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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livew...white-house-targeting-career-staff-dem-letter

Dems: Trump Officials Worked With Activists To Target State Dept. Career Staff

House Democrats on Thursday accused Trump-appointed officials in the State Department and at the White House of working with outside conservative activists to conduct a “cleaning” of career staff whom, according to emails handed over to Dems by a whistleblower, they deemed insufficiently loyal to the President’s agenda.

Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) — the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, respectively — made the claims in a letter dated Thursday to White House chief of staff John Kelly and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan. In the letter, Cummings and Engel requested documents and interviews related to the reassignment of State Department career staff and civil servants.

Politico has also obtained the emails the Democrats referenced in their letter.

In one email, David Wurmser, formerly a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, sent former House Speaker Newt Gingrich a March 2017 article in the Conservative Review targeting Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career State staffer and expert in Iran policy.

“Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here,” Wurmser wrote, according to the Democrats’ letter. “I hear Tillerson actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind…”

Gingrich then passed Wurmser’s email (which referred to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom President Donald Trump fired earlier this week) along to Trump appointees in the State Department, according to Cummings and Engel.

The Conservative Review story that Wurmser cited claimed that Nowrouzzadeh, who joined the State Department under the George W. Bush administration, had “burrowed” into the State Department. It also noted her role in the promotion of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal, which Trump has disparaged as a “disaster.”

Nowrouzzadeh reached out to her advisor Brian Hook, a political appointee and director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, seeking that he help her “correct the record,” according to the Democrats’ letter.

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Instead, according to Cummings and Engel, Hook forwarded her email to other State Department officials, who in turned forwarded it to aides at the White House.

One White House aide, Julie Haller, said falsely in an email that Nowrouzzadeh was “born in Iran” (she is of Iranian descent but was born in Connecticut, according to Politico). “pon my understanding,” Haller wrote, Nowrouzzadeh “cried when the President won.”

According to the Democrats’ letter, Haller also wrote to Trump aide Sean Doocey and other White House officials that it was “easy to get a detail suspended and because she’s a conditional career, we just need to confirm the year she is in.”

Hook cut short Nowrouzzadeh’s year-long stint at the Policy Planning Staff, which serves as an in-house think tank, by three months, Politico reported, and the State Department misled Politico when it initially reported her reassignment last year.

In an email exchange where career staffer Edward Lacey, the deputy director of Policy Planning Staff, instructed a press aide to stress that Nowrouzzadeh’s tenure in the role had been completed, Nowrouzzadeh rebuked his characterization, according to the report.

“Ed – My assignment was not ‘completed,’” she wrote, according to Politico. “The 3 month curtailment to the duration of my detail was also not handled in accordance with that which was explicitly stated in my [memorandum of understanding].”

According the House Democrats’ letter and Politico’s report, Nowrouzzadeh was not the only career staffer whom Trump appointees treated with suspicion.

Last April, according to Politico, Hook sent an email to himself with a list of names where he described one name as a “turncoat” and another as a “leaker and troublemaker.”

The email was titled “Derek notes” — an apparent reference to then-National Security Council aide Derek Harvey, according to the report.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, in a comment to Politico, denied that members of the Policy Planning Staff were biased against career staffers, and said that more than half of the office’s current staff are career professionals.

“Any suggestion that the makeup of the Policy Planning Staff reflects a bias against career civil servants is completely without merit,” she said. “The details of Policy Planning’s staffing under Director Hook demonstrate that career civil servants continue to play an integral role, as do political appointees.”
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https://www.mediaite.com/online/fox...rtedly-being-considered-as-next-va-secretary/

Fox & Friends’ Pete Hegseth Reportedly Being Considered as Next VA Secretary

With all the recent shake-ups in the Trump administration, it’s easy to forget some of the less-covered ones, like the behind-the-scenes drama over VA Secretary David Shulkin.

Shulkin, reeling from a recent damning IG report, is reportedly on the chopping block, with President Trump growing frustrated with him and even musing about replacing him with Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

Perry has publicly denied interest in making that move, and now someone who has spoken with the President before on these issues is on the list to take over Shulkin’s job.

