FBI accidentally reveals Saudi diplomat linked to 9/11

WASHINGTON

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has accidentally disclosed the name of a Saudi diplomat suspected of aiding two Al-Qaeda hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, Yahoo News reported Tuesday.

The mistake was made in a declaration by an FBI official in response to a lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims who say the Saudi government was involved in the attacks.

The filing by Jill Sanborn, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, was released in April but unsealed late last week, according to Yahoo News.

Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah was mistakenly named in the declaration. Al-Jarrah was a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and 2000.

He was in charge of supervising the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers in the US, according to the report.

The authorities believe that Al-Jarrah instructed two people Fahad al-Thumairy, a cleric, and Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi agent to help two of the hijackers settle in the US in January 2000 ahead of the attacks.

Al-Jarrah's whereabouts remain unknown, but he is believed to be in Saudi Arabia.

"This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement," Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families, told Yahoo News. "This is a giant screwup."

Yahoo News said it contacted the Justice Department on Monday, but officials notified the court and withdrew the FBI’s declaration from the public docket.

"The document was incorrectly filed in this case," the docket now reads, said the report.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks, masterminded by slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, led to the deaths of 2,753 people when members of the terrorist group hijacked two airliners and slammed them into New York's World Trade Center, destroying the towering buildings and sending plumes of debris shooting through the US's most populous city.

A third plane struck the Pentagon just outside of Washington, D.C., and a fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/fbi-accidentally-reveals-saudi-diplomat-linked-to-9-11/1838834

Giant screw up or true?

>>9159651

As Trump says "you'll find out" Kek

Senate panel tees up subpoena vote in probe related to Hunter Biden

The committee has scheduled a business meeting next week to vote on a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies, a public affairs firm that worked with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that hired Hunter Biden. The panel will consider the subpoena along with the nomination of Brian Miller, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the special inspector general for pandemic recovery, on May 20, according to a committee notice obtained by CNN.

Johnson has been investigating Burisma and Ukraine heading into the 2020 presidential election season, and has received documents from the State Department and the National Archives as part of the probe. Before the pandemic hit, Trump suggested he would make Ukraine a major part of the election should Biden be the nominee, while Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that the former vice president and his son acted corruptly in Ukraine. Johnson told CNN last week that he could issue a report on what his committee has found later this year.

"We've got a lot of information from the Archives, from the State Department," Johnson said. "We'll probably assemble all that."

While Johnson has insisted the investigation is not related to election-year politics, Democrats on the committee have slammed it as an effort to undermine Biden, and one of the committee's Republicans, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, said earlier this year that the probe felt political.

Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking Democratic member on the committee, condemned the move to vote on a subpoena as a "distraction" on Wednesday. Peters opposed the subpoena when Johnson first sought to issue it, which is why a committee vote is necessary to authorize the subpoena.

"We should be focusing on Covid issues," Peters told CNN. "It's not related at all to the crisis and so why are we spending time on it?"

CNN has reached out to the Biden campaign and Blue Star Strategies for comment.

The subpoena to Blue Star Strategies comes after Johnson scrapped an earlier vote to subpoena a Blue Star contractor, Andrii Telizhenko, who has made unfounded allegations about Ukrainian election interference in 2016 and is allied with the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Telizhenko told CNN in March the allegations against him were part of a smear campaign.

Burisma was at the center of the House's impeachment of Trump last year, as it was the company that Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate in their July 2019 call.

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1260694834911854593

Trump calls Fed chair Powell 'most improved player'

Trump calls Fed chair Powell 'most improved player'

© Getty

President Trump on Wednesday praised Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as the "most improved player" in the administration, a reflection of how far the president has come around on Powell after arguing last year he had the power to fire him.

"He has done a very good job over the last couple of months, I have to tell you that," Trump told reporters during a meeting with the governors of Colorado and North Dakota. "Because I have been critical, but in many ways I call him my 'MIP.' Do you know what an MIP is? Most improved player. It's called the Most Improved Player award."

