The Trump thread: All things Donald

[psiberzerker]

NDAs are not binding in this case.

#Resist

NDAs aren't Legally binding in any case where they're intended to cover up a crime.  Also an exception to Attorney-Client, and Doctor-Patient privilege.  If you witness, or are the victim of a serious crime, you can still legally report it, and no Civil papers can hold you accountable.  (However, there may be a civil suit.  Which is not the same as a Criminal trial.  For example, if you're payed off as part of a deal to keep quiet, you may have to return that money.)

[Athos_131]

Trump Says Wind Turbine Noise Causes Cancer. (It Does Not.)

President Trump has long despised wind power. He has repeatedly blamed wind turbines for killing birds (which they do at a lower rate than other energy sources) and for allegedly causing electrical power to halt when the wind stops blowing (in fact, electricity grids using mixed power sources and battery storage have solved this problem.) In a speech tonight to House Republicans, Trump claimed that wind turbines cause cancer.

“They say the noise causes cancer,” the president of the United States asserted.

Wind turbines do not cause cancer. Some people blame the noise for causing a variety of other health ailments, but these charges have zero scientific validity. Cancer is not caused by noises of any kind.

A power source that does cause many health problems, including cancer, is coal, an extremely dirty fuel Trump loves and has attempted to bolster, with almost no success. Aside from costing more to produce energy than other sources of power, and in addition to enormous air pollution side effects, coal also emits greenhouse gases in large amounts. Though this of course is another aspect of science Trump rejects.

In the same speech, Trump urged his fellow Republicans, “Hey, you gotta be a little bit more paranoid than you are. We have to be a little bit careful, because I don’t like the way the votes are being tallied.” Trump subscribes to wild fears over systematic Democratic voter fraud, a belief — like climate-science skepticism — that is extremely common inside his party.

The Republican affinity for kook pseudoscientific claims helps explain why his allies didn’t run screaming from the room in existential terror when they heard the most powerful person in the world assert that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer. “Wind turbine noise causes cancer,” the assembled members of Congress immediately intuited; it is simply another completely insane notion that Republicans are now expected either to promote or to quietly tolerate.

“Someone’s gonna leak this whole damn speech to the media,” Trump worried aloud. It was a valid fear, given that reporters were in the room and C-SPAN cameras were covering the speech live.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Donors to the Trump inaugural committee got ambassador nominations. But are they qualified?

When President Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the Bahamas testified before Congress to make the case for his nomination, he incorrectly stated that the island nation was part of the U.S. It is an independent country.

For ambassador to the United Arab Emirates — a job so sensitive in the tense Middle East that every previous president gave it to a career diplomat — Trump picked a wealthy real estate developer with no diplomatic experience.

The ambassador to Morocco? A well-heeled car dealer. The nominee for Iceland? While well-traveled, he had never been to that Nordic country. For Melania Trump's native country of Slovenia? The founder of an evangelical charity who frequently reposted false far-right social media posts on her Facebook page.

None have diplomatic experience, but they share one trait: All were big donors to Trump's presidential inaugural committee, which is now under federal investigation.

An NBC News review of those who donated to the Trump inauguration found at least 14 major contributors to its inaugural fund who were later nominees to become ambassadors, donating an average of slightly over $350,000 apiece. Though the Trump administration says the business acumen of these nominees qualifies them to represent the U.S. abroad, six of the 14 nominations have languished for months in the Republican-controlled Senate. One nomination has stalled for about two years.

While it is not unusual for a president to offer plum posts to wealthy donors, the Trump administration is nominating a greater number of political appointees to top-level slots, and is seeing a larger share stall in the Senate, according to two diplomatic experts and a senior Senate staffer.

Since the 1950s, roughly two-thirds of confirmed ambassadors have been career foreign service officials and one-third have been political appointees. Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush kept within that range, according to the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), which is comprised of current and former diplomats.

The Trump administration is different. Of its confirmed appointees, around 50 percent are career foreign service diplomats, and 50 percent are political appointees, according to AFSA.

There are also 52 vacant ambassadorships out of about 250. Two years into their presidencies, Obama had 11 and Bush had 15. There are also a large number of vacancies in critical countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The rate of confirmation is also quite different for Trump nominees. Two years into their presidencies, Presidents Bill Clinton, Bush and Obama had 96, 84 and 89 percent of their nominees confirmed. Trump is currently at 66 percent, according to a senior congressional staffer.

Why the lag in confirmations? R. Nicholas Burns, a former ambassador under Clinton and Bush and a former undersecretary of state under Bush, points out that the Trump administration was unusually slow to submit nominations.

But he also said it was possible "there may be questions about the qualifications of some of these people."

Burns, now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the Senate has the right to hold up confirmation if there are such questions.

"What I don't know is if some of these people are being held up by the Democrats," said Burns. "That sometimes happens."

