Moscow receives notification U.S. is ditching key arms treaty

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a media conference after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.

MOSCOW — The Russian Foreign Ministry says it has received official notification from the United States that it intends to walk out of a key Cold War-era treaty.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at a NATO meeting Tuesday that Washington would suspend its obligations under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 60 days due to Russia's alleged "cheating."
Russia has denied U.S. and NATO allegations that it is violating the landmark treaty that banned an entire class of weapons.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Wednesday that Moscow has been received an official notice from Washington that quotes unspecified evidence of Russian violations. Zakharova insisted that Russia has always respected the treaty and considers it "one of the key pillars of strategic stability and international security."

Climate watchdog Bernie Sanders spent nearly $300G on private air travel in October: reports

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a George Washington University in an undated photo. (Associated Press)

Bernie Sanders is so concerned about climate change that he spent nearly $300,000 on private air travel in October so he could speak to audiences in nine battleground states prior to November's midterm elections.
The independent U.S. senator from Vermont also used the opportunity to test the waters for a potential 2020 presidential run, according to reports.
Sanders’ 2018 campaign committee issued an Oct. 10 payment of $297,685 to New York-based Apollo Jets, a charter jet company used by retired sports stars Derek Jeter and Shaquille O’Neal, according to federal campaign reports obtained by VTDigger.org, a watchdog news site in Vermont.
“This expense was for transportation for the senator’s nine-day, nine-state tour to support Democratic candidates up and down the ballot ahead of Election Day,” said Arianna Jones, senior communications adviser for Friends of Bernie Sanders.
“This cost covered the entirety of the tour from Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California, and back to Vermont,” Jones continued. “The senator participated in 25 events.”
Jones said the charter jets were necessary so Sanders could campaign for candidates and get back to Vermont to join the state Democratic Party's campaign efforts.
The Sanders campaign purchased nearly $5,000 in carbon offsets to balance out the emissions produced from the travel. A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions to compensate for emissions elsewhere.
Sanders has been vocal about the need to curb the effects of climate change, calling it the “single greatest threat facing our planet.”
The same day his campaign paid Apollo Jets, Sanders called climate change a "planetary crisis" in a tweet.
"Climate change is a planetary crisis. Our task is clear. We must take on the fossil fuel industry that’s largely responsible for global emissions and accelerate our transition toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy sources,” Sanders wrote.
“He wanted to go where he thinks he can be helpful in energizing the base and bringing in young people and independent voters and working-class voters who supported him,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager and longtime political adviser.
The campaign also paid $13,500 to Virginia-based travel agency Metropolitan Travel at the end of September.
In July 2017, the Sanders campaign paid $37,567 to Apollo Jets, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
During the 2016 presidential election, Sanders spent $5.2 million on private jet services in a six-month period from the end of 2015 to mid-2016.

Gregg Jarrett: Mueller strikes out trying to nail Trump – Flynn sentencing memo is a big nothing

Gregg Jarrett Fox News

A sentencing memo that Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed in U.S. District Court in Washington Tuesday recommending little or no prison time for President Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn doesn’t implicate the president in any wrongdoing.
The memo isn’t a “smoking gun” showing President Trump colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election or did anything else illegal. In fact, the memo isn’t even a squirt gun. In terms of President Trump’s conduct, it amounts to nothing of any significance.
In recommending that Flynn – who served as President Trump’s national security adviser for just 24 days – get a sentence ranging from no prison time to six months at most, the memo filed by Mueller said Flynn has offered "substantial" help to investigators about "several ongoing investigations."
“Given the defendant’s substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below, a sentence at the low end of the guideline range – including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration – is appropriate and warranted," the memo states.
The sentencing memo says that Flynn was interviewed 19 times by prosecutors on Mueller’s team and other Justice Department lawyers. But crucially, the memo doesn’t specify anything that Flynn told Muller’s team regarding allegations against President Trump or anything else.
Flynn, who succumbed to Mueller's intense pressure by pleading guilty to making a false statement to the FBI, has cooperated with the special counsel's investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion to avoid a long prison sentence.
However, the sentencing memo and a heavily redacted addendum filed by Mueller suggest that Flynn provided absolutely no meaningful information that Trump conspired or coordinated with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.
Flynn pleaded guilty in last December to making false statements to the FBI with regard to his communications with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn and Kislyak allegedly spoke in late 2016 about the U.S. sanctions the Obama administration had placed on Russia. Flynn was fired on Feb. 13, 2017, for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials about his talks with Kislyak.
Flynn also admitted to making false statements about his work as an unregistered foreign agent to benefit the Turkish government. But there is no connection between that work and President Trump.

