Interest Abounds in US Presidential Election Betting

1. Never let a Covid crisis go to waste! Use the pandemic to push for a nation-wide vote-by-mail scheme.
By now we’re all familiar with the inequities, even idiocies, of the Covid-19 lockdown rules. In many states and cities, it’s forbidden to have normal assembly for social gatherings, businesses, church services, and even hospital visits.
On the other hand, it’s okay to have massive Black Lives Matter protests, Antifa riots, and anything else the left approves of, at least tacitly. Obviously, such unequal treatment is a formula for societal frustration, rage, and, yes, chaos.
And what a friend the Democrats have in crisis and chaos!
In fact, Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris has said that this sort of chaos is likely to continue—and should continue—through the election. “Everyone beware because they’re not going to stop,” Harris said about the (often violent) protests erupting in American cities. “They’re not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day.”
But according to the Democrats, the only certainty in all of this chaos is that Americans—who are safe to take to the streets in mass protests and riots—are not safe to vote in person on November 3. We must vote by mail, they tell us.
Mail-in voting is “essential from a health reason because we want to keep people at home to vote without having them all collect on Election Day,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last month. “People should not have to choose between their health and their vote.”
If you’re still scratching your head wondering why it’s safe to riot but not to vote, veteran political consultant Dick Morris explained the Democrats’ game plan: “If they feel they’re legitimately losing the election, [they] are going to use the excuse of the Covid virus—nobody can come out and vote in person, they claim … and they’re going to deliberately game the system by sending out millions and millions of mail-in ballots for people that don’t exist or have already voted.”
“And the states will not verify the [mail-in ballot] signatures because they are under the control of Democrats,” Morris added.
2. Enlist all the messengers at your disposal (Hollywood, Corporate Media, Big Tech, Pro Sports) to push for vote-by-mail.
The Democrats are using every tool in their considerable arsenal to push the vote-by-mail messaging, including multi-million-dollar super PAC ad campaigns. Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar has teamed up with failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to mandate a national vote-by-mail system, and a group called Stop Republicans has launched a digital blitz to push for the idea.
But the Democrats’ favorite tool is, of course, Hollywood and pop culture.
As early as April, about a month into the coronavirus shutdown, the Hollywood wing of the Democrat-Media Complex kicked into high gear to push vote-by-mail.
Actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, who were among the first big name figures to contract Covid-19, teamed up with former First Lady Michelle Obama and former Obama White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett in April for an ostensibly non-partisan virtual voter registration drive that encouraged states to loosen vote-by-mail requirements.
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Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson joined former First Lady Michelle Obama for a virtual get out the vote event on April 20, 2020, to encourage people to sign up for mail-in voting. (YouTube)
In August, a group of A-list celebrities hosted a virtual “United to Save the Vote” gala—which they claimed was “fiercely nonpartisan”—to raise money to “protect the 2020 election” by, in part, increasing trust in mail-in voting. The virtual roster included Jennifer Lawrence, Jamie Foxx, Dave Matthews, Ed Helms, Jennifer Lopez, Alicia Keys, Sia, Jake Johnson, Sarah Silverman, Kenan Thompson, Chelsea Handler, Gloria Estefan, Randall Park, Erich Bergen, Nick Kroll, Sophia Bush, Jonathan Scott, Kenny G., George Lopez, etc. You get the picture.
According to the event’s website, these zealously anti-Trump “fiercely nonpartisan” celebs gathered virtually to counter the efforts of “politicians who are undermining the security and validity of mail-in voting.”
Meanwhile, the Democrat-Media Complex is engaged in a bit of journalistic jujitsu churning out stories about how the Republicans are the ones who plan to steal the election. Here’s a headline from the Washington Post: “Republicans’ long-term vote heist matters more than Trump’s tantrums.” And here’s one from Rolling Stone: “The Plot Against America: The GOP’s Plan to Suppress the Vote and Sabotage the Election.” But it’s hard to top this headline from the Daily Beast: “This Is How Republicans Steal an Election, and Maybe Kill Some Dems in the Process.”
At the same time, the Democrat-Media Complex is also celebrating the new wokeness of pro sports, which is busy helping Democrats win in November. On September 7, Politico asked, “Could LeBron James Defeat Donald Trump?” As has been widely reported, the National Basketball Association has agreed to set up a “social justice coalition” to help get out the (Democrat) vote.
3. Get millions of questionable mail-in ballots into the system.
Here we might pause to note the distinction between the various kinds of voting by mail.
It is true that absentee voting by mail has been with us for many years. Even President Trump has voted by mail, and our active duty military regularly votes by mail. In fact, Republicans have been quite successful in the past with absentee voting. In Florida in 2016, for example, more Republicans voted by mail than Democrats, and Trump carried the state. There is even legitimate concern that any disparagement of mail-in voting could unintentionally hurt Republicans in November because their voters like voting by absentee ballots. Indeed, there are sincere and legitimate reasons for why absentee voting should be available during the pandemic.
However, there is a big difference between allowing absentee ballots as an option for people who are unable to make it to the polls and mandating that an entire election be done by mail-in voting.
And there is a really big difference between the long-standing practice of sending absentee ballots to voters who take the initiative of requesting them and the new Democratic proposal to mail out unsolicited ballots (or applications for ballots) to every registered voter regardless of whether those voters are still alive or eligible to vote in that jurisdiction. And, as we shall explain, this new effort to mail out ballots to every registered voter is coupled with the left’s years-long fight to prevent these same voter rolls from being updated to remove dead and ineligible people from the lists.
And to make matters extra complicated and chaotic, every state has a different standard for mail-in voting. Some states have more safeguards in place than others. For example, some states require that every mail-in ballot include a verifiable signature, additional witness or notary signatures, and even an enclosed copy of the voter’s photo ID. Some states have few, if any, such safeguards. Some states are loosening or experimenting with the rules for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
And then there is the issue of sending all these ballots through the mail. Can the U.S. Postal Service process them all in a timely manner? Every state has a different deadline for when these ballots need to be postmarked. What happens if they don’t arrive in time? Can election officials process them all in a timely manner? Counting mail-in ballots is much more time-consuming. It can involve matching signatures, checking postmarks, flattening out ballots that were crumpled in the mail, etc. If the recent primaries in Wisconsin and New York are anything to go by, mail-in ballots will take weeks to process and that process will be fraught with problems and potential for fraud.
(To give you a flavor of the postal chaos to come, the chief clerk for Brooklyn’s Kings County Board of Elections testified in federal court last month that in 2018, the USPS delivered “several hundred absentee ballots from the previous November” — which was “five months after Election Day.” And in Wisconsin this week, three trays of mail, which included absentee ballots, were found in a ditch.)
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Election officials take receipt of a dolly loaded with mail-in ballots at election offices in downtown Pittsburgh, PA, on May 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
There is also the issue of how voters can apply to vote by mail and who is eligible to do so. According to FiveThirtyEight, nine states and the District of Columbia will simply mail every registered citizen a ballot. In another 14 states, authorities will mail everyone an application to vote by mail. (Although, as we shall see, some states take a generous view of who, or what, might be eligible to receive such applications if outside interest groups decide to mail them out.) In 16 states, nothing is automatically mailed to voters, although voters can apply online to vote by mail. In six states, voting by mail is permissible only with a “valid excuse.” And the remaining states are some hybrid of the preceding categories.
All of these different rules provide plenty of opportunity to game the system on questions ranging from the verification of identity, addresses, and signatures to the timeliness of postmarks and the ability of the postal service to deliver ballots in a timely manner. Because there are so many “moving parts” to the vote-by-mail process, mail-in ballots are fraught with the potential for fraud. Yes, we’ve seen voter fraud before, but we ain’t seen nothing yet. The further we get from requiring that voters go to the polls to vote in person, the more we expand the avenues for fraud.
Consider, for example, the fraud potential that comes with mailing ballots to every registered voter. Back in 2012, a Pew Center study found that 1.8 million dead people were still registered to vote and that 24 million voter registrations were un-confirmable.
Though some states have made progress in updating their voting rolls since the 2012 Pew study, a comprehensive analysis conducted this year by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that 349,773 apparently dead people still remain on the voter rolls across 41 states. And apparently the dead still vote! The report also discovered a surprising number of people who apparently voted more than once.
The report found:

During the 2018 General Election, 37,889 likely duplicate registrants are apparently credited for casting two votes from the same address, and 34,000 registrants appear to have voted from non-residential addresses. Additionally, 6,718 registrants were apparently credited for voting after death.