Marquette University law professor Ryan Scoville, who is about to publish a study analyzing the qualifications of nearly 2,000 ambassador nominees from the Reagan era onward, was less equivocal. "Trump's picks are less qualified than prior presidents'," said Scoville, though Trump is continuing a downward trend in which "the level of qualification has eroded while the amount of contribution to candidates has risen."

Presidents have long appointed deep-pocketed donors to foreign posts around the world. Obama's ambassador to Singapore, Kirk W.B. Wagar, gave over $200,000 to Obama and Democrats during Obama's re-election campaign. Bush's ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Mercer Reynolds, gave over $100,000 to Bush and the GOP.

But the rules for giving to an incoming president's inaugural fund were different in the past. According to Trevor Potter, president of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center and a former Bush appointee to the Federal Election Commission, the Trump inaugural fund did not impose any donation limits, unlike those of past presidents. Some of Trump's nominees gave $1 million to that fund alone.

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement to NBC News, saying, "I try to do all business on a bipartisan basis and hope that we can continue that going forward, but it requires both sides to be willing partners."

But Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the Trump administration, which, he charged in a speech last week in Senate, "either through negligence or incompetence, sends us un-vetted, unqualified nominees, incapable and often times offensive."

Under Senate procedures, even though the GOP controls the chamber, Menendez as the ranking Democrat can block a nominee's hearing or committee vote. Any senator can later delay a nomination when it comes before the full legislative body.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Menendez in October of playing "political football" delaying nominations. A spokesperson told NBC News this week that Pompeo "has made clear his commitment to putting together a talented workforce" and "hopes that the qualified people nominated by the White House, and now awaiting confirmation, can be voted on promptly."

INAUGURAL DONORS WHO ARE STALLED
Among the nominations that have languished is that of Doug Manchester, a San Diego real estate magnate, chosen to go to the Bahamas. He gave $1 million via a trust to the inauguration. In his nomination hearing, he told senators the Bahamas was a U.S. protectorate. The Bahamas was once a British possession but has been an independent nation since 1972. While it lies just off the Florida coast, it has never been a U.S. territory.

When asked why he said the Bahamas was a U.S. protectorate, Manchester told NBC News, "I was incorrect in that statement."

In addition, The Washington Post reported that women who worked at a San Diego television station then owned by Manchester said interactions with him were "unsettling." Manchester apologized in an email to White House officials, saying, "I am terribly hurt to learn of these allegations and apologize to any employee who felt uncomfortable or demeaned."

But separately, in an interview, Manchester disparaged the Post story as "a hit piece."

Asked why his nomination has stalled, Manchester said, "I don't think that the opposing party wants any Trump nominees confirmed." Of all the nominees who helped finance Trump's inauguration events, his bid has languished the longest, for close to two years.

Then there are the Blanchards.

John Blanchard, a Montgomery, Alabama, real estate magnate, donated $553,500 to Trump's inauguration fund under the name Joe D. Blanchard. He and his wife, Lynda "Lindy" Blanchard, have given more than $2.6 million to Republicans since 2015.

In January 2018, the Blanchards collectively donated $250,000 to the Trump Victory Political Action Committee, a joint-fundraising effort by Trump's re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee. The couple also wrote four separate checks for $2,700 to Trump's re-election campaign on the same day, the maximum permitted for individual contributions.

Five months later, in June 2018, Trump nominated Lynda Blanchard to become ambassador to Slovenia.

Lynda Blanchard, who founded and ran a charity called the 100X Development Foundation, dedicated to helping children and the poor, was an early Trump supporter who often shared stories on her Facebook wall that praised the future president.

"May God our Father paint this country Red with the Blood of Jesus!" she posted on Election Day 2016.

Many articles she shared on her Facebook page in 2016 were from now-defunct sites that peddled false stories about Democratic politicians. She shared a link to an article titled, "The Clinton 'Body Count' EXPANDS – 5 Mysterious DEATHS in the Last 6 Weeks," pushing a baseless decades-old conspiracy theory that alleges Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered former friends and enemies.

She shared "WATCH: Jaws Drop When Lib CNN Host Betrays Hillary With Shock Message on Live TV," an article which has since been taken down from the far-right Conservative Tribune, a website known for false news, for failing to meet its "editorial standards."

An article from "Conservative Outfitters" carried the headline, "Hillary caught on camera breaking North Carolina election laws?" In the post, Blanchard asked, "Did this really happen?"

In September, the Foreign Relations Committee approved Blanchard's nomination. After the session ended in January, all pending nominations were brought back to the president. Trump then resubmitted her nomination and it is pending.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Jared Kushner identified as senior White House official whose security clearance was denied by career officials

The senior White House official whose security clearance was denied last year because of concerns about foreign influence, private business interests and personal conduct is presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with documents and testimony provided to the House Oversight Committee.

