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House Intel chair Nunes exposes Comey’s big DOSSIER LIE; challenges him to RE-TESTIFY before his committee

(National Sentinel) Self-Defense:  House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., defended his panel’s release of the scandalous FISA memo and disputed former FBI Director James Comey’s criticism of it.

During a Fox News interview with newsman Brett Baier, Nunes also extended an invitation to the fired former FBI director to reappear before the Intelligence Committee to answer new questions about the so-called “Trump dossier,” a political opposition document Comey and others within the Obama administration misrepresented as legitimate intelligence before the FISA court in order to get a surveillance warrant so they could spy on a President Donald J. Trump campaign figure, Carter Page.

Nunes was also highly critical of the politicized Obama-era FBI, Justice Department and State Department, which he compared to a “banana republic.”

“Mr. Comey had a chance in January, February, March, April…all the way til June (2016) to come clean about who for the [falacious anti-Trump dossier],” said Nunes, according to this transcript.

“He was asked about it in January [2017] and he said very clearly that he knew that it was Republicans who started the dossier — which was a lie — and then when asked and probed further, ‘Well, who finished the dossier?’ he didn’t know,” Nunes continued.

“Now maybe he was lying, maybe he didn’t know. But both seem a problem,” Nunes added. “So Mr. Comey is welcome to come back, tell us when he learned that the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the dossier.

“He’s welcome to come back and share that information, but I think the American people understand that the FBI should not go to secret courts using information that was paid for by the Democrats to open up investigations and get warrants on people of the other political party,” Nunes said.

“That the type of stuff that happens in banana republics.”

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Nunes hits BACK at ‘spurious’ FBI, DOJ objections to FISA memo release; NO more ‘stonewalling’ the American people

(National Sentinel) Transparency: House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. pushed back against FBI and Justice Department officials on Wednesday after they attempted to convince him and President Donald J. Trump not to release a four-page “FISA memo” that purportedly shows pre-election bias against the Republican nominee.

“Having stonewalled Congress’ demands for information for nearly a year, it’s no surprise to see the FBI and DOJ issue spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies,” Nunes said in a statement posted to the committee’s website.

“The FBI is intimately familiar with ‘material omissions’ with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts, and they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses,” he continued.

“Regardless, it’s clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counter-intelligence investigation during an American political campaign. Once the truth gets out, we can begin taking steps to ensure our intelligence agencies and courts are never misused like this again.”

Democrats and some officials within both agencies have been working behind the scenes and publicly to both delay the memo’s release and discredit it as a partisan attack.

Also Wednesday, the committee’s ranking minority member, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, objected to the memo’s release after minor editorial changes had been made to it in order to satisfy FBI concerns.

Schiff claimed the memo had been “secretly altered” and therefore must be reviewed again by the entire committee before it is released.

“BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release,” he tweeted, including a copy of a letter he sent to Nunes.

But in response to Schiff, the House GOP noted that changes were minor and editorial in nature while accusing the California Democrat of trying to unnecessarily delay the memo’s release.

“In its increasingly strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo, the Committee Minority is now complaining about minor edits to the memo, including grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves,” said the GOP statement.

“The vote to release the memo was absolutely procedurally sound, and in accordance with the House and Committee rules. To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves,” it added.

Previous reports have claimed that the memo lays out abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by Obama-era FBI and DOJ officials to improperly obtain a surveillance warrant to spy on President Trump’s campaign.

The memo also allegedly names certain department and bureau figures who may have been involved in the scheme.

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Carlson and Coulter DESTROY establishment media MYTH that ‘America LOVES Dreamers!’

(National Sentinel) Legal Immigration: On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program Friday night, he and conservative author, pundit and lawyer Ann Coulter discussed and debunked statistics widely cited by the ‘mainstream’ media that most Americans support so-called “Dreamers” — illegal immigrants brought into the country by their parents.

Slamming “phony polls” that purport to show that most Americans back liberal immigration policies, Carlson noted that many lawmakers, including a sizable percentage of Republicans, seemingly ignore Americans’ concerns on the issue.

“There’s a deeper question about democracy here,” Tucker said.

