The DC Buzz:
Devin Nunes to replace ~~[Dan Coats]~~! Perfect choice!'
==President Trump reportedly met with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, to discuss possible replacements for Director of National Intelligence ~~Dan Coats~~.==
Politico, citing three people familiar with the meeting, reported on Monday that Trump met with Nunes and a group of senior White House officials last week about potential figures who could replace ~~Coats~~.
The meeting came as speculation grows about whether ~~Coats~~ will depart from his leadership role in the intelligence community. ~~Axios~~ first reported earlier this month that Trump told confidants he was thinking about replacing him.
A senior White House official later told ~~CNN~~ that there has been some discussion about Coats departing from his position. Coats has dismissed the reports, telling The Hill that the "rumors" are "frustrating.
Politico noted that Trump's allies have promoted multiple candidates to replace ~~Coats~~, including Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who once served as chief of staff to national security adviser John Bolton.
Some inside the intelligence community have pushed for Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, to be considered.
Trump's meeting with Nunes is noteworthy given the Republican lawmaker's views on intelligence issues. Like Trump, he has accused those inside the intelligence community of improperly using their authority for political purposes.
One member of Congress told Politico that because of this similarity, he considers Nunes a candidate to replace ~~Coats~~.
“The president would certainly consider Devin Nunes for the director’s position, and I eventually see him serving in some capacity in this administration,” an unnamed U.S. lawmaker said, adding that he's only seen Nunes work toward reelection in Congress.
The prospect of Nunes, who served on Trump's presidential transition team, being considered for intelligence chief has sparked anxiety in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a person with direct knowledge told Politico.
Nunes faced scrutiny for his conduct as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee during Trump's first two years in the White House. Among other things, he launched an investigation into surveillance abuses by the FBI and Justice Department during the Obama administration.
In February 2018, he released a classified memo alleging abuse of government surveillance powers by the Justice Department after receiving authorization from Trump. The Justice Department strongly objected to its release.
Trump has repeatedly heaped praise on the GOP lawmaker. He said in March that Nunes would someday "be hailed as a great American hero."
Nunes and the White House did not provide comment to Politico. The White House and Nunes's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
The ODNI also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/454240-trump-met-with-nunes-to-discuss-potential-replacements-for-~~Coats~~
>WTF Duncan Trussel
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Bronfman empire Revealed: Justin Trudeau's close adviser helped move huge sums offshore
Sun 5 Nov 2017 18.00 GMT
The chief fundraiser and senior adviser to the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who played a critical role in the rise to power of the charismatic politician, was involved in the movement of millions of dollars to offshore havens, the Paradise Papers reveal.
Stephen Bronfman, heir to the Seagram fortune, who was instrumental in Trudeau’s successful bid for the leadership of the Canadian Liberal party in 2013 and the premiership two years later, engaged through his family investment business in a complex web of entities in the US, Israel and the Cayman Islands. Multimillion-dollar cashflows between the three jurisdictions might legally have avoided taxes in the US, Canada and Israel.
The leaked documents unveil a close relationship between two wealthy families who collaborated to shift millions of dollars to the Cayman Islands. On one side were the Bronfman family, inheritors of the Seagram distillery fortune in Montreal.
On the other side was the Cayman Islands-based trust of Leo Kolber, a former Canadian senator and powerhouse within the Liberal party Trudeau now leads.
Accountants working for the families discussed the possibility of recasting interest owed by the Kolber trust to two US-based Bronfman funds as “services rendered”, on the basis that the loans were not “in substance (only in form)”. Tax experts say that such interest-free loans would generally be barred under US tax laws.
The disclosures are likely to generate political heat for the Canadian prime minister, who swept to power in October 2015 partly on his promise to tackle economic inequality and take on tax avoidance. Last year, Trudeau came under pressure in the fallout from the Panama Papers, the trove of leaked documents from the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, during which his family inheritance was scrutinised.
It is absolutely unacceptable that there be people not paying their fair share of taxes
At that point Trudeau insisted his personal assets, which he put into a blind trust after he won his party’s leadership, were “completely transparent”. But he came under renewed pressure this year following a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) investigation into a KPMG scheme to help wealthy Canadians move money to the low-tax Isle of Man.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that there be people not paying their fair share of taxes,” the Canadian prime minister said in March, pledging to do “a better job of going out and getting tax avoiders and tax frauders”.