Kushner was identified only as “Senior White House Official 1” in committee documents released this week describing the testimony of Tricia Newbold, a whistleblower in the White House’s personnel security office who said she and another career employee determined that Kushner had too many “significant disqualifying factors” to receive a clearance.

Their decision was overruled by Carl Kline, the political appointee who then headed the office, according to Newbold’s interview with committee staff.

The new details about the internal debate over Kushner’s clearance revives questions about the severity of the issues flagged in his background investigation and Kushner’s access to government secrets.

Last year, President Trump directed his then-chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to give Kushner a top-secret security clearance, despite concerns expressed by career intelligence officers.

Security clearance experts said the issues raised in Kushner’s background investigation were significant.

“It’s a big deal,” said David Kris, a senior Justice Department official during the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and a founder of the consulting firm Culper Partners.

“The kinds of concerns that she mentioned are very serious,” he said. “Senior staff at the White House — and particularly relatives of the U.S. president — are incredibly attractive targets for our adversaries seeking to gather intelligence or exert covert influence.”

White House officials declined to comment Wednesday. An attorney for Kushner referred questions to the White House.

In an interview Monday with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Kushner said he could not comment on the White House security clearance process, but dismissed the idea that he posed a risk to national security.

“But I can say over the last two years that I’ve been here, I’ve been accused of all different types of things, and all of those things have turned out to be false,” he said.

Kushner’s legal team issued a statement in February saying that “White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone.”

Kushner, who is a senior adviser to Trump and married to his daughter Ivanka, was unable to obtain a permanent security clearance for more than a year as his background investigation dragged on — a situation that troubled senior White House officials.

Newbold told the House Oversight Committee that Kushner’s background investigation raised concerns about foreign influence, outside business interests and personal conduct, according to a document released by the committee.

The specific issues flagged in his background check remain unknown. But The Washington Post reported last year that foreign officials had privately discussed ways to try to manipulate Kushner by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience.

Among the nations that discussed ways to influence Kushner were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, current and former officials said.

Kushner also came to his post with complex business holdings and a family company facing significant debt, including more than $1 billion owed on a Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue.

In 2016, at the same time Kushner was helping to run Trump’s presidential campaign, he and company officials spoke with potential foreign investors about becoming partners in the building, including investors in China and Qatar.

Those deals never materialized. In August, Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian company, announced it was purchasing the office tower.

[Kushner Companies finalizes deal on troubled office tower]

A person familiar with Kushner’s security clearance, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters, noted that Kushner was interviewed by both the special counsel and congressional lawmakers investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.

“Not one allegation has been proven, and no one has in any way been able to show any foreign influence or improper business investments,” the person said.

While Kushner’s security clearance was pending, he held an interim top-secret clearance that at one point also gave him access to some of the government’s most sensitive materials, including the president’s daily intelligence brief, The Post has reported.

Last February, his clearance was downgraded to secret as part of an effort by Kelly to rein in the number of White House officials without permanent clearances who had access to highly classified material.

Trump then personally directed Kelly to give Kushner a top-secret clearance — a move that made Kelly so uncomfortable that he documented the request in writing, according to people familiar with the situation.

As president, Trump has the authority to grant such clearances. But congressional Democrats have raised questions about the risks that could be overlooked by such a decision.

“It shows a disregard for the national security of the country if the professionals in the intelligence committee believed Jared Kushner shouldn’t get a security clearance, and the president overrode that decision to give him one,” said House Intelligence Committee member Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.).

Kushner’s permanent top-secret clearance was granted May 1, according to internal White House personnel logs obtained by The Post. The notation was made by someone with the initials “CLK,” the same as Newbold’s then-boss, Kline.

On the same day, Ivanka Trump also obtained her clearance, the logs show.

Newbold told the House Oversight Committee that Kline had overruled her denial of Kushner’s clearance. She said he did so without addressing the disqualifying factors raised by the staff and merely noting that “the activities occurred prior to Federal service,” according to a committee document.

An attorney for Kline declined to comment.

In a memo Monday, Republican staff to the House Oversight Committee said that Newbold did not have “direct knowledge” about why Kline overruled her recommendation to deny a clearance to “Official 1.” They also described Newbold as a disgruntled employee.

In her testimony, Newbold said that when Kushner applied for an even higher level of clearance, another agency contacted her to determine “how we rendered a favorable adjudication,” an inquiry she said reflected that agency’s “serious concerns.”

The agency was not identified in committee documents. The CIA is the agency responsible for granting White House officials access to government information classified above top secret.

In all, Newbold alleged that 25 individuals were given clearances or access to national security information since 2018 despite concerns about ties to foreign influence, conflicts of interests, questionable or criminal conduct, financial problems or drug abuse.

Newbold, who worked on security clearance matters in the White House for 18 years under Republican and Democratic administrations, said she reluctantly came forward as a whistleblower over concern for national security.