The memo isn’t a “smoking gun” showing President Trump colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election or did anything else illegal. In fact, the memo isn’t even a squirt gun.

The sentencing memo – less than six pages long – makes no mention of any evidence Flynn might have given to support Mueller's mandate. The addendum – five pages long – is so heavily redacted with infamous black lines that it is difficult to comprehend. But it appears that Flynn offered prosecutors assistance in two areas.
First, Flynn contributed something to an unidentified criminal case that is not being handled by the special counsel and, thus, not directly collusion-related.
Second, Flynn seems to have answered candid questions about the Trump transition team's conversations with foreign governments after the presidential election in 2016 and before Inauguration Day. Again, this would not be relevant to "collusion" to win the election because the election was already over.
The documents filed in court Tuesday make a passing reference to the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes with foreign governments. But no one has ever been convicted under the act, passed in 1799. Lawyers, judges, and constitutional scholars regard the law as unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, this long dormant law does not apply to members of presidential transition teams who are acting not as private citizens, but as incoming government representatives of the person about to assume the presidency. They would therefore be constitutionally authorized to conduct foreign affairs. Every president-elect has his transition members engage with foreign governments to prepare for the challenges that lay ahead.
Not even Mueller would be foolish enough to bring a case under the Logan Act, especially since Flynn did not interfere in a diplomatic dispute under the meaning of the act. To the contrary, Flynn sought ways to de-escalate tensions over U.S. sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia by asking the Russian government to limit its response "in a reciprocal manner."
By doing this, Flynn was acting for the benefit of the U.S. government and in a manner not inconsistent with the Obama administration's wishes and policy.
Flynn's other contact with Russia, also referenced in the court documents, dealt with a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank.  However, this, too, would not fall under the Logan Act, since the U.S. took no position on the U.N. resolution. By abstaining, it neither supported the resolution nor opposed it.
And since the U.N. measure imposed no sanctions, it was nothing more than an idle diplomatic statement. Flynn, or anyone else in the incoming Trump administration, can hardly be accused of interfering.
There are other reasons to believe that Flynn’s "substantial assistance" to the Mueller investigation had nothing to do with "collusion" with the Russians. He was never charged with the underlying crime, whatever that is.
Moreover, since Mueller is moving ahead with sentencing, he will not be using Flynn as a witness. This indicates that Flynn has nothing of significance that would be useful in any potential prosecution.
Flynn should never have been prosecuted. The FBI agents who interviewed him concluded that he was telling the truth. This was confirmed by both former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, when they testified before congressional investigators. Had Mueller been forced to prove his case in court, he would have lost.
The law requires that a false statement be made "willfully and knowingly" (18 U.S.C. 1001).  If Flynn’s recollection of the conversation with Russian Ambassador Kislyak is inconsistent with a transcript of their conversation, secretly recorded, it is not a crime. If Flynn interpreted his discussion differently than the FBI, it is also not a crime.
As I explained in my book, “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump,” Flynn pleaded guilty not because he lied, but because Mueller crushed him financially and threatened to take legal action against the retired Army general's son.
With his assets dwindling – and forced to sell his home to pay his mounting legal bills – Flynn finally surrendered under the intense emotional strain and monetary pressures.
Flynn's decision was understandable. Mueller's actions were, and are, unconscionable and wrong.               

On Tuesday night Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani likened the offenses Flynn pleaded guilty to committing to “spitting on the sidewalk, with major repercussions for many.”
The former New York City mayor said nothing in the Flynn sentencing memo even suggested Trump presidential campaign or candidate Trump colluded with Russia, and said Mueller’s team was made up of “overzealous media inspired prosecutors. They are sick puppies.”

Giuliani was right. But, of course, that won’t stop the anti-Trump media frenzy of demonizing President Trump on a daily basis and trying to convince the American people – without evidence – that he is an illegitimate president put into the Oval Office by Russia.

