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More civilians were killed by Afghan and international coalition forces in Afghanistan in the first half of this year than by the Taliban and other militants, the U.N. mission said in a report released Tuesday. The report apparently refers to civilian…
July 30, 2019Read More
The GfK consumer sentiment indicator, based on a survey of about 2,000 Germans, edged down to 9.7 from 9.8 a month earlier. Household spending and construction have become important drivers of growth in Europe’s largest economy as its exports falter. …
July 30, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — European nations, alarmed by Iran’s capture of a British oil tanker, are mounting a response to protect their commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf. The Royal Navy has started to escort British ships, and a…
July 30, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Jordan Rochester was a 22-year-old working on his Masters in economics at the University of Warwick when David Cameron pledged to hold a Brexit referendum.Today, at 28, he’s Mr. Brexit to colleagues and clients. The currency strategist a…
July 30, 2019Read More
The allegations come at a time when the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, has narrowly survived the unprecedented loss of all funding from the United States, its largest donor, and is currently enjoying “an equally unprecedented wave of sup…
July 29, 2019Read More
Dominic Cummings, picked last week by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to be his top adviser, is a combative and unorthodox political strategist credited with masterminding the unexpected 2016 Brexit vote victory. The director of the official Leav…
July 29, 2019Read More
A month after President Donald Trump said he would allow U.S. companies to resume selling to blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei , his administration has done little to clarify what sales will be permitted. The lack of clarity on what …
July 29, 2019Read More
Two Somalia refugees living in Arizona were charged with providing support to a terror group after federal agents say they were planning to travel from Tucson to Egypt to join the Islamic State. Both Tucson residents, who had received government docum…
July 29, 2019Read More
Alex WongDonald Trump’s new pick for Director of National Intelligence played a role last year in popularizing what briefly became one of the right’s most easily-debunked conspiracy theories about the investigation into Trump and Russia, offering what he presented as evidence of an anti-Trump “secret society” operating within the FBI.Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, has been an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia before the 2016 election. Like other Republicans, he seized on text messages between FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who were having an affair, as proof that the FBI had been biased against Trump in the run-up to the election. One of Ratcliffe’s biggest contributions to the Republican pushback on the investigation came in January 2018, when he claimed that he had seen text messages between Page and Strzok that suggested the existence of a “secret society” working against Trump. But Ratcliffe’s claims, which were subsequently amplified by pro-Trump media outlets, fell apart when the fuller text exchanges became public.Ratcliffe’s congressional office didn’t respond to a request for comment.Trump Invites Putin to Visit, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats Learns About It From Tweet Read to Him on StageRatcliffe, who was tapped by Trump to replace the departing Dan Coats, first made his “secret society” claim on a Jan. 22, 2018 appearance on Fox News. “We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of his election, there may have been a ‘secret society’ of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI, to include Page and Strzok, working against him,” Ratcliffe said. “I’m not saying that actually happened, but when folks speak in those terms, they need to come forward to explain the context.”According to then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who appeared alongside Ratcliffe on Fox News that day, it was Ratcliffe himself who was responsible for discovering the supposedly incriminating text messages. Ratcliffe followed that cable news appearance by promoting his claim on Twitter, claiming the text messages were proof of “manifest bias” at the top of the FBI. “The texts between Strzok and Page referenced a ‘secret society,” Ratcliffe tweeted. EMBED – https://twitter.com/RepRatcliffe/status/955599629206335488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw While he was making these claims, Ratcliffe never described the full text message he was quoting from. Still, right-wing media picked up on his explosive notion of an anti-Trump cabal inside the FBI. The Daily Caller declared that Ratcliffe had found proof of an “Anti-Trump ‘Secret Society’ At FBI.” “FBI CONSPIRACY?” tweeted Fox News host and Trump confidante Sean Hannity, who later deleted the tweet. A day after Ratcliffe’s initial claim on Fox, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) moved the conspiracy further, claiming that Republican investigators had learned of meetings of an off-site “secret society” from an “informant.” Johnson eventually had to back down from his proclamation, saying he had only heard the term from the Strzok-Page text messages. Despite the excitement that greeted Ratcliffe’s claims among Trump supporters, the actual “secret society” text message turned out to be less sinister than initially suggested. ABC News published the full text message two days after Ratcliffe made his viral Fox appearance, revealing that the “secret society” text referenced calendars of a “beefcake” Vladimir Putin that Strzok was giving out as gifts to people who worked on the Russia investigation. “Are you even going to give out your calendars?” Page wrote. “Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”Shortly after the ABC story broke, discussion about an anti-Trump “secret society” largely disappeared from right-wing media. Even Johnson, one of the secret society’s most enthusiastic promoters, conceded there was a “real possibility” that Page’s text message was a joke. Ratcliffe himself appears to have abandoned the claim, at least publicly. He hasn’t tweeted about it since he first pushed it in Jan. 2018. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
July 29, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — The best question to ask about the departure of Dan Coats as director of national intelligence is what took President Donald Trump so long to drive him out? Coats minced no words when warning of the threat Russia and other foreig…
July 29, 2019Read More
The Senate failed Monday in a bid to override a trio of vetoes issued by President Donald Trump, allowing the administration to move forward with plans to sell billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s decisi…
July 29, 2019Read More
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