Chuck Schumer tells GOP to beware: Pursuit of FBI informant's identity comes close to crossing legal line

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Saturday warned Republicans that their efforts to uncover the identity of a secret FBI source in a possible attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is nearing a legal line.

Schumer tweeted support of Sen. Mark Warner's, D-Va., statement cautioning Republicans to stop pressing the Justice Department for more information about a source that is presumed to have helped the FBI and Mueller's probe into potential Trump campaign dealings with Russia.

"@MarkWarner’s statement here is on the money and a severe warning to right wing Republican Congressmen who are trying to obstruct Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation and could be coming close to crossing a legal line," Schumer tweeted on Saturday.

Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that Republicans could be breaking the law in their pursuit.

“It would be at best irresponsible, and at worst potentially illegal, for members of Congress to use their positions to learn the identity of an FBI source for the purpose of undermining the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in our election,” Warner said in a statement Friday night. “Anyone who is entrusted with our nation’s highest secrets should act with the gravity and seriousness of purpose that knowledge deserves.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes requested details related to the covert source, but was denied by the Justice Department on grounds that releasing such information could endanger lives and pose a risk to national security. Nunes and other Trump allies say they aren't concerned about the source's identity but the source's role in the investigation.

Trump pushed the issue in a tweet Friday, repeating the unverified claim that an informant worked their way into his campaign.

Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a “hot” Fake News story. If true - all time biggest political scandal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2018

Warner and Schumer aren't the only ones warning Republicans. FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a word of warning to Congress during his testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"The day that we can't protect human sources is the day the American people start becoming less safe," Wray said Wednesday.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/chuck-schumer-tells-gop-to-beware-pursuit-of-fbi-informants-identity-comes-close-to-crossing-legal-line

>>1477943

I used to get so frustrated every time they opened their mouths, but I just laugh now, because it's beyond ridiculous. I think most are on to them now. So for me it's their Cryin Game,over and over again.

>>1477946 @ >>1477969

‘Wet leased’ Boeing jet in worst Cuba plane crash since 1989 had safety complaints

The aircraft was ‘wet leased’ to Cuba’s state airline by a Mexican company that also supplied crew, flight attendants, a maintenance technician, as well as the insurance.

The Mexican charter company whose plane crashed in Havana, killing 110 people, has been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba’s national airline.

The plane was barred from Guyanese airspace last year after authorities discovered that its crew had been allowing dangerous overloading of luggage on flights to Cuba, Guyanese Civil Aviation Director Captain Egbert Field said.

The plane and crew were being rented from Mexico City-based Damojh airlines by EasySky, a Honduras-based low-cost airline.

Cuba’s national carrier, Cubana de Aviacion, was also renting the Boeing 737 and crew in a similar arrangement known as a “wet lease” before the aircraft veered on takeoff to the eastern Cuban city of Holguin and crashed into a field just after noon Friday, according to Mexican aviation authorities.

A Damojh employee in Mexico City declined to comment, saying the company would be communicating only through written statements.

Mexican authorities said Damojh had permits needed to lease its aircraft and had passed a November 2017 verification of its maintenance program.

Mexico’s government released a statement saying its National Civil Aviation Authority would carry out a new “operational audit” of Damojh to see if its “current operating conditions continue meeting regulations, as well as collecting information to help the investigation”.

Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez said that Cubana had been renting the plane for less than a month under an arrangement in which the Mexican company was entirely responsible for maintenance of the aircraft.

Armando Daniel Lopez, president of Cuba’s Institute of Civil Aviation, said that Cuban authorities had not received any complaints about the plane in that month. He declined to comment further.

Yzquierdo said it was routine for Cuba to rent planes under a variety of arrangements because of what he described as the country’s inability to purchase its own aircraft due to the US trade embargo on the island.

Cuba has been able to buy planes produced in other countries, including France and Ukraine, but has pulled many from service due to maintenance problems and other issues.

“It’s normal for us to rent planes,” he said.

“Why? Because it’s convenient and because of the problem of the blockade that we have. Sometimes we can’t buy the planes that we need, and we need to rent them.”

He said that with Damojh, “the formula here is that they take care of the maintenance of the aircraft. That’s their responsibility.”

He said Cuba didn’t have pilots certified to fly the Boeing, so it had hired the Mexican crew with the expectation that they were fully trained and certified by the proper authorities.

Yzquierdo also said the jet’s “black box” voice recorder had been recovered and that Cuban officials had granted a US request for investigators from Boeing to travel to the island.