“So, if the public has been clear in poll after poll about what it wants and what it doesn’t want on the question of immigration, and it went to the trouble of electing Donald Trump against all odds and all predictions, just to express that view, and it still can’t get what it demonstrably wants in immigration, is it possible for the public to have a say in this?”

“No, it’s amazing. I mean, it is beyond what you just described,” Coulter noted, as reported by The Daily Caller. 

“I was looking through Nexis transcripts today. The fact that Donald Trump is president–it was utterly implausible. It’s like a Hollywood movie. And this isn’t the first time,” she continued.

“You keep hearing these phony polls being being cited by the media, showing that American love Dreamers! They love them! Just like that one you interviewed, who couldn’t love her? They love them!”

She went onto note that recent polling indicates that a majority of Americans want less immigration — legal and illegal. Recently, the Trump administration “distributed a Harvard-Harris poll that showed Americans generally approve of the president’s immigration plan, believe people should enter legally, and that those who are allowed in should contribute to American life in a positive way,” the Washington Examiner reported.

“…[E]very time they have an actual ballot, every time, for 20 years now, [Americans] will vote against bail for illegals, against government services for illegals, they’ll vote for Donald Trump, they’ll vote for English as the national language,” said Coulter, author of several top-selling books including one on immigration called, “Adios, America.”

“This Harvard poll that just came out that shows more Americans would like zero immigration than our current immigration policy. But the way they pull off these phony polls, is by, I mean, I didn’t need to read Saul Alinsky to know this is not a good way to take a poll–they personalize it,” Coulter continued.

“They say do you want to support Juanita the maid? They make it about a specific person. No, I want questions like ‘Do you want more or less immigration?’ ‘Do you think people who break the law should be able to become citizens and start collecting welfare right away?’ ‘Do you think we should we be dumping millions of low-wage workers on the country?’”

Coulter then noted recent reports indicating that President Donald J. Trump may be supportive of a plan that gives many so-called DACA recipients -a slow but sure path to citizenship.

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“Which is going to come back–I mean, Trump thinks he’s a genius and in some ways he is,” Coulter said. “He has an uncanny sense for what are popular issues, that’s why he won. He may be able to roll over the never-Trumpers, but if he continues down this line, former-Trumpers may be a much more difficult category for him.”

“We need an immigration time-out so we can assimilate those who are here, like we did throughout much of the 20th century,” editor-in-chief J. D. Heyes said.

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Tucker Carlson schools Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith over publication of BOGUS dossier: ‘You ran this because it was TRUMP’ (Video)

(National Sentinel) Media Mishaps: On his Wednesday night program, Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith on the one-year anniversary of his publication of the debunked Trump dossier, which he defended as being in the public’s interest.

Carlson asked Smith to comment in regards to a lawsuit filed by President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, who was named in the dossier as having traveled to the Czech Republic to meet with Russian officials — a trip Cohen says he never made, which has since been substantiated.

The dossier itself is a document of kind of obvious central public importance,” Smith said Wednesday. “That was clear a year ago. It’s actually a lot clearer now. Before we published it, as we knew then, important elected officials intelligence agencies were investigating this document.”

For his part, Carlson said that Smith, as a journalist, should never have published the dossier without first verifying it.

“You see a lot of stuff that you don’t pass on, because you don’t know if it’s true. And the words hang in the air and you libel someone in effect, so you don’t run it,” Carlson said. “But you did run this, because it was Trump.”

Smith stood by his decision to publish the dossier and said that he believes recent media coverage vindicated his decision.

“But you’re making a retroactive argument,” Carlson responded. “You’re arguing, ‘well okay it’s at the center of news, so we were right a year ago to run it.’ And I’m actually not even attacking you for running it, I would just like you to acknowledge partisanship played a role.”

Carlson added that had Smith obtained information that appeared damaging to President Obama, he would never have run it.

“If you came across a dossier in the middle of the Obama administration that laid out in some detail how he was born in Kenya and had a weird personal life, you would never run that. Because you would be attacked by every one of your friends,” Tucker said, laughing.

