Trump lied about North Korea. Lied about it last year, lied about it yesterday. BBC
North Korea has denied US President Donald Trump's claim that the country demanded total sanctions relief during a failed summit in Hanoi.
The North's Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho was speaking after talks between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended without agreement.
He said they asked only for partial sanctions relief in exchange for disabling its main nuclear complex.
The US insists this is not the case.
After their talks broke down, Mr Trump said Mr Kim had offered to dismantle all of the Yongbyon complex, the research and production facility at the heart of North Korea's nuclear programme, a significant proposal.
By the way, why does Trump always want to be so cozy with dictators? And why does he always defend these ones that murder and torture by using his own so-called personal relationship instead of the facts? Consider Otto Warmbler
Donald Trump has said he took Kim Jong-un “at his word” when he denied any responsibility in the imprisonment and torture of Otto Warmbier that led to the US student’s death in 2017.
“Some really bad things happened to Otto,” Trump said. “But Kim tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”
Although Kim wields tremendous power in one of the world’s last totalitarian regimes, Trump said he believed the North Korean leader was not aware of Warmbier’s imprisonment in January 2016 and torture in jail until it was too late.
“I don’t believe he knew about it. He felt very badly about it, I did speak to him. He knew about it, but he knew about it after,” Trump said. North Korea, he went on, was a “big country” with “a lot of people in those prisons and the camps – there are some bad people”.
Let's say that Un didn't actually know that an American was being tortured. He is still responsible, and shoudl not be given a pass based on whether Trump believes it based on what Un says.
The Warmbier family responded March 1 2019
The parents of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died after being imprisoned by the North Korean regime, responded for the first time Friday to President Trump's comments siding with dictator Kim Jong Un on the death of their son.
In Vietnam, Mr. Trump, who said he mourned the student's death last year and invited his parents to his State of the Union address,
told reporters Kim "tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word." Warmbier died last year shortly after he was released in a coma.
"We have been respectful during this summit process," Warmbier's parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said in a statement. "Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that."
Trump's Corrupt Cabinet
Alex Acosta, Secretary of Labor was a federal prosecutor in Jeffrey Epstein's case in Florida. Philly.com
Over the last two decades, nearly 100 women told authorities all about sexual crimes allegedly committed by the hedge-funder Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein was a friend of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and many other men in high places....
Twelve years ago, despite masses of corroborating evidence and the statements of the Jane Does, federal prosecutors under then-Miami U.S. Atty. Alexander Acosta — now President Trump’s Labor secretary — handed Epstein a sickly-sweet sweetheart deal.
The multimillionaire pleaded guilty to two negligible charges of soliciting prostitution in state court and paid restitution to dozens of his victims. In exchange, according to the plea agreement, he and “any potential co-conspirators” received immunity from potential federal charges that could have carried a life sentence. And instead of being sent to state prison, Epstein served his grueling 13-month sentence in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Jail, with work release privileges of up to 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Judge Kenneth A Marra ruled last week that Acosta broke the law when he and the other federal prosecutors didn't inform more than 30 underage victims of sexual abuse that the prosecutors were doing a plea deal with Epstein. This isn't a question of doing this to protect the victims, they wanted to be informed of what was going on and there was a law that required the prosecutors to inform them. Philly.com
Indeed, Epstein’s teen-sex-abuse equivalent of shooting a man on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it was clearly made possible by his many powerful friends — including not just Trump but also former president Bill Clinton, a frequent flier on Epstein’s plane that was dubbed (no, you can’t make these things up) “the Lolita Express.” His lawyers who negotiated his cushy deal included Alan Dershowitz (now also accused of Epstein-related sexual shenanigans) and Kenneth Starr. Their work only proved that there are two systems of justice in America — one for the 1 Percent and another for the rest of us.
Trump was a friend of Epstein and one of the young, underage women that was raped filed a lawsuit against Trump. Here are the court documents.
Tiffany Doe says in court documents that she lured Jane Doe to a party with the promise of money and meeting contacts in the modeling industry.
She claims in the documents that she personally witnessed the girl being forced to engage in various sex acts with Trump and Epstein, who she said were aware of her age.
“I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop,” Tiffany Doe alleges.
Right before they were to appear at a press conference, Jane Doe dismissed her lawsuit (this was right before the election).
Johnson claimed that Trump violently raped her when she was 13 at a 1994 orgy hosted by Jeffrey Epstein — the billionaire who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and has been accused of having sex with more than 30 underage girls.
Johnson’s lawsuit mentioned Trump’s friendship with Epstein, and a comment Trump made in 2002 about their respective tastes in women: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
The lawsuit alleged a number of charges against both Trump and Epstein, including rape, sexual abuse, assault and battery, and 0 imprisonment. Johnson said that when she was 13, Epstein lured her to parties at his apartment by promising “money and a modeling career.”
Johnson said Trump had sexual contact with her at four of those parties, including tying her to a bed and violently raping her in a “savage sexual attack.” The lawsuit said Johnson “loudly pleaded” with Trump to stop, but that he responded by “violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted.”
After that, Trump allegedly threatened to harm or kill Johnson and her family if she ever told anyone. Johnson said Trump told her he could make them “disappear” like Maria — a 12-year-old girl Johnson says Trump also forced her to have sexual contact with, and whom Johnson hadn’t seen since that encounter.
