https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1121776048520273921

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45_Schedule

20m20 minutes ago

Significant bump in new GDP report: 3.2% in advance estimate of first quarter 2019, up from 2.2% fourth quarter 2018.

POTUS_Schedule Retweeted

CEA

‏Verified account @WhiteHouseCEA

50m50 minutes ago

Real #GDP rose 3.2% at an annual rate in the first quarter of 2019 (see figure)—above market expectations. The 3.2% annual rate of growth in real GDP matches the Trump Administration’s forecast for the four quarters of 2019.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouseCEA/status/1121768707741581321

POTUS_Schedule Retweeted

The White House

‏Verified account @WhiteHouse

3m3 minutes ago

We're the number 1 economy right now in the world, and it's not even close.

https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1121777372326445058

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45_Schedule

17m17 minutes ago

President Trump now aboard Marine One en route Indianapolis to attend and address the @NRA Convention.

Exclusive: WikiLeaks lawyer says he helped pass info to 'innocent victim' Don Jr.

by Alana Goodman

| April 26, 2019 10:00 AM

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/exclusive-wikileaks-lawyer-says-he-helped-pass-info-to-innocent-victim-don-jr

A lawyer for WikiLeaks who helped provide Donald Trump Jr. with the password to an anti-Trump website during the election has said the information was obtained legally and Trump’s son was an “innocent victim” of a political smear campaign.

Jason Fishbein, a Miami attorney who has done legal work for Julian Assange, told the Washington Examiner that he was a member of a private online chat group in which journalist Charles Johnson posted an early-access password to a website called PutinTrump.org in September 2016. The PutinTrump website, which was funded by Democratic donor Rob Glaser, sought to expose Donald Trump’s “ties to Russia.”

The password was posted in a Slack chat group run by Johnson, a right-wing political activist who worked closely with members of the Trump transition team. The chat group included independent researchers, activists, and reporters with the Daily Caller.

Fishbein told the Examiner that he sent the password to another contact at WikiLeaks, who then passed the information along to Don Jr. in a Twitter direct message. Don Jr. later told senior Trump campaign staff that he “tried the password and it works,” according to the special counsel report.

Several news outlets have questioned whether Don Jr. violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by using a password obtained through illegal means. But Fishbein said the access code was legally available and had been sent out to reporters in a press release from PutinTrump.org to let them preview the website before its official launch.

“They’re trying to use this super innocent thing as another one of those ‘Trump-Russia-WikiLeaks’ connections,” Fishbein told the Washington Examiner. “The password did not provide access for anything administrative. It was only to read the contents of the website.”

He said he did not witness other contacts between Don Jr. and WikiLeaks, and as far as he knows, there was no coordination between the two.

>>6321753

“I think Don Jr. is an innocent victim in this,” he said. “I think the Trumps are innocent victims.”

Fishbein also claimed he saw no indication that WikiLeaks was working with Russia; however, he acknowledged that his contacts in the transparency group were limited and he never spoke directly with Assange.

“At one point when the media was discussing that Russia was behind the hacks, I askedm 'Was there any way this was Russia?' The response I got [from WikiLeaks employees] was, ‘No, working with Russia would be a death sentence for our organization. We’re a transparency organization,’” he said.

Fishbein, a 39-year-old professional poker player and lawyer from Miami, was interviewed twice by Robert Mueller’s investigators last fall and is described in the special counsel report as an “attorney who performed worked for Julian Assange.” He first came across the radar of the Special Counsel’s Office after Roger Stone referred to Fishbein in an email to Steve Bannon as “Assange’s attorney” and a “big Democrat.”

Fishbein denied he is a Democrat — and denied ever meeting or speaking to Stone — but said he worked as an attorney for WikiLeaks from the summer of 2016 through the election. He said he conducted legal research on international law and investigated disinformation campaigns against Assange, including false allegations of pedophilia.

There were a number of other details of Fishbein’s life that piqued the interest of federal investigators, outside of his work with WikiLeaks: he lived in the same gated community as Paul Manafort; he traveled often to South America with a friend who has a Russian name; he was invited to Mar-a-Lago and met President Trump in January 2018; and he was a former colleague of Aaron Nevins, a Florida-based GOP operative who was the first person to receive documents from the DNC hack from Guccifer 2.0.

Fishbein said he previously worked for boutique Florida private spy firm CTC International Group and briefly as a reporter for the pro-Trump National Enquirer. He said aspects of his biography that appear to tie him to the Trump campaign or Russia are merely coincidental. For example, he said he never met Manafort, despite living a block away from the former Trump campaign manager and convicted tax cheat. He said his trips to South America are to buy discounted asthma medication, and his Russian-sounding friend is a Ukrainian-born poker player with no political connections.

Fishbein described Mueller’s investigators as very professional and said they “allowed Assange to assert his attorney-client privilege right and redact information” from subpoenaed documents.

“I thought they were very professional and courteous. Even friendly,” said Fishbein.

He said investigators asked him whether he had any foreknowledge of the John Podesta email leaks; he claims he did not. He said they also quizzed him about Charles Johnson and about any Ukrainian or Russian individuals whom Fishbein knew.

“Both WikiLeaks and DOJ acted ethically and impressively, and they both are performing valuable services we should not take for granted,” said Fishbein.