“The truth is this stuff was unverified a year ago, it remains unverified,” Carlson added. “We are no closer to proving that [Trump] collaborated with the Russian government.”

Cohen is not the only person suing Buzzfeed for defamation. Lawsuits have also been filed by Russian technology firms named in the dossier, and former low-level Trump campaign official Carter Page has also filed suit against Yahoo and HuffPo over allegedly libelous allegations regarding contact with Russian operatives.

Watch:

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EXPOSED: Newly revealed texts from FBI agent Strzok, lawyer Page, show MORE anti-Trump bias; Congress probes pair for possible news LEAKS

(National Sentinel) Unprofessional: Newly revealed text messages sent by FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok show even more bias against President Donald J. Trump than previously reported.

As noted by The Hill‘s John Solomon, Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, the two shared a National Public Radio article on the opening of Trump’s new hotel in Washington and could “barely contain their disdain,” the report noted.

“That’s one place I hope I never stay in,” Page wrote.

Strzok replied. “Agreed. I hope it fails horribly.”

After one of the presidential debates, Strzok also had an observation about then-Fox anchor and current NBC anchor Megyn Kelly. “Vaguely satisfying to see Megyn Kelly (who had Botox and looks HORRIBLE) utterly going after Trump,” he texted, as Solomon reported.

In addition, the new texts and other information that has been turned over to Congress has sparked an additional probe into whether Strzok and Page illegally leaked classified information to several media outlets.

GOP-led committees in the House and Senate are poring over messages that appear to indicate Strzok and Page had advance knowledge of a Wall Street Journal report close to election day and plotted how they would feign stumbling upon it so they could share it with colleagues.

“Article is out, but hidden behind paywall so can’t read it,” Page texted Strzok on Oct. 24, 2016.

“Wsj? Boy that was fast,” Strzok texted back, using the initials of the famed financial newspaper. “Should I ‘find’ it and tell the team?”

The messages, reviewed by The Hill, also reveal how the two allegedly plotted how to make it appear as though they innocently stumbled upon the article, such as in a Google News alert.

“I can get it like I do every other article that hits any Google News alerts, seriously,” Strzok wrote, noting further he didn’t want his team hearing about the article “from someone else.”

Strzok had a key role early on in the Russia meddling probe and was a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team until last summer, when initial anti-Trump texts between him and Page were discovered.

But now Congress wants to know whether the pair is responsible for a series of damaging leaks against Trump and his administration.

“The Hill reviewed nearly three dozen texts in which the two agents discussed articles, tried to track down information about a specific New York Times reporter or opined about leaked information in stories that they fretted were ‘super specific,'” the news site noted.

Republican investigators say the messages suggest that the pair had media contacts but they don’t necessarily prove they leaked information.

Also, Solomon reported:

Separately, the House Intelligence Committee says it has obtained information that Mueller’s current deputy in the Russia probe, respected Justice Department financial fraud prosecutor Andrew Weissman, had contact with the news media last April, shortly before Mueller was named special prosecutor, according to a letter the committee has sent the department.

In a deal with current FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Justice officials have promised to provide the Intelligence Committee with information on the Weismann contacts later this week.

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Expert: James Comey LIED to Congress, as Weiner-Abedin CLASSIFIED emails prove

(National Sentinel) Under Oath: Former FBI Director James Comey was not truthful with Congress when he testified earlier this year when he discussed classified emails that bureau investigators found on a laptop in 2016 belonging to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, said Chris Farrell, the Director of Investigations and Research at Judicial Watch.

During an appearance on Fox Business‘ “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Farrell noted that at least five of the emails turned over to his organization on Friday by the State Department in response to a FOIA lawsuit contained classified information. At the time they were discovered, Weiner was married to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton when she served as President Obama’s secretary of state.

At the time of the emails, Abedin was married to Weiner, a onetime Democratic congressman who began a 21-month prison sentence last month after being convicted of sexting a 15-year-old girl.

Fox News reported Friday that Comey said during a congressional hearing earlier this year that he believed Abedin regularly forwarded emails to Weiner for him to print out so she could give them to Clinton.

Farrell insisted that Comey’s testimony to Congress was erroneous.