According to the report, New York, Texas, Michigan, Florida, and California were the top five states with dead voters on the rolls, accounting for 51 percent of all the dead registrants. The crucial swing states of Michigan and Florida had 34,225 and 25,162 dead registrants respectively.
That would seem to be a serious indictment of the system and a warning against mailing unsolicited mail-in ballots or even mail-in ballot applications to everyone on the voter rolls. But Democrats are working hard to bulldoze the path for vote-by mail, or, as Breitbart News often calls it, cheat-by-mail. Democratic governors in New York and Pennsylvania have already moved to ease vote-by-mail, as have local officials in Harris County, TX, population 4.7 million. Oh, and did we mention that in Nevada’s June primary, more than 223,000 ballots in Clark County (Las Vegas) went to a bum address? That means almost a fifth of all the ballots mailed out in the county went to a bum address.
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Election workers process mail-in ballots during a nearly all-mail primary election in Las Vegas, NV, on June 9, 2020. (AP Photo/John Locher)
But, you might ask, why don’t we just make sure the voter rolls are accurate by removing people who have moved or died? Why don’t we have a standardized signature verification protocol and a requirement for an additional witness signature and photo ID for mail-in ballots to ensure they are legit? Good questions. The answer is the left fights these reforms.
Left-wing groups want to expand access to voting by registering as many people as possible, but they also fight to block meaningful efforts to ensure that only eligible American citizens are voting. When Republicans enact legislation to encourage transparency and accuracy in our voting process by removing dead or ineligible voters from the rolls or mandating some form of identity verification, left-wing activists challenge these initiatives in court to stop any reform.
Eric Eggers, the author of Fraud: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election, explained to Breitbart News how left-wing interest groups have fought for years to keep the loopholes that could potentially create a “tsunami of voter fraud” in November.
“Organizations that are funded by George Soros both fight to keep those vulnerabilities in place, as in Ohio, by trying to prevent efforts to pass voter-ID laws or to make the voter rolls more secure,” Eggers said. “But then they also — and this is really the insidious part — they fund organizations that go out and round up voters, regardless of legality of their status, and force them through the vulnerabilities in the system.”
“There are 248 counties in this country that have more registered voters than actual citizens of legal voting age,” Eggers said. “It’s a problem because it creates opportunity for organizations like the formerly known ACORN and La Raza — they’re all funded by [billionaire George] Soros — to go and figure out where the vulnerabilities are and force the voters — whether they’re legal or not — through the gaps.”
But according to the establishment media, the instances of mail-in voter fraud are “infinitesimally small.” And to prove this, the media loves to quote the “non-partisan” Brennan Center for Justice. What the media fails to tell you is that the Soros-funded Brennan Center is leading the charge to expand mail-in voting. They don’t just have a dog in this fight — they have a whole kennel! Quoting the Brennan Center to deny the reality of mail-in voter fraud is like quoting Big Tobacco to deny that smoking causes cancer.
And yet when Donald Trump or any Republican points out the obvious vulnerabilities in our voting system, the Democrat-Media Complex quotes biased sources to vilify Republicans. Nancy Pelosi actually called President Trump and Republicans “enemies of the state” for expressing concerns about vote-by-mail’s fraud potential.
It seems fair to say that Democrats are making sure that the system works for them. Recently, Politico headlined a long piece, “Inside the Democratic Party’s plan to prevent vote-by-mail disaster,” detailing the efforts of the party, and its well-funded allies, to win the November mail war.
A key part of that plan is legal challenges. For instance, in Georgia, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the state government of wrongfully purging nearly 200,000 voters from the rolls. In this legal battle, the ACLU is joined by the Palast Investigative Fund, one of the myriad “non-partisan” foundations that the Democrats always have at their side.
Yet in the meantime, the ACLU has nothing to say when we discover, for example, that during the 2020 Michigan primaries, the number of ballots counted in 72 percent of Detroit’s absentee ballot precincts didn’t match the number of ballots cast. And the votes counted in 46 percent of all of Detroit’s precincts–both absentee and in-person–didn’t match the number of ballots tracked in the precinct poll books. For perspective on what such abnormalities might portend for the next election, we might observe that Detroit has a population of 670,000. In 2016, Donald Trump won Michigan by a mere 10,704 votes.
Oh, and did we mention that a federal lawsuit filed last year alleged that the city of Detroit had over 2,500 dead people still registered on its voter rolls, and about 4,788 registered Detroit voters were flagged as having potentially registered to vote twice or even three times. But I’m sure none of those dead people will vote by mail, right?
Oh, and while we’re on Michigan, we should also mention that Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State who was endorsed by Joe Biden and was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention, misprinted the ballots that were created for Michigan voters serving in the military overseas. Guess which candidate was listed incorrectly? You guessed it: Trump! The bad ballots list the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate as President Trump’s running mate instead of Mike Pence. But don’t worry. The spokesperson for Michigan’s Democratic-Biden-endorsed-DNC-speaking Secretary of State has assured us that clerks “will be instructed to duplicate a vote for Trump” for any military voter who mails in one of these misprinted ballots.
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Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) speaking during the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, 2020. (DNC via AP)
In the face of all this potentially embarrassing data, the Democrats have decided that the best defense is a good offense. For instance, Joe Biden stays on the offensive, regularly accusing President Trump of seeking to squelch vote-by-mail; but he never allows that vote-by-mail might need to be reformed. Biden charged on September 7 that Trump “wants to make sure those mail-in ballots don’t get where they’re supposed to get.”
We might wonder: If Biden routinely accuses Trump of cheating, should we be surprised if Democratic activists get the hint and decide that they could, and should, cheat on Biden’s behalf? After all, they might rationalize these efforts as fighting fire with fire.
Cheat-inclined Democrats might draw inspiration from an anonymous Democratic consultant in New Jersey who recently confessed to the New York Post that “fraud is more the rule than the exception.” The consultant explained the various ways in which political operatives can harvest mail-in ballots, change them by inserting different ballots into the envelope, use friendly postal workers to disappear ballots in neighborhoods that lean Republican, and so forth. A few hundred bogus ballots here and there can change an election.
“An election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a difference,” the Democratic operative said. “It could be enough to flip states.”
Indeed, even Democratic pets can make a difference—and they don’t even have to be alive! Recently in Atlanta, a family got a voter registration application in the mail for their deceased house cat named Cody.
How did that happen, you ask? Well, outside third-party groups can rent mailing lists and randomly send everyone on the list an absentee-ballot application or voter registration application that they downloaded from the state’s election website. Have you ever used your pet’s name to subscribe to something because you didn’t want junk mail in your own name? If so, don’t be surprised if Fluffy or Spot gets a voter registration or absentee ballot application in the mail.
Georgia’s election officials assure us that Cody the cat would not have been able to vote at the polls in the Peach State because the cat doesn’t have a license or state ID. But one wonders if he would be allowed to vote by mail, assuming his registration application cleared. And, of course, not every state requires a photo ID to vote like Georgia does.
Speaking of Georgia, its Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, announced on September 8 that his office had identified 150,000 Georgians who had applied for an absentee ballot and then showed up at the polls to vote in person in the June primary; that is, they wished to vote, carelessly or purposefully, for a second time. This in a primary in which a little less than 950,000 people voted; in other words, the attempted (or at least potentially attempted) double voting accounts for around a sixth of total ballots cast. Of these 150,000, Raffensberger added that perhaps 1,000 had actually succeeded in voting twice.
Were these innocent mistakes? Simple confusion? Or guilty action? Whatever the truth about these would-be double voters and actual double voters, we should applaud Georgia authorities for minimizing what could have been a major electoral debacle; thanks to their good work, it was only a minor electoral debacle. In any case, the Georgia ACLU has nothing to say about that.
Voter fraud exists even when you vote in person, but mail-in voting blows the doors wide open in fraud potential. And the Democrats are ready to fight for every ballot—pets and all!
4. Send Democratic lawyers into key districts to fight for every challenged ballot. Use the courts and progressive election officials to keep the count going as long as possible with as little verification as possible.
As we have seen, each mailed-in ballot has the potential to foment a legal fight over its validity. In fact, the Washington Post reported on August 24, that more than 534,000 primary votes in 23 states have been rejected for one reason or another:

Democrats and voting rights groups are now waging court battles to ensure that absentee ballots are not discarded on technicalities, pushing to require that ballots postmarked by Election Day be counted and to make signature-matching laws more voter-friendly.

Meanwhile, in Indiana, a federal judge ruled that Hoosier election officials cannot reject ballots for dissimilar signatures without notifying the voter and giving him or her—aided, of course, by partisan pals—a chance to “cure” the ballot. In fact, 20 states allow a voter to attempt to cure a faulty ballot so that it can be counted. That might be a good idea, but we can see that each “cure” will take a lawyer, not a doctor.
In fact, with such legal fights in mind, the Biden-Harris campaign has already built a SWAT team of 600 lawyers, expecting many more recruits to come.
And just on September 14 came this headline, courtesy of the New York Times: “Biden Creates Legal War Room, Preparing for a Big Fight Over Voting.”
According to the Times, two Democratic legal veterans–Dana Remus, who has served as Biden’s general counsel in the 2020 campaign, and Bob Bauer, a former Obama administration White House counsel–will co-head this legal effort. Others involved include former Obama attorney general Eric Holder and two former solicitors general in Democratic administrations, Donald B. Verrilli and Walter Dellinger. In all, the Times tells us that “hundreds of lawyers will be involved, including a team at the Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, led by Marc Elias.”
The name Marc Elias might ring a bell because, as Breitbart News has reported, he was in the middle of the infamous fake-news Christopher Steele dossier, having retained the firm of Fusion GPS on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. And come to think of it, Bob Bauer, mentioned above, was also a longtime Perkins Coie lawyer, having been there, alongside Elias, during the 2016 presidential campaign and its Steele-y aftermath.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris herself is keeping up the drumbeat, warning Democrats of the many bad things Republicans are thought to be doing.
“There will be many obstacles that people are intentionally placing in front of Americans’ ability to vote,” Harris said. “We have classic voter suppression. We have a president who is trying to convince the American people not to believe in the integrity of our election system and compromise their belief that their vote might actually count.”
By “voter suppression,” she means any effort to make sure that only eligible living non-pet American citizens are voting in November.
But while we’re on this topic, we should note that the Department of Justice announced this week that it’s investigating reports that nine military mail-in ballots were discarded in Pennsylvania. Seven of the ballots were cast for President Trump; the contents of the other two are unknown. Yes, it’s only nine ballots, but the campaign season is young, and there are lots of places where marked ballots can be discarded.
And the crickets you hear is the sound of Democrats, normally so up-in-arms about vote suppression, now being oh-so-quiet about vote destruction.
Democrats are armed and ready for a vote-by-mail total war. We can expect they will have a ground game in every district. Every disputed ballot will get its own Democratic lawyer. Every critical district and state will see litigation over signature-matches, addresses, postmarks, and anything else that might affect Democratic balloting.
In fact, the Democrats’ legal team has already scored potentially game-changing court victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina on how long ballots can be counted after Election Day.
In Wisconsin, a federal judge ruled Monday that mail-in ballots can be counted up to six days after Election Day, and a ballot can be counted even if there is no “definitive” sign of a postmark on it.
In Pennsylvania, the state’s Supreme Court ruled last week that mail-in ballots can be received up to three days after Election Day; and, similar to the Wisconsin ruling, these ballots can be counted even if there is no evidence that they were postmarked on time. (The Pennsylvania court handed the Democrats a second victory by keeping the Green Party candidate off the ballot, thereby preventing the Greens from peeling off any progressive voters. We note that the court didn’t grant the GOP a similar favor by kicking the Libertarian Party off the ballot.)
The Pennsylvania Secretary of State also issued an order last week instructing clerks not to conduct signature matches on the mail-in ballots – which means that Pennsylvania essentially nullified signature verification because the state’s election officials won’t be verifying anything.
In Michigan, a judge ruled that postmarked mail-in ballots can be accepted up to 14 days after Election Day, and third parties are allowed to deliver these ballots. This fraud-friendly delivery service is commonly known as “ballot harvest.” It’s all the rage in California and other third world countries.
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A ballot drop box in Detroit, MI, on Sept. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
In North Carolina, a coalition of Democrat-aligned special interest groups got the state to agree to accept mail-in ballots up to nine days after Election Day and to allow voters to “cure” any problems with these ballots. North Carolina election officials also agreed to create vote-by-mail ballot “drop-off” stations, which is essentially an invitation for “ballot harvesting.”
You’ll notice that these are all swing states, and three of them – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – were the Rust Belt blue wall states that put Trump over the top in 2016. He won them by 22,748 (WI); 44,292 (PA), and 10,704 (MI) votes. And the Democrats are stopping at nothing to win them back.
Of course, these court victories were concerned with when the mail-in ballot delivery window will close. Let’s not forget the question of when the in-person polls will close. It’s a safe bet that Democratic lawyers will argue—and even sue, as they have in the past—for extra hours in places where their voters might come straggling in late. After all, many protestors and rioters seem to be night people.

