Sanders draws Democratic challenger tired of his 'Robin Hood shtick'

Bernie Sanders’ enduring popularity across Vermont for decades has scared off political challengers, but the independent senator is facing competition in his 2018 reelection bid from a Democrat who thinks his “Robin Hood shtick” must end.

“It’s shamefully arrogant when you’re more interested in being a celebrity than honoring your progressive agenda,” challenger Jon Svitavsky told Fox News. “This wonderful, political ‘I am Robin Hood shtick’ can only last for so long.” 

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Then-Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during the opening of his Cedar Rapids field headquarters, Sunday, Aug. 16, 2015, in Marion, Iowa.  (AP)

The longshot bid comes from a first-time candidate even more anti-establishment than the democratic socialist incumbent and, in his words, "far more liberal."
An advocate for the homeless who claims to have some name recognition in the state, Svitavsky not only questions the sitting senator's commitment to Vermont voters but argues he used and undermined the Democratic Party for his 2016 presidential bid.

'He’s not a Democrat. That was a joke.'
- Jon Svitavsky, on Sanders' White House bid

Svitavsky contends Sanders joined Democrats to seek their nomination, then damaged frontrunner Hillary Clinton enough to give then-candidate Donald Trump the edge in the general election -- only to once again become an independent.
He also suggests an FBI investigation into a commercial real estate loan orchestrated by the senator’s wife, Jane Sanders, has left Sanders vulnerable.

FBI PROBE OF SANDERS' WIFE BASED ON 'FACTS,' GOP OFFICIAL SAYS
While his curmudgeonly manner has long alienated Capitol Hill colleagues, Sanders, a self-styled champion of the poor and middle class, continues to be immensely popular among voters.
A Morning Consult survey released Tuesday showed him with the highest approval rating among all 100 senators, 75 percent, based on interviews with registered voters in their respective states.
However, the poll was conducted from early April to mid-June, largely before reports of the loan started attracting national attention.

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 (File: UNDATED: Jon Svitavsky, a 2018 Senate candidate in Vermont, with grandson Fable Marcus Svitavsky. Submitted: Jon Svitavsky.)

The federal investigation apparently focuses on whether Jane Sanders, as president of the now-shuttered Burlington College in Vermont, overstated or overpromised financial pledges and grants to get at least $6.7 million in financing in 2010 for roughly 33 acres for a new campus.
There also have been unsubstantiated allegations that Sanders, now seeking a third Senate term, used his political office to either get the loan approved or at least OK’d swiftly.
The senator, in various interviews, has called such claims an "absolute lie" while describing the criticism of his wife as "pathetic" and political.
The self-described democratic socialist also has more than $3.8 million cash on hand in Senate accounts, according to OpenSecrets.org., which only adds to Svitavsky’s complications.
Svitavsky hopes to win the state’s Democratic primary and challenge Sanders in the general election.
In an interview Tuesday, he sounded undeterred by Sanders’ popularity and war chest, saying that his decades-long efforts in opening homeless shelters across the state has given him standing among voters.
“I think that resonates,” he said. “And I’m not unknown here. People might say I don’t have political experience but not that I’m insincere. … I’m far more liberal than Bernie, far more committed to making things happen.”
Svitavsky says he's getting strong grassroots support from across the state and country -- including a call from a guy who used to play with folk-singing legend Pete Seeger.
The Sanders campaign has declined to comment on Svitavsky’s bid.
Before Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006, he served 19 years in the House and eight as mayor of Burlington. He was reelected to the Senate in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote, as proof of his political strength.
There has been no indication that the 75-year-old Sanders intends to retire before next year. And one source close to his 2016 presidential campaign recently told Fox News he wants to run for president again in 2020.
Right now, Sanders is still among the leading voices for national Democrats, even taking the spotlight from Democrat National Committee Chairman Tom Perez during a recent, multi-state tour that attempted to bridge the party’s lingering Clinton-Sanders divide.
“He’s not a Democrat. That was a joke,” said Svitavsky, who argues the Democratic Party was outfoxed by Sanders but is now coming to its senses. Svitavsky cannot officially file to run until next spring.
Sanders and his White House bid captured the political interests of tens of millions of voters -- particularly younger Americans -- with promises of a free college education, universal health care and legalized marijuana.
However, Svitavsky largely dismissed those promises as unrealistic because they would be too expensive for taxpayers, even if Congress approved them.
“This cannot go on forever,” he said.

'Everybody would do that': Trump downplays son's meeting with Russian lawyer

President Trump on Wednesday told Reuters that he was unaware of Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer until a “couple days ago,” and did not fault his son for accepting the meeting.

“It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from what I’m hearing,” Trump said. “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that.”

