>>5977392

thank you baker

Joe Biden’s spokesman said Friday that the former vice president does not recall kissing a Nevada political candidate on the back of her head in 2014.

The allegation was made in a New York Magazine article written Friday by Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state representative. Flores wrote that she and Biden were waiting to take the stage during a rally in Las Vegas before the 2014 election.“I felt two hands on my shoulders. I froze. He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head.” Flores said Biden’s behavior “made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused.”

Biden spokesman Bill Russo said in a statement Friday, “Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes.”

https://newsbreakinglive.com/2019/03/30/biden-doesnt-recall-alleged-kissing-incident-from-2014/

President Trump Pledges to Help Navy SEAL Charged With Fatally Stabbing Iraqi Prisoner

(PALM BEACH, Fla.) — President Donald Trump says a Navy SEAL accused of fatally stabbing an Iraqi war prisoner “will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court.”

In his Saturday morning tweet, Trump says Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher will be moved in “honor of his past service to our Country.”

Gallagher is accused of killing a teenage Islamic State fighter under his care and then holding his reenlistment ceremony with the corpse. Navy prosecutors also accuse Gallagher of shooting two civilians in Iraq and opening fire on crowds. Gallagher has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Trump appears to be responding to a request from a number of congressmen for the Navy to review the conditions of Gallagher’s confinement in a Navy brig in California.

http://time.com/5561614/trump-comments-navy-seal-murder/

>>5977485

Ocasio-Cortez Blames Anonymous Staffer for Widely-Mocked Green New Deal FAQ Rollout

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) on Friday blamed an anonymous staffer for the early rollout of the Green New Deal FAQ, which was widely-mocked for saying there would be a guarantee of economic security even for those "unwilling to work" and calling for the elimination of "farting cows."

During a town hall that aired on MSNBC Friday night, Ocasio-Cortez was asked by host Chris Hayes whether she thought that office rolled out the Green New Deal the right way.

"What I will say is that I definitely had a staffer that had a very bad day at work and did release a working draft early, so I get that that's what they are seizing on," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Really what we need to do is have a serious conversation and even in those draft versions what they were talking about is really about the fact that we need to innovate on technology."

She went on to reference "cow flatulence," prompting Hayes to interject, "It sounds ridiculous, but it literally is an issue."

"It is an issue when it comes to contributing to methane, but that doesn’t mean you end cows, it means we need to innovate and change our cow grain from which they feed in these troughs," Ocasio-Cortez said. "We need to really take a look at regenerative agriculture, like these are our solutions."

The Green New Deal frequently-asked-questions document was released and circulated by NPR in early February, but after it was widely-mocked, it disappeared from Ocasio-Cortez's website, including press releases or Green New Deal content on her media page, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Robert Hockett, a Cornell law professor and adviser to Ocasio-Cortez, even attempted to gaslight Fox New host Tucker Carlson over the FAQ, saying Republicans doctored official documents that came directly from Ocasio-Cortez's office.

"We never would and AOC has never said anything like that," Hockett said. "I think you're referring to some sort of document, some sort of doctored document that someone else has been circulating."

Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff would later admit that the FAQ was shared with NPR and posted on Ocasio-Cortez's website, but said it was "clearly unfinished."

"An early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND [Green New Deal] resolution got published to the website by mistake," Chakrabarti tweeted. "But what’s in the resolution is the GND."

Hockett would later concede that he was incorrect during his interview with Tucker Carlson.

"It appears there was more than one document being discussed yesterday, only one of which I had heard about with any definiteness by last evening after a long day of media appearances – namely, the one referred to by the Congresswoman in her tweet," he wrote in an email to The Daily Caller. "I regret that we seem unknowingly to have ended up speaking about different documents for a minute during our longer and otherwise ‘on-the-same-page’ conversation last night."

https://freebeacon.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-blames-anonymous-staffer-for-widely-mocked-green-new-deal-faq-rollout/

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>>5977754

>>5977743

Judge blocks Trump’s attempt to open up Arctic, Atlantic areas to oil and gas leasing

A federal judge in Alaska has overturned U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to open vast areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas leasing.

The decision issued late Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason leaves intact President Barack Obama’s policies putting the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, part of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea and a large swath of Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast off-limits to oil leasing.

Trump’s attempt to undo Obama’s protections was “unlawful” and a violation of the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Gleason ruled. Presidents have the power under that law to withdraw areas from the national oil and gas leasing program, as Obama did, but only Congress has the power to add areas to the leasing program, she said.