Erik Prince keeps popping up in the Trump-Russia investigation, but is always elusive. In this post I detail the many ways Prince associates, his “shadows”, have instigated the Trump-Russia scandal.
Erik Prince's link to Palantir: Buzzy Krongrad
In 2001, after terrorists flew planes into New York City’s World Trade Center, Prince called up Buzzy Krongard of the CIA (1) and attained Blackwater’s first contract with the US military, sending Prince right into the center of the War on Terror in Afghanistan (2) where he worked for both the CIA (3) and JSOC (4), the later commanded by General Stanley McChrystal (5).
Krongard later joined the board of Blackwater in 2006, only to step down embroiled in a scandal the following year (6)(7).
While working at the CIA, Buzzy created a subdivision called Information Technologies (8) that spawned In-Q-Tel, a CIA-backed venture capital firm seeking to invest in the rapidly advancing tech industry. Buzzy currently sits on its board of Trustees (9). In 2005, In-Q-Tel invested into Palantir (10).

1. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/20/blackwater.cia.ties/
   
2. https://www.salon.com/2007/10/02/blackwater_bush/
   
3. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/blackwater-201001
   
4. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121502690
   
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_A._McChrystal#Commander,_Joint_Special_Operations_Command
   
6. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17brothers.html
   
7. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/11/buzzy-krongard-quits-blackwater-board/
   
8. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25386-2001Apr30.html
   
9. https://www.iqt.org/about-iqt/team/
   
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
    

Erik Prince’s and Palantir’s link to the Kremlin: Tiger Fund
Julian Robertson has strong ties with Trent Lott and Dick DeVos, Erik Prince’s brother-in-law. All three sit on the Children’s Scholarship Fund board (1) and Robertson donates to Betsy DeVos’s the American Federation for Children Action Fund (2). Trent Lott himself gained a bit of infamy in 1997 when, along with Newt Gingrich, he slipped in a last minute tax break for Dick DeVos’ Amway into a contentious tax compromise bill. Four months later DeVos and his wife together donated $1 million to the GOP (3).
In 2006, a Julian Robertson-seeded hedge fund run my Chase Coleman, Tiger Fund, invested in DST (4). By the end of 2009 DST would own 10% of Facebook (5), financed by the Russian-state-owned Gazprom, as revealed by the Paradise Papers (6).

A Moscow source said: "DST has the backing of the big boys at the top in the Kremlin, which is why it will go from strength to strength" (7).

In 2008, Tiger Fund invested into Palantir (8).

1. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2014/01/28/national-school-choice-week-know-the-players-and-the-funders/
   
2. https://firststreetresearch.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/school-choice-group-turns-its-back-on-washington-focuses-on-states/
   
3. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1998/11/tough-sell/
   
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail.Ru
   
5. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jan/04/facebook-dst-goldman-sachs
   
6. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-investor
   
7. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jan/04/facebook-dst-goldman-sachs
   
8. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tiger-siliconvalley/tiger-global-leads-wall-street-pack-turning-to-silicon-valley-idUSBREA2Q1YK20140327
   

Erik Prince’s ties to Michael Flynn: Stanley McChrystal
In 2009, Palantir hired Stanley McChrystal’s top CDR, Douglas Philippone, who commanded multiple JSOC outstations in Afghanistan (1) that Prince had worked with. On July 2, 2010, McChrystal’s deputy of intelligence, Michael Flynn, put in an urgent request to purchase Palantir for McChrystals troops after two Palantir reps visited him (2 page 4), though by June 23, McChrystal had resigned from the military. Five days after his resignation, Tiger Fund invested into Facebook (3).
In July, 2010 Eric Prince moved to Abu Dhabi and founded Reflex Response, R2 (4), financed by Prince Zayed himself, while McChrystal founded McChrystal Group and joined the board of Knowledge International (5), a licensed arms dealer with close ties to the UAE government with only two listed addresses: one the home of Stanley McChrystal in Virginia, and the other in Abu Dhabi (6).
Three months later in Aspen McChrystal talked about his resignation during a private event. Julian Robertson was in attendance (7). As late as March 2015, Michael Flynn and Stanley McChrystal continued to work together to push Palantir (9), but with Palantir’s biggest pusher resigned from the military, Palantir needed another connection. Luckily Erik Prince and Julian Robertson had plenty. In 2010 Palantir hired two lobbyist, Trent Lott and John Breaux at Patton Boggs (8).
By the time Palantir hired Lott and Breaux, Lott already had his own Russian connection. In 2006, the same year Tiger Fund was investing in a Russian tech company linked to Gazprom, Gazprom’s subsidiary, Gazprombank, hired the lobbying firm, Ketchum. On April 25, 2007 Ketchum emailed Trent Lott’s National Security Advisor, Mitch Waldman, about “Russia,” according to the vague FARA disclosure (10). By 2014, Trent Lott and John Breaux would snag Gazprombank as a client themselves (11).
That same year, 2014, Flynn was fired from his military position. Soon enough he founded Flynn Intel Group registered at the same address at McChrystal’s home (12). December 2015, Michael Flynn visited Sergey Kislyak at Kislyak's home (13) and dined with Putin in Moscow (14) On September 20, 2016, Rohrabacher met with Flynn at Flynn Intel Group, a meeting probed by Mueller (15).

1. https://www.crunchbase.com/person/doug-philippone#section-recent-news-and-activity
   
2. http://fortune.com/palantir-pentagon-trump/
   
3. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tiger-global/investments/investments_list#section-investments
   
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html
   
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_A._McChrystal
   
6. https://knowledgeintllc.us/
   
7. http://www.coloradoindependent.com/62815/mcchrystal-in-aspen-afghanistan-a-post-apocalyptic-nightmare
   
8. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/palantir-defense-contracts-lobbyists-226969
   
9. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/williamalden/palantir-has-well-placed-friends-in-trumpworld#.hlk7aKy87
   
10. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/putins-washington-113894_Page3.html
    
11. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/two-former-senators-are-helping-a-russian-bank-fight-us-sanctions/379494/
    
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_A._McChrystal
    
13. https://investigaterussia.org/media/2018-04-28/flynn-met-kislyak-2015
    
14. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696
    
15. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mueller-probing-pre-election-flynn-meeting-pro-russia-congressman-n819676
    

Patton Boggs and Erik Prince back-channels to Russia
Patton Boggs and Erik Prince play a diverse and central roll in the Trump-Russia scandal- like P-B lawyer Don McGahn working on Trump’s campaign (1) and P-B working with Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen (2)- so I’ll break the connections down one at a time. Follow the two immediate links below and scroll through the years to find Patton-Boggs' (later Squire-Patton-Boggs) many lobbying clients.
Patton-Boggs: 2010-2014
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000022176&year=2010
Squire-Patton-Boggs: 2014-
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000067299

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_McGahn
   
2. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/25/michael-cohen-squire-patton-boggs-alliance-607897
   

Maricopa County
Maricopa County hired Patton Boggs from 2010-2012. Maricopa County’s sherriff at the time was Joe Arapio, whom Trump pardoned for his crimes in 2017.
In 2011 Trump met with Steve Bannon over a possible 2011 run for the presidency (1). Soon after, Trump and Arapio heavily pushed the Obama birther conspiracy (2)(3) and Trump would later even emulate Arpaio’s “concentration camps” (4)(5). At the time Arpaio worked closely with Steven Seagal, even raiding a home with a military tank in September, 2011(6). Steven Seagal shared a business partner with Paul Manafort, Julius Nasso, who was connected to the Gambino crime family and worked with Manafort selling Russian nuclear tech in the US (7). in 2016, Vladimir Putin would personally reward Seagal with Russian citizenship (8).
On March 19 2013, Rohrabacher met with Paul Manafort, Vin Weber, and Rick Gates while Manafort was working as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine and their pro-Russian Party of Regions (9), a meeting central to Gates guilty plea in the Mueller investigation (10). Two months later Dana Rohrabcher met with the Russian FSB and the head of the FSB, Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin, arranged and attended by none other than Steven Seagal (11) (12).
The man who introduced Steven Seagal to Vladimir Putin, Bob Van Ronkel, happened to attend Donald Trump's Miss Universe 2013 contest in Moscow (13).