The Paradise Papers put the spotlight once again on Trudeau’s record on tax fairness, only this time the focus falls within his inner circle. Specifically, on Bronfman, one of his closest advisers.
The two men are childhood friends who in recent years have revived their bond to assist Trudeau’s meteoric rise. Bronfman, 53, raised $2m for Trudeau’s leadership campaign and was was rewarded by being made the Liberal party’s chief fundraiser with a seat on its national executive.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers
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Bronfman empire Revealed: Justin Trudeau's close adviser helped move huge sums offshore
Sun 5 Nov 2017 18.00 GMT
Bronfman runs Claridge, the Montreal-based investment firm set up by his father, Charles Bronfman, to manage the vast wealth of the Seagram liquor empire, which came to prominence in the 1920s supplying the illicit alcohol trade during US prohibition. The distinctive Seagram Building in Manhattan, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, still stands as a monument to the family’s status.
One of Claridge’s clients was the Cayman Islands-based trust of Kolber, Stephen Bronfman’s godfather and predecessor as chief fundraiser of the Liberal party who for decades was in charge of the Bronfman family’s investments. Kolber was appointed to the Canadian senate in 1983 by Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father, towards the end of his stint as prime minister.
The tight triangle between Kolber, Bronfman and Trudeau was on display last December when a Liberal party fundraiser, at $1,500 a ticket, was held at Kolber’s Montreal home with Bronfman as co-host and Trudeau as its prize draw.
Confidential emails contained in the Paradise Papers reveal that links between the Bronfman and Kolber businesses were so close they were almost intertwined. In 1991, a Kolber family trust was set up in the Cayman Islands and Leo Kolber’s son Jonathan named as one of its beneficiaries.
The Bronfmans helped kickstart the Kolber trust with an injection of millions of dollars of funds, the leaked files show, including a $5.3m loan made by Stephen Bronfman personally in 1997. By then the trust was flush with almost $40m in assets.
From the beginning, the arrangement between the two families over the repayment of the Bronfman loans was unusual. A contract tied to a Charles Bronfman loan in 1991 of almost $10m said: “The loan shall bear interest at such rate as may be determined between the parties from time to time.”
What are the Paradise Papers? – video
In 2002, the Kolber trust took on an $8m debt to the Israeli offshoot of the Bronfman empire, Claridge Israel – an enterprise that, in a further sign of the close ties between the two families, Jonathan Kolber had helped set up and run after he relocated from Canada to Israel in 1991.
For reasons that are unclear but do not suggest anything unlawful, the Kolber trust debt was transferred from Claridge Israel to two other Bronfman entities. The entities, Charles Bronfman Trust and Charles R Bronfman Trust, were US-based and thus liable to pay US taxes on any interest accruing, which would be treated as income.
In October 2005, Jonathan Kolber fired off an 18-page fax from his business offices in Israel about the Cayman Islands trust of which he was beneficiary. He hand-wrote on the cover sheet: “CONFIDENTIAL!!”
One of the documents in the fax was an email that was sent to him from a financial adviser. It noted that as a result of the switch of the debt from Claridge Israel, the Kolber trust had paid the US-based Bronfman trusts about $40,000 in interest charges.
The email went on to say: “As there was never supposed to be interest paid on this debt in substance (only in form), the [Kolber trust] needs to be compensated by the Bronfman trusts for these cash outlays, in some manner to be agreed upon by both parties.”
A second email from the financial adviser contained in the fax gives details of the “manner” by which the interest issue might be resolved. It records that senior Bronfman officials told Kolber that they would “‘make you whole’ somehow”.
One idea floated in the email was to get Kolber to “invoice Claridge a fee for services rendered, equal to the interest which Claridge has charged to the [Kolber trust] on these loans”. The Kolber trust would then mark on its books the sums as receivable fees instead of describing them as they really were – reimbursement of the interest payments.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers
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Bronfman empire Revealed: Justin Trudeau's close adviser helped move huge sums offshore
Sun 5 Nov 2017 18.00 GMT
Experts consulted by news organizations investigating the Paradise Papers said both the US and Canadian tax authorities viewed no-interest loans as red flags for potential tax avoidance schemes. Grayson McCouch, a tax professor at the University of Florida, told CBC that in his view the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would probably want to interrogate the transactions.