“I would not be doing a service to myself, my country, or my children if I sat back knowing that the issues that we have could impact national security,” she told the committee, according to its summary of her interview.

Newbold said that she faced retaliation internally after she raised concerns about the clearance process. At one point, she has alleged, Kline moved clearance-related files to a shelf beyond the reach of Newbold, who has a rare form of dwarfism.

The House Oversight Committee’s Democratic majority voted this week to issue a subpoena to Kline to testify about his role in approving the security clearances. The panel’s vote was one of the first moves in the Democratic-controlled House to compel the White House to provide information about the Trump inner circle.

The White House has said that the Oversight Committee has no authority to question the president on security-clearance matters and has refused to provide the committee with documents.

Republicans on the panel have attacked Cummings’s inquiry, saying that he has politicized the discussion of the clearance issue and that he “cherry-picked” excerpts of the closed-door interview with Newbold. They complained that GOP members were unable to attend because they were told about it only the previous afternoon.

Newbold’s lawyer, Edward Passman, said Republican staffers were present for the hearing and aggressively questioned Newbold.

#Resist

[Jed_]

If anyone has been concerned about my lack of activity on the site, I’m concerned too.  I recently found out I’ve been exposed to windmills, and I just want to be with family until I know the extent of the possible carcinogenic damage.

This is just like the 1980’s when I found out trees cause more pollution than automobiles.

[psiberzerker]

You know you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, when causing homosexuality, and drugs doesn't have it's sting, and you have to resort to the Cancer card.

Quixotic.  That's the word you're looking for.

[Jed_]

Quixotic.  That's the word you're looking for.

Well, we are talking about the Don. . . . . .

[Athos_131]

Some on Mueller’s Team See Their Findings as More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Revealed

WASHINGTON — Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.

Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.

However, the special counsel’s office never asked Mr. Barr to release the summaries soon after he received the report, a person familiar with the investigation said. And the Justice Department quickly determined that the summaries contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand-jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential, according to two government officials.

Mr. Barr was also wary of departing from Justice Department practice not to disclose derogatory details in closing an investigation, according to two government officials familiar with Mr. Barr’s thinking. They pointed to the decision by James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to harshly criticize Hillary Clinton in 2016 while announcing that he was recommending no charges in the inquiry into her email practices.

The officials and others interviewed declined to flesh out why some of the special counsel’s investigators viewed their findings as potentially more damaging for the president than Mr. Barr explained, although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. It was unclear how much discussion Mr. Mueller and his investigators had with senior Justice Department officials about how their findings would be made public. It was also unclear how widespread the vexation is among the special counsel team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel.

At the same time, Mr. Barr and his advisers have expressed their own frustrations about Mr. Mueller and his team. Mr. Barr and other Justice Department officials believe the special counsel’s investigators fell short of their task by declining to decide whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed the inquiry, according to the two government officials. After Mr. Mueller made no judgment on the obstruction matter, Mr. Barr stepped in to declare that he had cleared Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.

Representatives for the Justice Department and the special counsel declined to comment on Wednesday on views inside both Mr. Mueller’s office and the Justice Department. They pointed to departmental regulations requiring Mr. Mueller to file a confidential report to the attorney general detailing prosecution decisions and to Mr. Barr’s separate vow to send a redacted version of that report to Congress. Under the regulations, Mr. Barr can publicly release as much of the document as he deems appropriate.

A debate over how the special counsel’s conclusions are represented has played out in public as well as in recent weeks, with Democrats in Congress accusing Mr. Barr of intervening to color the outcome of the investigation in the president’s favor.

In his letter to Congress outlining the report’s chief conclusions, Mr. Barr said that Mr. Mueller found no conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference. While Mr. Mueller made no decision on his other main question, whether the president illegally obstructed the inquiry, he explicitly stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.

Mr. Mueller’s decision to skip a prosecutorial judgment “leaves it to the attorney general to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime,” Mr. Barr wrote. He and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, decided that the evidence was insufficient to conclude that Mr. Trump had committed an obstruction offense.

Mr. Barr has come under criticism for sharing so little. But according to officials familiar with the attorney general’s thinking, he and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into political territory. Mr. Barr and his advisers expressed concern that if they included derogatory information about Mr. Trump while clearing him, they would face a storm of criticism like what Mr. Comey endured in the Clinton investigation.

Legal experts attacked Mr. Comey at the time for violating Justice Department practice to keep confidential any negative information about anyone uncovered during investigations. The practice exists to keep from unfairly sullying people’s reputations without giving them a chance to respond in court.

Mr. Rosenstein cited the handling of the Clinton case in a memo the White House used to rationalize Mr. Trump’s firing of Mr. Comey.