1. https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/politics/steve-bannon-donald-trump-relationship/index.html
   
2. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/07/trump-sends-investigators-to-hawaii-to-look-into-obama/
   
3. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/05/22/153313783/sheriff-arpaio-sends-publicly-funded-deputy-to-hawaii-on-birther-hunt
   
4. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/aug/21/arizona-phoenix-concentration-camp-tent-city-jail-joe-arpaio-immigration
   
5. https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-donald-trump-is-still-setting-up-concentration-camps-on-american-soil-1.6197513
   
6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2032973/Steven-Seagal-killed-puppy-reality-police-breaking-cockfighting-ring.html
   
7. https://www.reddit.com/RussiaLago/comments/8rrnkx/how_trumps_mob_ties_led_to_paul_manafort_in/
   
8. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/steven-seagal-vladimir-putin-russian-citizenship
   
9. http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-rohrabacher-s-meeting-with-manafort-1498680385-htmlstory.html
   
10. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2018/02/23/gates-accused-of-lying-about-manafort-meeting-with-rohrabacher-weber-114848
    
11. https://abcnews.go.com/International/steven-seagal-opened-doors-us-delegation-moscow/story?id=19310164
    
12. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence2013/06/congress-in-russia-seagal-bonding-few-facts.html
    
13. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/03/624059365/how-did-steven-seagal-and-vladimir-putin-become-bffs-bob-van-ronkel-introduced-t
    

Palantir
At the same time, Peter Thiel’s Palantir hired Patton-Boggs from 2010-2014.
Peter Thiel is a terrible person. Peter Thiel wrote a book about how politically-correct “multiculturalism” has had a debilitating impact on higher education (1), wrote that woman’s sufferage was bad for democracy (2), ran an unethical human herpes experiment offshore (3), and vouched for monopolies (4). Peter Thiel is the embodiment of the alt-right. In 2016 he gave a speech at Donald Trump’s inauguration (5), donated $1.25 million in support of Trump’s cause to various SuperPACs (5), and joined Trump’s transition team (6). One SuperPAC Peter Thiel donated to, along with Erik Prince, was the Mercer-back Make America #1 that funded scandal-plagued and now defunct Cambridge Analytica (7). Peter Thiel showed reporter Maureen Dowd a photo of Thiel, Erik Prince, and Donald Trump together at the "Heroes and Villains" party held in Dec 2016 (14).
The same year Palantir hired Patton-Boggs, the president of the Russian federation and former head of Gazprom, Dmitry Medvedev, visited Silicone Valley along with a cadre of figures central to Trump-Russia including: Yuri Milner of DST (8); Russian "top spy" Sergey Kislyak (9); and Victor Vekselberg of Skolkovo, who is under investigation by Mueller (10). While there, they recruited Google’s Eric Schmidt to join the board of Vekselberg’s Skolkovo (11). According to US intelligence, Skolkovo was likely a Russian spy facility. Schmidt’s daughter, Sophia, later interned at Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL, and recommended CA work with Palantir (12); and Vekselberg later held a mysterious meeting with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower (13).

1. https://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-Multiculturalism-Political-Intolerance/dp/0945999763
   
2. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-women-democracy_us_5747079be4b03ede4413f6f5
   
3. https://www.salon.com/2017/08/28/libertarian-billionaire-peter-thiel-funds-unethical-offshore-human-testing-of-herpes-vaccine-skirting-fda-rules_partne
   
4. https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536
   
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-donald-j-trump.html
   
6. https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/11/technology/peter-thiel-trump-team/index.html
   
7. https://www.thedailybeast.com/thiel-backed-pac-may-have-made-illegal-payments-to-bannon-company
   
8. http://fortune.com/2010/10/04/facebooks-friend-in-russia/
   
9. https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/02/world/sergey-kislyak-russian-ambassador-us-profile/index.html
   
10. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/politics/viktor-vekselberg-mueller-investigation.html
    
11. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/jun/23/dmitry-medvedev-silicon-valley-visit
    
12. https://www.inc.com/business-insidefacebook-cambridge-analytica-emails-link-sophia-schmidt-palantir-alfredas-chmieliauskas-peter-thiel-eric-schmidt.html
    
13. https://apnews.com/5e533f93afae4a4fa5c2f7fe80ad72ac/Sanctioned-Russian-oligarch-linked-to-Cohen-has-vast-US-ties
    
14. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/17/notorious-mercenary-erik-prince-is-advising-trump-from-the-shadows/
    

Erick Prince’s link to Peter Thiel and Dana Rohrabacher: Paul Behrends
While Peter Thiel was on Trump’s transition team, he held a four hour phone call with Stephen Bannon and Dana Rohrabacher (1). Since then, Rohrabacher’s right hand man, Paul Behrends, has become one of Thiel’s greatest confidants (2) and even arranged a meeting between Thiel and Pro-Putin Hungarian Prime Minster’s senior visor, Jeno Megyesy (5). Paul Behrends was the one that arranged Rohrabacher’s many visits into Russia and even joined in, including a meeting with Russian agent Veselnitskaya in April 2016 (3), two months before the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
Paul Behrends is also close with Erik Prince and arranged for Prince to intern with freshman rep Dana Rohrabacher back in 1990 when Prince was still a college student (4). In 1998, when Erik Prince opened up Blackwater, Behrends became a partner at the now infamous Alexander Strategy Group and lobbied extensively for Blackwater (5). ASG then arranged for Dana Rohrabacher’s visit to Prince’s Blackwater compound (6).

1. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/romney-fading-rohrabacher-bolton-rising-for-state-as-consensus-package
   
2. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/20/the-hill-staffer-at-the-center-of-the-russia-intrigue-215396
   
3. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/03/gop-congressman-met-in-moscow-with-kremlin-linked-lawyer-at-center-of-russia-investigation/
   
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Prince
   
5. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/20/the-hill-staffer-at-the-center-of-the-russia-intrigue-215396
   
6. https://www.salon.com/2007/10/02/blackwater_bush/
   

Facebook
Facebook hired Patton-Boggs from 2012-2015.
In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg visited Vekselberg and Medvedev in Moscow (1). While there, Zuckerberg had an interesting conversation with Medvedev:

Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Medvedev talked about Facebook’s role in politics, though only jokingly in reference to its importance in the American presidential campaign, according to Mr. Medvedev’s press office. (2)

1. https://www.adweek.com/digital/zuckerberg-russia-skolkovo/
   
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/technology/zuckerberg-meets-with-medvedev-in-key-market.html
   

Erik Prince's link to Cambridge Analytica: Vincent Tchenguiz, Black Cube, Ko Chun Shun, Palantir, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and Michael Flynn
In 2013 Facebook and Palantir joined forces at Cambridge Analytica following Eric Schmidt's daughter's suggestion (1). At the suggestion of a Palantir employee, Alfredas Chmieliauskas, suspected Russian spies Aleksander Kogan and Joseph Chancellor hacked Facebook and sold the data to CA (2) with Steve Bannon’s approval (3). Palantir employees later worked on that data (4). All the while, Facebook and Google hand embeds in Cambridge Analytica’s operation (5).
Prior to the formation of Cambridge Analytica, CA’s parent company, SCL, was owned by billionaire Robert Mercer (6) and Vincent Tchenguiz (7). After Tchenguiz divested from SCL, his employee, Julian Wheatland, stayed on the board (8). Israel's Dorian Barak introduced Prince to Tchenguiz with the hope of forming a joint venture together (9). Tchenguiz contracted with Black Cube after SFO raided Tchenguiz's Kaupthing for its links to Alfa-Bank and possible fraud (10)(11).

The Trump campaign has hired Ted Cruz’s former data-analysis firm, Cambridge Analytica—and in doing so, it has connected itself with a British property tycoon, Vincent Tchenguiz, and through him with the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a business associate of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who resigned last week. (12)

Once CA collected Facebook's hacked data, they needed to spread to find a way to use it. Erik Prince then arranged a meeting on August 3, 2016, between Donald Trump Jr., George Nader, and Black Cube agent Joel Zamel (13), an Israeli that specialized in social media manipulation. Zamel had already drawn up a multi-million dollar social media campaign to elect Trump (14). However, when the CA scandal broke, CA shut down, but soon after a new analytics company formed, Emerdata, with many of the same board members as the defunct CA, but with a new name to the list- Erik Prince’s business associate Johnson Ko Chun Shun (15).
Squire Patton-Boggs, representing CA, threatened to sue the Guardian over articles on Facebook’s data breach (16).

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/cambridge-analytica-palantir.html
   
2. https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/palantir-confirms-a-staff-link-with-cambridge-analytica/
   
3. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-bannon-cambridge-analytica-facebook-20180320-story.html
   
4. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge-analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html
   
5. https://twitter.com/bbcstories/status/896752720522100742?lang=en
   
6. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
   
7. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/257246/making-serious-dough-in-tel-aviv
   
8. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/211152/trump-data-analytics-russian-access
   
9. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/revealed-erik-prince-had-business-ties-with-netanyahus-disgraced-chief-of-staff-1.5627887
   
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exista
    
11. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/ap12/vincent-tchenguiz-black-cube
    
12. https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/211152/trump-data-analytics-russian-access
    
13. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-who-is-joel-zamel-australian-israeli-linked-to-mueller-s-trump-probe-1.6104963
    
14. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-domestic-conspiracy-that-gave-trump-the-election_us_587ed24fe4b0b110fe11dbf9
    
15. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/ma21/cambridge-analytica-links-erik-prince-blackwater-f/
    
16. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-mercer-guardian-lawsuit-threat_us_591c5a95e4b041db8965d6b7
    

Reflex Responses and Spectrum Health
More directly, in 2011, Erik Prince’s own R2 hired Patton Boggs and from 2011-2012 Dick DeVos’s Spectrum Health hired Patton-Boggs as well.
In still one of the biggest mysterious of the Trump-Russia saga, during the 2016 campaign Spectrum Health’s servers pinged servers at Trump Org and that of Russian bank Alfabank, a phenomenon currently under investigation by Mueller (1).