The White House on Wednesday worked to try and go on the offensive, and change the conversation into what it sees as a Democrat double standard for their associates’ alleged coordination with foreign governments in 2016.
But one important issue is that Trump Jr. was did not immediately report that he met with the lawyer. The New York Times claimed that Trump Jr. only tweeted images of the emails after “he was told NYT was about to publish the contents of the emails.”
Trump Jr. acknowledged in an exclusive interview with Fox News' "Hannity" Tuesday night that he "probably would have done things a little differently"

"This [was] pre-Russia fever. This [was] pre-Russia mania," Trump Jr. told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "I don’t think my sirens went [off] or my antenna went up at this time because it wasn’t the issue that it’s been made out to be over the last nine months, ten months."
The president’s eldest son also described the meeting as "a nothing," adding, "I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame."

The emails between Trump Jr. and Goldstone contain no evidence that the president’s son was informed of the larger alleged Russian effort to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump, for his part, said on Twitter that the White house was “functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.”

Florida Congressman Proposes Taxpayer Pension Disclosure Act

A Florida Congressman has introduced a bill to increase transparency of government pensions. Currently, the amount paid to former government employees after they retire is unknown by taxpayers footing the bill. It would take an act of Congress to force those records open.
Congressman Ron DeSantis (FL-R) is  looking to do just that with the Taxpayer Pension Disclosure Act. “Taxpayers have a right to know how their money’s being spent” DeSantis said.
Roughly 125 billion dollars is spent annually on federal pensions. Federal courts have consistently ruled that disclosing federal pension amounts of retired congressional representatives and senators violates  privacy rights.   
DeSantis is against Congressional pensions altogether, however the bill is not to get rid of them, but to lift the veil and let taxpayers know where and to whom their money is going. “Regardless of your political affiliation,” said  DeSantis,  “most voters and most taxpayers think they have a right to know how their money’s being spent. It should not be done in the dark.”
He used former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the I.R.S., Lois Lerner as one example as to why he believes taxpayers should have the right to pension information.
“There are certain offenses that if you get convicted of then your pension goes away. Then there are other offenses where it doesn’t like Lois Lerner.” Lerner became the center of controversy when she was accused of targeting conservative organizations. “[Lerner] was at the I.R.S. really at the center of that. She was allowed to retire and she’s getting a full pension. We know it’s a 6 figure pension but we don’t know exactly how much.”

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FBI document dump reveals secrets of Clinton probe as new director nominee faces Senate

Some 42 pages of highly redacted documents from the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's mishandling of highly classified materials paint a picture of a serious, but flawed investigation hindered by a lack of cooperation, according to a key watchdog group.

The materials, all part of the probe dubbed "Midyear Exam,” included several documents designated as “grand jury material,” indicating the potential seriousness of the investigation that would ultimately be ended by FBI director James Comey in July, then restarted for a brief period in October before being shut down for good.

One redacted exchange reveals a back and forth subpoena response to the FBI from one of Mrs. Clinton's private attorneys, Katherine Turner, a partner at Washington DC powerhouse firm Williams & Connolly. In the document, Turner agreed to turn over one of Mrs. Clinton's non-secure Apple iPads and two of her BlackBerrys to the FBI.

“The new records show how badly the Obama Justice Department and FBI mishandled the Clinton email investigation. "

But neither smartphone received from the law firm contain SIM cards or Secure Digital (SD) cards, and a total of 13 mobile devices identified by the FBI as potentially using clintonemail.com email addresses were never located by Williams & Connelly.
"We are presuming there are still 13 devices at issue,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Fox News. “The new records show how badly the Obama Justice Department and FBI mishandled the Clinton email investigation. They get the equivalent of wiped phones from the Clinton lawyers and do nothing?"
READ THE DOCUMENTS
As extensively reported by Fox, Clinton would often task aides including Monica Hanley with finding and supplying the secretary of state's never-ending demand to use non-secure BlackBerrys for all her official government work.  Some of Clinton's BlackBerrys wound up being pounded with hammers on orders by Huma Abedin after Clinton's homebrew servers went down or when news that Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's email had been hacked in 2013 by the Romanian hacker known as "Guccifer"---Marcel Lehel Lazar.
The new documents offer a glimpse into the lawyering ballet inside the Beltway---as this surrendering of two BlackBerrys and one iPad by her private attorneys occurred just six days before Hillary Clinton, then the leading Democratic nominee for president, testified before Congress on Oct. 22, 2015 about the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
In a photo captured in the Benghazi hearing, Turner and her law partner David Kendall pointedly flanked Clinton during her marathon testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Also hovering nearby was longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, who was also at the epicenter of Clinton's deliberative use of a non-secure email system while she headed one of the most sensitive federal agencies in the U.S. government.
Mills, who was Clinton’s chief of staff and counselor at State, received immunity for her cooperation into the email investigation was permitted to be in the room while Clinton interviewed by the FBI in July 2016. Comey would later admit publicly that he had never heard of a potential witness representing the subject of an FBI investigation to be present during an interview with investigators.
Nearly a year has passed since Comey's then-boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, held her infamous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton in Phoenix, Arizona. Eight days later, Comey announced on July 5, 2016, that "regarding the handling of classified information, our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."
Comey made his determination despite noting that Clinton and her colleagues "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," and even though 22 top secret email exchanges deemed too damaging to national security to release. Some of those exchanges contained Special Access Privilege (SAP) information characterized by intel experts as “above top secret."  
"They (the FBI) were played by Mrs. Clinton's lawyers and didn't care,” Fitton said. “The Trump Justice Department needs to audit this mess and figure out if the Clinton matters need to be reopened or reinvigorated."
In the latest documents dumped by the FBI, a whopping 325 pages are cited as "total deleted pages."  The 42 pages that were released and are only readable in parts include 177 redactions. The redactions include those made citing Freedom of Information Act exemptions  under (b) (7) (e) in which the information is denied because revelations could “disclose investigation techniques.“
Now---64 days after James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump as the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray is scheduled to sit down before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the start his confirmation process.
Two former agents with the FBI told Fox News they hope that “the atmosphere is changed with a new director.”
Pamela K. Browne is Senior Executive Producer at the FOX News Channel (FNC) and is Director of Long-Form Series and Specials. Her journalism has been recognized with several awards. Browne first joined FOX in 1997 to launch the news magazine “Fox Files” and later, “War Stories.”