DHS expedites border wall replacement in Arizona, Texas

By Rachel Frazin - 04/26/19 10:28 AM EDT

https://thehill.com/latino/440804-dhs-expedites-border-wall-replacement-in-arizona

he Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday that it two issued waivers to expedite replacement of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and Texas.

DHS said in a statement that it would be replacing about 53 miles of wall near Yuma, Ariz., and El Paso, Texas.

It noted in a separate statement that funding for the 26 miles of wall in Arizona will come from Customs and Border Protection's 2018 Fiscal Year budget and is not related to President Trump's national emergency declaration. The department did not specify where funding for the El Paso project would come from.

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The waivers were published Wednesday and construction also began as early as Wednesday in Arizona. One of the two areas covered by the waiver is the area around the Arizona Land Port of Entry.

DHS said in a statement that the project, which would replace "dilapidated and outdated designs," would help it prevent illicit activity.

"The Yuma & El Paso Sectors are areas of high illegal entry and are experiencing large numbers of individuals and narcotics being smuggled into the country illegally," the department said in a statement.

"The construction of border infrastructure within these project areas will support DHS’s ability to impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations," it added.

The department said the waiver allows it to circumvent certain construction project laws, but that "DHS remains committed to environmental stewardship." It said it will coordinate with federal and state agencies to minimize the project's environmental and cultural impact.

The Hill has reached out to DHS for additional comment.

The department said it continues to implement President Trump's executive order and that it is working on building a wall at the southern border.

President Trump earlier this year declared a national emergency to divert funds from appropriated elsewhere to border wall construction after Congress did not meet his funding demands.

Border Patrol official calls for changing 'outdated laws' to deal with surge in illegal crossings

By Robert Gearty | Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/us/border-patrol-outdated-laws-deal-crossings

“Outdated laws” need fixing to deal with the surge in illegal immigrant families crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, a top Border Patrol official said Friday.

Migrant families face no consequences if apprehended trying to cross the border illegally under present law, Border Patrol chief of Operations Brian Hastings claimed during an appearance on "Fox & Friends."

“We need a change in the current outdated laws that we’re dealing with for this current demographic and this crisis that we have,” he said.

Hastings said as of Thursday there have been 440,000 apprehensions along the southwest border. There were 396,000 apprehensions all of last year.

And those numbers continue to rise, he said.

Historically 70 to 90 percent of apprehensions at the border were quickly returned to Mexico, Hastings said.

Now, 83 percent of those apprehended have come from the Central American northern triangle which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and of those 63 percent are “family units” and children who cannot be returned, he said.

“There are no consequences that we can apply to this group currently,” Hastings said. “We’re overwhelmed. If you look at agents there doing a tremendous job trying to deal with the flow."

The law dictates children have to be released after 20 days of detention.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says that has forced immigration officials to release entire families because "you don't want to separate families."

Recently, he said he is drafting legislation that would allow children to be detained for more than 20 days.

Hastings said agents are frustrated with the situation but are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

“Up to 40 percent of our agents are processing at any given time,” he said. “That should say that in and of itself is pulling from those border security resources.”

DHS request for more troops at the border is sent to the Pentagon

Kate Sullivan byline

By Ryan Browne and Kate Sullivan, CNN

Updated 9:07 PM ET, Thu April 25, 2019

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/25/politics/dhs-border-troops-pentagon/index.html

(CNN)The new Department of Homeland Security Request for Assistance for additional US troops and other logistical support on the southern border has been sent to the Pentagon but has yet to be signed by acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan, according to two US defense officials.

The request arrived late Wednesday and is being reviewed. There are no guarantees that all the requests will be approved, and the Department of Defense has previously rejected requests, pending DHS edits.

At the Pentagon last Friday, Shanahan told reporters he did not "have a finite number" in terms of how many additional troops would be sent but that the Pentagon was "looking at anticipating" what DHS needs prior to the receipt of a formal request for assistance.

"Where DHS loses its capacity is in the migrant family processing, when you think about their finite ability to do apprehensions they're really kind of trapped back in the processing side of things," Shanahan said, "so working with the joint staff, we're finding a way to how do we do more monitoring and detection for them, do we maybe take that on as a mission."

Over the last year thousands of American troops ahve been deployed to the southern border. At its peak, some 5,900 troops were part of the border mission, which has involved surveillance, aviation support and the placement of concertina wire between ports of entry.

Currently there are 3,000 active duty troops and 2,000 National Guard personnel deployed in support of border security.

Two US soldiers on the border recently found themselves in an encounter with armed Mexican troops, an incident that saw the Mexican forces remove one of the American soldiers' sidearms.

President Donald Trump told reporters earlier this month that he is "going to have to call up more military" to the southern border to address a historic increase in the number of migrant apprehensions.

There were more apprehensions on the southern border in March than in any other month in more than a decade, according to data released by Customs and Border Protection.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said the influx of migrants has caused the agency to reach a breaking point. Earlier this month Trump announced then-Homeland Secrurity Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen would be leaving her position, and her second in command, acting deputy Claire Grady, also left the department.

This story has been updated.

https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1121790190974980096

POTUS_Schedule

‏ @45_Schedule

4m4 minutes ago

The DoD is preparing to approve a request from the Department of Homeland Security to provide military lawyers, cooks and drivers to assist with handling a surge of migrants along the southern border.

@ActingSecDef is expected to sign the request today.