1. https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/fbi-investigation-continues-into-odd-computer-link-between-russian-bank-and-trump-organization/index.html

Exxon-Mobil
Exxon-Mobil hired Patton Boggs from 2012-2014.
Within that timeframe, Exxon-Mobil’s Rex Tillerson penned a deal with Rosneft’s Igor Sechin that earned him the Russian Order of Friendship directly from Vladimir Putin (1). That deal also broke US sanctions law and Exxon-Mobil was fined $2 million (2). Rex Tillerson would become Trump’s Secretary of State after Russia rejected Mitt Romney as a choice (3).

Erickson worked his GOP connections to try to influence Trump’s transition team and the new administration’s staffing. Butina and Torshin discussed who might be appointed secretary of state, with Butina asking how “our people” felt about one name, per the affidavit. (4)

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/13/what-is-the-russian-order-of-friendship-and-why-does-trumps-pick-for-secretary-of-state-have-one/
   
2. http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-exxon-mobil-fined-2-million-for-1500561365-htmlstory.html
   
3. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/376746-russia-says-it-stopped-mitt-romney-from-becoming-secretary-of-state
   
4. https://www.vox.com/2018/7/19/17581354/maria-butina-russia-nra-trump
   

Apollo Global Management
From 2013-2015 Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management hired Patton Boggs.
Erik Prince’s associate Buzzy Krongrad joined the AGM’s board in 2011 (1). That same year Alexander Torshin’s sanctioned Sberbank formed the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF, and AGM’s head, Leon Black, joined the RDIF board (2). (Russian spy Maria Butina later reported to Torshin on her infiltration of the NRA (3)).
In January 2013, Peter Thiel’s associate, Max Levchin, met up with Sberbank’s Herman Greff in Davos during Victor Pinchuk’s Ukrainian Lunch (4). Then in February, Donald Trump’s close associate, Rudy Giuliani, happened to bump into Emin Agalarov (5). Emin hung out with Trump himself in Vegas four months later during the Miss USA pageant, where Trump announced that Miss Universe 2013 would be held in Moscow (6). While in Moscow Herman Greff signed a contract with Donald Trump to finance a Trump Tower Moscow (7).
In 2013 Michael Flynn visited the GRU (8) and in January 2014, three months after Trump signed the contract with Greff, a former Sberbank employee and Cambridge University student, Svetlana Lokhova, met Flynn at a conference known for being a Russian spy’s nest (9). At some point Michael Flynn would become an advisor to Cambridge Analytica (10), founded by Steve Bannon at that very same Cambridge University (11).
In December 2016 "Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified" (20). In January 2017 Prince Zayed and George Nader introduced Erik Prince to the head of the RDIF, Kirill Dmitriev. (Nader is currently cooperating with the Mueller investigation into that meeting) (12). Patton-Boggs has worked closely with Prince Zayed’s father, Sultan Al Nahyan, for over 20 years (19).
Leon Black is good friends with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (13) and, in 2016, AGM loaned Jared Kushner’s company $180 million, which is currently under investigation (14). That same year, while Krongard was still on the board for AGM, AGM bought Prince’s Blackwater through Constellis (15)(16). Then in 2017 Tiger Fund invested into AGM (17) while Erik Prince lobbied Donald Trump to provide the CIA with a private network of intelligence contractors (18).

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=11734234&privcapId=8740684
   
2. https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-investment-fund-connected-to-us-investors-sanctioned-2015-7
   
3. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/nra-russia-maria-butina-alexander-torshin-republicans-trump/
   
4. https://pinchukfund.org/en/projects/20/photo/266/
   
5. https://thesternfacts.com/rudy-giuliani-knows-russian-oligarchs-son-who-linked-trump-campaign-with-spies-3a1a366a90fd
   
6. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-trump-trip-to-las-vegas-adds-intrigue-to-the-steele-dossier
   
7. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/trumps-moscow-partner-was-apparently-financed-by-a-russian-bank-under-us-sanctions/
   
8. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/ma31/michael-flynn-new-evidence-spy-chiefs-had-concerns-about-russian-ties
   
9. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5776741/Cambridge-graduate-accused-serial-seducer-spymasters-fights-clear-name.html
   
10. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/04/michael-flynn-cambridge-analytica-disclosure
    
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M
    
12. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mueller-gathers-evidence-that-2016-seychelles-meeting-was-effort-to-establish-back-channel-to-kremlin/2018/03/07/b6a5fb8c-224b-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html
    
13. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/sporting/news/a7802/ivanka-trump-wendi-deng-us-open/
    
14. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/politics/jared-kushner-business-loans-white-house-meetings/index.html
    
15. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/constellis-announces-management-led-buyout-300313127.html
    
16. https://www.your-poc.com/academi-triple-canopy-5-companies-merge-forming-largest-high-threat-security-group-world/
    
17. https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2017A/04/06/hedge-fund-tiger-global-is-making-a-major-bet-on-billionaire-leon-black/#3ed7234d2095
    
18. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/afghanistan-camp-david/537324/
    
19. https://www.squirepattonboggs.com/en/locations/abu-dhabi
    
20. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel-with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html
    

Erik Prince's other exploits: Mike Pence, True Pundit, and Christophe Charlier
Along the way, Erik Prince played other roles in the Trump campaign. For example Erik Prince and Rudy Guiliani worked together to intimidate James Comey into reopening the FBI case against Clinton (1).
He was also integral in getting Mike Pence selected as Donald Trump's VP. When Prince returned to America after Blackwater gunned down 17 civilians in the Nisour Square Massacre, Pence greeted him with a party. Prince became a top donator to Pence (2). When Paul Manafort pushed for Trump to choose Pence as VP, Manafort's long-time business associates, Rick Gates and Tom Barrack, were working with Erik Prince-agent Michael Flynn on a plan to build nuclear plants across the US (3). In 2011 Prince had signed a contract with UAE to supply security to a string of nuclear power plants across the Middle East, none of which had been built yet (4).
Prince also had a number of email exchanges with Russian banker and Rusal board member, Christophe Charlier. Charlier's chaired at the Russian bank, Renaissance Capital, linked the to the KGB and FSB. His boss owned part of Oleg Deripaska's Rusal and later Charlier became a board member to Rusal himself. Charlier had introduced Prince to a member of Glencore that was involved in the purchase of Rosneft shares described in the Steel dossier as a way of paying Trump and his associates for their work (5).
In another avenue, Joseph Schmitz of Trump's National Security Council during the campaign also happened to be the ex-board member of Erik Prince's Blackwater holding company.

1. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-domestic-conspiracy-that-gave-trump-the-election_us_587ed24fe4b0b110fe11dbf9
   
2. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/mike-pence-will-be-the-most-powerful-christian-supremacist-in-us-history/
   
3. https://www.propublica.org/article/white-house-may-share-nuclear-power-technology-with-saudi-arabia
   
4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387319/Blackwater-founder-Erik-Prince-Reflex-Responses-R2-training-secret-commandos-desert-mercenaries-UAE-Arab-sheik.html
   
5. https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/a-fresh-look-at-erik-princes-house-intelligence-committee-testimony-and-emails-with-christophe-6603f06c6568
   