Eyewitness and private salon owner Rocio Martinez said she heard a strange noise and looked up to see the plane with a turbine on fire.

“It had an engine on fire, in flames, it was falling toward the ground,” Martinez said, adding that the plane veered into the field where it crashed, avoiding potential fatalities in a nearby residential area.

Field said that the Boeing 737 with tail number XA-UHZ had been flying four routes a week between Georgetown, Guyana, and Havana starting in October 2016.

The crash was the worst in Cuba since a Soviet-made Ilyushin-62M passenger plane crashed near Havana in 1989 killing all 126 people on board and another 14 on the ground.

http:// www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/2146936/wet-leased-boeing-jet-worst-cuba-plane-crash-1989-had-safety

Bill Gates: Trump twice asked me difference between HIV and HPV – but he knew ‘scary’ amount about my daughter’s looks

‘So when I first talked to him it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter’s appearance. Melinda didn’t like that too well’.

Bill Gates, the billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, has claimed Donald Trump twice asked him the difference between HIV and HPV and knew a “scary” amount about Gates’s daughter’s looks.

The remarks were recorded at a recent Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting, where Gates took questions from staff, according to MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes show, which broadcast the footage on Thursday.

Gates told the audience how Trump had encountered his daughter Jennifer, now 22, at a horse show in Florida. “And then about 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place,” the Microsoft co-founder said. “So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.”

Gates himself met Trump for the first time in New York in December 2016, he recalled: “So when I first talked to him it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter’s appearance. Melinda [Gates’ wife] didn’t like that too well.”

They met again in March last year at the White House. Gates continued: “In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines and somebody – I think it was Robert Kennedy Jnr – was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things. And I said no, that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.

“Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other.”

Trump since appears to have abandoned plans to investigate debunked theories linking childhood immunisations and autism. Robert F Kennedy Jnr told the Guardian earlier this year that parents and children’s health advocates felt “enormous betrayal and disappointment” at the decision.

The UK’s National Health Service website lists “ What’s the difference between HPV and HIV? ” as one of its common health questions. It says: “Human papilloma virus (HPV) affects the skin and moist membranes. HPV can cause problems such as verrucae, genital warts and abnormal cell changes in the cervix.

“Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the immune system. HIV infection can lead to Aids; however, with early diagnosis and treatment, most people don’t go on to develop Aids.”

Gates is hardly known for his comic timing but he frequently prompted laughter from the audience at the foundation event. In one anecdote he said: “When I walked in, his first sentence kind of threw me off. He said: ‘Trump hears that you don’t like what Trump is doing.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, but you’re Trump.’ I didn’t know the third-party form was always expected. ‘Gates says that Gates knows that you’re not doing things right.’”

Trump has a now-familiar verbal tic of referring to himself in the third person.

Hayes said his show had sought comment from the Gates Foundation but has not yet received a response. Tara Dowdell, Democratic strategist, told the MSNBC host: “We’re looking at a president that doesn’t know the difference between HIV and HPV but he has memorized Bill Gates’ daughter’s appearance.

“So if he spent more time actually learning policy, if he devoted just a quarter of the time that he devotes to harassing women and gawking at women to actual policy, memorizing and learning policy, I think the country would be a lot better off.”

http:// www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2146702/bill-gates-trump-twice-asked-me-difference-between

(So we are in CYA mode, before everyone learns what he and his vaccines have done to the ww population. Pull Trump is sexist, card again,PLEASE!)

Royal wedding: two-thirds of Britons aren’t interested, poll suggests

‘We’re not a nation of republicans yet – but we’ve stopped being a nation of royalists’

A global audience will be watching when Prince Harry weds his US fiancée Meghan Markle on Saturday – but most Britons don’t care that much, a poll suggested on Monday.

The research, commissioned by anti-monarchist pressure group Republic, found that 66 per cent of Britons are not interested in the event – with 60 per cent of them planning to just have a normal weekend.

Harry and Markle are set to marry at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle with more than 5,000 media staff and around 100,000 well-wishers expected to descend on the market town.

The survey, by polling firm YouGov, showed that 57 per cent of respondents believed the royal family should pay not only for the wedding but also for the costs of police.

Past opinion polls have suggested that Britons are still overwhelmingly in favor of the monarchy continuing. Ipsos Mori research from 2016 found 76 per cent rejected the idea of Britain becoming a republic.

And another poll, by ComRes, earlier this month found 58 per cent of respondents thought the royal wedding and the recent birth of Prince Louis to Prince William and his wife Kate were events of which Britain could be proud, although support was more pronounced among older people.