Giuliani says Flynn offenses like 'spitting on the sidewalk,' calls Mueller team 'sick puppies'

President Trump's attorney Rudolph Giuliani told Fox News on Tuesday night that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had admitted to offenses comparable to "spitting on the sidewalk" after Special Counsel Robert Mueller recommended minimal prison time for the former three-star Army general.
In a sentencing memorandum and a heavily redacted addendum filed Tuesday evening, Mueller's team said Flynn had met with investigators 19 times and provided "substantial" help to investigators about "several ongoing investigations." In addition, prosecutors said Flynn had provided "firsthand information about the content and context of interactions between the [Trump] transition team and Russian government officials."
In response, Giuliani told Fox News that nothing in the sentencing memo suggested collusion between Trump and Russian officials. The former New York City mayor lambasted the Mueller team as "overzealous media-inspired prosecutors."
"They are sick puppies," said Giuliani, who added: "This whole thing started as an orchestrated attempt to take the president out of office as an insurance policy."
Trump has been quick to express his displeasure at former surrogates who have cooperated with the Mueller probe. Earlier this week, the president lashed out at his former legal fixer, Michael Cohen, saying he is making up "stories" to get a reduced prison sentence after his latest guilty plea to lying to Congress. Trump also praised longtime confidante Roger Stone for saying he would "never testify against Trump," adding in his tweet, "Nice to know some people still have 'guts!'"
MUELLER SAYS FLYNN GAVE 'SUBSTANTIAL' HELP TO FEDS
By contrast, the president has been more sympathetic toward Flynn, repeatedly lamenting how his life has been destroyed by the special counsel's probe. At one point, he tried to protect Flynn by asking then-FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into his alleged false statements, according to a memo Comey wrote after the February 2017 encounter.
That episode, which Trump has denied, is among those under scrutiny by Mueller as he looks into whether the president tried to obstruct the Russia investigation.
ROGER STONE TO PLEAD THE FIFTH IN SENATE RUSSIA PROBE
Flynn was forced to resign his post on Feb. 13, 2017, after news reports revealed that Obama administration officials had warned the Trump White House about Flynn's false statements. The White House has said Flynn misled officials-- including Vice President Mike Pence -- about the content of his conversations. Mueller's filing Tuesday matched that explanation, saying: "Several senior members of the transition team publicly repeated false information conveyed to them by [Flynn] about communications between him and the Russian ambassador [to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak]" regarding sanctions levied by the Obama administration on the Kremlin in response to election interference.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December of last year to lying to the FBI about conversations with Kislyak. He also admitted to making false statements about unregistered foreign agent work he performed for the benefit of the Turkish government. Flynn was under investigation by the Justice Department for that work when he became national security adviser.

Democrat Cartoons

Ballot harvesting bounty: How Dems apparently used election law change to rout California Republicans

An Orange County registrar pop-up voting location is seen at the Golden West College in Huntington Beach, Calif., Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Amy Taxin)

A minor change in California’s election laws may had a major effect on last month’s midterm elections that saw Democrats steamroll their Republican rivals and claim all but seven of the Golden State’s 53 House seats.
Despite holding substantial leads on Election Day, many Republican candidates in California saw their advantage shrink, and then disappear, as late arriving Democratic votes were counted in the weeks following the election. While no hard evidence is available, many observers point to the Democrats use of “ballot harvesting” as a key to their success in the elections.
“Anecdotally there was a lot of evidence that ballot harvesting was going on,” Neal Kelley, the registrar for voters in Southern California’s Orange County, told Fox News.
In Orange County – once seen as a Republican stronghold in the state– every House seat went to a Democrat after an unprecedented “250,000” vote-by-mail drop-offs were counted, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“People were carrying in stacks of 100 and 200 of them. We had had multiple people calling to ask if these people were allowed to do this,” Kelley said.
Two years ago, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB1921, which legalized the so-called practice of “ballot harvesting.” Previously, only a family member or someone living in the same household was permitted to drop off mail ballots for a voter, but the new allowed anyone – including political operatives – to collect and return them for a voter.
California Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment, but in the past Democrats in the state argued that the bill, which was passed on a party line vote, was meant to make it easier for people to vote.
But following the drubbing they took in the midterms, some Republican leaders in Washington have expressed confusion over what happened in California.
“We were only down 26 seats (nationally) the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race,” outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., told the Washington Post. “Point being, when you have candidates that win the absentee ballot vote, win the day of the vote, and then lose three weeks later because of provisionals, that’s really bizarre.”
Ryan added: “When you win the absentee ballots and you win the in-person vote, where I come from, you win the election…I’m not saying there’s anything nefarious about it, because I just don’t know, but we believed we were up about six seats in California the night of the election, now I think we lost just about every single one of those.”
While Ryan may have been taken off guard by the system in California, the state’s GOP was not.
“To say we were caught flat-footed by this is just not true,” Matt Fleming, a spokesman for the California GOP, told Fox News. “We were well aware of this, we even did it ourselves, we pay attention to election laws.”
Echoing Ryan, Fleming blamed the GOP’s losses in California on changing demographics in the state, a large cash infusion for Democratic candidates and a heightened enthusiasm among the Democratic base in the run-up to the election.
“Democrats’ desire to send a message to the president and the blue wave that occurred everywhere but in the US Senate, really affected the outcome,” he said.
Democrats say that ballot harvesting was only part of a larger ground game they employed to help win over voters in California.
“We beat Republicans on the ground, fair and square,” Katie Merrill, a Democratic consultant, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Many of the field plans included [ballot harvesting] as an option to deliver voters or their ballots” to the polls.
In one anecdote, Democratic volunteers in Orange County visited a home four times to speak with the owner’s 18-year-old daughter – a no preference voter – to see if she wanted them to pick up her ballot for her.
“We were not wasting time talking to people who weren’t going to vote for Democrats,” Merrill said.
Despite being stung by the Democratic ground game and ballot harvesting moves, some Republicans admitted they were – at least a little bit – impressed by how the Democrats pulled off their near sweep of the House in California.
“I have a little bit of professional admiration for how well the Democrats executed their plan,” Dale Neugebauer, a longtime Republican strategist, told the Chronicle.
“The Democrats are creating a new, highly efficient tool to turn out voters,” Neugebauer added. “If Republicans can’t find a way to match it, we’re going to lose more elections all over the country.”

