Iran Blackmail Money Cartoon

Iran "give me money" Cartoons

Behind the sudden shakeup: Why Trump rebelled against being managed

The pundits instantly ripped Donald Trump’s campaign shakeup yesterday, using analogies like Titanic deck chairs and saying the candidate, not the staff, is the problem.
And it’s true that some of the recent unforced errors have been Trump’s doing, amplified by increasingly hostile media coverage. But based on conversations with knowledgeable sources, let’s offer a contrarian view.
If Trump is going to lose anyway—and recent polls haven’t been encouraging—why not finish the campaign as the street fighter he is at heart? And maybe that might just turn things around. The free-swinging approach, in his mind, is how he seized the Republican nomination.
Trump was clearly chafing at the efforts by Paul Manafort and others to transform him into a more choreographed and disciplined candidate. But it wasn’t working, and every few days he’d fall off the wagon. So rather than change, he got himself some new aides, in the person of Breitbart executive Steve Bannon and GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway.
Conway’s mere presence, as the first woman to manage a Republican presidential campaign, helps Trump, who faces a huge gender gap.
Trump never got entirely comfortable with Manafort, who was brought in as designated grownup after the firing of Corey Lewandowski, who largely followed a “let Trump be Trump” philosophy. There was a feeling within the campaign that Manafort, a longtime lobbyist, was too tied to the Washington establishment and grumbling that he was spending some weekends in the Hamptons. Rightly or wrongly, Manafort is also blamed for the campaign’s weak infrastructure, including the lack of field offices in such battleground states as Florida.

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I’m told that Trump wasn’t particularly perturbed by the New York Times report that Manafort, as an adviser to Ukraine’s former pro-Russian regime, may have received millions in undisclosed cash payments, which Manafort vociferously denies. Trump was far more upset about the previous day’s Times story on how Trump’s aides had concluded that he wasn’t coachable, with details of meetings that included Manafort and only a handful of other advisers. The sources seemed to be distancing themselves from a potential Trump defeat.
It’s interesting that after the shakeup was announced, a couple of news outlets got word that Manafort had tried to stop Trump’s infamous taco bowl tweet on Cinco de Mayo, which some found offensive.
Insiders hope that Conway’s polling data will guide Trump’s rally appearances, such as a law-and-order speech he gave Tuesday night that included an appeal to black voters, and that he will focus on the half-dozen swing states he needs to win rather than wasting time in places like Wisconsin and Connecticut.
What’s striking is that Trump didn’t tell Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus of the decision after it was made on Sunday, fearing it would leak to Manafort.
Instead, he waited for Jared Kushner, Ivanaka’s husband, who had assumed day-to-day management of the operation, to fly back from a vacation in Croatia to give Manafort the news.
It’s easy to conclude that shuffling aides won’t matter much if Trump keeps talking his way into trouble and picking unnecessary fights.
But as the candidate himself told a Wisconsin television station: “I don’t wanna change. Everybody talks about, ‘Oh well, you’re gonna pivot, you’re gonna’ — I don’t wanna pivot. I mean, you have to be you. If you start pivoting, you’re not being honest with people.”

Clinton reportedly told FBI that Colin Powell urged her to use private email

Barking out more lies?

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly told federal authorities during her questioning over her email practices while at the State Department that former Secretary of State Colin Powell encouraged her to use a private email account.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Clinton’s revelation is part of the FBI’s notes that were given to Congress on Tuesday about the agency’s questioning in July that led Director James Comey not to pursue criminal charges against her over her use of private emails.
An email exchange emerged from 2009 between Clinton and Powell during the questioning that revealed that she had asked the former secretary of state about his email practices under George W. Bush, a source told The Times. Clinton had already setup her private email server during that time.
The Times reported that the conversations between Clinton and Powell are revealed in an upcoming book detailing Bill Clinton’s post-presidency, titled “Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton,” by Joe Conason.
The book details a conversation between Clinton and Powell at a party hosted by Madeleine Albright in Washington. The Times reported that Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice also attended the event.
“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat,” a passage details. “Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.”
Clinton has repeatedly claimed that her personal email use was in line of that of her predecessors’. But this is the first time of any details of a personal conversation between the pair that revealed Powell recommended Clinton use a private email account.
According to The Times, Powell’s office said in a statement that he had “no recollection” of the alleged conversation between him and Clinton. He did confirm that he told Clinton via email about his use of a personal account for unclassified emails and “how it improved communications within the State Department.”
Howard Krongard, a former watchdog for the State Department, told Fox News in May that he would have immediately opened an investigation if he caught wind of a secretary of state used a private account.
Krongard shot down the notion that she was in line with her predecessors’ in using a private email account for State Department business. He pointed to a May 25 inspectors general report that stated Rice did not use personal email for government business. It said Powell used personal email on a limited basis to connect with people outside the department, and he worked with the State Department to secure the system. The report found Clinton did neither.
The report concluded Clinton’s use of a private server and account was not approved, and broke agency rules. The report said by the time she became secretary, the rules had repeatedly been updated, and were “considerably more detailed and more sophisticated.”
The Times reported that the State Department has asked to review the FBI’s notes from Clinton’s questioning before they are officially released.
Clinton campaign officials fear that materials could be leaked in order to hurt her campaign.