Per The Washington Post, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth is the “leading candidate” to replace Shulkin: Townhall reported yesterday that the President has been “strongly considering” Hegseth.

Hegseth is himself a veteran who previously served as executive director for Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.

The Fox News host had reportedly been talked about as a potential VA Secretary during the post-election transition period, but veterans groups “vigorously opposed” him being chosen.
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southsil4lil said:
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-jr-wife-vanessa-divorce

Report: Vanessa Trump Files For Divorce From Trump Jr.

Donald Trump Jr.’s wife, Vanessa, filed for divorce Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court, according to a Page Six report.

Vanessa Trump reportedly filed for an uncontested proceeding where “she’s not expecting a legal battle over custody of the couple’s five children or their assets.”

The couple married in November 2005, but the New York Post first reported Wednesday that they had been “living separate lives” despite not being legally separated.

Trump Jr.’s social media habits had reportedly caused a rift in their marriage, the Post reported Wednesday.

Two sources told the Post that Trump Jr. “appears to have changed recently, and friends are concerned about him.”

Their concerns were increased by Don Jr.’s tweeting, including when he liked a tweet linking antidepressants to mass murder, and another liking a tweet attacking a teen survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

The two sources added that Vanessa Trump has been “uncomfortable with the intense focus on the Trump family” because she is “a very low-key person.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livew...hese-officials-are-maybe-in-trumps-crosshairs

NYT Reports That These Officials Are (Maybe) In Trump’s Crosshairs

The New York Times reported Thursday on a handful of administration officials who could face imminent departures from the White House.

The report came hours after President Donald Trump said Thursday morning that “there will always be change, but very little” in his administration. He was responding to a question about the numerous recent firings and resignations among senior White House staffers.

Citing knowledgeable unnamed sources — and sometimes not citing any — the Times listed five officials who could face career trouble.

White House chief of staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “are on thin ice,” the Times’ Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman reported, “having angered the president by privately saying ‘no’ to the boss too often.”

Separately, the Times cited several unnamed people familiar with phone calls Trump made following reporting on domestic violence allegations against then-White House staff secretary Rob Porter. For months, long after the FBI delivered the results of his background check to the White House, Porter kept his senior-level position despite the allegations.

Trump’s language about Kelly’s botching of “the Porter issue,” in the Times’ words, was “unfit for publication.”

Unnamed “White House insiders,” the Times said, predict Kelly or McMaster, or both, could be fired “soon.”

The same goes for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, the Times said, without citing specific sources.

Both officials, the paper wrote, “have both embarrassed the president by generating scandalous headlines” — an eye-popping dining room set, the order for which has now been cancelled, and a $122,000 European trip, respectively.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a frequent target for presidential attacks, is another official whom “Mr. Trump could act as early as Friday to remove,” the Times said, without citing specific sources.

Some unnamed White House officials, the Times reported, believe that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is behind rumors of Sessions’ ouster (and, in turn, rumors of Pruitt’s own move to lead the Justice Department).

Yet other unnamed associates, the Times said, “speculate” that Trump knows firing Sessions would constitute a step too far in the eyes of many, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Left unscathed by the President’s potential wrath: Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Despite his defiance on Trump’s wishes to ban transgender people from the military, the Times wrote, Mattis is safe “in part because he is a general who in Mr. Trump’s mind ‘looks the part’ of a military leader.”
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Damn.. Even Dr. Coon Carson is on the chopping block.. All that shoe shinin’ and tap dancin’ was for nothing...
 
https://www.apnews.com/amp/4fd6d212e9a3432d9af05574774f7206

'Fake news' smear takes hold among politicians at all levels

An Idaho state lawmaker urges her constituents to submit entries for her "fake news awards." The Kentucky governor tweets #FAKENEWS to dismiss questions about his purchase of a home from a supporter. An aide to the Texas land commissioner uses the phrase to downplay the significance of his boss receiving donations from employees of a company that landed a multimillion-dollar contract.