Don’t blame travel ban on Iranian cancer doctor being detained, sent back, Border Patrol says

The Iranian cancer researcher who was detained at Boston's Logan International Airport along with his family and sent back to his home country on Tuesday was not a result of President Trump's travel ban, a spokeswoman from U.S. Customs and Border Partol said.

Stephanie Malin, the spokeswoman, said Moshen Dehnavi and his family were detained for “reasons unrelated” to Trump’s executive order. She said the stop was based on information discovered during the agency’s review. She did not elaborate.  

Dehnavi was arriving in the U.S. to start work at a prominent Boston hospital.
Boston Children’s Hospital said in a statement earlier Tuesday that Dehnavi was prevented from entering the country with his wife and three young children despite holding a J-1 visa for visiting scholars.
“Boston Children’s hopes that this situation will be quickly resolved and Dr. Dehnavi and his family will be released and allowed to enter the U.S.,” hospital spokesman Rob Graham said in the statement. “
But Malin noted that visa applicants “bear the burden of proof” to meet all requirements and can be denied entry for a range of reasons, including health-related issues, criminality or security concerns.
The Supreme Court recently ruled the Trump administration could largely enforce its temporary ban on travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. But the court said the ban can’t block people with a “credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
Some advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Iranian American Council, suggested the detention might be a violation of the Supreme Court order.
“The family is very worried,” said Shayan Modarres, a lawyer for the D.C.-based council, which has been in contact with the family. “If it is a minor paperwork issue, then something needs to be told to the family so they can resolve it.”
At the very least, the incident shows how the administration’s political priorities are leading to “overzealous enforcement” of immigration laws, said Gregory Romanovsky, chair of the New England chapter of the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association.
“Exercising discretion is not what they’re comfortable doing anymore, especially if they’re dealing with someone from one of the six banned countries,” he said of local customs officials. “The travel ban and the whole anti-immigrant mood coming from the very top of this administration certainly affects their ability.”
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat, told reporters he was waiting to hear more about the Dehnavis’ circumstances, but also suggested the case was an example of concerns with the travel ban.
“Many people, doctors and nurses and people who are students working in the world-class institutions that we have are going to be boxed out or left out of the country,” he said.

Study: Taxpayers Funding Costly Federal Grants for the Arts

A study by the Illinois based group, Openthebooks.com found millions of dollars in federal arts grants is going to wealthy non-profits, all paid for by taxpayers. The group is one of the nation’s largest private database of government spending and broke down the numbers on the National Endowment of Arts and Humanities. Their findings suggest the majority of the grants go to wealthy nonprofits, some of which already have endowments already over 1 billion dollars. 

Openthebooks.com CEO Adam Andrzejewski is  a classical violinist and a strong supporter of the arts, but he said he takes issue with the public funding. “My daughters dance in the pre-professional ballet. But, when it comes to public funding of the arts and prestigious organizations with billion dollar balance sheets, there needs to be reform in the funding.” 

Andrzejewski  said,  according to the study, in terms of non profit grant making there was ” 183 million dollars granted in fiscal year 2016 and much or this, about 100 million dollars of it went to organizations with over 10 million dollars of existing financial assets. They didn’t need taxpayer money but they took it anyway.” 

The group looked at 3,200 organizations that received 441 million dollars in federal grants last year. Organizations with assets greater than 10 million dollars received 84 million of the designated money. Those worth 1 million dollars  received less than half that. 

Among those also includes those in the more obscure category, like a sightseeing tour for saguaro cactuses in the Arizona desert.  “They green lit a ten thousand dollar grant so people can go on a tour  to see the saguaro cactus,  to listen to the cactus, to hear the cactus speak to them, and then share their findings on social media.” 

Andrzejewski said the purpose of the report is to elevate the debate for both sides by providing transparency. 

President trump’s 2018 budget proposed doing away with the National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities. He’s received criticism for leaving “starving artists” out to dry. 

