Assessing Trump’s claim of ‘executive privilege’ on FBI access to MAL docs

Assessing Trump’s claim of ‘executive privilege’ on FBI access to MAL docs

Michael Stern writes: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and former President Donald Trump are locked in a long running dispute over records taken from the White House in January 2021. According to a NARA May 2022 letter and more recent reporting, the agency went back and forth with Trump’s lawyers about “missing Presidential records” throughout 2021 and well into 2022. In January 2022, Trump transferred 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago to NARA. It’s an exchange that may…

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‘The U.S. could lose the right to vote within months,’ warns Colorado secretary of state

‘The U.S. could lose the right to vote within months,’ warns Colorado secretary of state

The Guardian reports: Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, is warning anyone who will listen that the fate of free and fair elections in the United States hangs in the balance in this November’s midterm contests. In many of the most competitive races for offices with authority over US elections, Republicans nominated candidates who have embraced or echoed Donald Trump’s myth of a stolen election in 2020. Griswold, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (Dass) and is…

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Fox News fired me after I said Biden won. That wasn’t the worst of it

Fox News fired me after I said Biden won. That wasn’t the worst of it

Chris Stirewalt writes: My first meeting in Roger Ailes’ boardroom of doom was on Election Day 2010. At the time, I was the network’s new political editor. Republicans were poised to deliver a serious walloping to President Barack Obama and roll back the Democrats’ doughty majorities in both houses of Congress. The GOP was in a position to score major wins in governors’ mansions and statehouses from coast to coast. The second floor of the News Corp headquarters on Sixth…

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‘Slower burn.’ Russia dodges economic collapse but the decline has started

‘Slower burn.’ Russia dodges economic collapse but the decline has started

CNN reports: Six months after invading Ukraine, Russia is bogged down in a war of attrition it didn’t anticipate but it is having success on another front — its oil-dependent economy is in a deep recession but proving far more resilient than expected. “I’m driving through Moscow and the same traffic jams are there as before,” says Andrey Nechaev, who was Russia’s economy minister in the early 1990s. The readiness of China and India to snap up cheap Russian oil…

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What animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity

What animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity

By Rachel Nuwer, August 26, 2022 The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was, by all accounts, a miserable human being. He famously sought meaning through suffering, which he experienced in ample amounts throughout his life. Nietzsche struggled with depression, suicidal ideation, and hallucinations, and when he was 44 — around the height of his philosophical output — he suffered a nervous breakdown. He was committed to a mental hospital and never recovered. Although Nietzsche himself hated fascism and anti-Semitism, his…

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U.S. feared Trump’s mishandling of intelligence files put spies’ lives at risk

U.S. feared Trump’s mishandling of intelligence files put spies’ lives at risk

The New York Times reports: They risk imprisonment or death stealing the secrets of their own governments. Their identities are among the most closely protected information inside American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Losing even one of them can set back American foreign intelligence operations for years. Clandestine human sources are the lifeblood of any espionage service. This helps explain the grave concern within American agencies that information from undercover sources was included in some of the classified documents recently…

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It’s over: Trump will be indicted

It’s over: Trump will be indicted

Brad Moss writes: I have finally seen enough. Donald Trump will be indicted by a federal grand jury. You heard me right: I believe Trump will actually be indicted for a criminal offense. Even with all its redactions, the probable cause affidavit published today by the magistrate judge in Florida makes clear to me three essential points: (1) Trump was in unauthorized possession of national defense information, namely properly marked classified documents. (2) He was put on notice by the…

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Possibility of obstruction looms over Trump after thwarted efforts to recover documents

Possibility of obstruction looms over Trump after thwarted efforts to recover documents

The New York Times reports: When the Justice Department proposed redactions to the affidavit underlying the warrant used to search former President Donald J. Trump’s residence, prosecutors made clear that they feared the former president and his allies might take any opportunity to intimidate witnesses or otherwise illegally obstruct their investigation. “The government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed,” prosecutors said in…

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Intel officials to assess national security fallout from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents

Intel officials to assess national security fallout from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents

Politico reports: The U.S. intelligence community will evaluate the potential national security risks stemming from former President Donald Trump’s possession of top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told top lawmakers. In a letter obtained by POLITICO and dated Friday, Haines told House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) that her office will lead an “assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from…

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Russia blocks UN nuclear treaty agreement over Zaporizhzhia clause

Russia blocks UN nuclear treaty agreement over Zaporizhzhia clause

The Guardian reports: Russia has blocked an agreement at the United Nations that was aimed at bolstering the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) because Moscow objected to a clause about control over the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine. The failure to agree to a joint statement after four weeks of debate and negotiation among 151 countries at the UN in New York is the latest blow to hopes of maintaining an arms control regime and keeping a lid on a rekindled…

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Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Neil Seeman writes: In light of Japan’s decision last week to waive pre-departure COVID-19 tests for vaccinated inbound travelers, it is worthwhile to consider that its strong performance over the first two years of the pandemic may have had less to do with policy than with culture. In a study published this summer in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Fahad Razak and colleagues at the University of Toronto examined COVID-19 outcomes in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the…

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Seven-million-year-old femur suggests ancient human relative walked upright

Seven-million-year-old femur suggests ancient human relative walked upright

Nature reports: A battered fossil leg bone discovered more than 20 years ago in Chad is finally making its scientific debut. Researchers say that the remains, described today in Nature, show that a species called Sahelanthropus tchadensis was an ancient human relative that walked on two feet. At seven million years old, S. tchadensis is a candidate for the earliest known member of the hominin lineage — the evolutionary branch that leads from the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees…

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The redacted affidavit shows Trump’s actions posed a clear risk to our national security

The redacted affidavit shows Trump’s actions posed a clear risk to our national security

Andrew Weissmann writes: Trump knows the answers to the most important unanswered questions: What material did Mr. Trump take from the White House, why did he take it, what had he done with it and what was he planning to do with it? There is nothing that prevented Mr. Trump for over a year from publicly answering those questions; he surely has not remained silent because the answers are exculpatory. Above all, the newly released redacted affidavit (and an accompanying…

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Inside Trump’s public bravado and private resistance over Mar-a-Lago documents

Inside Trump’s public bravado and private resistance over Mar-a-Lago documents

CNN reports: Not long after the National Archives acknowledged in February that it had retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump began fielding calls from Tom Fitton, a prominent conservative activist. Fitton, the longtime head of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, had a simple message for Trump — it was a mistake to give the records to the Archives, and his team should never have let the Archives “strong-arm” him…

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