“If it’s done to disguise or to reverse the purported interest payments, then it could look to an observer, particularly a revenue service, like evidence of fraudulent intent,” he said.
You can’t have interest-free loans between related parties
Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told the Guardian that under US tax law any loan greater than $10,000 that charged no or below-market interest rates would be assumed by the authorities to bear imputed interest that would bring it up to applicable federal levels. “The lender must report it as taxable income and pay taxes on it,” he said.
The head of the international tax program at the University of Michigan, Reuven Avi-Yonah, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that tax laws generally barred transactions that failed to report interest. “You can’t have interest-free loans between related parties,” he said.
Jonathan Kolber stressed to CBC that he had relocated his family’s trust from the Cayman Islands to Israel a few years ago following a change in Israeli tax law. “The trust declared Israeli status and we paid back taxes and whatever they asked for,” he said.
Kolber went on to deny any wrongdoing: “I’ve never broken any laws and this was all reported and so transparent, and is now an Israeli entity. This has all been declared and above board and properly handled with full transparency.”
Stephen Bronfman and Leo Kolber declined to comment.
A lawyer representing Jonathan Kolber and Bronfman father and son denied any improper activity on their part. He said: “None of the transactions or entities at issue were effected or established to evade or even avoid taxation. My clients have always acted properly and ethically, including fully complying with all applicable laws and requirements.”
The lawyer said that the Cayman Islands trust was set up because of volatility in Israel at the time. Kolber was not liable for tax in Canada under existing law given that he no longer lived there; nor was there any tax owing in his adoptive Israel.
The lawyer confirmed that Stephen Bronfman did make a $5.3m loan to the Kolber trust in 1997, but said it was repaid within five months.
Of the proposed reimbursement of interest from the two Bronfman trusts based in the US to the Kolber trust and the suggestion that it be portrayed as “services rendered”, the lawyer said: “No invoices were sent and nothing was paid.” He added that “non-interest-bearing loans by a US person do not violate US law”.
Trudeau was contacted at his official prime ministerial residence, 24 Sussex Drive, but chose not to respond.
• This article was amended on 6 November 2017. An earlier version said Justin Trudeau was premier. This has been corrected to prime minister.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers
Trump was right after all about the Obama administration wiretap
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/325648-trump-was-right-after-all-on-the-obama-wiretapping …
???
I feel the need to share this as 9/11 was thing that WOKE me. "MEMORANDUM AND ORDER FOR THE FORMAL PROSECUTION FOR THE BLACK-OP ATTACK OF SEPTEMBER 11TH" Read the names!
docdroid.net/zmVDhA4/d2-peter-munk-george-soros-cheney-paul-wolfowitz-hwbush-gwbush-john-kerry-clinton-september-11-attack.pdf
When you know better, you do better. Follow the money of @RepCummings both public and private. Where is your $ - ask the Q -
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5:5
DK CHINA
Missionaries of Charity embroiled in ‘infant-sale’ scandal; All you need to know
'''Ranchi: Established by the Mother Teresa, Catholic congregation ‘The Missionaries of Charity’ has landed in a stirring controversy over the alleged sale of infants at their Nirmal Hriday centre in Jharkhand’s state capital. The scandal began when city police arrested a nun who had been accused by a businessman from Uttar Pradesh for selling him an infant in exchange for a little over Rs 1 lakh. While law enforcement agencies were able to recover the child in question, interrogation revealed that the nun sold three other infants apart from the one in Uttar Pradesh.
Statements made by Sister Cornelia who is currently in detention for trafficking infants have sent shockwaves across the country. Police officials have claimed to have found one more infant out of the four that were reportedly sold by the nun to a wealthy businessman. Even the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) has tightened its noose on the 68-year-old congregation. Police officials have given statements to the media hinting that there may be more such cases where members of Calcutta’s Saint Teresa may have sold infants to those willing to pay a price for it.
A former member of the CWC, OP Singh has claimed that he has suspected Nirmal Hriday, the Ranchi unit of the Roman Catholic Church of trafficking several infants over the years. He even said that he was turned back by sisters at the unit when he had visited the Ranchi centre as part of an inspection conducted by the CWC. Media reports have alleged that the allegations surrounding Missionaries of Charity may involve close to 280 infants. However, no official confirmation has been issued in this regard as of yet.
