New Book Fills In Gaps On Meeting That Sparked FBI’s Trump-Russia Probe

A book released on Tuesday provides new details about a May 2016 meeting that led the FBI to open its investigation into the Trump campaign.

Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos met with then Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London on May 10, 2016. Downer has claimed that Papadopoulos told him that Russia had derogatory information on Hillary Clinton.

Downer initially viewed Papadopoulos’s remarks as an afterthought, according to “The Apprentice.” The FBI did not open its investigation until more than two months later.

The Australian diplomat who sparked the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign initially viewed his interactions with Trump aide George Papadopoulos as an afterthought, according to a book published Tuesday.

In “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy,” Washington Post reporter Greg Miller provides new details of a series of events that led to the culmination of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.

The investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, a week after WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

After the email dump, Alexander Downer, the top Australian diplomat to the U.K. at the time, contacted a U.S. embassy official in London to provide details of a conversation he had two months earlier with Papadopoulos, an energy consultant who joined the Trump team in March 2016.

Downer was put in contact with Papadopoulos through Erika Thompson, another Australian diplomat who had met Papadopoulos in April 2016.

Papadopoulos has accused Downer of working as part of a concerted effort to spy on him during the campaign. But Miller asserts that Downer’s delay in relaying the information to the U.S. government indicates that he was not sent to collect specific information to open an investigation of the Trump campaign.

“Downer understood that it was pointless to expect a comprehensive take on the Trump world view from a cipher like Papadopoulos, but if nothing more, it was an opportunity to take the measure of one of the few identified members of Trump’s foreign policy brain trust,” wrote Miller, whose book is largely critical of Trump.

Papadopoulos met with Downer and Thompson at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London on May 10, 2016.

“Downer was drinking a gin and tonic and doing most of the talking. Papadopoulos struck him as surprisingly young and inexperienced, someone who seemed unlikely to land in a position of real influence in the U.S. government,” Miller wrote.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/10/03/alexander-downer-george-papadopoulos/

Obama Admits Heavy Drinking, Drug Problems As An 'Adolescent' In Rare Video Footage

In light of the recent attacks on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over his alleged drinking in high school and his having thrown ice at someone in a bar, a rare video clip of then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama has surfaced that shows the 40-year-old admitting that while he was a "young boy" and an "adolescent" he drank "a six-pack in an hour" in between classes, got in fights, was a "thug," and used illegal drugs.

The February 2001 biographical interview was made by The History Makers, who interviewed Obama about everything from his favorite color to describing his adolescent behavior to defining what he wanted his legacy to be.

While discussing his adolescent behavior, Obama said, "I was a thug for a big part of my growing up," adding that he was "mischievous."

"I didn't take school that seriously," Obama continued. "I got into fights. I drank and did —and consumed substances that weren't always legal."

Obama noted that some of his behavior "was self-destructive," saying, "I might have drank a six-pack in an hour before going back to class, things like that."

The clip validates other statements made by Obama, who has admitted to using cocaine and marijuana during his high school years.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/36649/obama-admits-heavy-drinking-drug-problems-ryan-saavedra

FDA Cracks Down on Vape Maker Juul, Raids Office Seizing Thousands of Documents

The FDA is continuing its crackdown on vape manufacturers and their investigation recently came to a head as they raided the popular vape maker Juul.

Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration set its sights on e-cigs and launched a massive campaign to discourage teens from using e-cigarettes. The FDA also announced an investigation into several vaping products—namely the most popular brand, Juul which makes up 72 percent of the market—for allegedly marketing their products to teens.

Because the FDA can’t understand why teen vaping has rapidly increased over the last few years, they think the answer might lie in marketing. Recently, this investigation came to a head when the FDA launched an “unannounced on-site inspection” — also known as a raid — of the Juul headquarters. During the raid, the FDA seized “thousands of pages of documents,” according to the FDA.

“The JUUL inspection, which we completed on Friday, sought further documentation related to JUUL’s sales and marketing practices, among other things, and resulted in the collection of over a thousand pages of documents,” the FDA said in a statement emailed to Gizmodo. “The inspection followed the Agency’s request for information that we issued to JUUL Labs in April for documents that would help us to better understand the reportedly high rates of youth use and the youth appeal of JUUL products, including documents related to marketing and product design.”

In response to the FDA’s unannounced raid, Juul CEO Kevin Burns said they plan to work with the FDA and claim to have never marketed to children and the documents will prove it.

“We are committed to preventing underage use, and we want to engage with FDA, lawmakers, public health advocates and others to keep JUUL out of the hands of young people. The meetings last week with FDA gave us the opportunity to provide information about our business from our marketing practices to our industry-leading online age-verification protocols to our youth prevention efforts. It was a constructive and transparent dialogue,” Burns said. “We’ve now released over 50,000 pages of documents to the FDA since April that support our public statements. We look forward to presenting our plan to address youth access in the 60-day time frame as outlined by FDA. We want to be part of the solution in preventing underage use, and we believe it will take industry and regulators working together to restrict youth access.”

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/fda-cracks-down-on-vape-maker-juul-raids-office-seizing-thousands-of-documents/

>>3316093

He didn't mention how he paid for the drugs

US Special Agent Tipped Off Syrian Terror Suspect to FBI Investigation

Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) special agent Leatrice Malika De Bruhl-Daniels was arrested on Friday over accusations she shared classified information with a terror suspect ‒ Nada Diya ‒ with whom she was romantically involved.

According to multiple media reports, Bruhl-Daniels met Diya in Dubai in 2016 while working at the US consulate there. She had been a special agent for nine years and had top-security clearance with access to sensitive information on some subjects.

