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Category: Politics

Judge: Trump signed court document that knowingly included false voter fraud numbers

Judge: Trump signed court document that knowingly included false voter fraud numbers

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump signed legal documents describing evidence of election fraud that he knew were false, a federal judge indicated on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge David Carter wrote in an 18-page opinion that emails from attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election, needed to be turned over to the Jan. 6 select committee. Those emails, Carter wrote, “show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud…

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Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the U.S. constitution

Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the U.S. constitution

The Guardian reports: Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US constitution. Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years. Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call…

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John Durham failed because the anti-Trump ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy never happened

John Durham failed because the anti-Trump ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy never happened

Jonathan Chait writes: John Durham’s latest, and presumably final, humiliation is the capstone of his failed attempt to prove a conspiracy theory that has long been accepted as settled fact in the conservative universe. This theory holds that, in 2016, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or James Comey (or maybe all of them — the mastermind changes in different iterations) devised a plot to smear Donald Trump by ginning up an FBI investigation into his completely innocent and superficial connections to…

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Russia destroys power and water infrastructure across Ukraine

Russia destroys power and water infrastructure across Ukraine

Reuters reports: Ukraine said Russia had destroyed almost a third of its power stations over the past week as Moscow stepped up a pre-winter campaign to strike infrastructure, a move the West says is a calculated attempt to disrupt and demoralise. Missiles struck power generating facilities in a clutch of Ukrainian cities home to millions of people and several people were killed. Moscow acknowledged targeting energy plants, while Ukraine said water infrastructure had also been hit. “The situation is critical…

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Drones embody an Iran-Russia alliance built on hostility toward the U.S.

Drones embody an Iran-Russia alliance built on hostility toward the U.S.

The New York Times reports: The Iranian-made drones that Russia sent on Monday to divebomb Ukraine’s capital delivered the most emphatic proof yet that Tehran has become a rare, increasingly close ally to the Kremlin, offering both weapons and international support that Russia sorely lacks. There is no deep love between Russia, newly a pariah for attacking another country, and Iran, for decades one of the most strategically isolated nations in the world. But the two authoritarian governments, both chafing…

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German cybersecurity chief sacked following reports of Russia ties

German cybersecurity chief sacked following reports of Russia ties

The Guardian reports: Germany’s interior minister has sacked the country’s cybersecurity chief, after allegations he had turned a blind eye to a firm with links to Russian security circles. Arne Schönbohm, the president of the German Federal Office for Information Security, was released from his duties with immediate effect on Tuesday, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported, citing security sources. A spokesperson for the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, confirmed that Schönbohm would be barred from his office, as “necessary public…

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Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

The Washington Post reports: More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation. In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s…

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Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Josh Rogin writes: The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case. Many dictatorships unjustly imprison Americans. But while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure…

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Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin’

Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin’

Politico‘s Maura Reynolds: We’ve recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he’s playing? Hill: It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — including the recognition of Crimea as Russian because it’s been mostly Russian since the 1780s — and…

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White House calls Trump’s attack on American Jews antisemitic

White House calls Trump’s attack on American Jews antisemitic

The Washington Post reports: The White House on Monday called Donald Trump’s attack on American Jews antisemitic after the former president wrote online that American Jews need to “get their act together” and show more appreciation for the state of Israel “before it is too late.” Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, said, “Donald Trump has aligned with extremist and antisemitic figures” and that comments like the ones he made Sunday on his social media…

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CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, harming pandemic response

CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, harming pandemic response

The Washington Post reports: Trump appointees oversaw a concerted effort to restrict immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border during the pandemic, change scientific reports and muzzle top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to emails, text messages and interviews gathered by a congressional panel probing the pandemic response. Former CDC Director Robert Redfield, former top deputy Anne Schuchat and others described how the Trump White House and its allies repeatedly “bullied” staff, tried to rewrite their publications…

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DOJ recommends 6-month jail term for Bannon

DOJ recommends 6-month jail term for Bannon

Politico reports: The Justice Department is recommending a six-month jail sentence and $200,000 fine for Steve Bannon, the longtime adviser to Donald Trump who defied a subpoena to the Jan. 6 select committee. Prosecutors said Bannon, from the moment he received the select committee subpoena on Sept. 2021, “has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt.” A jury found Bannon guilty in July on two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and provide documents to…

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How Marjorie Taylor Greene took a GOP leadership position without being given one

How Marjorie Taylor Greene took a GOP leadership position without being given one

Robert Draper writes: “There’s going to be a lot of investigations,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said, describing what she anticipates if the Republicans regain the House majority this November. “I’ve talked with a lot of members about this.” It was early September, two months before the midterm elections, and Greene, the first-term congresswoman from Georgia, was sitting in a restaurant in Alpharetta, an affluent suburb of greater metropolitan Atlanta. Among the fellow Republicans with whom Greene said she had been speaking…

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From Italy to Brazil to the U.S., political leaders increasingly echo Putin’s far-right authoritarianism

From Italy to Brazil to the U.S., political leaders increasingly echo Putin’s far-right authoritarianism

The Washington Post reports: In a flurry of elections, some of the world’s major democracies have been leaning toward or outright embracing far-right authoritarian leaders, who have echoed one another by promising to crack down on loose morals, open borders and power-hungry elites. Voters in Italy last month elected a nationalist leader whose party proposes a U-turn from the effects of globalization. In Brazil, right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro injected doubt into the results of his reelection bid by speculating that…

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Russia is grabbing men off the street to fight in Ukraine

Russia is grabbing men off the street to fight in Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center this week unannounced. They were looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw. Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability. “I have no idea why they took him,” said Alexei, who, like dozens of others in the office…

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A tale of three generals — how the Ukrainian military turned the tide

A tale of three generals — how the Ukrainian military turned the tide

Mick Ryan writes: Since the beginning of their invasion, Russia’s military has been forced by the Ukrainians to continually re-assess their strategic objectives. This is not unusual in warfare. While political objectives shape how war is conducted and what battles are fought, so too do battles reshape political objectives. The Ukrainian resistance, and their defeat of the Russians in the north of the country early in the war, have unhinged the Russian overall campaign for Ukraine. This has been the…

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