However, Congress’s version slightly increases art funding by roughly 5 million dollars. 

“What’s the purpose to compel working and middle class taxpayers to continue to fund the [Metropolitan Museum of Art]” asks Andrzejewski. “The Met has nearly 4 billion dollars in their bank accounts and financial assets.” 

Pres. Trump Speaks Out on Son’s Meeting With Russian Lawyer

President Trump is speaking out about his sons meeting with a Russian lawyer last year.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the president said his son, Donald Trump Junior, is a high quality person and he “applauds his transparency.”
This comes after his eldest son released the entire email chain setting up the meeting.
He says he agreed to meet with a woman who supposedly had information that would be helpful to the Trump campaign.
Don Junior said that woman did not have anything useful to say at the meeting, and he and other members of the Trump campaign left when she started talking about a sanction put on Russian adoption.
The woman later admitted she was not an operative for the Kremlin.

Liberal Actor Cartoons

Gregg Jarrett: If Comey's in legal jeopardy, will Mueller ride to his rescue?

Hillary Clinton, thanks to James Comey, escaped criminal prosecution for violating the Espionage Act. 

Now it is Comey who may have violated that same law.  If he did, will Comey escape prosecution, courtesy of his good friend, Robert Mueller?

The fired FBI Director’s legal predicament comes as The Hill reports that Comey authored seven memorandums reflecting the contents of his conversations with President Trump and that four of the memos “have been determined to contain classified information.”
If this is true and Comey kept these documents in his personal possession upon leaving government service and conveyed some of them to another individual without authorization, then it would appear that he committed multiple felonies under the Espionage Act.
It is a crime to mishandle classified information:  18 USC 798 and 1924  prohibit a government official from removing a classified document from its proper place of custody to a location which is unsecure and disclosing it to an unauthorized person.  Is this what Comey did?  It sure looks like it.

How can Mueller discharge his responsibilities in a fair, objective and impartial manner? Will the mentor investigate and, if warranted, prosecute his protégé? Doubtful.

Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, stored 110 emails containing classified information on her home computer server, an unauthorized place.  Yet, Comey misinterpreted the criminal statute by claiming she did not “intend to violate the law.”  This is not the legal standard, as any knowledgeable lawyer will tell you.  Clinton was never indicted, though she should have been.
David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA, was not so fortunate.  He pled guilty to removing classified documents to his personal residence where he stored them in an unsecured drawer.  He also gave them to his biographer who was not authorized to receive them.
John Deutch, also a former CIA Director, agreed to plead guilty to keeping classified material on his unauthorized laptop computer, but was pardoned by President Bill Clinton just days before the formal charges were filed.
Comey insists the information contained in the memo he gave to his lawyer friend who leaked it to the media was unclassified.  If true, it is not a violation of the Espionage Act.  But if Comey gave his friend, Columbia University Professor Daniel C. Richman, any of the four documents containing classified information, then he committed one or more crimes.
Richman now claims he received four memos from Comey, but none were marked classified.  The good professor may not realize that the “marking” in no way determines its classified status.  The content dictates classification, as Fox News Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge has consistently pointed out.
Importantly, if Comey maintained these four documents in his personal possession, as his Senate testimony suggests, then he may have committed at least four more crimes in the same way that Clinton, Petraeus and Deutch did.  Again, it is a felony to keep documents containing classified information in an unauthorized place, such as your personal possession, home or private unsecured computer.
As explained in an earlier column, Comey likely violated another law.  All of his memos are, unquestionably, government property under the Federal Records Act and the FBI’s own Records Management regulations.  They were composed by him in the course and scope of his employment as the Director of the FBI.  In meeting with President Trump, Comey was not acting as a private citizen.  Both Congress and the FBI agree on this obvious point.
Therefore, the memos were not Comey’s to keep in his possession.  It is a crime to convert government property to your own personal use and then give it to another person.  18 USC 641 makes it a felony to “steal, sell or convey” such property to someone else without permission.
Comey’s conduct and whether it constitutes numerous crimes should be investigated by Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.  Yet, that is not likely to happen.  Why?
In a previous column, I described in detail how Mueller and Comey have been long-time close friends, allies and partners.  They have enjoyed a mentor-protégé relationship.
This is precisely why Mueller should have disqualified himself from serving under the special counsel statute (28 CFR 600.7 and 28 CFR 45.2).  His strong relationship to Comey creates a genuine conflict of interest and, at the very least, the appearance of impropriety.
How can Mueller discharge his responsibilities in a fair, objective and impartial manner?  Will the mentor investigate and, if warranted, prosecute his protégé?  Doubtful.
The prospect of prejudice and favoritism this case presents is anathema to the fair administration of justice.
The American people expect and deserve something better than a legal charade.
Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News Anchor and former defense attorney.

Cruz: Congress shouldn't recess until ObamaCare repealed, replaced

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joined the growing chorus of lawmakers calling on Congress to forego its August recess until it passes legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare. 