Johnson also accused Epstein of raping her “anally and vaginally despite her loud pleas to stop,” and that he “attempted to strike Plaintiff about the head with his closed fists while he angrily screamed that he, Defendant Epstein, rather than Defendant Trump, should have been the one who took Plaintiff’s virginity.”
The court filings also included a statement from “Tiffany Doe,” another anonymous woman, who said that she witnessed the rapes and procured the young girls for the parties, and “Joan Doe,” a classmate of the victim who said she was told about the rapes during the following school year. Tiffany Doe said that Epstein and Trump knew that Johnson was 13.
Son in Law Jared Kushner and his security clearance. Trump and his daughter Ivanka lied that Trump had nothing to do with Kushner being granted a top security clearance. Newsweek
A directive by President Donald Trump to give son-in-law Jared Kushner top secret security clearance didn’t sit well with then-chief of staff General John Kelly, who went on to document it in an internal memo, according to The New York Times, which broke the story.
According to the report, Kelly and top intelligence officials opposed granting Kushner access to viewing sensitive materials pertaining to the nation’s security. Though their defiance of the president’s wish began sooner, Kushner was given top clearance in May 2018.
Abbe D. Lowell, Kushner’s attorney, said Kushner went through a standard process for obtaining his clearance.
“In 2018, White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone,” Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Lowell, told The Times on Thursday. “That was conveyed to the media at the time, and new stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time.”
Why didn't Kushner immediately get top secret clearance in the first place? Or after? Washingon Post
Kelly told colleagues that the decision to give Kushner top-secret clearance was not supported by career intelligence officials, and he memorialized Trump’s request in an internal memo, according to two people familiar with the memo and the then-chief of staff’s concerns.
What did Trump say about this? That he had had nothing to do with it. That was a lie. Ny Times Feb 1 2018
HABERMAN: Can I switch gears for a second? There’s been a story in the news the last two weeks about your son-in-law’s security clearance.
TRUMP: Yeah.
HABERMAN: Did you tell General Kelly or anyone else in the White House to overrule security officials? The career veterans —
TRUMP: No. I don’t think I have the authority to do that. I’m not sure I do.
Haberman: You do have the authority to do it.
Trump: But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it.
HABERMAN: O.K.
TRUMP: Um, Jared is a good —
HABERMAN: You never —
TRUMP: I was never involved with the security. I know that he — you know, just from reading — I know that there was issues back and forth about security for numerous people, actually. But I don’t want to get involved in that stuff.
What did Ivanka Trump say about this? She also lied, in an interview with Abby Huntsman of ABC.
“There were anonymous leaks about there being issues. But the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance, zero," Trump told ABC’s Abby Huntsman during an exclusive interview for “The View”.
The House is going to call in Ivanka Trump and Kushner to testify before Congress.
Michael Cohen, who worked for Trump as a sort of *bag man*. Cohen was extremely loyal, but after his office was raided, and he was indicted, he turned on Trump. Trump has called him a *rat*. (I don't know about you, but when someone uses the term rat, it has always meant to me that the person is selling out someone doing something wrong and, er, telling the truth). Here are 5 key takeaways from Cohen's testimony to Congress this week.
Republicans didn't defend Trump, rather just pushed back on the fact that Cohen had lied the last time he came before Congress. A hilarious defense of Trump by Rick Santorum who says that Donald consistently doesn't tell the truth about a lot of topics, ie, Trump is a liar, so it's not out of character for him to lie about Russia.
Payments to Stormy Daniels
Fourth, Cohen brings Donald Trump’s crimes into the White House—and he brings the literal receipt. Cohen has provided the committee a “copy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account—after he became president—to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.” It’s easy to forget that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, aka “Individual 1,” has already been credibly implicated as an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance felony—a fact that in any other circumstance would garner unending wall-to-wall news coverage.
Matt Gaetz sent a threatening tweet to Michael Cohen and is now being investigated by the Florida Bar.
Gaetz is currently the subject of an inquiry by the Florida Bar after posting a tweet that critics said appeared to be threatening toward former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The tweet, which was later deleted, implied that Cohen had extramarital relations and was posted the night before the public hearing where Republicans attempted to shred Cohen’s credibility as he detailed his illegal activities on behalf of the president.
Is Gaetz now an underling in service of liar Donald Trump? Perhaps so.
Trump lied about what Michael Cohen said about Russian collusion. VOX
Cohen did not say there was “no collusion.” What he said was that he does not “know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia,” but “I have my suspicions.”
Oh, Trump left off ThAT part-haha.
During his opening statement, Cohen recalled an incident shortly before the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, in which Trump Jr. walked into his father’s office and told him, “The meeting is all set.”
“What struck me as I look back and thought about the exchange between Don Jr. and his father was ... that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of significance alone, and certainly without checking with his father,” Cohen said. “I also knew that nothing went on in Trumpworld, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval. So I concluded that Don Jr. was referring to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting about dirt on Hillary with the Russian representatives when he walked behind his dad’s desk that day, and that Mr. Trump knew that was the meeting Don Jr. was talking about.”