President Donald Trump's campaign to discredit the news media has spread to officials at all levels of government, who are echoing his use of the term "fake news" as a weapon against unflattering stories.

It's become ubiquitous as a signal to a politician's supporters to ignore legitimate reporting and hard questions, as a smear of the beleaguered and dwindling local press corps, and as a way for conservatives to push back against what they call biased stories.

"When Trump announced he was going to do his fake news awards, a group of us conservative legislators said, 'We need to do that, too,'" said Idaho state Rep. Priscilla Giddings, who has urged supporters to send examples of "biased, misleading and fake news" and plans to announce her awards March 18. "We need people to wake up to the fact that just because it's on the front page of the Boise newspaper doesn't mean it's 100 percent true."

The winners of the contest, it turns out, will be announced at the end of Sunshine Week, an annual focus by the nation's news media on government transparency and the importance of a free press.

Rhonda Prast, editor of the Idaho Statesman in Boise, said it was ridiculous for anyone to assert that it would publish a story it knew contained falsehoods.

"The Statesman has a longstanding reputation as a reliable paper of record — going back 154 years — and our standards for accuracy and fairness have never changed," she said in a statement. "The allegations of 'fake news' are unjust attacks on a free press."

Giddings used the term herself last year to dismiss a report from another newspaper suggesting she may have been unqualified to run for office because she was claiming a homeowner's exemption outside of her district. She said she's submitting paperwork to prove the break was legitimate.

Experts on the press and democracy say the cries of "fake news" could do long-term damage by sowing confusion and contempt for journalists and by undermining the media's role as a watchdog on government and politicians. They say it's already exacerbated the lack of trust in media by conservatives and contributed to hostility that sometimes turns violent.

In the last year, at least three political figures have been implicated in physical assaults on reporters asking questions, while journalists have been attacked in dozens of other incidents by protesters, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

"I worry about the ongoing attack on the legitimacy of the media by President Trump and some of his supporters. The press is hardly perfect, of course, but it is also an important mechanism of accountability for people in power," said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. "This kind of rhetoric is potentially corrosive to trust in the media and to people's willingness to accept information that is critical of politicians they support."

Nyhan was among the authors of a recent study for the Poynter Institute that found partisan divisions in the public's attitudes toward the press. More Democrats now have more faith in the press, while Republicans have far more negative views and are "more likely to endorse extreme claims about media fabrication, to describe journalists as an enemy of the people, and to support restrictions on press freedom," the study found.

The routine labeling of factual reporting as "fake news" comes as actual fake news proliferates on the internet.

Media researcher Craig Silverman helped popularize the term in 2014 as a label for completely fabricated stories written and spread by individuals seeking profit. Now the news media editor at BuzzFeed, he wrote recently that he cringes when he hears anyone use the term, which he said became a partisan weapon after Trump's election in 2016.

Silverman wrote that political figures are manipulating social media to "literally brand real things as fake" and manufacture reality for their followers.

Politicians who have used the term in recent months in response to news reporting include the governor of Maine, a New Mexico congressional candidate, the Georgia secretary of state and the vice chairman of Trump's now-disbanded voter fraud commission. A California school board president repeatedly used the term to attack a journalist investigating the area's high rate of teenage pregnancy and its sex education policies.

The cries of "fake news" create a quandary for reporters, who want to defend their stories while also not giving credence to the charge.

"Our members, many of whom work for small news outlets, are bearing the brunt of these unwarranted attacks, and it's completely unfair. These are people who are serving the community," said Rebecca Baker, president of the Society of Professional Journalists. "Some are just ignoring it, and some are fighting back."

Baker suggests that journalists respond to the attacks by showing their work as much as possible — by sharing the audio, video and documents that back up their stories. She wonders whether the term is starting to lose its clout from overuse, but also worries that whichever party controls the White House, Congress and state governments in the future will continue to use the tactic.

"This is part and parcel of the polarization of our politics right now," she said.
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https://www.mediaite.com/tv/james-comey-reportedly-planning-a-book-tour-media-blitz-to-correct-lies/

Mike Allen: James Comey ‘Going to Come Out Hot’ on Book Tour Blitz to ‘Correct Lies’

James Comey is planning a book tour that “is going to rattle a lot of china,” according to an Axios’s Mike Allen.