Bush family wants funeral that avoids anti-Trump sentiment: report

The Bush family contacted the White House this past summer saying that President Trump would be welcome at George H.W. Bush’s funeral and assured Trump that the focus would be on the 41st U.S. president’s life rather than their disagreements, The Washington Post reported, citing a former administration official.
"This will be about the celebration of the noble public service that George H.W. Bush gave. It’s not going to be about anybody else. I don’t think it’s going to be about Trump," a former Bush associate told Politico.
A person close to the funeral preparations told The Post that the tone of Wednesday’s funeral at the Washington National Cathedral will reflect the sense of propriety of Bush, who "wouldn't want anyone there to feel uncomfortable, including the incumbent president."
“If anybody at any time knew anything about the 41st president of the United States, they would completely and totally understand that he would welcome the current occupant 100 percent,” an aide in the office of the former president told the publication. “This is the way the country says goodbye to presidents.”
Trump had the final say over important funeral details, the person said, including providing Air Force One to carry the former president’s body from Texas to Washington for the funeral and back to Texas on Thursday for another service and burial.
The Trump White House has accommodated all the Bush family’s requests for the state funeral. The Bush family will be able to stay at Blair House, the official guesthouse across the street from the White House, a person familiar with the planning told The Post.
First lady Melania Trump, who represented the White House at former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral in April, was struck by the Bush family’s graciousness toward her, one official told The Post. She conveyed that to the president, who did not attend that funeral, the official said.

Eric Trump blasts Kellyanne Conway’s husband for showing ‘disrespect’ towards wife

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Eric Trump took to Twitter late Monday to call out White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband George Conway.

President Trump's son, Eric Trump, took to Twitter late Monday to call out White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband George Conway-- a fierce critic of President Trump—who earlier suggested that a tweet from the president was tantamount to witnesses tampering.
Eric Trump did not specify what prompted the tweet, but wrote, “Of all the ugliness in politics, the utter disrespect George Conway shows toward his wife, her career, place of work, and everything she has fought SO hard to achieve, might top them all.”
The rare public rebuke came after Conway's husband-- an attorney-- responded to a tweet from the president praising the longtime Republican operative Roger Stone. Stone said in an interview he would never testify against the president. Stone told ABC on Sunday that he'd be forced to "make things up, and I’m not going to do that."
The president praised Stone’s comment in a tweet, saying, that his longtime ally will "not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about "President Trump." Nice to know that some people still have guts!”
Conway's husband responded on Twitter to the president's praise for Stone and referenced the statutes of tampering with a witness and obstruction of justice.
George Conway responded to Eric Trump's tweet by retweeting a user who wrote, "Of all the ugliness in politics, the utter disrespect the Trumps show toward the rule of law, the presidency and its place of work, and everything this nation has fought SO hard to achieve might top them all. Donald Trump is(sic) terrible person and frankly his actions are horrible."
The Washington Post reported last month that Conway's husband told a podcast that the Republican Party has become a "personality cult," and he would prefer to move to Australia than vote for Trump. Conway was asked recently about her husband’s criticism of Trump and said, "It doesn’t affect me or my job at all."
Her husband has also downplayed their differences of opinions, according to the Post.
"If I had a nickel for everybody in Washington who disagrees with their spouse on something that happens in this town, I wouldn’t be on this podcast. I’d be probably on a beach somewhere," he said.