“I know that people have been jailed for a fraction, a tiny fraction, of what has now been made public and documented through Judicial Watch’s litigation and so this really cries out for a legitimate investigation being done,” he told Dobbs.

“Your earlier clip with Mr. Comey talking about intent is a fraud,” he continued. “There’s no requirement for proving intent under that particular citation I gave you a moment ago. Intent is irrelevant. The fact that the loss or the mishandling of the national defense information occurred – that’s the crime.”

He continued, “Frankly, these documents conform the foundation for an indictment of Comey and [Peter] Strzok, the investigator who is at the center of this entire nightmare of a security problem.”

Earlier in the day, Bernard Kerik, New York City’s former police commissioner, tweeted essentially the same thing.

“The possession, transmission, and failing to secure these documents are all federal crimes that do not require intent. Why hasn’t someone been prosecuted? Any member of the , or would’ve been prosecuted in a second for a violation that substantial,” he wrote.

Comey famously claimed in a July 2016 press conference and later to Congress that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified email, which is not a legally actionable term.

The former FBI director had initially written in his statement that her behavior was “grossly negligent,” which is a legally actionable term. However, Strzok later changed that portion of his statement to “extremely careless.”

Critics of the widening classified email scandal say the latest findings among documents released by the State Department indicate that criminal charges not only should have been recommended a year ago, but that they should still be filed.

“This is a major victory,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a Friday statement. “After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents.”

Fitton added, “That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law.”

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Trump, first lady Melania, receive STANDING OVATION at Palm Beach church service (Video)

(National Sentinel) Grateful: President Donald J. Trump and first lady Melania Trump received a standing ovation when they attended a Christmas Eve church service in Palm Beach they were married at, Bethesda-by-the-Sea.

The Palm Beach Post’s Matt Morgan tweeted a photo of the Trumps arriving at church, “President Trump and Melania have arrived at the church and were greeted by Rev. James Harlan #TrumpInPalmBeach”

White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino tweeted out a picture of the first couple arriving.

Here is a pool report on the service:

President Trump departed the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-sea at 12:19

The president was seated in the third row in the spot closest to the aisle, on the right side of the church (if youre in the back looking toward the altar). The First Lady was the only member of the presidents family to attend mass with him.

Reverend James Harlan, the churchs rector, gave the homily. It centered around the themes of the power of words and Gods light. He began by quoting Nelson Mandela, whom he noted rebelled against his government for its systemic oppression.

The Mandela quote: It is never my custom to use words lightly. If 27 years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.”

Harlan connected the power of words especially as it pertains to Gods word to their ability to educate, enlighten and draw out the best in people, while he also cautioned words can be used to cause harm.

Your words can have as much destructive potential as they do healing, Harlan said. Gods word is pure light.

A crowd of people encircled the president to shake his hand when it came time for the peace-be-with-yous. The churchs live stream cut to another angle once the president stood up to take communion. Once it cut back, the president was standing in his pew, and appeared to be holding the communion, which he then took.

Songs:

* God rest ye merry gentlemen
* O come let us adore him”

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Ingraham: Here’s the REAL REASON why Hanks won’t screen ‘The Post’ at the White House

(National Sentinel) Trump Hate: Last week on her Fox News program, host Laura Ingraham was critical of actor Tom Hanks, who said earlier this month that he wouldn’t attend a screening of his new movie at the White House if asked.

“I don’t think I would,” Hanks told The Hollywood Reporter when asked if he would screen the new film, “The Post,” with President Donald J. Trump, adding that before November 2016 — when Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton — he never could have imagined what would happen next.

But according to Ingraham, there’s one main reason why Hanks said he wouldn’t screen his movie with Trump: Publicity.

“After the year Hollywood had with (Harvey) Weinstein and (Kevin) Spacey et al, you’d kind of think that its brightest stars would practice some humility on the whole moral barometer front,” Ingraham said in her opening segment.

“Well, no such luck,” she added. “Instead one of America’s favorite actors is insulting the president just to sell his movie.”

She went onto say that Hanks is a fine actor “who has given us so many iconic moments on the screen.” However, when it comes to politics, she suggested he doesn’t really know what he is talking about.