The former FBI Director, who was fired by President Donald Trump last year amid his growing frustrations with the metastasizing Russia investigation, is penning a memoir set to be published April 17.

And the book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” is looking like a bombshell: according to Politico, its “publisher is taking extreme precautions to prevent potentially explosive revelations detailing Comey’s interactions with President Donald Trump from leaking.”

Comey has spent the year since his firing laying low, but according to Allen’s Axios report, he “has heard a lot of lies and misstatements about the FBI that he intends to correct.”

“There’ll be more announcements about his book tour soon, but he’s eager to go to where his critics are and take them on,” Mike Allen reported, adding Comey intends to compare and contrast Presidents Bush and Obama with Trump (he served under all three.)

“As you can guess, what he says is going to rattle a lot of china,” Allen added.

The Axios co-founder appeared on Morning Joe Friday to discuss his report, and said that Comey is “going to come out hot” for his book tour.

Meanwhile, Comey’s media blitz is already shaping up to be a whirlwind: he’s hitting ABC News’s 20/20 for an interview with George Stephanopoulos on April 15, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on April 17, and The View on April 18.

Buckle up!
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https://www.mediaite.com/tv/stormy-...lation-she-was-threatened-with-physical-harm/

Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Stuns Morning Joe With Revelation: She Was Threatened With Physical Harm

Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti appeared on Morning Joe Friday, and faced an interrogation at the hands of an insatiably curios MSNBC panel about his case and upcoming 60 Minutes episode.

And at the end of the interview, Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski asked — almost off-the-cuff — what ended up being a very revealing question about Daniels: “Was she threatened in any way?”

“Yes,” Avenatti replied.

“Was she threatened physical harm?” Brzezinski followed up.

“Yes,” the lawyer replied.

“Oh, wow,” Brzezinski reacted, while MSNBC’s John Heilemann asked her to continue the questioning.

The entire Morning Joe panel proceeded to grill Avenatti to try and pry more information about the threats towards his client, but the lawyer remained tight lipped, responding that all will be revealed in Stormy’s 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, slated for March 25.

Daniels, of course, claims to have had an affair with Donald Trump back in 2006. She is suing the president to get out of a nondisclosure agreement she claims is invalid because Trump never signed it. Recently, her lawyer said she would be willing to return the $130,000 she was paid just before the 2016 election to allegedly keep quiet about the affair.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...ation-cases-challenges-taking-fake-news-court

New Lawsuit Reveals Challenges Of Taking ‘Fake News’ Peddlers To Court

If online agitators spark a wave of harassment by publishing damaging, dishonest stories about private individuals’ personal lives, can the victims do anything to stop them?

Brennan Gilmore hopes so. A counter-protester at the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Gilmore has brought a defamation suit against InfoWars, Gateway Pundit and other right-wing conspiracy-peddling sites that he says smeared his reputation.

The lawsuit comes not long after some of those same sites falsely dismissed the student activists who survived the Parkland school massacre as “crisis actors,” and at a time of broader concern about the growing, destructive influence of fake news.

But the hurdles the suit appears to face speak to the challenges of using the courts to hold fake news purveyors accountable.

In a complaint put together by lawyers at the Georgetown Law School’s Civil Rights Center and filed in federal court Tuesday, Gilmore claims false stories saying he was part of a “deep state” plot to undermine the Trump administration by staging the murder of anti-racist activist Heather Heyer have led to threats to his personal safety and caused potential damage to his career.

Gilmore, a foreign service officer on long-term unpaid leave, became a target after sharing on Twitter a video he’d captured from the rally, showing neo-Nazi James Fields’ car ramming into a crowd, injuring dozens and killing Heyer. In response, a number of far-right sites quickly noted that Gilmore had worked for the State Department and donated to Democratic politicians. They used this to suggest he was part of a conspiracy funded by philanthropist George Soros to effect an anti-Trump coup.