BREAKING: TRUMP to delay UK trip -- FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Aug. recess in jeopardy -- ISENSTADT: MITT shows signs of political revival -- SPOTTED at Mike Shields/Katie Walsh engagement party -- B’DAY: Greta van Susteren
by [email protected] (Daniel Lippman) via POLITICO - TOP Stories
URL: http://ift.tt/2rP8bod
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK -- WE HEAR … There is a chance Congress will stay in session for part of August. There has been political pressure from some members of the House and Senate to stay in town and try to get some things done instead of take a five-week recess. The pressure will only increase if the Obamacare repeal and replace isn’t done in the next few weeks. Congress has just 27 days in session until the summer break. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise: many lawmakers have had to face angry constituents on trips home.
STATEMENTS FROM PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey -- at 8:22 a.m.: “The #FakeNews MSM doesn’t report the great economic news since Election Day. #DOW up 16%. #NASDAQ up 19.5%. Drilling & energy sector......way up. Regulations way down. 600,000+ new jobs added. Unemployment down to 4.3%. Business and economic enthusiasm way up- record levels!” … at 8:29 a.m.: “I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very ‘cowardly!’” … at 8:49 a.m.: “The Democrats have no message, not on economics, not on taxes, not on jobs, not on failing #Obamacare. They are only OBSTRUCTIONISTS!”
-- TWO QUICK THINGS: Many Democrats will privately agree with Trump that they oftentimes lack a coherent message. But Trump’s presidency has unified Democrats for the first time in a long time … Trump has majorities in the House and Senate, and he’s blaming Democrats for obstructing him.
**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook:http://politi.co/2lQswbh
BREAKING OVERSEAS -- TRUMP PUTS OFF U.K. VISIT -- THE GUARDIAN: “Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain put on hold: U.S. president told Theresa May he did not want trip to go ahead if there were large-scale public protests”: “Donald Trump has told Theresa May in a phone call he does not want to go ahead with a state visit to Britain until the British public supports him coming. The U.S. president said he did not want to come if there were large-scale protests and his remarks in effect put the visit on hold for some time. The call was made in recent weeks, according to a Downing Street adviser who was in the room. The statement surprised May, according to those present.” http://bit.ly/2reskVQ
Good Sunday morning. Jake will be on Steve Hilton’s new Fox News show “The Next Revolution” live from Los Angeles tonight at 9 p.m. East Coast time.
TRUMP stopped by a wedding at his country club in New Jersey last night. http://bit.ly/2t98Uhy
YOU’LL HEAR THIS QUOTE A LOT -- Donald Trump Jr. on Fox News, via the Washington Post: “‘When he tells you to do something, guess what? There’s no ambiguity in it, there’s no, ‘Hey, I’m hoping,'’ Trump said. ‘You and I are friends: ‘Hey, I hope this happens, but you’ve got to do your job.’ That’s what he told Comey. And for this guy as a politician to then go back and write a memo: ‘Oh, I felt threatened.’ He felt so threatened -- but he didn’t do anything.’ Trump also said that Comey’s testimony ‘vindicated’ the president and that everything in it was ‘basically ridiculous.’” http://wapo.st/2t9eJf5
ALEX ISENSTADT in DEER VALLEY, UTAH -- “Romney stokes speculation he’s weighing another political run: The 2012 GOP nominee is plotting how to help Republicans in the midterms, and he’s being coy about his own political future”: “Mitt Romney is once again testing his political power — critiquing President Donald Trump, raising money and campaigning for fellow Republicans, and not ruling out another run for office for himself. The 2012 GOP nominee is returning to the spotlight, six months after Trump -- the man Romney once savaged as unfit for the presidency -- nearly picked him to be secretary of state. …
“Spencer Zwick, a longtime Romney adviser and political gatekeeper, said he’d been inundated with appeals from Republican candidates asking the former GOP nominee to help them. Last week, Romney held his first fundraiser for a 2018 hopeful, an event benefiting Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican who has been fiercely critical of the president. Over the coming days, Romney is also expected to release a robo-call boosting Georgia Republican Karen Handel, who has been losing ground in a high-stakes June 20 special House election she had once been favored to win.
“‘All I can tell you is that the number of requests that Mitt has gotten in the last month to come to a district or to come to a state for a sitting senator — it’s like he’s a presidential candidate again, which I was surprised by,’ said Zwick, who doubles as a top political aide to House Speaker Paul Ryan. ‘There are only so many people in the party that can headline these things.’” http://politi.co/2rZkZ9X
-- THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE between Republicans wanting to take advantage of Romney’s fundraising prowess, and his running for office and garnering the support he needs to win.
SUNDAY BEST -- JOHN DICKERSON speaks with SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OKLA.) on CBS’S “FACE THE NATION” -- DICKERSON: “On the question of influencing the investigation, again, thinking about the scale, on the one hand the president might have done something that was a little bit crossing a line but he’s a new guy to the job all the way to this question of obstruction of justice. Where do you put, knowing what you know about the president’s behavior, where do you put what he did on that scale?” LANKFORD: “I would say it’s very inappropriate. As Jim Comey said, it’s awkward to be able to have the president of the United States sitting down with someone in the F.B.I., the leadership of the F.B.I., to be able to have direct questions. And for the issue to come up about the Michael Flynn investigations, inappropriate. But the way that it was handled, with no follow-up, with no other press, with no other return to that topic, it looks like what I called a pretty light touch. If this is trying to interfere in a process of any investigation, it doesn’t seem like it was number one, very effective, and number two, came up more than once in a conversation. So this looks more like an inappropriate conversation than obstruction.”
-- SEN. JACK REED (D-R.I.) tells CHRIS WALLACE on “FOX NEWS SUNDAY” that Trump needs to be deposed on all Russia-related questions -- “[T]he deposition is not just about his conversations with Mr. Comey. There are issues with respect to his conversation with director of national intelligence Dan Coats, Admiral Rogers, the NSA director, his relationships with Manafort. By the time the special prosecutor Mr. Mueller is ready to depose or ask the president to speak under oath, there are a myriad of questions. So what I don’t want to see is simply, we’ll I just said I talk about Comey, I’m not talking about anything else. To resolve this situation he has to be prepared to speak on all these matters.”
-- PREET BHARARA speaks to GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS on ABC’S “THIS WEEK” -- STEPHANOPOULOS: “The president’s defenders, like Alan Dershowitz, say there’s no grounds for obstruction. You talked about that. And he, in fact, says that presidents have the constitutional right to fire FBI directors and investigations as much as they want. One of the president’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, is coming up next. He says there’s no there there, no basis for obstruction. You’re a former prosecutor. Are -- is there evidence there ... to begin a case for obstruction?” BHARARA: “I think there’s absolutely evidence to begin a case. I think it’s very important for all sorts of armchair speculators in the law to be clear that no one knows right now whether there is a provable case of obstruction. It’s also true I think from based on what I see as a third party and out of government that there’s no basis to say there’s no obstruction.”
-- SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine) talks to BRIANNA KEILAR on CNN’s “STATE OF THE UNION” -- KEILAR: “I want to ask you about something the president has been cagey about, and that is these tapes, of course. So, I wonder if you would support issuing a subpoena to the White House. Right now, it’s just a request coming from Congress. Would you support issuing a subpoena for the recordings or any documents that might come from that?” COLLINS: “This is an issue that the president should have cleared up in his press conference. He should give a straight yes or no to the answer -- to the question of whether or not the tapes exist. And he should voluntarily turn them over not only to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but to the special counsel. So, I don’t think a subpoena should be necessary. And I don’t understand why the president just doesn’t clear this matter up once and for all.”
THE NEXT MAIN EVENT -- “Sessions will testify before Senate in Russia investigation,” by Kyle Cheney and John Bresnahan: “In a letter to his former colleagues in the House and Senate, Sessions canceled a planned appearance before Congress’ appropriations committees. Sessions said he instead plans to appear on Tuesday before the Intelligence panel to respond to questions stemming from FBI director James Comey’s bombshell testimony last Thursday. …
“If this is an open session ... Sessions will likely face a barrage of questions over his role in Comey’s dismissal, his independence from President Donald Trump, and allegations of additional unreported meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Sessions has already recused himself from the Russia probe after failing to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation of two meetings with Kislyak, and there have been reports of additional sessions.” http://politi.co/2rOVc5P
-- SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CALIF.) told Brianna Keilar on “State of the Union” that she didn’t know if the hearing will be open.
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW -- “What’s next for Comey? Maybe law, corporate work, politics,” by AP’s Eric Tucker: “So what’s next for James Comey? The former FBI director boldly challenged the president who fired him, accused the Trump administration of lying and supplied material that could be used to build a case against President Donald Trump. But after stepping away from the Capitol Hill spotlight, where he’s always seemed comfortable, the 56-year-old veteran lawman now confronts the same question long faced by Washington officials after their government service.
“His dry quip at a riveting Senate hearing that he was ‘between opportunities’ vastly understates the career prospects now available to him — not to mention potential benefits from the public’s fascination with a man who has commanded respect while drawing outrage from both political parties.” http://apne.ws/2sQlkMb
EYE-POPPING NUMBERS FROM WAPO’S KAREN TUMULTY in SANDY SPRINGS, GEORGIA -- “Trump looms over Georgia special election, a proxy battle for 2018”: “It is an arms race of money and organization. The latest fundraising report, filed Thursday, showed Ossoff raising an additional $15 million in the past two months, nearly quadruple what Handel brought in. With outside groups weighing in, the race has thus far cost more than $40 million -- far outpacing the previous record for a congressional race of nearly $30 million for a Florida contest in 2012.
“Polls indicate there are few voters still undecided. ‘The next 10 days are about turning out the base. There are more of us than them in the district. The more people who vote, the better,’ said Corry Bliss, who heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). That organization alone plans to spend about $7 million in the race.” http://wapo.st/2rjhPM4
FASCINATING READ -- “Palantir goes from Pentagon outsider to Mattis’ inner circle,” by Jacqueline Klimas and Bryan Bender: “The Trump era has brought a change of fortune for a Silicon Valley software company founded by presidential adviser Peter Thiel — turning it from a Pentagon outcast to a player with three allies in Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' inner circle. At least three Pentagon officials close to Mattis, including his deputy chief of staff and a longtime confidante, either worked, lobbied or consulted for Palantir Technologies, according to ethics disclosures obtained by POLITICO. That’s an unusually high number of people from one company to have such daily contact with the Pentagon leader, some analysts say.