“Imagine a world, Hanks explained, where the president treats papers like The Washington Post as purveyors of fake news,” she said, summing up Hanks’ point of view. “Hey Gump, maybe he treats them that way because half the time they are.”

Hanks’ film is about The Washington Post‘s reporting of a Republican scandal involving President Richard Nixon’s attempt to cover up the Watergate break-in.

In his interview with THR, Hanks compared the Nixon administration’s flouting of the First Amendment to the Trump administration’s current treatment of the news media. He also said that many alleged controversies during the first year of the Trump administration led him to finally take action.

“And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts,” the actor said. “You don’t take to the ramparts necessarily right away, but you do have to start weighing things.”

Ingraham then suggested Americans “cast away Tom Hanks,” a reference to the actor’s 2000 film “Cast Away.”

“I kind of like him better, by the way, on the deserted island talking to that volleyball,” she said. “That was cute. That’s the dialogue that I enjoy from Tom Hanks. Riveting. I almost thought it was a basketball, I had forgotten.”

As for having Hanks, a longtime Democrat supporter, at the White House to screen the film, Ingraham suggested that the actor wouldn’t have to worry about it because the president wasn’t likely to ask him anyway.

The L.A. Times reported that moviegoing is likely to drop to a 22-year low this year, based in part on streaming and bad sequels, the paper said.

Critics note that Left-wing politics practiced by most stars along with a series of high-profile scandals is also to blame.

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Rosenstein REFUSED to say whether FBI paid for infamous ‘Trump dossier’

(National Sentinel) NOversight: During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refused to answer a congressman’s direct question as to whether the FBI helped pay for the now-infamous “Trump dossier.”

In response to the question from Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., Rosenstein suggested he knew the answer but would not say for certain.

“Did the FBI pay for the dossier?” DeSantis asked.

“I’m not in a position to answer that question,” Rosenstein responded.

“Do you know the answer to the question?” the Republican DeSantis followed up.

“I believe I know the answer, but the Intelligence Committee is the appropriate committee…” Rosenstein began.

That led DeSantis to interject that his panel “had every right to the information” about payments related to the dossier, especially since the Judiciary Committee has oversight over the Department of Justice, which the FBI falls under.

Congressional Republicans have long sought information about who created and helped finance the dossier.

Earlier reports have noted that the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton helped finance at least some of it.

The dossier was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. Earlier this year reports noted that “Steele and the FBI struck an informal agreement that he would be paid to continue his investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia,” The Daily Caller reported.

“It has been reported that Steele was never paid for his work, though the FBI and DOJ have not publicly disclosed those details.”

Earlier as well, CNN reported that Steele was compensated at least partially for his work investigating Trump.

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Clintons caught hiding contributions from lobbyists tied to Uranium One scandal

(National Sentinel) Clinton Corruption: Former President Bill Clinton and Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hid donations from a firm tied to the controversial Uranium One, as indicated in documents obtained by The Hill.

Reporters John Solomon and Alisan Spann reported that the Clintons understated donations they received in 2008 and 2016 from a firm hired by a Russian nuclear company involved in the deal.

The pair reported:

The Clinton Foundation’s donor disclosure site vastly understated support that the Clinton Global Initiative received from APCO Worldwide, a global communications firm that lobbied on behalf of Russia’s state-owned nuclear company.

The site, created to detect conflicts of interest for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because of her family’s various charitable efforts, shows APCO gave between $25,000 and $50,000 over the last decade.

But according to interviews and internal documents reviewed by The Hill, APCO was much more generous and provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in pro-bono services and in-kind contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) between 2008 and 2016.

An internal CGI document that was prepared in the fall of 2011, for example, lists APCO’s in-kind contribution for that year alone at $275,000. Also, the firm’s annual report pertaining to its charitable contributions featured a large increase in support for the Clinton charity in 2011.

“In 2011, APCO significantly increased its pro-bono support for CGI and, for the first time, our team managed the press around CGI’s America meeting, as well as its global Annual Meeting,” APCO stated in a report submitted to the United Nations Global Compact.