The Obama-imposed leasing prohibitions “will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress,” Gleason said in her ruling.

Trump’s move to put offshore Arctic and Atlantic areas back into play for oil development came in a 2017 executive order that was part of his “energy dominance” agenda. The order was among a series of actions that jettisoned Obama administration environmental and climate-change initiatives.

The Trump administration has proposed a vastly expanded offshore oil leasing program to start this year. The five-year Trump leasing program would offer two lease sales a year in Arctic waters and at least two lease sales a year in the Atlantic. The Trump plan also calls for several lease sales in remote marine areas off Alaska, like the southern Bering Sea, that are considered to hold negligible potential for oil.

Obama had pulled much of the Arctic off the auction block following a troubled offshore Arctic exploration program pursued by Royal Dutch Shell. Shell spent at least $7 billion trying to explore the Chukchi and part of the Beaufort. The company wrecked one of its drill ships in a grounding and managed to complete only one well to depth. It abandoned the program in 2015 and relinquished its leases.

Gleason, in a separate case, delivered another decision Friday that blocks the Trump administration’s effort to overturn an Obama-era environmental decision.

Gleason struck down a land trade intended to clear the way for a road to be built though sensitive wetlands in Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The Obama administration, after a four-year environmental impact statement process, determined that the land trade and road would cause too much harm to the refuge to be justified. Trump’s then Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke broke the law when he summarily reversed the Obama policy without addressing the facts found in the previous administration’s study of the issue, Gleason ruled.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5113867/trump-arctic-atlantic-oil-gas-judge-order/

>>5977855

>>5977865

Thiessen: The Trump-Russia collusion hall of shame

The news that special counsel Robert Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” has left a lot of people in Washington with a lot of explaining to do.

Put aside the rogues’ gallery of reporters and pundits who assured us that Donald Trump had conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency. What is most insidious are those who did have access to classified intelligence and led Americans to believe that they had seen what we could not: actual evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

Recall that in 2016, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., released a letter to FBI Director James Comey claiming the FBI had proof of Trump-Russia collusion. “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government,” Reid declared. When asked what information Reid was referring to, a spokesman said, “There have been classified briefings on this topic. That is all I can say.”

Trump has called for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to resign. He is absolutely correct. Schiff repeatedly said that his committee had dug up “plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy.” In March 2017, he said on “Meet the Press,” “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now” and last May he told ABC that Trump’s Russia conspiracy is of “a size and scope probably beyond Watergate.”

Schiff is a disgrace. But he is not alone. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, “In our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion” and declared Trump an agent “working on behalf of the Russians.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., claimed, “It’s clear that the campaign colluded, and there’s a lot of evidence of that.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Judiciary Committee, assured us last year that “the evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, “There is no longer a question of whether this campaign sought to collude with a hostile foreign power to subvert America’s democracy.” And recently, the committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., declared that “enormous amounts of evidence” exist of collusion between Trump and Russia and that “there’s no one that could factually say there’s not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between Trump Organization and Russians.” Except for Mueller, of course.

These comments by people with access to intelligence were shameful. But the most sinister of all is John Brennan, who used his authority as former CIA director to suggest that Trump was a traitor and a compromised Russian asset. After Trump’s Helsinki summit, Brennan declared “he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.” When challenged by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” Brennan stood by his assessment. “I called [Trump’s] behavior treasonous, which is to betray one’s trust and aid and abet the enemy, and I stand very much by that claim.”

This month, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell told Brennan this investigation was “developing while you were still on the job” and asked, “Did you see enough at that stage to believe … that that would result in indictments?” Brennan replied, “I thought at the time there was going to be individuals who were going to have issues with the Department of Justice. Yes.” In a New York Times op-ed, he wrote that “Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.” Now, Brennan feigns contrition. “I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was,” he said, adding, “I am relieved that it’s been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election.”

Hogwash. He wanted it to be true, and he relied on his CIA credentials to convince Americans that it was. That is a violation of the public trust. Trump was right to revoke Brennan’s security clearance. He is among the worst of the worst, the Trump-Russia collusion hall of shame. We have long since passed the point where Americans expect objectivity from the press. But we should hold our elected and appointed officials handling sensitive national security issues to a higher standard.

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/20190330/thiessen-trump-russia-collusion-hall-of-shame

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>>5977757

>>5977873

>>5978035

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