Diya was trying to get a tourist visa to visit the United States. Court documents say that Bruhl-Daniels contacted officials at the State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who informed her that both the DHS and FBI had their eyes on Diya in a counterterrorism probe.

Bruhl-Daniels, despite being told to "Stay away from Diya," went on to form a romantic relationship with him and told him that if he came to the US he would be arrested.

The criminal complaint against her says that Diya furnished her with lavish gifts, including a big birthday party in Dubai that State Department and active duty Navy members came to, loans to vacation in Greece, a job at his company for her son, a gold bracelet and a massage.

Bruhl-Daniels said she paid him back for the $1,400 loan with booze.

In various messages to Diya, Bruhl-Daniels wrote that she was "deeply attracted" to him and assured him she was trying to sway federal officials to find him innocent. Diya had "some associates that are well known" to investigators, she said, telling him that she offered no more information to authorities besides what she believed would be exonerating. "I gave them no more than what I could to emphasize your innocence," she said, court documents allege.

NCIS agents confronted her about those messages in May. She said she didn't remember sending them but they were "pretty damn bad,"

Diya was charged in Texas in September after he was caught in the US with fake identification papers that said he came from South America.

Bruhl-Daniels was represented by a public defender when she appeared in court in Alexandria, Virginia, which borders Washington, DC, on Wednesday for a detention hearing.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201810031068568812-Special-Agent-Syrian-Terror-Suspect/

Trump told Saudi King he wouldn’t last ‘2 weeks’ without US support

The Saudi Arabian monarchy would fall “within two weeks” if it wasn’t for the military support that the US has provided to the Gulf kingdom over the decades, Donald Trump noted in graceless remarks to the King.

“We protect Saudi Arabia,” Trump proclaimed at a rally in Southaven, Mississippi. “And I love the King, King Salman. But I said ‘King, we’re protecting you, you might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military.’”

While Trump failed to mention when the undiplomatic remarks were made to King Salman, it is known that the two leaders held a phone conversation on Saturday to discuss global oil supplies.

Trump has repeatedly vaunted the might of the US military and the country’s role as the “protector”. Time and again, he has urged NATO nations to contribute to the overall maintenance of the alliance, which is heavily dependent on US military and industrial spending. South Korea and Japan also have the US to thank for stability in the Asian region, according to Trump, who previously demanded increased payments from US allies to keep American bases in their countries.

While the US does not have any military bases in Saudi Arabia, neighboring Qatar hosts a large American contingent at Al Udeid Airbase. In the immediate vicinity of Riyadh, Bahrain remains home to the US Fifth Fleet, while adjacent Kuwait also continues to host US troops. There is also an American military presence in the UAE, Iraq, Jordan, and Oman, which can rush to help Saudi Arabia at a moment’s notice.

Trump has yet to demand payment for keeping US troops in the oil-rich region, but the US president did urge them to lower oil prices in return for security last week. “We defend many of these nations for nothing, and then they take advantage of us by giving us high oil prices. Not good. We want them to stop raising prices, we want them to start lowering prices,” Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly.

https://www.rt.com/usa/440180-trump-saudi-security-two-weeks/

Pro-Mass Migration Moroccan Minister Rejects Hosting Asylum Centres, Claims Migrant Crisis Exaggerated

The mass-migration supporting foreign minister of Morocco has rejected proposals by the European Union to build refugee processing centres in North Africa and claimed the bloc is exaggerating the migrant crisis.

“Morocco is generally against all kinds of [migration] centres. This is part of our migration policy and a national sovereign position,” Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita told German daily Die Welt in an interview published Wednesday.

With European leaders pushing for migrant processing centres in North Africa, Bourita claimed that stopping migration at the African coast is counterproductive and accused the EU of exaggerating the migrant crisis.

“Migration covers three percent of the world’s population, of which 80 percent are legal,” he said. “So we only talk about 20 percent of these three percent.”

Between 2014 and 2017, nearly two million migrants from the global south, the vast majority of those coming from African being economic migrants, travelled to Europe; European Parliament President Antonio Tajani warned that unless mass migration is put under control, up to 30 million more may be prepared to make the same journey from Africa in the coming years.

Migration via the western Mediterranean route, from Morocco to Spain, has increased in recent months after Italy clamped down on NGOs transporting illegals across the sea, with the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla particularly vulnerable to mass incursion attempts by migrants attempting to put a foot on European soil to secure asylum rights.

The Moroccan minister’s refusal to engage in migrant reduction, with his country remaining a transit nation for the world’s poorest, resonates with his comments in May where Bourita asserted that “Migration is here to stay.”

Speaking at the fifth Euro-African Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development in Marrakesh, Morocco, Bourita told the delegates representing 50 African and European nations that migration “will continue to increase irregularly, at worst, and, at best, in a safe, orderly and regular manner”.

Delegates supported the Rabat Process which although covered measures to tackle illegal immigration and repatriation, also called for a migration “approach based on human rights” as well as seeking to eliminate discrimination and racism — similar in wording to the United Nations’ proposed Global Compact for Migration which aims to protect the “human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants” and combat “xenophobia, racism and discrimination”.

European migration commissioner Dimitri Avramopoulos praised the Rabat declaration, tweeting that “Europe and Africa need each other more than ever.”

Avramopoulos affirmed the EU’s support for the management of mass migration from Africa to Europe at last week’s United Nations General Assembly, where he told the supranational body that the bloc was working to comply with the Global Compact for Migration which aims to institutionalise migration at an international level through strengthening its “global governance”.

https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/10/03/pro-mass-migration-moroccan-minister-rejects-hosting-asylum-centres/