The donations jump came as APCO recieved $3 million in 2010 and 2011 from Rosatom, the Russian nuclear firm that managed to obtain 20 percent of all U.S. uranium reserves.

Uranium is a strategic asset since it is used in nuclear power and the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

“Rosatom paid APCO to lobby the State Department and other federal agencies on behalf of its Tenex subsidiary, which sought to increase its commercial uranium sales in the United States,” The Hill reported.

The Uranium One deal is controversial because Hillary Clinton, in her role as secretary of state, had a part in approving the deal — even as, apparently, donations flowed from interested parties to her and her husband’s charities.

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said the donations had nothing to do with her policy decisions while at State.

He also blamed the renewed focus on the deal on President Donald J. Trump and conservatives. He said it was simply “more of the right doing Trump’s bidding for him to distract from his own Russia problems, which are real and a grave threat to our national security.”

The Hill noted further:

The donor disclosure site was set up under a special ethics agreement when Clinton became President Obama’s secretary of State. It declared that CGI was a part of the Clinton Foundation, acknowledged that CGI commitments included “in-kind contributions” and said that all donors to the Foundation would be disclosed annually even as CGI was to be spun off into its own entity.

However, foundation officials told the news site that’s not quite how things worked out in practice.

The agreement “did not include the disclosure of in-kind and pro-bono donations to CGI, in part because the IRS doesn’t treat them as reportable charitable revenues. Only cash contributions to CGI were reported, the officials said.”

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Trump diplomacy: Three UCLA basketball players held for shoplifting in China have been released

(National Sentinel) Presidential Power: Three UCLA basketball players accused of shoplifting and arrested by Chinese police have now been released, likely due to intervention from President Donald J. Trump who is returning today from his first Asian trip.

Media reports say that Freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley were detained in Hangzhou on suspicion of theft after their team defeated Georgia Tech in their season-opening game in Shanghai as part of the annual Pac-12 China game.

Ball is the brother of LA Lakers guard Lonzo Ball.

Their UCLA teammates returned to California on Saturday without them, leaving many to speculate when or whether the Chinese would release the trio.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott thanked Trump, the White House and the State Department for their efforts in resolving what he called “the incident with authorities in Hangzhou, China.”

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The president said Tuesday he had a long conversation about the three players’ status with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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Injustice: Traitor Bergdahl gets NO prison time

(National Sentinel) Desertion: Former U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who walked away from his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and recently pleaded guilty to desertion, will not serve another day in prison, a military judge decided Friday.

The ruling, which is certain to outrage serving military personnel and veterans, also angered the Commander-in-Chief, who tweeted after the ruling that it was “a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military.”

The military judge at Fort Bragg, North Carolina did give Bergdahl a dishonorable discharge, reduced his rank to private and said he must forfeit pay equal to $1,000 per month for 10 months. He made no further comments.

Military lawyers wanted stiff punishment for the admitted deserter because of wounds suffered to service members who were sent in search of Bergdahl after he left his post, fearing he had been captured instead.

Shortly after he broke a cardinal regulation for military members and abandoned his post, he was captured by Taliban forces and held captive for five years, though not much about his time in captivity has been publicized.

Following the ruling the White House had no official comment, instead referring reporters back to a statement President Donald J. Trump made several weeks ago. The president said he “expects all military personnel who are involved in any way in the military justice process to exercise their independent professional judgment, consistent with applicable laws and regulations.”

Bergdahl’s defense lawyer, Eugene Fidell, said he will now attempt to have the case dismissed, saying Trump’s comments on the campaign trail last year and again when Bergdahl pleaded guilty in October should serve as the basis for dismissal.

He said Trump had already caused one of the “most preposterous” legal situations in American history.

After Bergdahl entered his guilty plea, Trump said on the campaign trail, “We’re tired of Sgt. Bergdahl, who’s a traitor, a no-good traitor, who should have been executed.” He added that “thirty years ago, he would have been shot.”

Legal experts disagree over whether Trump’s statements as a presidential candidate who had yet to win the election can be given the same weight as statements made as president.

As to the judge’s sentence, several military experts believe that it sends the wrong message to current members of the armed forces, that desertion — which is a very serious offense — will be tolerated on some level.