The president said he still is at odds with Powell over his stance on negative interest rates. Trump has for months pushed negative interest rates, arguing the U.S. is on an unfair playing field if other countries have negative rates.

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Trump hammered Powell relentlessly last year to cut interest rates, and he has shifted to offering praise after the central bank took drastic action amid the pandemic-induced downturn.

The Federal Reserve in March slashed interest rates to zero percent and purchased $700 billion in bonds and securities to stabilize financial markets and support the economy.

The Fed announced in April it will finance more than $2 trillion in emergency loans using the $464 billion in credit protection allotted by the CARES Act.

Powell and his central bank colleagues have also consistently warned that the steep interest rate cuts and trillions in loans and asset purchases deployed by the Fed will not be enough to support the economy alone.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/497657-trump-calls-fed-chair-powell-most-improved-player

Fed chairman asks Congress to consider more stimulus

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday urged Congress to consider another ambitious fiscal rescue package, warning that the economy may need further support to avoid a cycle of business failures, job losses and bankruptcies well after the pandemic passes.

In a Wednesday speech, Powell said the U.S. could suffer serious long-term economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic and called on policymakers to do whatever they can to foster a strong recovery—regardless of the cost.

“The recovery may take some time to gather momentum, and the passage of time can turn liquidity problems into solvency problems,” he said during remarks before an interview with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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“Additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery,” he continued. “This trade-off is one for our elected representatives, who wield powers of taxation and spending.”

Powell’s latest call for fiscal stimulus comes as Republican lawmakers grow increasingly wary of adding to the roughly $3 trillion already spent by Congress to support the economy. House Democrats on Tuesday proposed another massive $3 trillion economic rescue and COVID-19 response package that Republicans promptly declared dead on arrival.

Powell’s Wednesday comments may add to the growing pressure on by rank-and-file Republicans to extend a counteroffer to Democrats after GOP leaders declared a pause on formal bipartisan negotiations.

While the Fed chair praised Congress for the size and depth of its response so far, he warned that further spending may be necessary to stave off “an extended period of low productivity growth and stagnant incomes.”

“There is a growing sense that the recovery may come more slowly than we would like, but it will come. And that may mean that it's necessary for us to do more,” Powell said during the interview following his remarks.

“We know that long periods of unemployment leave a shadow over the labor force and over our economy, over people's lives en masse. We also know that waves of bankruptcies can weigh on economic activity for years,” he continued.

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Powell, a Republican seen as moderate, had pleaded with Congress to cut deficits during the economic boom that preceded the crisis. But with the economy cratering as COVID-19 spreads through the U.S., the Fed chair has urged fiscal hawks to temporarily set aside concerns about the mounting debt.

“When the economy is strong and unemployment is low, that's the time to be addressing those concerns. I think now, when we are facing the biggest shock that the economy has had in modern times, is, to me, not the time to prioritize considerations like that,” Powell said Wednesday.

He and central bank colleagues have also consistently warned that the steep interest rate cuts and trillions in loans and asset purchases deployed by the Fed will not be enough to support the economy alone.

The U.S. economy has lost at least 21.4 million jobs since mid-March as thousands of businesses lay off workers in the face of bankruptcy, according to data released by the Labor Department last week. The unemployment rate in April spiked to 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression, and Powell warned Wednesday that it is likely to peak “over the next month or so.”

Powell also said that 40 percent of those in U.S. households earning less than $40,000 a year lost their jobs in March, citing results from a Fed survey to be released Thursday.

“While we are all affected, the burden has fallen most heavily on those least able to bear it,” Powell said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/497513-powell-high-cost-of-coronavirus-stimulus-worth-it-to-salvage-economy?utm_source=thehill&utm_medium=widgets&utm_campaign=es_recommended_content

Alexander Downer and Joseph Mifsud are the next clowns to be exposed. It’s going to be glorious and a great day for America

https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1260697180836433928

>>9160156

>>9160188