“It also represents a sharp rise in prominence for the company, which just months ago could barely get a meeting in the Pentagon. Last year, Palantir even had to go to court to force its way into a competition for a lucrative Army contract. Thiel was one of the only Silicon Valley titans to openly support Trump during the campaign, a role that gave him a prime speaking slot at last summer’s Republican convention. He has since acted as a key adviser arranging meetings among the president and other tech executives. While there's no evidence he had a direct hand in these specific Pentagon hires, analysts say they absolutely show his growing influence in the administration, where he holds no formal role.” http://politi.co/2sqMdbS
DEMOCRATS’ NEW PLAYBOOK -- “Democrats bet on Trump in Virginia governor’s race,” by Kevin Robillard: “Virginia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday is shaping up to be the first real test of liberalism in the Trump era, with both candidates lurching for increasingly leftward policies to position themselves in contrast with President Donald Trump. …
“Virginia’s gubernatorial elections often develop into contrasts with a new president, but there’s a stark difference between now and how Republican candidate Bob McDonnell handled then-President Barack Obama in 2009. While critical of the Obama's economic record, the future governor also regularly praised Obama for supporting school choice, straddling the partisan divide. The Democrats have felt no need to do the same with the less popular Trump, whose approval rating was at 36 percent in a recent Washington Post-George Mason University poll of Virginia.” http://politi.co/2rjHzYJ
THE LATEST ON HEALTH CARE -- “Fate of Planned Parenthood funding tied to Senate moderates,” by Jen Haberkorn: “Two female Senate Republicans could stop the anti-abortion movement from achieving its most significant win against Planned Parenthood in decades. Most Republicans want to eliminate the group’s $555 million in federal funding as part of their bill to repeal Obamacare. But as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tries to solve the legislative Rubik’s Cube of finding 50 votes for repeal, he may have to drop the Planned Parenthood cut to win the support of the two Republican moderates, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.” http://politi.co/2sbbpTf
WHAT SILICON VALLEY IS READING -- “Uber Board to Discuss CEO Travis Kalanick’s Possible Leave of Absence: Board also set to vote on recommendations from a report of an investigation into workplace issues,” by WSJ’s Greg Bensinger: “Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Travis Kalanick will discuss taking a possible leave of absence when the board of directors of the embattled ride-hailing company meets Sunday morning, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“Also on the agenda when the seven-person board convenes is a vote on a series of recommendations from a report prepared by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder regarding its workplace. It was uncertain whether Mr. Kalanick would ultimately take the leave or whether the board would approve of such a measure, which would require finding a temporary replacement in short order.” http://on.wsj.com/2r7Ram8
THE JUICE …
-- SPOTTED at Mitt Romney’s E2 Summit in Deer Valley, Utah: New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Spencer Zwick, Matt Waldrip, Corry Bliss, Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kristen Soltis Anderson, Ron Kaufman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Anthony Scaramucci, Bianna Golodryga, Will Ritter, Mary Bono Mack, Lanhee Chen, Leah Malone and Andrew Liveris.
RIP -- @SecondLady: “Rest in peace Oreo. You touched a lot of hearts in your little life. Our family will miss you very much.” http://bit.ly/2sgQOxR
‘WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT WEEK’ AT THE WHITE HOUSE -- “Donald and Ivanka Trump head to Wisconsin for jobs push,” by ABC News’ Jordyn Phelps: “President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump are set to travel to Wisconsin Tuesday to join Gov. Scott Walker to tour a technical college, as the administration puts a renewed focus on its goal of job creation. The trip is just one event in a week full of activities built around promoting technical skills training and apprenticeships. [They are d]ubbing it ‘workforce development week’ ...
“The president is expected to make what the administration is billing as a ‘major policy speech’ at the Department of Labor on Wednesday, in which he’ll lay out steps the administration will take to encourage workforce development and also call for Congressional action. Ivanka Trump will also lead a roundtable with some 15 CEOs. On Thursday, the president will also host a roundtable discussion, where he will welcome eight governors from states with successful workforce development programs to the White House.” http://abcn.ws/2r7tOwT
THE NEW U.K. POLITICAL REALITY -- “For Britain, Political Stability Is a Quaint Relic,” by NYT’s Steven Erlanger in London: “In a little more than two years, Britain has had two general elections and a nationwide referendum. Each time, the politicians, pollsters, betting markets, political scientists and commentators have got it wrong.
“Once considered one of the most politically stable countries in the world, regularly turning out majority governments, Britain is increasingly confusing and unpredictable, both to its allies and itself. Far from settling the fierce divisions exposed by last year’s referendum on Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit, the election on Thursday only made them worse.” http://nyti.ms/2shhy1i
-- THE POLITICO EUROPE TICK TOCK: “How Theresa May lost it: A reluctance to delegate, hubris and campaigning ineptitude ruined British prime minister’s grand plan to secure a mandate,” by Tom McTague, Charlie Cooper and Annabelle Dickson in London: “Halfway through Britain’s seven-week snap election campaign, some in Theresa May’s team came to the conclusion that they had a problem — the candidate. At a gathering of senior staff in Conservative campaign headquarters in central London, one of May’s top operatives told the sitting prime minister that she risked crashing and burning like Sarah Palin did in 2008. ... To the operative, May was overly controlling and her inexperience would tell during a short, intense campaign. May listened with good grace ... [but] changed nothing.” http://politi.co/2t8VuSG
ACTUAL FAKE NEWS – NYT A22, “A Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorist, a False Tweet and a Runaway Story,” by Jeremy Peters: “A pro-Trump activist notorious for his amateur sleuthing into red herrings like the ‘Pizzagate’ hoax and a conspiracy theory involving the murder of a Democratic aide, Mr. Posobiec wrote on May 17 that Mr. Comey, the recently ousted F.B.I. director, had ‘said under oath that Trump did not ask him to halt any investigation.’ …
“But as the journey of that one tweet shows, misinformed, distorted and false stories are gaining traction far beyond the fringes of the internet. Just 14 words from Mr. Posobiec’s Twitter account would spread far enough to provide grist for a prime-time Fox News commentary and a Rush Limbaugh monologue that reached millions of listeners, forging an alternative first draft of history in corners of the conservative media where President Trump’s troubles are often explained away as fabrications by his journalist enemies.
“In this fragmented media environment, the spread of false information is accelerated and amplified by a web of allied activist-journalists with large online followings, a White House that grants them access and, occasionally, a president who validates their work. The right-wing media machine that President Bill Clinton’s aides once referred to as ‘conspiracy commerce’ is now far more mature, extensive and, in the internet age, tough to counter.” http://nyti.ms/2sbduPm
DEEP DIVES -- NYT A1, “Opioid Dealers Embrace the Dark Web to Send Deadly Drugs by Mail: Anonymous online sales are surging, and people are dying. Despite dozens of arrests, new merchants — many based in Asia — quickly pop up,” by Nathaniel Popper (print headline: “Drug Trade Rises in Dark Corners of the Internet”): “As the nation’s opioid crisis worsens, the authorities are confronting a resurgent, unruly player in the illicit trade of the deadly drugs, one that threatens to be even more formidable than the cartels. The internet. In a growing number of arrests and overdoses, law enforcement officials say, the drugs are being bought online. Internet sales have allowed powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl — the fastest-growing cause of overdoses nationwide — to reach living rooms in nearly every region of the country, as they arrive in small packages in the mail.” http://nyti.ms/2t91CdL
--“China’s New Bridges: Rising High, but Buried in Debt: China has built hundreds of dazzling new bridges, including the longest and highest, but many have fostered debt and corruption,” by NYT’s Chris Buckley: “The eye-popping structures have slashed travel times in some areas, made business easier and generated a sizable slice of the country’s economy, laying a foundation, in theory at least, for decades of future growth. But as the bridges and the expressways they span keep rising, critics say construction has become an end unto itself. Fueled by government-backed loans and urged on by the big construction companies and officials who profit from them, many of the projects are piling up debt and breeding corruption while producing questionable transportation benefits.” http://nyti.ms/2t9er7I
BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman:
--“Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture”: “Some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have been so far blown back.” http://bit.ly/2rULMnO
--“How the D-Day Invasion Was Planned” – in the August 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics: “Every one of the thousands of men landed in France required about 10 ship tons of overall equipment, and an additional ship ton every 30 days. The number of separate items needed was about a million. Some of these million items had to be accumulated in millions, resulting in astronomical totals.” http://bit.ly/2smaY97
--“Eternal Champions,” by Sam Borden in ESPN: “Seven months ago, Brazilian underdogs Chapecoense boarded a plane to play in the game of their lives. Instead, their biggest moment turned into a tragedy no one can forget.” http://es.pn/2r9Y3aB (h/t Longform.org)
--“Inside Trump’s secretive immigration court: far from scrutiny and legal aid,” by The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland in Jena, Louisiana: “[T]he remote LaSalle detention facility is part of Trump’s attempt to fast-track deportations. A visit reveals a hastily arranged setup beset by flaws.” http://bit.ly/2scNvHQ
--“Rolling Stone at 50: How Hunter S. Thompson Became a Legend,” by Patrick Doyle in Rolling Stone – per The Browser’s description: “Sports Illustrated asked Hunter S. Thompson for 250 words about a Las Vegas motorbike race. He gave them 2,500 words — and when they spiked the piece he took it to Rolling Stone, which wanted more. The result was Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, published in 1971. Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign ‘reshaped what it meant to write about politics’. But ‘getting work out of him was becoming difficult”. Editing him ‘was a bit like being a cornerman for Ali.’” http://rol.st/2smiHEk
--“Weddings of the 0.01 Percent,” by Julia Rubin in Racked: “Cristal! Caviar! Chris Martin! How the rich (and sometimes famous) get married.” http://bit.ly/2smtvCz
--“The truth about tarot,” by James McConnachie in Aeon Magazine: “Whether divining ancient wisdoms or elevating the art of cold reading, tarot is a form of therapy, much like psychoanalysis.” http://bit.ly/2sL1XDY (h/t ALDaily.com)