Though it was not clear what findings the special counsel’s investigators viewed as troubling for the president, Mr. Barr has suggested that Mr. Mueller may have found evidence of malfeasance in investigating possible obstruction of justice. “The report sets out evidence on both sides of the question,” Mr. Barr wrote in his March 24 letter.

Mr. Mueller examined Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the investigation, including his firing of Mr. Comey and his attempt to oust Mr. Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to install a loyalist to oversee the inquiry.

The fallout from Mr. Barr’s letter outlining the Russia investigation’s main findings overshadowed his intent to make public as much of the entire report as possible, a goal he has stressed since his confirmation hearing in January. He reiterated to lawmakers on Friday that he wanted both Congress and the public to read the report and said that the department would by mid-April furnish a version with sensitive material blacked out. He offered to testify on Capitol Hill soon after turning over the report.

Mr. Barr, who took office in February, has shown flashes of frustration over how the unveiling of the investigation’s findings has unfolded. In his follow-up letter to lawmakers on Friday, he chafed at how the news media and some lawmakers had characterized his March 24 letter.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller have been friends for 30 years, and Mr. Barr said during his confirmation hearing in January that he trusted Mr. Mueller to conduct an impartial investigation. He said he told Mr. Trump that Mr. Mueller was a “straight shooter who should be dealt with as such.” Mr. Mueller served as the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division when Mr. Barr was attorney general under George Bush, and their families are friends.

Mr. Barr’s promises of transparency have done little to appease Democrats who control the House. The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to let its chairman use a subpoena to try to compel Mr. Barr to hand over a full copy of the Mueller report and its underlying evidence to Congress. The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has not said when he will use the subpoena, but made clear on Wednesday that he did not trust Mr. Barr’s characterization of what Mr. Mueller’s team found.

“The Constitution charges Congress with holding the president accountable for alleged official misconduct,” Mr. Nadler said. “That job requires us to evaluate the evidence for ourselves — not the attorney general’s summary, not a substantially redacted synopsis, but the full report and the underlying evidence.”

Republicans, who have embraced Mr. Barr’s letter clearing Mr. Trump, have accused the Democrats of trying to prolong the cloud over his presidency and urged them to move on.

Mr. Trump has fully embraced Mr. Barr’s version of events. For days, he has pronounced the outcome of the investigation a “complete and total exoneration” and called for the Justice Department and his allies on Capitol Hill to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for opening the inquiry.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

‘You pay and you get in’: At Trump’s beach retreat, hundreds of customers — and growing security concerns

Presidents used to vacation in seclusion — at a ranch in Texas or a beach house in Hawaii. Screening their visitors was relatively simple: The only people who came were friends and staff.

President Trump has added vast new complications by choosing to spend his weekends with his customers.

Trump stays at the Mar-a-Lago Club, a busy beachfront resort where his quarters are a short distance from the pool, the ballroom, and the “six star” seafood buffet. That decision — to use his Palm Beach, Fla., club as both a presidential retreat and a moneymaking resort — brings hundreds of members, overnight guests and partygoing strangers into the president’s “Winter White House” every weekend.

To protect the president, that requires the Secret Service to screen hundreds of would-be visitors against preapproved lists.

But to protect his business, it has also required the Secret Service to defer to Mar-a-Lago staffers and allow in some visitors who are not on the list.

Last weekend, that complex system of lists and exceptions broke down.

When a visitor approached the club, officers found she was not on the approved list — but let her in anyway after a Mar-a-Lago staffer suggested she might be the relative of a club member.

The woman, identified as Yujing Zhang, a Chinese national, was later arrested inside the club’s main building. Authorities said she was carrying four cellphones, a laptop and a thumb drive with malicious software.

“I’m surprised that she got in. But then again, I’m not surprised,” said Shannon Donnelly, the longtime society columnist for the Palm Beach Daily News who has covered Mar-a-Lago for years.

She described a situation in which the Secret Service is dealing with two missions, to keep the president safe and to keep his customers happy.

“It’s bound to happen” that people will slip through, Donnelly said. “There’s hundreds of people coming and going when there’s an event, and half of them are members — they’re not used to being stopped.”

On Wednesday, Trump said he had a brief meeting about the incident but said he was not concerned about potential espionage efforts aimed at Mar-a-Lago. He praised the Secret Service as well as the receptionist who first noticed something was amiss with Zhang.

“We have very good control,” he told reporters at the White House. “The person at the front desk did a very good job, to be honest with you.”

Zhang is in jail, charged with making a false statement to a federal officer and entering a restricted area. On Monday, a federal judge will decide whether she should remain in custody.

Counterintelligence agents at the FBI are also looking at Zhang to see whether they can find any information that would explain her behavior, according to people familiar with the matter.