In one example, Infowars’ Alex Jones claimed in a video posted online that he “did research” and “confirmed” that Gilmore was a “high-level CIA” operative and “State Department insider with a long history of involvement in psy-ops.” Jones definitively stated that Gilmore helped orchestrate the chaos at Charlottesville and was paid $320,000 a year by Soros.

Within days, Gilmore was subjected to death threats, doxxing and in-person harassment on the streets of Charlottesville that made him fear for his personal safety, according to the complaint. He claims the enduring consequences of these false stories have “compromised” his career, deterring companies from wanting to work with him while he’s on leave and putting him at risk if he rejoins the foreign service and returns abroad, as he plans to. The result has been emotional distress, he says.

Gilmore told TPM he won’t settle for any amount of money, and wants his case to set a precedent. His goal, he said, is “to try and prevent someone else who is in my shoes to be victim to the same type of predation that Alex Jones and his fellow conspiracy theorists directed to me.”

“They knew what they were saying was false and they made no attempt to verify anything,”Andrew Mendrala, supervising attorney of Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic, told TPM. “[They were] putting this out there with the intention of smearing him and unleashing their followers to sort of carry that out in real life.”

Beyond defamation, the case aims to hold the creators of false online content responsible for their followers’ responses to that content.

That’s why it may be a heavy lift. Although Gilmore may have suffered real personal trauma, strong constitutional protections for publications that traffic in opinion pose a major challenge, First Amendment experts told TPM.

Not all of the defendants used language as unequivocal as Jones’. Derrick Wilson, a writer for former U.S. congressman Allen West’s website, wrote a story suggesting Charlottesville “was a complete SET-UP” and that it was “fishy” that Gilmore formerly worked for the State Department.

That could shield Wilson from the legal standard for defamation, which explicitly relates to false, damaging factual assertions, experts said. Call it the “a lot of people are saying” defense.

“It’s a tough argument to make,” preeminent first amendment attorney Bruce Johnson told TPM of Gilmore’s suit, calling it “path-breaking in terms of the First Amendment issues presented.”

“I could see the core of a defamation case lurking there,” Johnson, a litigator at Davis Wright Tremaine, told TPM. “And I can understand the plaintiff’s frustration because the prevalence of these fake news organizations has clearly infected our political dialogue.”

But, Johnson added, although people can be held liable for false and defamatory facts, “the courts are very reluctant to police individual opinions.”

Then there are the threats. Though the defendants could reasonably be expected to know that their legions of social media followers would go after Gilmore as a result of their bogus stories, it’s difficult to hold them accountable for the actions of others, according to Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. Volokh noted that the defendants did not direct their followers to threaten Gilmore.

“Outright solicitation of violence or other kinds of crimes, like vandalism, against a specific identified target is probably unprotected,” Volokh said. But condemning somebody or publishing demeaning hypotheses about them is “generally protected, even when the foreseeable result given the audience is that a fraction of it is going to act improperly or even criminally.”

Many of the defendants in the Charlottesville suit have publicly brushed off the case as a concerted effort to silence conservative voices.

Compare the case to a recent lawsuit targeting the far-right brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Last year, the civil-rights group sued Andrew Anglin, the founder of neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, for directing his followers to carry out a months-long, anti-Semitic harassment campaign against a Montana Jewish woman and her family.

The SPLC accuses Anglin of invading Tanya Gersh’s privacy, intentionally inflicting emotional distress, and violating Montana’s Anti-Intimidation Act. First Amendment attorneys told TPM the case is strong, pointing to the over 700 messages the Gershes received on their personal devices at all hours of the night, on Anglin’s orders, including death threats and promptings to commit suicide.

Still, both cases represent a burgeoning effort to provide legal redress for private individuals suffering real-world consequences caused by chronic bad online actors.

As Mendrala, the attorney in the Charlottesville case put it: “They feel there’s some anonymity afforded them [online], combined with some vague notion that the First Amendment protects anything that they say about anyone, and that they can operate with impunity. And that’s not the case.”

“We feel like were sort of seeking to hold them accountable in ways that maybe they have not yet been,” he said.
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