Noel Francisco, next in line to oversee Mueller investigation, received ethics waiver in April

The man who could one day supervise special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation received an ethics waiver from the Trump administration in April, a watchdog has found. Noel Francisco, a longtime conservative lawyer who is the U.S. solicitor general, is next in line to oversee Mueller's team if Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein were to be fired or resign. However, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington announced on Friday it had found a previously undisclosed ethics waiver that could present obstacles blocking Francisco from taking over that responsibility.

CREW notes that Francisco's former law firm, Jones Day, represents President Trump's presidential campaign in the special counsel investigation, and that they still share financial ties, among other issues. The short April 24 waiver relieves Francisco from an ethics pledge he signed — per Trump's ethics executive order — that would preclude him from participating in any investigation in which Jones Day was involved. CREW said it was "troubling" that this waiver is absent from the Office of Government Ethics's online list of all ethics pledge waivers for Trump political appointees serving outside the White House. Furthermore, CREW said the signature on the waiver appears to be that of former White House counsel Don McGahn, who also had ties to Jones Day and the same obligation not to get involved in any investigation in which the law firm has a client. "Notwithstanding these waivers, of course, Mr. Francisco should still recuse from the Special Counsel investigation if Mr. Rosenstein resigns or is fired," CREW wrote in an online post. "There is still the matter of the half a million dollars Jones Day owes him, and there’s his own involvement in the Trump campaign’s landing team to consider." The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

Francisco was confirmed in September 2017 as solicitor general, a role in which he conducts and supervises the government's litigation at the Supreme Court. In September, his name came up amid speculation that Rosenstein might depart following a New York Times article that said Rosenstein talked about secretly recording Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to oust the president after FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017. The deputy attorney general has denied about considering such measures, and subsequent reports say that he was joking or being sarcastic.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/noel-francisco-next-in-line-to-oversee-mueller-investigation-received-ethics-waiver-in-april

>>3713583

Just a thought here, who is under RR? Could that be the reason?

Private messages from 81,000 hacked Facebook accounts for sale

Hackers appear to have compromised and published private messages from at least 81,000 Facebook users' accounts. The perpetrators told the BBC Russian Service that they had details from a total of 120 million accounts, which they were attempting to sell, although there are reasons to be sceptical about that figure.

Facebook said its security had not been compromised. And the data had probably been obtained through malicious browser extensions. Facebook added it had taken steps to prevent further accounts being affected.

The BBC understands many of the users whose details have been compromised are based in Ukraine and Russia. However, some are from the UK, US, Brazil and elsewhere. The hackers offered to sell access for 10 cents (8p) per account. However, their advert has since been taken offline. "We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores," said Facebook executive Guy Rosen. "We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts.

Intimate correspondence

The breach first came to light in September, when a post from a user nicknamed FBSaler appeared on an English-language internet forum. "We sell personal information of Facebook users. Our database includes 120 million accounts," the user wrote.

The cyber-security company Digital Shadows examined the claim on behalf of the BBC and confirmed that more than 81,000 of the profiles posted online as a sample contained private messages. Data from a further 176,000 accounts was also made available, although some of the information - including email addresses and phone numbers - could have been scraped from members who had not hidden it. The BBC Russian Service contacted five Russian Facebook users whose private messages had been uploaded and confirmed the posts were theirs. One example included photographs of a recent holiday, another was a chat about a recent Depeche Mode concert, and a third included complaints about a son-in-law. There was also an intimate correspondence between two lovers. One of the websites where the data had been published appeared to have been set up in St Petersburg. Its IP address has also been flagged by the Cybercrime Tracker service. It says the address had been used to spread the LokiBot Trojan, which allows attackers to gain access to user passwords.

>>3713685

This also makes me think of "Flood Coming" Q drop.. interesting.

>>3713851