On Wednesday, three top Senate Democrats asked FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to investigate whether foreign spies could exploit weaknesses at Mar-a-Lago to steal classified information. Zhang’s arrest “raises very serious questions regarding security vulnerabilities at Mar-a-Lago, which foreign intelligence services have reportedly targeted,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.); Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee; and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Bernd Lembcke, Mar-a-Lago’s longtime managing director, did not respond to questions about the club’s security procedures, including whether members are checked to see whether they might be foreign agents. Neither did Trump Organization executives in New York.

Mar-a-Lago stretches the full width of narrow Palm Beach island, off the coast of South Florida. It features a beach club, a main building with dining and living rooms, two ballrooms, six hotel suites and an attached house where Trump lives.

There is a cap of 500 members. As of last year, joining required sponsorship by an existing member and a payment of $200,000 — an initiation fee that doubled the year Trump took office. The annual dues are about $14,000, according to members.

Trump has been to the club 22 times since he became president, according to a Washington Post tally.

On busy Saturdays in the winter and spring — like this past Saturday, when Zhang got in — there are hundreds of people arriving. Some are members, coming to swim, eat or play tennis.

Others are attending luncheons and galas, holding tickets that cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars. At first, these galas largely drew guests from Palm Beach’s pastel-colored social scene. These days, after a decline in that traditional banquet business, the galas are more commonly aimed at Trump’s fervid political fan base, which extends beyond the clubby island.

That busy schedule is what Trump wanted for Mar-a-Lago, according to one former senior Trump administration official. Even after he became president, Trump did not want Mar-a-Lago to become a place where visitors became uncomfortable.

So he kept it as it was — and made his aides uncomfortable instead.

“The president has no idea who most of the people around him at the club are,” said another White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “You pay and you get in.”

When Trump is present, guests say, the first stop for visitors is a security screening in a parking lot across the street from the club.

There, past visitors said, guests give their names and identifications to Secret Service agents or police officers, who check them against a list supplied by the club. The checks are strict: One member said her 11-year-old grandson brings his passport with him when he comes to use the pool.

But visitors also described instances in which — if a name was not on the list — Mar-a-Lago security personnel would make exceptions if they knew the guest or found another staffer to vouch for them.

“Usually it’s the Mar-a-Lago people that are giving the go-ahead,” said one person familiar with the property who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering management. “If [the guest is] a familiar face, they would let them in.”

The Secret Service confirmed as much in its statement about Zhang’s arrest. “The Mar-a-Lago Club’s management determines which members and guests are granted access to the property,” the agency said.

The Secret Service has additional layers of protection around Trump. Agents stand outside the door to his residence, cordon off his table at dinner and surround him if he drops in to weddings or galas in the ballrooms. Guests cannot approach unless Trump waves them over.

“There’s no more access than they’d have than if he was in a restaurant,” said Ronald Kessler, an author who has known Trump for two decades. Kessler said his wife was yanked back by a Secret Service agent when they approached Trump’s table at Mar-a-Lago two years ago.

But, intelligence officials have said, a foreign spy might find Mar-a-Lago a gold mine — even if the spy never laid eyes on Trump. The club is full of Trump’s friends, aides and hangers-on; it could be bugged, or its computers hacked, if someone could get in the door.

In the case of Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested Saturday, she arrived at the first security checkpoint, in the parking lot across the street, and said she was headed to the club’s pool. She was not on the list. According to charging documents, a Mar-a-Lago staffer still allowed her in because the club “believed her to be the relative” of a club member whose name was also Zhang, prosecutors said.

Zhang was picked up by a club employee and driven in a golf cart to the main building. There, prosecutors said, a club receptionist stopped Zhang and asked her why she had come to the club.

Zhang said she had come from Shanghai to attend a “United Nations Friendship Event” at the club, at the invitation of a friend named “Charles.” But there was no such event scheduled, according to charging documents. The receptionist called over a Secret Service agent, the documents said, and Zhang then became “verbally aggressive” and was arrested.

Trump was in Palm Beach this past weekend, but at the time of Zhang’s entrance he was out of the club playing golf.

On Wednesday, authorities were still trying to understand her motivations.

One possibility: She really thought she had a ticket to an event at the club.

There is a Chinese entrepreneur named Charles Li, with a group called the United Nations Chinese Friendship Association, who has sold package tours in China that included tickets to galas at Mar-a-Lago, according to reporting by the Miami Herald.

The Washington Post sought to reach Li at the Beijing address listed for the association, but the building’s management said it had no such tenant.

The Post also sent messages through the Chinese social media network WeChat to a number listed for Li. When The Post asked whether this number belonged to Charles Li, the user sent back a photo of Trump doing a thumbs-up.

But then, when The Post asked about Zhang, the account did not respond, and then it blocked The Post from further contact.

Could Zhang have been at Mar-a-Lago as part of a foreign intelligence operation? Former U.S. counterintelligence officials said that was possible — but noted that it appeared to be an unsophisticated effort, lame enough to be foiled by a receptionist.