"It’s crazy that we would be taking a recess," Cruz told Fox News' "Hannity" Monday night. "There are a bunch of us, myself included, that have been urging leadership back from January [to] not take any recesses.

"Let’s work every day, let’s work weekends, let’s work until we get the job done," Cruz added. "We have a job to do and a short window of time, and so we ought to stop taking recesses, stop taking time off and just keep going until we get it done."
The former presidential candidate has found himself at the center of the Senate GOP's internecine warfare over healthcare legslation after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., postponed a vote on legislation he had written largely in secret.
Cruz has proposed an amendment letting insurers sell any policies they wish, so long as they also offer polices that cover a list of services required by ObamaCare. Vice President Mike Pence endorsed the amendment Monday on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.
Cruz told host Sean Hannity Monday night that his amendment was "the knob of the battle" in the Senate. "[It] says you, the consumer, you have the right to choose what health insurance you want to buy."

Lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. says new NY Times report 'much ado about nothing'

A lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. late Monday dismissed a New York Times report that the president's eldest son knew that potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton was offered as part of a Russian government effort to assist his father in last year's election.

The paper reported that music publicist Rob Goldstone indicated in an email to Trump Jr. that the Kremlin was the source of information about purported illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee provided by attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

"In my view, this is much ado about nothing," said attorney Alan Furtefas, who said that Goldstone had contacted Trump Jr. late in the Republican primary campaign and "suggested that people had information concerning alleged wrongdoing" by Clinton.
"The meeting [with Veselnitskaya] lasted about 20-30 minutes and nothing came of it," Furtefas went on. "His father knew nothing about it. The bottom line is that Don Jr. did nothing wrong."
The White House referred questions to the president's son. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president's outside legal team, would not comment on the Times story, reiterating only that the president "was not aware of and did not attend the meeting."
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said the Times report proved "Donald Jr. was willing to accept the help of a hostile foreign government to sway the election. In the ensuing months, the Trump family watched as news of the Kremlin’s hacking campaign developed and they did nothing but celebrate and encourage it to continue.
"It is time for Donald Trump, his family, and his team to stop lying and come clean about their contacts with Russia, what they knew about the Kremlin’s effort to help them, and when they knew it," Watson added.
Goldstone confirmed earlier Monday that he had set up the meeting between Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya on behalf of his client, singer Emin Agalarov.
In a statement Sunday, Trump Jr. acknowledged taking the meeting to learn damaging information about Clinton, but claimed that Veselnitskaya allegations were "vague, ambiguous and made no sense” and it “became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
The Times story, which cited three unnamed people with knowledge of Goldstone's email but did not relate the actual email text, was the third report in as many days concerning the meeting between Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya.
In response to an Times report published Saturday, Trump Jr. said the meeting was primarily about allowing Americans to adopt Russian children and “mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.” Responding to the paper's Sunday report, Trump Jr. acknowledged that he was told Veselnitskaya "might have information helpful to the campaign."
The Veselnitskaya meeting, which was also attended by Trump's then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser Jared Kushner, is the first confirmed private meeting between members of President Trump’s inner circle and a Russian national. If the content of Goldstone's email is confirmed, it would be the first public word that Trump Jr. had been made aware the material could have been emanating from the Kremlin.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Monday the Kremlin doesn't know Veselnitskaya and "cannot keep track" of every Russian lawyer who holds meetings in Russia or abroad. Although she has not been publicly linked with the Russian government itself, Veselnitskaya represented the son of a vice president of state-owned Russian Railways in a New York money-laundering case settled in May before a trial.
Trump spent time with Agalarov during his visit to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned at the time. The real estate mogul appeared in a music video with Agalarov and several pageant contestants. Agalarov's father, Aras, is a Russian developer who sought to partner with Trump on a hotel project in Moscow and tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin during the Miss Universe contest.
Earlier Monday, Trump Jr. tried to brush off the significance of the meeting, tweeting sarcastically, "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent ... went nowhere but had to listen."

Trump Jr. also said on Twitter he was willing to work with the Senate intelligence committee, one of the panels probing possible campaign collusion, "to pass on what I know."

Lawmakers on the committee from both parties said they indeed wanted to talk with the president's son. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the panel "needs to interview him and others who attended the meeting." Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., agreed, saying, "Based on his own admissions, this is an attempt at collusion."

Marine aircraft disaster: FBI seeks answers in Mississippi crash that killed at least 16

The FBI has reportedly joined local and state agencies to investigate what caused a U.S. Marine Corps KC-130 to corkscrew out of the sky and into a soybean field in Mississippi, killing at least 16.

The search for additional victims is continuing. The Marine Corps said the aircraft “experienced a mishap.” The plane spiraled down at about 4 p.m. in a field about 85 miles north of Jackson. The plane’s debris were scattered in a radius of about five miles.

Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks told The Associated Press that officials were still searching for bodies after nightfall.
"We're still searching the area," Banks said. "It's hard to find bodies in the dark."
Banks earlier told the Greenwood Commonwealth that 16 people were believed to be on board but would not confirm that information to the AP.
The Marine Corps says it operated the plane but has provided no information on where the flight originated or where it was going.
Alan Hammons, an official at Greenwood Airport, told WNCN that the aircraft suffered a “structural failure” at 20,000 feet. The Clarion Ledger reported that the plane departed from Naval Support Activity Mid-South Base in Millington, Tenn.
An intense fire fed by jet fuel hampered firefighters, causing them to turn to unmanned devices in an attempt to control the flames, authorities said. There were several high-intensity explosions.
Aerial pictures taken by WLBT-TV showed the skeleton of the plane burning, producing plumes of black smoke visible for miles across the flat landscape of the delta.
Austin Jones, who owns a neighboring farm, said the fire continued after sunset.
"It's burning worse now than it was early in the afternoon," said Jones. He said his son watched the plane go down while working on the farm and said it was smoking as it descended.
Officials did not have information on what caused the crash or where the flight originated.
Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

De Blasio skips slain NYPD cop's vigil to praise police in Germany

Mayor de Blasio flew all the way to Hamburg, Germany, to praise that city’s police in a speech — while cops back home continued to mourn, without him, the assassination of one of their own in The Bronx.

“Our right to protest is directly related to the fact that our police protect us,” Hizzoner told a crowd of thousands at the outdoor Hamburg Shows Attitude rally protesting the G-20 summit Saturday. “So help me by joining in applause and thanks for the police,” he said as the crowd cheered.

“There have also been great acts of bravery and restraint,” he said. “Remember, our police are working men and women, too.”
But Hamburg police weren’t feeling the love, despite the praises of “Burgermeister de Blasio.” By Saturday night — after two days of rioting — more than 200 Hamburg cops had been injured by a rowdy minority of bottle- and firebomb-tossing protesters, according to CNN.
And back home, the mayor missed an evening vigil honoring slain NYPD Officer Miosotis ­Familia at the 46th Precinct station house where she worked in The Bronx.
Familia, 48, a mother of three, was shot in the head early Wednesday by a cop-loathing ­parolee as she sat in a police command vehicle.
“It’s disgraceful that the mayor is anywhere but at this ceremony right now,” vigil attendee Maria Rinaldi, 53, of University Heights, told The Post.
“I get where he’s at right now,” said precinct neighbor Caesar Montez, 61. “But this is your city. You need to be here when a tragedy like this happens.”
De Blasio gave two speeches Saturday during his all-expenses-paid junket to Hamburg.
The first was in the morning, at the city’s Thalia Theater, where he avoided any mention of filth or delays as he praised the New York City subway system, calling it a metaphor for a harmonious society.

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Riding the subways are “people of all faiths and people of all backgrounds,” he said.
“You have the rich and the poor, people of all faiths and all backgrounds, cramped in close together.
“And I like it as a metaphor because it’s not perfect, it’s not necessarily the way you want to live, to be the sardine in the sardine can. But what you notice is there is a working harmony.”
The mayor spent much of his second outdoor rally speech ­distancing himself from US conservatives.
“My nation isn’t broken, but my nation is going through an identity crisis,” he said. “It’s on its way somewhere, and I know it’s somewhere good because I see what happens in the neighborhoods in my city . . . I see the process of change underway.”
De Blasio was accompanied at both speeches by his 19-year-old son, Dante, a Yale University ­undergrad who is spending the ­summer in Berlin.
After the rally, de Blasio gave a series of softball interviews to local media, who asked him how much German he could speak and how he and Dante were ­enjoying their visits.
But he refused to take any more questions when a Post reporter approached to ask for a response to the criticism he has received — from police, political opponents and New Yorkers — for leaving the city just one day after Familia’s assassination to grandstand on a global stage.
“It seems the mayor hasn’t learned anything from the men and women [in blue] who turned their backs on him in the past,” said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association — in a reference to angry cops turning their backs on the mayor at past events.
“No one in uniform is surprised” by de Blasio’s show of disrespect, said Pat Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

Priebus pushes back on Russia meeting story, suggests Democrats, opposition research involved

hite House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday suggested a recent news story about President Trump and his advisers meeting last summer with a Russian lawyer is part of a large political smear campaign orchestrated by a group that pushed out the largely discredited “Steele dossier.”

“The individual who set up the meeting may have been affiliated with Fusion GPS, which is an opposition research firm that is being subpoenaed and talked to by the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Priebus told “Fox News Sunday.”