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Mueller to announce first indictment Monday in Trump ‘collusion’ probe

(National Sentinel) Team Trump: Special counsel Robert Mueller is set to announce the first indictment in his probe of alleged “collusion” between members of the Trump campaign and Russia during last year’s election on Monday, two sources leaked to NBC News.

The sources did not disclose who was set to be indicted or the nature of the charges but did confirm that the announcement would be made tomorrow.

On Friday, CNN was the first to report the Mueller’s office was set to announce its first indictment in the probe in what appeared to be a targeted leak to a friendly news outlet. CNN has been reliably ant-Trump administration throughout President Donald J. Trump’s short tenure.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, slammed the leaks, saying that it was obvious someone “violated their oath” of secrecy.

“In the only conversation I’ve had with Robert Mueller, I stressed to him the importance of cutting out the leaks,” Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s kind of ironic that the people charged with investigating the law and the violations of the law would violate the law.”

Gowdy, himself a former federal prosecutor, added: “Make no mistake, disclosing grand jury material is a violation of the law. Somebody violated their oath of secrecy.”

The charges come as calls came last week for Mueller, a former FBI director, to resign. Mueller was head of the bureau when it discovered evidence that Russian operatives were violating laws against racketeering via money laundering and bribery as they worked to get the sale of a Canadian firm company with uranium holdings in the U.S. approved. The company, Uranium One, was eventually sold to Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom, which gained control over 20 percent of all strategic U.S. uranium in the deal.

The sale was approved by the Obama administration, which went ahead despite the FBI’s discovery of law-breaking. Reports noted that Mueller failed to notify Congress of the bureau’s findings.

Fox News also reported that Mueller’s investigatory tactics have also been called into question. During a raid by the FBI in July of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s Virginia home,  a source close to the investigation told Fox News at the time the scope of the search was “heavy-handed, designed to intimidate.”

red-alert-FO-160x600In addition, the prosecutor Mueller tapped to help lead the investigation has also come in for some scrutiny. Sydney Powell, a former federal prosecutor, recently wrote about Weissmann in a piece titled, “Judging by Mueller’s staffing choices he may not be very interested in justice.”

Andrew Weissmann, the prosecutor tapped by Mueller to help lead the investigation, has also received criticism. Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor recently wrote about Weissman in a piece titled, “Judging by Mueller’s staffing choices, he may not be very interested in justice.”

He accused Weissmann — who once directed the Enron task force — of “prosecutorial overreach” and said that members of Trump’s campaign team could be subject to similar judicial abuse.

“What was supposed to have been a search for Russia’s cyberspace intrusions into our electoral politics has morphed into a malevolent mission targeting friends, family and colleagues of the president,” Powell wrote in The Hill. “The Mueller investigation has become an all-out assault to find crimes to pin on them — and it won’t matter if there are no crimes to be found. This team can make some.”

Powell went on to cite a number of cases where Weissmann won convictions that were later overturned.

There has been speculation that former Trump campaign chairman Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn as likely targets.

What are your thoughts?

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Vietnam vet and four-time Super Bowl Champ Rocky Bleier gives HIS view of NFL protests and it’s epic

(National Sentinel) NFL Protests: Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rocky Bleier won four Super Bowl championships with his team over the course of an 11-year career, one season of which was interrupted after he was drafted into the Army in 1968 and sent to Vietnam.

Following his rookie season, Bleier lost part of his right foot in combat overseas and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. When he returned home, because of his injury he had to fight again — to get back into the NFL.

He did, and he spent multiple seasons with one of the first NFL dynasty teams. But given his legendary play and his blood spilled on the battlefield, he is perhaps one of the most qualified players to comment on the current ‘social justice’ protesting going on in today’s league.

“It’s very simply this: This is a workplace, you are at the stadium, you are working that day, this is not a platform for protest,” Bleier, 71, told Yahoo Sports. “The American people, they can’t go to their workplace and start to protest about whatever may be happening in their life. That wouldn’t be allowed and that shouldn’t be allowed in the NFL.”