“I don’t know if it’s a sanctioned activity by the Chinese government, but there’s no doubt it’s some type of potential intelligence operation,” said Robert Anderson, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official. He is now chief executive of Cyber Defense Labs in Dallas.

He also called it “very disturbing” for someone “with that shoddy of a story to get by two or three levels of security” at a facility where the president could be in attendance. “How in the heck does that happen?”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The plot just thickened on William Barr and the Mueller report

For the entirety of its probe, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has been leakproof. When we learned things about its Russia investigation, it was almost always through people who found themselves mixed up in it. Mueller lived up to his by-the-book reputation.

Which makes what we saw Wednesday night all the more notable. The New York Times broke, then The Washington Post matched, the news that investigators on Mueller’s team were grousing about how Attorney General William P. Barr has handled summarizing their report.

Even if the leaks weren’t deliberate — the Times initially reported this secondhand as the Mueller team complaining to associates, not them — the fact that the investigators are complaining enough that this would leak is significant. It suggests a serious level of dissatisfaction and concern, if not a concerted effort to send a message before Barr’s big reveal of the Mueller report this month. These investigators may feel liberated to vent now that the probe is over (and some of them have even left the Justice Department), but you have to think this represents a very serious level of concern about Barr’s conduct, rather than just a few offhand comments.

The Post’s Ellen Nakashima, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman report:

Members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.

“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.

The New York Times first reported that some special counsel investigators feel that Barr did not adequately portray their findings.

Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions.

“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The Mueller team is reportedly saying it wrote summaries for each section, which it believed Barr could release immediately and without a need to redact. Instead, he chose to summarize the report almost completely in his own words and didn’t even include complete sentences from Mueller’s report.

The Justice Department has fought back, saying that even Mueller’s summaries included potentially sensitive information. Spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said every page was marked as possibly including materials obtained via grand jury, which is information the Justice Department legally can’t release. “Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the attorney general decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately — without attempting to summarize the report — with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process,” she said.

Barr’s summary has been at issue ever since it was released, as has his decision to exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice when Mueller’s team pointedly declined to either accuse or exonerate. Since then, the question has been how damning the evidence is and whether Barr’s decision to exonerate Trump on his own was necessary. Some have even alleged Barr was protecting the man who appointed him or doing his bidding. (Barr’s history of criticizing the Mueller probe as a private citizen certainly could lead one to draw conclusions.)

The Times put it like this: “Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.”

That’s an interesting point. There is certainly something to be said for setting the terms of the debate. If people have processed that the report doesn’t accuse Trump of crimes, perhaps they’ll look at even highly questionable behavior and simply conclude, “Well, they didn’t say it was a crime.”

But there is also something to be said for setting expectations low. Generally speaking, before a big reveal, you want to lower expectations so that it looks like good news for you. There is a very credible case to be made that the Trump team setting the bar at “complete and total EXONERATION” could make the ultimate report look especially bad for him.

The message from Mueller’s team, whether deliberate, seems to be: Stay tuned, and be wary of William Barr.

#Resist

[joan1984]

  The Times and The Post each quote no known individual, so a secret source, just as they each have done dozens of times, each time reporting breathlessly the demise of President Trump due to "Russian Collusion", painting Trump as a traitor at minimum.

  The same  leakers they quoted then, they quote now, and the same level of proof they presented then, they present now, NADA...

  The 'standard' was Bob Mueller, he was the cop who was going to deliver the goods, and frogmarch the entire Trump Family from the White House... NADA...

  This nonsense has grabbed headlines for more than Two YEARS, and NADA...

  Chairman Naddler knows what he should receive, just as he knew during the Clinton Impeachment process what his committee should see, and should not see. The ruse that he wants it all, unredacted by anyone, and wants it when he wants it is just that... Democrats fund raising over nonsense...

  Congress will get what they are entitled to, no less, and the Attorney General has committed to release as soon as it is possible, legally, having done his duty to protect methods, sources, and Grand Jury Testimony. Congress history has been to make public, officially or just for Democrats to leak sensitive information as they have all along to the Times and the Post the past two years which is good reason not to show anything to Congress that is not suitable for public release, frankly, and certainly nothing not related to the reason for the Special Counsel being appointed, and what he and his team were commissioned to study, and make their formal recommendation via the report.

[Lois]

What is clear, reading the Muller report or not, is that Trump has not acted prudently, especially with regards to the Russians.

Why did he hire Manafort? Why was a Russian pro-expansionist platform added to the official Tump campaign platform?

Why did he fire Comey and then boast about it to the Russian ambassador?   Why did he provide the Russians with confidential intellegence provided to us by Israel, compromising their sources?

Why did Trump side with Putin against our own intellegence services over the issue of Russian interference in our election?

Why did he twice meet with Putin privately, with no aids present?