--“The Worst Ever First Day on the Job -- Punching In: My Life as a Long Haul Trucker,” by Finn Murphy in Literary Hub: “Moving companies perform four categories of moving work: local, commercial, long-distance, and international. Callahan’s work was mostly local moving, loading up someone’s house in the morning and then unloading in the afternoon at the new house. It takes the greatest toll on the body because you are handling stuff every working day. It’s the local stuff that eventually kills you or drives you to drink; more commonly, both.” http://bit.ly/2s4Nuoy
--“There Were Once Jews Here,” by Lucette Lagnado, author of “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World,” in Tablet Magazine: “During the Six-Day War, some of the Arab countries at war with Israel -- Egypt, Tunisia, Libya -- treated their Jewish populations terribly, causing them to leave en masse.” http://bit.ly/2t92OOk ... $10.01 on Amazonhttp://amzn.to/2sbmAeT
--“Dear Brazilian Government, Thanks for the Contracts,” by Michael Smith, Sabrina Valle, and Blake Schmidt on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek: “There’s graft, and then there’s the graft machine perfected by Odebrecht, one of the world's biggest construction companies.” https://bloom.bg/2rOEHqr … The coverhttp://bit.ly/2rjKL6H
--“‘Kill them, kill them, kill them’: the volunteer army plotting to wipe out Britain’s grey squirrels,” by Patrick Barkham in The Guardian: “The red squirrel is under threat of extinction across Britain. Their supporters believe the only way to save them is to exterminate their enemy: the greys. But are they just prejudiced against non-native species?” http://bit.ly/2re8OE6
--“This County Switched From Backing Obama to Trump. Here’s What Happened,” by Josh Siegel in The Daily Signal: “In 1980, manufacturing jobs comprised 38 percent of all jobs in Coos [New Hampshire]. In 2014, only 7 percent of jobs in the county were in manufacturing. Payroll wages from manufacturing have dropped from 49 percent to 9 percent since the mid-1980s.” http://bit.ly/2sL2A0v
SPOTTED: Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly enjoying “DHS Night” Friday night at the Nats game along with members of DHS’ workforce – pic http://bit.ly/2rjyfUM... Anson Kaye, partner at GMMB, in New Orleans last night, accepting a Gold ADDY award (and also a Mosaic Award) for the ad “Mirrors” (http://bit.ly/2sbAIEM) he created for Hillary for America
SPOTTED at State Department senior White House adviser Matt Mowers’ birthday party at Wet Dog Tavern last night (which coincidentally also hosted RNC alum Anna Epstein’s birthday party at the same time): Cassie Spodak, Ryan Williams, Zeke Miller, Ben Sparks, Jill Barclay, Phil Elliott, Ethan Zorfas, Ben DeMarzo, Maren Kasper, Michael Kratsios, Kailani Koenig, Tom Dickens, Elise Dietsch Dickens, Eric Jones, Alan He, Andy Polesovsky, Corey Ershow, Kelly Klass, Britt Carter.
SHIELDS/WALSH ENGAGEMENT PARTY -- THE BRITISH EMBASSY hosted an engagement party last night for Mike Shields, former RNC chief of staff and founder and partner at Convergence Media and Katie Walsh, former WH deputy chief of staff and former RNC chief of staff who is now senior advisor at America First Policies. Amb. Kim Darroch toasted the pair and called them the “ultimate political couple” and told the crowd how the couple got engaged in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, where the prime minister has met with his or her cabinet every week for 250 years. He also needled Mike, who has a British mother and is a big soccer fan, for supporting Ipswich, who he cast as much inferior to Chelsea in the Premier League. The food at the party included: herb-crusted fillet of lamb, goat’s cheese and beetroot, terrine of pork, and chili shrimp while desserts included mini Bakewell tart, strawberry tartlet and passion fruit mousse. Pics of the couplehttp://bit.ly/2sbk3Bp … http://bit.ly/2saWbhk … Reince Priebus taking a pic of the couple as they thanked friends for coming http://bit.ly/2rOGmfz … The crowdhttp://bit.ly/2rOzjDs
SPOTTED: Reince and Sally Priebus, Sean and Rebecca Spicer, Steven Mnuchin and his chief of staff Eli Miller chatting on a walk around the gardens of the embassy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Rob and Cindy Simms, Cara Mason, Jessica Ditto, Sarah and Dave Armstrong, Tim Pataki, Richard Walters, Rob Jesmer chatting with Sean Cairncross (Sean and Rob have been friends since they were 5 years old growing up in Minnesota), Brian O. Walsh, Josh Pitcock, Mike’s 15-year-old son Aidan Shields-Eads, Molly Donlin, Steven Law, Sam Feist, Mike Allen, Andrew Bremberg, Lew Eisenberg, Madeleine Westerhout, Johnny DeStefano, Renee Hudson, Michael Hoare, Lindsay Walters, Vanessa Morrone and Mike Ambrosini, Zach and Mallory Hunter.
ENGAGED --Andrew Feldman, principal of the progressive communications firm Feldman Strategies, proposed to his longtime girlfriend Megan Salzman Saturday night during Country Music Fest in Nashville. Megan is a communications manager at the early education advocacy group The First Five Years Fund. “Andrew and Megan met on OKCupid nearly four and a half years ago. Andrew points out that the ring has extra significant because the center stone was Megan’s mother’s engagement stone and she is no longer with us.” Pics http://bit.ly/2r7KrIZ ... http://bit.ly/2rOFJTb … The ringhttp://bit.ly/2rjzLGh
-- Jessica Huff, social media director for McClatchy in Dallas and a Politico alum, and Spenser Walters, an area sales rep for Duvel USA, got engaged on Friday night in Austin, Texas. She emails us: “We met in college at UT-Austin after he came back from Afghanistan. He was serving in the Marines. We had the same group of friends but I hadn’t met him yet since he was overseas. Once he was back, one of our first dates was at a restaurant in the hill country in Texas overlooking the lake, and so while visiting Austin he took me back there and proposed during sunset. It’s a very special place to us so it was perfect!” Picshttp://bit.ly/2shqCmX … The ringhttp://bit.ly/2t9rnKO
WEEKEND WEDDINGS -- Travis Considine, communications manager at Uber Texas and a John McCain and Rick Perry alum, married Morgan Smith, a reporter with The Texas Tribune, on Saturday evening at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Guests enjoyed a bluegrass band and flawless weather at the outdoor ceremony and reception. Pichttp://bit.ly/2t9jc1c … Travis’ speechhttp://bit.ly/2sQLqi2
SPOTTED: Tucker and Alexia Bounds, Brittany Bramell, Trevor Theunissen, Chris Miller, Allie Brandenburger and Ryan Mahoney, Kevin Benacci, Emily Ramshaw, Matt and Jen Hirsch, Evan Smith, Perrylanders Rob Johnson, Mark Miner, and Andy Hemming.
OBAMA ALUMNI – Meredith Carden, head of partnerships at Sidewire, got married this weekend to Micah Fergenson, law clerk at U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a small ceremony at Four Follies Farm in Tiverton, Rhode Island. The couple first met in 2009 when they were working for President Obama. Micah worked in the WH Counsel’s Office, and Meredith worked for FLOTUS in the East Wing. They lost touch, but were reintroduced by a mutual friend in 2015. Pichttp://bit.ly/2sb3PIq
--“Lily Rothman, Elihu Dietz” – N.Y. Times: “Ms. Rothman, 31, is the history and archives editor at Time magazine, overseeing its history coverage, Life.com and the magazine’s digital archive. She also wrote ‘Everything You Need to Ace American History in One Big Fat Notebook.’ She graduated magna cum laude from Yale and received a master’s degree in journalism from the City University of New York. ... Mr. Dietz, 32, is a candidate for a master’s degree in environmental management at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, where he studies the integration of renewable energy into the grid. He graduated from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M. ... The groom is a great-great-grandson and a namesake of Elihu Root, who was President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912. He is also a direct descendant of President Ulysses S. Grant. The couple met on a blind date arranged by friends in Brooklyn in 2011.” With pic http://nyti.ms/2rZpO2N
--“Alison Kenworthy, Michael Koenigs”: “The bride and groom work at ABC News in New York, where they met. She is a news producer for ‘Good Morning America.’ He is a senior coordinating producer, creating content that is used on-air and on the website. He was also the host of ‘Election Cycle,’ a series in 2016 that featured him bicycling through swing states and interviewing voters along the way. The bride, 33, graduated from Rutgers. ... Mr. Koenigs, 30, graduated cum laude from Harvard.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/2t8GB2L
--“Julia Pudlin, David Wishnick”: “Ms. Pudlin, 32, worked until earlier this year at the United States Treasury Department as a deputy executive secretary in the chief of staff’s office and a senior adviser to the general counsel. On July 10 she is to begin working as the assistant deputy general counsel for government investigations at Comcast in Philadelphia. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale, and received a law degree magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. ... Mr. Wishnick, also 32, was until recently an associate in the Washington office of Jenner & Block, a Chicago law firm. On July 12 he is to begin a fellowship, conducting research in contract law, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown, and received a law degree from Yale. ... The couple met in April 2013 through the dating app Hinge.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/2rOZSIV
--“Victoria St. Martin, Richard G. Jones”: “The bride, 36, is a general assignment reporter on the local desk of The Washington Post. She graduated from Rutgers and received a master’s degree in journalism from American University. ... The groom, 46, is to become the director of the journalism program at Notre Dame. Until recently, he was an associate editor in news administration for The New York Times, as well as the director of the newspaper’s Student Journalism Institute. He graduated from the University of Delaware and has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia. ... The couple were introduced in 2006 by a mutual friend in Yardley, Pa.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/2rOtYMA
BIRTHDAYS: Greta Van Susteren, the pride of Appleton, Wisconsin (hat tip: Tammy Haddad) ... Tad Devine, the pride of Providence who lives on Block Island, is 62 ... Kim Oates of the House Radio/TV gallery … Carrie Budoff Brown’s older sister, Jennifer Budoff, budget director for the D.C. City Council ... former Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is 87 … Lindsey Williams Drath ... Jennifer Rubin ... Michael Timmeny, SVP for government and community relations at Cisco ... Jeremy Ben-Ami, president at J Street (h/ts Jon Haber) ... POLITICO’s Reid Pillifant, Emily Dobler and Juliette Medina ... South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard is 64 ... Treasury alum David Cohen ... TJ Adams-Falconer, associate director of external affairs at Axios ... Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Tex.) is 69 ... Cesar Gonzalez, COS for Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart ... former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) is 59 ... DNC comms staffer and former HRC campaign media booker Lucas Acosta (h/t Crystal Carson) ...
... Will Rahn, managing editor for politics at CBS News digital, is 3-0 ... Jessica Franks, gov’t affairs representative for Halliburton ... Politico Europe’s Tanit Parada Tur ... Chris Campbell, Republican staff director at Senate Finance ... Kristina Edmunson ... Rachel Ruskin ... Obama alum Jonathan McBride, now a managing director at BlackRock … Mike Schoenfeld, the Blue Devils’ master of public affairs/Duke’s other Mike … Betsy Gotbaum, former NYC public advocate, is 79 ... Matt Chaban, policy director at Center for an Urban Future ... Mary Kate Cunningham ... Salesforce’s Tom Gavin, an Obama WH OMB alum … Michael Froehlich ... Caroline Barker ... Matthew Campbell ... Vanessa Chan, corporate comms. at Facebook ... Kelly Danielka Peirson ... Google’s Ramya Raghavan ... Tom Alexander, COO at 1871 Chicago and a Rahm alum ... Jacque Vilmain, the pride of Eagle Grove, Iowa(h/t Teresa) ... animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk is 68 ... Power Playbooker Dr. Oz is 57 ... actor Hugh Laurie is 58 ... Shia LaBeouf is 31 (h/ts AP)