https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1094680818058854400
Trump did not leak messages between Bezos and mistress, AMI lawyer says
A lawyer representing American Media CEO David Pecker denied on Sunday that President Trump or Saudi Arabia leaked intimate messages exchanged between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his mistress ahead of the National Enquirer’s recent exposé on Bezos’ extramarital affair.
“Bezos and Ms. [Lauren] Sanchez knew who the source was. Any investigator that was going to investigate this knew who the source was,” attorney Elkan Abramowitz said during an interview on ABC News’ “This Week.”
“It was not the White House. It was not Saudi Arabia. And the libel that was going out there slamming AMI was that this was all a political hatchet job sponsored by either a foreign nation or somebody politically in this country,” said Abramowitz, who also denied that conservative operative and Trump adviser Roger Stone was behind the leak.
Saudi officials on Sunday also denied having anything to do with the leaked messages between Bezos and his mistress.
“This is something between the two parties, we have nothing to do with it,” Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s minister of state for foreign affairs, told CBS’ “Face the Nation."
Bezos has said AMI threatened to publish the explicit photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained his private exchanges with his mistress, former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, and publicly declare that the Enquirer's coverage of him was not politically motivated. Bezos also owns The Washington Post.
Bezos' investigators have suggested the Enquirer's coverage of his affair was driven by dirty politics, and the high-profile clash has pitted the world's richest man against the leader of America's best-known tabloid, who is a strong backer of President Trump. Trump has been highly critical of Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post and Amazon, and the Post's coverage of the White House.
Federal prosecutors are looking into whether the Enquirer violated a cooperation and nonprosecution agreement that recently spared the gossip sheet from charges for paying hush money to a Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Trump, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday. The people weren't authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bezos' affair became public when the Enquirer published a story on Jan. 9 about his relationship with Sanchez, who is also married. Bezos then hired a team of private investigators to find out how the tabloid got the texts and photos the two exchanged.
Bezos' personal investigators, led by his security consultant Gavin de Becker, have focused on Sanchez's brother, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Michael Sanchez is his sister's manager, a Trump supporter and an acquaintance of Roger Stone.
After Bezos on Thursday posted the exchanges with AMI in an extraordinary blog post on Medium.com, several celebrities and journalists posted on social media that they too had been threatened by AMI. Ronan Farrow said he and "and at least one other prominent journalist" involved in reporting on the tabloid had "fielded similar 'stop digging or we'll ruin you' blackmail efforts from AMI" and actor Terry Crews alleged the company tried to "silence him" by "fabricating stories of me with prostitutes."
In recent months, the Trump-friendly tabloid acknowledged secretly assisting Trump's White House campaign by paying $150,000 to Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump. The company then buried the story until after the 2016 election.
Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty last year to charges that included helping to broker that transaction.
As part of a nonprosecution agreement in that case, AMI promised not to break the law. The deal requires top executives, including Pecker and the Enquirer's editor, Dylan Howard, to cooperate with federal prosecutors. A violation of the agreement could lead to criminal charges over the McDougal payments.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-did-not-leak-messages-between-bezos-and-mistress-ami-lawyer-says
hmmm…plants need water?
Thousands join right-wing rally in Madrid, demand PM resign
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Tens of thousands of people joined a right-wing rally in Spain's capital Sunday to demand that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez step down for his handling of the Catalonia region's secession crisis.
Many in the crowd assembled in Madrid's Plaza de Colon waved the national flag and chanted slogans in support of Spain's security forces along with calling for the Socialist prime minister's resignation.
The conservative opposition Popular Party and the center-right Citizens party organized the rally, which the upstart far-right Vox party and other far-right parties backed.
"The time of Sanchez's government is over," Popular Party president Pablo Casado said. He asked voters to punish Sanchez's Socialists in the European, local and regional elections in May.
The political tensions come as a highly sensitive trial at Spain's Supreme Court starts Tuesday for 12 Catalan separatists who face charges, including rebellion, for their roles in a failed secession attempt in 2017.
Sanchez inherited the Catalan conflict from former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, the then-leader of the Popular Party. Rajoy proved incapable of stopping support for secession from swelling in Catalonia to roughly half of the northeastern region's voters.
Speaking at a Socialist party event in northern Spain, Sanchez reminded his political opponents that when he was an opposition leader, he stood by Rajoy on the situation in Catalonia even after separatist regional officials staged an Oct. 2017 independence referendum in defiance of Spanish courts..
"And what I am doing now as prime minister, always respecting the constitution, is to solve a national crisis to which the Popular Party has contributed," Sanchez said.
"The unity of Spain means uniting Spaniards and not confronting them as the right wing is doing in Plaza de Colon today," he said.
Sanchez came to power in June promising to thaw tensions between central authorities in Madrid and the Catalan leaders in Barcelona. He met twice with Catalan chief Quim Torra. Members of the central and regional governments had several more encounters.
Sanchez had said he would be willing to help Catalan lawmakers agree to a new Charter Law, which determines the amount of self-rule the region enjoys. But Sanchez's government broke off negotiations on Friday, when Vice President Carmen Calvo said the separatists wouldn't budge from their demand for an independence referendum.
Sanchez is trying to cobble together support to pass a national budget. His minority government will need votes from the Catalan separatists and other parties to pass it.
Even though Sanchez has said he wants to see out the legislative term through 2020, a failure to win a budget vote will crank up the pressure on him to call for an early election.
https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/thousands-join-right-wing-rally-in-madrid-demand-pm-resign/article_2c06306e-fdd5-5a3f-b797-b35990555521.html
NOTABLE