Was he colluding or just smoking crack?

[psiberzerker]

NADA...

According to the Muller Report, or the guy that's refusing to release it until he has time to redact it?

If there's no evidence, then what needs to be redacted?  The Muller Report is hundreds of pages.  The Barr Report isn't.

There's your "NADA."  I'll believe there's nothing in that report, when someone actually gets to read the report.  NADA=/=Redacted

[joan1984]

None of the actions you cite are or were illegal.

Congress is not privy to what the SC found on legal activity.

You are not privy to the 'why' answers to political questions.

No one is privy to another American's legal activity, or thoughts.

Our option will be to express our doubts by choosing at the Polls.

What is clear, reading the Muller report or not, is that Trump has not acted prudently, especially with regards to the Russians.

Why did he hire Manafort? Why was a Russian pro-expansionist platform added to the official Tump campaign platform?

Why did he fire Comey and then boast about it to the Russian ambassador?   Why did he provide the Russians with confidential intellegence provided to us by Israel, compromising their sources?

Why did Trump side with Putin against our own intellegence services over the issue of Russian interference in our election?

Why did he twice meet with Putin privately, with no aids present?

Was he colluding or just smoking crack?

[psiberzerker]

Congress is not privy to what the SC found on legal activity.

Really?  You believe that, for 1 second.  Congress, who ordered the investigation, is not privy to what the investigation found?

[joan1984]

Congress did not order the Special Counsel investigation by Mueller.

The Attorney General, in this case the acting Attorney General, authorized
the Special Counsel investigation. Lacking a specific noted 'crime', this SC
investigation was/is a Intelligence Investigation, with a confidential report
to be issued from the SC to the U.S. Attorney General.

You may be thinking of the Starr Special Counsel investigation, made under
the OLD law, which incorporated a confidential report to Congress. That law
was allowed to lapse, with bipartisan agreement, during President Clinton's
term, and the current law regulating Special Counsel calls for the report to go
only to the U.S. Attorney General.

The Attorney General decides whether and when, and if, to make a report to Congress in relation to any Special Counsel conclusions regarding the specifics of the commission of the Special Counsel.

Congress is not privy to what the SC found on legal activity.

Really?  You believe that, for 1 second.  Congress, who ordered the investigation, is not privy to what the investigation found?

[psiberzerker]

The Attorney General decides whether and when, and if, to make a report to Congress in relation to any Special Counsel conclusions regarding the specifics of the commission of the Special Counsel.

No, that's not how that works at all.  He's not a Judge, he's not a Legislator, he's an Attorney.  The Rules of Evidence apply to all Lawyers, even the AG.  He can not Rule on Law, he cannot make up Laws, and he cannot redefine Obstruction of Justice to make his client innocent.  (Or decide it's impossible for him to be guilty, because he's above the law)

Not even close.  He's committing Obstruction of Justice, Tampering with Evidence, which is also an exception to Privilege (In the commission of, or accessory to a crime, even after the fact.)  Just like it was for Cohen.  You cannot commit more Obstruction to get out of Obstruction of Justice charges.

[joan1984]

  Should the entire files of the FBI and Justice Department regarding Hillary Clinton be made public? The FBI Director preempted the decision not to charge Hillary Clinton, which was not the FBI's to make, was up to the Attorney General to make such a decision.

  AG Lnych was not a Judge, or a Lawmaker, not was Director Comey a Judge or a Lawmaker, yet the full report, with all the details about Hillary Clinon, including the details about her Campaign, John Podesta, the DNC Hacking and Wikileaks, have not been made public, or issued in full to anyone, yet.

  This is the Justice Department we have, a part of the Executive Branch, btw.
Congress has its own Investigators, and may do it's own investigations of course regardless of what they may 'see' as to Special Counsel report findings.
There is no obligation for AG Barr to produce a 'edited' Mueller Report, by law. for viewing of the public or Congress.

  He may do so, and is not obligated at all. Carping about a schedule for any release is show boating, and is for use in fund raising by the Democrat party.
The MSM is allied with the Democrats of course, sees no double standard there.

[psiberzerker]

 Should the entire files of the FBI and Justice Department regarding Hillary Clinton be made public?

To the legislators charged with oversight of that office?  Yes.  I don't have to read the hundreds of pages of evidence, but they do.  It's part of the investigation.  The AG destroying, and altering evidence is not.  Pert of ANY investigation.  Ever.  He's supposed to be the chief Prosecuter for the United States.  You realize that, right?  He's not a Defense Attorney?  Rudy Guilianni is, you get that, right?

The Attorney General is Destroying Evidence.  That is not how the law works.  That's how the law is Broken.

[Athos_131]

Trumpers:  "The Mueller report exonerates Donnie!"

Sane People:  "Ok, release it."

Trumpers:  "Nah."

#Resist