Priebus was responding to a story posted Saturday afternoon by The New York Times about the June 2016 meeting, shortly before Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, between a Russian lawyer and Trump, Jared Kushner and political adviser Paul Manafort.
The story is among many attempting to connect the Trump presidential campaign to Russia meddling in the 2016 White House race.
The possible connection between the meeting and Fusion GPS was reported first by Circa.com.
Circa reported Saturday that the president’s legal team thinks the meeting may have been “part of a larger election-year opposition effort aimed at creating the appearance of improper connections between Trump family members and Russia that also included a now-discredited intelligence dossier produced by a former British intelligence agent named Christopher Steele who worked for a U.S. political firm known as Fusion GPS.”
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, told Circa that lawyers have learned that “the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm that according to public reports was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the president and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier."
Priebus said Sunday that the Senate committee is questioning Fusion GPS about its role in “putting together that phony dossier.”
“So, this is a developing story,” he continued. “I don’t know much about it other than it seems to be on the end of the Trump individuals, a big nothing burger but may spin out of control for the (Democratic National Committee) and the Democrats.”
Fusion GPS is reportedly run by three former Wall Street Journal reporters and has helped Planned Parenthood.
The dossier largely included reports of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The news media began reporting widely on the dossier in fall 2016, the homestretch of the White House race, but the unverified reports have since largely been dismissed as “fake news.”

Turkish Opposition Holds Anti-Govt Rally

Supporters of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, rise their hands as they gather for a rally following their 265-mile ‘March for Justice’ in Istanbul, Sunday, July 9, 2017. Kilicdaroglu, along with thousands of supporters, walked from the capital Ankara to an Istanbul prison, to denounce the imprisonment of a party lawmaker, and the large-scale government crackdown on opponents in the wake of July 2016’s failed coup attempt. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

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Protesters rally in Istanbul in the final stage of a three-week justice march against the Turkish government.
The opposition leader held an event on Sunday in defiance of an intensifying government crack-down.
It comes after thousands of people marched from the country’s capital to Istanbul following the arrest of an opposition lawmaker.
They accuse the government of trying to create a one-party state in the wake of a failed coup last year, using powers under a state of emergency.

Pres. Trump Pushes GOP Leaders on Healthcare

FILE – In this photo taken June 27, 2017, the U.S. Senate is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. July shapes up as one of the most critical tests for President Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress. Get healthcare done in the Senate, a budget in the House and overhaul of the nation’s tax code will be next up. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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President Trump urges Republican leaders to continue their effort to repeal and replace Obamacare.
In a tweet Sunday, the President said for years he listened to Republicans push to repeal and replace the healthcare law and now they finally have their chance.
The President’s remarks come just one day before GOP senators return to work after the July 4th recess.
They delayed a vote before their break after failing to garner enough support behind the current bill.
President Trump recently indicated he would be open to repealing Obamacare first and developing a replacement later on.

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Roy Moore: Former chief justice, fiery and outspoken, stirs far-right base in Alabama Senate race

In the blood-red state of Alabama, a fiery, outspoken jurist is running for U.S. Senate by standing up for what he believes.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore doesn’t shrink from telling voters he has twice been ousted from the bench for defying federal courts over the Ten Commandments and same-sex marriage.

Instead, he wears those rejections as a badge of honor, telling Republican voters that they are akin to battle scars.
“I will not only say what is right, I will do what is right,” Moore said during a June forum in the east Alabama city of Oxford.
Moore is part of a crowded GOP field vying to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old seat in the U.S. Senate. Moore’s iconic status in the culture wars gives him a strong GOP voter base and makes him a leading contender in the primary on August 15.

 

But he’s also a polarizing figure. Some voters said they are voting for him because of his past fights.

Others said they want someone else for the same reasons. Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen, who filed the complaint that led to Moore’s removal, last year referred to him as the “Ayatollah of Alabama” for intertwining his personal religious beliefs and judicial responsibilities.
Incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, appointed last year by the state’s former governor and backed by Republican establishment, faces multiple challengers. Among them, in addition to Moore, is U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who has the endorsement of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. The race could lead to a runoff between the top two primary finishers.
The Senate Leadership Fund, which has ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and tries to bank candidates perceived as winnable in general elections, has put its fiscal force behind Strange.
The Republican National Committee last week authorized its Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to spend $350,000 on the Alabama Senate race, money that is expected to benefit Strange.
Moore is a West Point graduate and former military policeman during Vietnam. He became a prosecutor, circuit judge and then state chief justice.
But Alabama’s judicial discipline panel twice stripped him of his chief justice duties. In 2003 he was removed for disobeying a federal judge’s order to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.
He re-took the chief justice’s office in 2012, but was suspended for the remainder of his term last year.
The suspension — not, technically, a removal — came after Moore wrote a memo telling probate judges that they remained under a state court order to deny marriage licenses to gay couples even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gays and lesbians have a fundamental right to marry. While he was suspended, Moore left the bench to run for Senate.
“I stood up to same-sex marriage legally by pointing out active injunctions. They didn’t like that. I opposed the agenda of the Supreme Court, and they came after me,” Moore said in Oxford.
Thirty-nine-year-old Emily Holland said she admires Moore. “He goes by what the Bible says,” said Holland. “He has been to war. He refused to take down the Ten Commandments.”
Jean Hobson said she watched the Oxford debate to learn more about the other candidates, but knows she’s not voting for Strange or Moore.
“Judge Moore has been elected twice and thrown out twice,” Hobson said.
Moore also discusses other issues on the campaign trail — including a call for increased military spending — but it’s his well-known history that appears to be driving both his support and his opposition.
For now, “The Judge,” as Moore is nicknamed, revels in his outsider status in a year of anti-Washington sentiment.
“Washington doesn’t want me, evidently, from the money they are pouring behind one of the candidates and from the message we received from Washington. That’s OK,” Moore said with a slight grin as he removed his sunglasses during a sweltering June campaign stop on the Alabama Capitol steps. “I’m looking forward to going and representing the people of Alabama, what they stand for. What they believe in is what I believe in and I’ll take it to Washington whether they like it or they don’t.”

Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner respond to meeting with Russian lawyer

President Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law, and then-campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to be the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the president and a Russian.

Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner’s attorney confirmed the June 2016 meeting of the men and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended, according to the statement from Donald Trump Jr.

“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up,” said Donald Trump Jr. in a statement released to Fox News. “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
Trump Jr. does not serve in the administration and is not required to disclose his foreign contacts.
Kushner lawyer Jamie Gorelick, told Fox News in a statement: “As we have previously stated, Mr. Kushner’s SF-86 was prematurely submitted and, among other errors, did not list any contacts with foreign government officials. The next day, Mr. Kushner submitted supplemental information stating that he had had ‘numerous contacts with foreign officials’ about which he would be happy to provide additional information."
"He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition," said Gorelick. "Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”
Manafort helmed Trump’s campaign for about five months until August and resigned from the campaign immediately after the Associated Press reported on his firm’s covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party. He is one of several people linked to President Trump who are under scrutiny by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees investigating Russian attacks on the U.S. during the 2016 campaign and potential collusion with Trump associates.
Manafort has denied any coordination with Russia and has said his work in Ukraine was not related to the campaign.

U.S. Rejects UN Treaty on Nuclear Weapons

A detail of the video board showing the votes in favor, against and the abstention is seen after a vote by the conference to adopt a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination, Friday, July 7, 2017 at United Nations headquarters. More than 120 countries have approved the first-ever treaty banning nuclear weapons at a U.N. meeting boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations. Friday’s vote was 122 countries in favor with the Netherlands opposed and Singapore abstaining.(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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The United States, along with the other nuclear powered nations of the world, rejected the UN’s treaty to ban nuclear weapons on a global scale.
All of the world’s nuclear powers – including the U.S., France, Britain, and Russia – have refused to be part of the negotiations.
The vote was approved by 122 non-nuclear members of the United Nations Friday, with the Netherlands voting against the deal, and Singapore sitting out the vote.
The dissenting nations are also permanent members of the UN Security Council and stated the treaty was unrealistic.
They added countries like North Korea would never comply with a nuclear weapons ban.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May talks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the G20 leaders summit in Hamburg, Germany July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

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President Trump meets with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Hamburg to discuss the future of trade between the U.S. and the U.K.
The President told reporters he and the Prime Minister spoke on the sidelines of the G20 leaders summit and are working on a ‘powerful deal.’
While Britain can’t seal a separate trade deal with the United States until it has left the European Union, President Trump says, once that happens, the U.S. and the U.K. will get a deal done without hesitation.
The U.K. plans to exit the European Union in 2019.

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Sheriff exposes liberal columnist's traffic stop tale for the lie that it is

A sheriff in Missouri is firing back at a now-suspended newspaper columnist who claimed to experience what “minority motorists” must feel when getting pulled over by cops, saying he was lucky he didn’t “get shot” during a recent traffic stop.

Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey has refuted a June 30 opinion column by longtime Columbia Daily Tribune columnist Bill Clark, who was stopped 10 days earlier for failing to use his turn signal. Clark, an 84-year-old white man, suggested in the column that he might’ve been pulled over because of his “liberal bumper stickers,” an obvious sign of an “aging hippie with a weed habit,” he claimed.

“I’m lucky I didn’t get shot,” Clark wrote. “Sirens wailed and when I stopped, two officers were out of the sheriff’s vehicle. When I reached over to turn off the radio and then take my wallet out of my pocket to produce the driver’s license and insurance card, I realized my hands were not at the top of my steering wheel. Danger lurked and official arrogance was to follow.”
Clark, who claimed he received a “good dose of arrogance” during the stop, said he understands how someone could lose respect for cops after the stop, saying his life “seemed to be in danger” during the interaction with two deputies.

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Clark's column ticked off the local police

“When you are in the shoes of the minority, you learn a lot more about their journey,” Clark wrote.
But a review of dashcam video told a different story, according to Carey, who contacted the newspaper’s managing editor, Charles Westmoreland, to disagree with Clark’s version of events. Carey also released the 11-minute video and penned an 1,800-word response to Clark’s column, blasting it as “sensationalism” and disputed the claims of “arrogance” on behalf of the deputies.
“In his column he indicates, ‘I’m lucky I didn’t get shot,’” Carey wrote. “There is never a weapon drawn, the deputies don’t take a position of cover, there are no loud verbal commands, no panic or anything else for that matter by the deputies. Would you agree this is sensationalism at its best? I say yes!”