Responding to the allegations, a bishop in Ranchi said that the confessions produced by the police in court were forced out of the nuns arrested earlier last week. He even accused law enforcement agencies of treating the whole of Mother Teresa's organisation as a "criminal gang". He also said that a whole organization cannot be maligned for one or two people.
Missionaries of Charity embroiled in ‘infant-sale’ scandal; All you need to know Description: While police officials have said that the nun arrested from the Ranchi unit of Missionaries of Charity has confessed to selling as many as four infants, a Bishop has denied any such allegations stating that the police are treating the whole of Mother Teresa's organisation as a "criminal gang". Times Now
https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in-focus/article/missionaries-of-charity-embroiled-in-infant-sale-scandal-nirmal-hriday-ranchi/253221
While speaking at the annual Salute to Labor Picnic in Illinois, ~~[Hillary Clinton]~~ recounted her experience with ~~[Mother Teresa]~~. Clinton said she and the nun, who one day ago was canonized as a saint …
Clinton Recounts Working With Mother Teresa
Fox News's Shepard Smith hits Trump for 'inaccurate' claims on Uranium One deal
November 14, 2017 - 05:34 PM EST
Fox News host Shepard Smith blasted President Trump on Tuesday for "inaccurate" claims about the Uranium One agreement following Trump's repeated calls for the Justice Department to investigate the deal.
On his show, Smith laid out the controversy surrounding the Obama-era deal, which involved the sale of a uranium company that did some mining in the United States to a Russian company.
"Here's the accusation: Nine people involved in the deal made donations to the Clinton Foundation totaling more than $140 million," Smith said. "In exchange, Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton approved the sale to the Russians - a quid pro quo."
"The accusation [was] first made by Peter Schweizer, the senior editor at large of the website Breitbart, in his 2015 book, 'Clinton Cash,' " Smith continued. "The next year, candidate Donald Trump cited the accusation as an example of Clinton corruption."
Smith then played a clip from a June 2016 speech Trump gave in New York City in which he repeated the claim.
"Hillary Clinton's State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America's uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation," Trump said in the speech.
Smith called the statement "inaccurate in a number of ways."
"The Clinton State Department had no power to approve or veto that transaction. It could do neither," the Fox News host noted.
Smith then laid out the approval process for the sale, which involves a nine-person committee made up of the heads of federal agencies, and noted that no one person could approve or veto the deal - only former President Obama could do either.
The Fox News anchor also detailed Trump's claim that the Clinton Foundation received money after the deal was completed.
"Here, the timing is inaccurate," Smith said, noting that the source of the majority of the donations, Frank Giustra, said he sold his stake in the uranium company before the company was sold and before Clinton became secretary of State.
"The accusation is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale," Smith said. "She did not. A committee of nine evaluated the sale, the president approved the sale, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others had to offer permits, and none of the uranium was exported for use by the U.S. to Russia. That is Uranium One."
Trump has repeatedly called on the Justice Department to investigate Clinton, saying earlier this month that he was "very unhappy" that federal officials were not investigating her.
"Hopefully they are doing something," Trump said of the Justice Department probing Clinton during a radio interview with host Larry O'Connor on Washington's WMAL. "At some point maybe we're going to all have it out."
In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have called for a second special counsel to be appointed to investigate matters involving Clinton, including the Uranium One deal.
But Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday pushed back on the immediate need for a new special counsel during an appearance on Capitol Hill, saying it would take "a factual basis that meets the standards of a special counsel" to appoint a new investigator.
"We will use the proper standards and that's the only thing I can tell you, Mr. Jordan," Sessions said in a heated exchange with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "You can have your idea but sometimes we have to study what the facts are and to evaluate whether it meets the standards it requires."
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/360371-fox-news-shepard-smith-hits-trump-for-inaccurate-claims-on-uranium-one-deal
Go here for more non-German swastika items
Germaniainternational.com
>confiscate all their ill gotten gains (all the shit they have stolen over their lives) and place in a public trust all these assholes should be busting rocks in Leavenworth
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^T__HIS ANONS__^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^