Continuing, he noted, “It’s not a violation of the First Amendment at all. You have off days, you can do it outside of the stadium or on other platforms, but not the gameday platform. It’s a very simple question and people are making it more complex than it really is.”

Bleier’s position is reflective of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has said any of his players who don’t stand for the National Anthem won’t be on the field. But he also noted that players and owners shared the blame.

“The was a lack of leadership there on the owners’ side as well as the Players Association long before to nip whatever was coming down the road after the Colin Kaepernick situation a year ago, in the bud,” Bleier said. “It should never have gotten to this point, nobody has stepped up to say ‘No, this is not what we do on game day.’”

“It was a year ago that Kaepernick took a knee, so if you’re the commissioner or an owner, you have to be proactive in saying this: ‘If it never happens again, fine, but if it does, what is our position?’” Bleier added.  “Somewhere along the line, I have not seen the leadership maybe I expected from the commissioner and the owners in this situation.”

Liberal sports commentators are quick to say that the protests were dying out last year and early in the season, but that’s not altogether accurate: There were enough of them to draw the attention of President Donald J. Trump, who openly criticized kneeling during the anthem or sitting on the bench, and since then protests have grown exponentially.

The protesting — and the league’s inability to adequately address it, as Bleier suggested — has taken its toll. Viewership is down across the league and on all networks that broadcast NFL games, as well as stadium ticket revenues and sales of NFL gear.

“You can’t allow it to continue to drag on,” Bleier said. “Otherwise, it will be like an open sore that heals and if you peel off the scab again and it will continuously be there.”

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Great again: Consumer confidence, markets, hit new highs

(National Sentinel) Economy: So much winning. That’s what Donald J. Trump promised us as the Republican presidential nominee. And 10 months into his presidency, the country has already notched some yuuuuge victories.

From CNBC:

U.S. stocks reached record highs on Friday as investors bet on another strong earnings season.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent and hit an all-time intraday high, with information technology and materials leading advancers. The Nasdaq composite also hit a record, advancing 0.3 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average traded 49 points higher and notched an all-time high.

Bank of America jumped 1.6 percent on better-than-expected earnings. Netflix added 1.5 percent, crossing above $200 for the first time to an all-time high as investors bought the stock ahead of its earnings next week.

The three major indexes were also on track to post slight weekly gains. The S&P 500 and the Dow were poised to post five consecutive weekly gains, while the Nasdaq was on track for three.

“People are generally expecting a strong earnings season,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt.

“The good news is the number of companies currently beating estimates, and the margin by which they are doing so, is running at a clip well above what these same 31 companies have recorded, on average, over the past three years,” adds Nick Raich, CEO of The Earnings Scout, in a letter to clients.

Meanwhile, consumer confidence just happens to also be at new highs, per Bloomberg:

U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly surged to a 13-year high as Americans’ perceptions of the economy and their own finances rebounded following several major hurricanes, a University of Michigan survey showed Friday.

The jump in sentiment, which was greater than any analyst had projected, may reflect several trends: falling gasoline prices following a hurricane-related spike; repeated record highs for the stock market; a 16-year low in unemployment; and post-storm recovery efforts driving a rebound in economic growth.

The advance in the main gauge spanned age and income subgroups as well as partisan views, according to the report. Almost six out of every 10 consumers thought the economy had recently improved in early October, the university said.

“While the early October surge indicates greater optimism about the future course of the economy, it also reflects an unmistakable sense among consumers that economic prospects are now about as good as could be expected,” Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan consumer survey, said in a statement. “Indeed, nothing in the latest survey indicates that consumers anticipate an economic downturn anytime soon — which contrarians may consider a clear warning sign of trouble ahead.”

As in the past committed Leftists in academia, the media and on Capitol Hill will credit everything and everyone except the president of the United States. But you can bet your assets if markets and consumer confidence were down he’d get all the blame.

Cutting red tape, reshaping policies to reduce the excessive role of government in the economy, reforming health care in a meaningful and competitive way and pushing for major tax cuts for job creators are having a cumulative effect — both on the economy and on Americans’ attitudes about the future.

That’s Trump — not Obama, not Hillary, not Democrats, and certainly not Congress — Trump.

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