The YouGov survey did however suggest that the popularity of the royal family is contingent on the personalities of its members. While 60 per cent of respondents say they like Queen Elizabeth, her son Charles is far less popular.

Nearly half of respondents would prefer “someone else” to succeed the Queen, while only 37 per cent want Charles, who is the father of Harry and his older brother William.

“This YouGov poll shows a very clear picture of a nation disinterested and apathetic about the royal family,” Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, said.

“We’re not a nation of republicans yet – but we’ve stopped being a nation of royalists.”

http:// www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2146124/royal-wedding-two-thirds-britons-arent-interested-poll-suggests

>>1478232

I didn't look at it that way, I was looking a the perspective of a few that were watching on this board yesterday morning, they were saying it didn't seem that there was much interest among the Brit's and I think this confirms that. The other thing that stuck out to me were those trinkets. Who receives the royalties on those, the Queen or Harry and Megan? Thinking these weddings are just the thing they want when the finances are getting tight.

>>1478323

That could be. I know someone who spent a year there and I was told the Brit's view the Royals as money suckers directly from their paychecks. I have been told they feel as though average citizen there feels as they are the welfare system to keep the royal facade going.

Campbell's CEO steps down as soup maker ponders brand sales

Chief Executive Officer Denise Morrison abruptly stepped down from Campbell's Soup Co. on Friday as the foodmaker ponders reshaping its brand portfolio after the $6.1 billion purchase of snack-maker Lance-Snyder.

Board member Keith McLoughlin, the former head of home-appliance manufacturer Electrolux, will service as interim CEO while Campbell's seeks a permanent successor for Morrison, the Camden, N.J.-based company said.

The management shakeup followed a quarterly loss of $393 million, as well as lower profitability than executives had expected, prompting the firm to project a full-year drop in earnings rather than growth of as much as 4 percent.

"These results are unsatisfactory and disappointing to us as well as our shareholders," McLoughlin told investors on an earnings all. "We intend to take appropriate and decisive actions to ensure that Campbell's is positioned to compete and win in the marketplace. That means we must take a fresh look at our strategies, our operations and our portfolio and to do so with urgency."

While McLoughlin declined to share details on what strategic moves the company consider, he promised that "there are no sacred cows."

The company also suggested it would raise prices on its products as a result of the looming steel and aluminum tariffs the Trump administration announced earlier this year.

"That’s obviously going to put some pressure on the margin," Chief Financial Officer Anthony DiSilvestro said. "It would certainly be our intention that, over time, productivity and pricing will offset cost inflation."

While the Lance acquistion helped boost total revenue 15 percent to $4.12 billion for the quarter that ended on April 30, sales in the company’s meals and beverage sector declined by 3 percent.

"We are facing both execution-related and external challenges," DiSilvestro told investors. "We are analyzing these issues in depth, developing action plans to address them and doing so with a heightened sense of urgency."

Campbell's fell 11 percent to $34.80 in New York trading on Friday, taking this year's decline to 28 percent.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/campbells-soup-ceo-steps-down-after-quarterly-loss

GOP to investigate Fannie Mae's reported lobbying violation

The House Financial Services Committee will investigate Fannie Mae over a report that one of executives has been lobbying to get the bailed-out mortgage giant out of the government’s hands, chairman Jeb Hensarling said Friday.

“It is a slap in the face of taxpayers that Fannie Mae thinks it can take their money and blatantly ignore the rules that came with it,” the Texas Republican said. “The American people deserve better.”

Fannie Mae’s general counsel has been advocating with Trump administration officials for the company to be released from government conservatorship and placed back into private hands, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Under the terms of the 2008 bailout for the company, it is not supposed to engage in political advocacy.

Some legislators, including Hensarling, have sought to shutter Fannie and Freddie Mac in order to ensure that there is not a repeat of the pre-crisis dynamic, in which the two companies took on risk to gain profits, but then got a taxpayer rescue when they failed.

Hensarling and other conservators have been particularly sensitive to the possibility that either of the two could be lobbying, engaging in activism, or otherwise becoming more politically engaged.

Congress has failed to advance reforms to the housing finance system, though, raising the likelihood of the Trump administration pursuing action on its own to resolve their status. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he is committed to getting them out of government conservatorship.

Asked for comment, a representative for Fannie Mae said that the company does not lobby and has not advocated for any specific housing finance reform.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/gop-to-investigate-fannie-maes-reported-lobbying-violation

>>1478407

Exactly where he belongs and his little wife too.