State Department says review into deleted briefing footage 'inconclusive'

State Dept. admits to deleting parts of Iran deal briefing, Your Crooked Government at Work.

 

The State Department announced Thursday, after a weeks-long review involving dozens of interviews, that it still does not know why several minutes of footage from a 2013 briefing were deleted from a public archive – leaving the department’s top spokesman on the defensive over the unusual incident.
“There’s no evidence to suggest [the edit] was made with the intent to conceal information from the public,” spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
At the same time, he said they couldn’t rule out “nefarious” intent – but said the results of an extensive review were “inconclusive.”
The vague comments came as he announced the results of a “fact-finding review” into the deletion which apparently included interviews with more than 30 current and former employees and a review of emails and other documents.
The matter flared up more than two months ago when Kirby publicly acknowledged that an official had intentionally deleted video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a former spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.
“There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” Kirby said in June.
On Thursday, Kirby stood by the assessment that this was a deliberate edit, but couldn’t say why it was done.
“We may never know,” Kirby said, as he addressed tough questions from reporters.
At the 2013 briefing in question, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.
Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”
However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel (though not from the transcript). Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect.
The State Department report concluded that the effect was "evidence of deliberate editing," but added that it had "not found any evidence to support a conclusion that the video was edited to hide any content."
Kirby on Thursday reviewed what they know and don’t know. The spokesman reiterated that a technician came forward and acknowledged getting a phone call requesting the edit, and then making it.
However, Kirby said they can’t conclude who placed that call or why. Further, he said additional details call into question the suggestion this was done to conceal – including that the full transcript was always online, and that the video was seemingly shortened early on, even before the technician remembers getting the request. Kirby said it’s possible the white-flash effect was inserted because the video had lost footage due to technical problems.
“I understand these results may not be completely satisfying to everyone,” he said.
This may not be the last word on the matter. Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group, filed suit this week seeking all records regarding the video footage and its deletion.

Obama administration says $400M to Iran was contingent on release of prisoners

The Obama administration admitted Thursday that a $400 million cash payment to Iran in January was contingent on the release of American prisoners being held in the country – while still denying that the payment was a ransom.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the negotiations to return the money – originally from a 1979 failed military equipment deal made between Iran and the U.S. – were conducted separately from negotiations to free the four prisoners.
The four detainees who were released on January 17 were Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati; Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose case had not been publicized before the release.
However, Kirby said that the U.S. withheld the cash delivery until Iran made good on its promise to release the prisoners.
“In basic English you are saying you wouldn’t give [Iran] the 400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?” asked a reporter at Thursday’s State Department briefing.
“That’s correct,” Kirby responded.
The new details, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, added to criticisms from Republicans that it was a ransom paid by the Obama administration. Kirby’s admission only served to add fuel to the controversy.
“What the State Department admitted today was the dictionary definition of a ransom payment and a complete contradiction of what they were saying just two weeks ago,” RNC Spokesman Michael Short said in a statement. “It’s time for the Obama White House to drop the charade and admit it paid a ransom to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
"If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If a cash payment is contingent on a hostage release, it's a ransom,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. “The truth matters and the President owes the American people an explanation."
Earlier this month, after the revelation the U.S. delivered the money in pallets of cash, the administration flatly denied any connection between the payment and the prisoners.
"Reports of link between prisoner release & payment to Iran are completely false," Kirby tweeted at the time.
"This wasn’t some nefarious deal," Obama said during an August 4 press conference. "We do not pay ransom for hostages."
The agreement was the return of the $400 million, plus an additional $1.3 billion in interest, terms that Obama described as favorable compared to what might have been expected from a tribunal set up in The Hague to rule on pending deals between the two countries.
Abedini has claimed that he and the other hostages were kept waiting at an Iranian airport for more than 20 hours before their departure. Abedini said he was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official that their departure was contingent on the movement of a second plane.
State Department officials denied Abedini's claims to the Journal, saying the delay was due to issues locating Rezaian's wife and mother, who accompanied him on the flight.
According to the Journal, GOP leaders say they plan to hold hearings on the payment next month, when Congress returns from its summer recess. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., chair of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, last week sent letters to the Justice and Treasury Departments, as well as the Federal Reserve, requesting more information the transaction.