Ex-Marine gets 12 years for smuggling fentanyl into the US from Mexico
April 22, 2023, 1:18 PM ET
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Mark Meadows is the 'single most important witness' — on multiple federal cases: legal expert
June 06, 2023
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified to a grand jury in the federal investigations of Donald Trump, according to a bombshell report on Tuesday. He could reportedly be a very important witness.
Speaking to CNN, legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig outlined just how valuable a witness Meadows is, in not one but both of the federal investigations into the former president.
"Pretty big win for the special counsel, Jack Smith, to secure the testimony of Mark Meadows," said anchor Jake Tapper.
"Yeah, Jake, this is significant in a few respects," said Honig. "First of all, Mark Meadows was one of the last remaining major witnesses who we knew was outstanding, who, until this point, we did not know had testified. Now he has testified. If it's in a grand jury, he has testified under oath. He obviously was very close to Donald Trump throughout the lead-up to and during January 6th. I think he's the single most important witness as to January 6th and, as you said, he would have relevant information, potentially, as well about the retention of sensitive or classified documents that underlies the Mar-a-Lago examination and investigation. So Mark Meadows is a crucial witness on both of the matters that the special counsel has before him right now."
"I personally, as a journalist, have a lot of questions for him about these conversations," said Tapper. "One of the questions is, what exactly did he convey to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, if anything, leading up to that time? There's talk of them reaching out to Meadows and Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who are the individuals that have the relationships with those far-right paramilitary groups."
"I think that's the issue with Mark Meadows: he seems to have been a fulcrum of communications," said Honig. "Everything went through him, and Meadows did cooperate briefly with the January 6th Committee and turned over those hundreds or thousands of very revealing text messages where we saw members of Congress and members of Donald Trump's family and White House advisers reaching out to him saying, you've got to do something, you have to get him to do something. Now Mark Meadows then suddenly hit a wall and basically said, I'm not cooperating then, and he was held in contempt by the January 6th Committee, although DOJ declined to prosecute him."
"One big question I have about the testimony that we're now learning Mark Meadows gave is, under what conditions did he give that testimony?" Honig added. "We know that he raised an executive privilege objection, basically saying, I can't testify about these confidential communications with the president, but he lost that fight. He and Donald Trump lost that fight in court. I wonder whether Mark Meadows took the Fifth and had to be given immunity in order to testify, and it's really important to know, did he have any agreement in place with prosecutors that underlied his testimony?"
Watch below or at the link.
Elie Honig weighs in on Mark Meadows testimony www.youtube.com
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Buttigieg: Republicans target LGBTQ people because they 'don’t want to talk about' their 'radical positions'
June 06, 2023
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg blasted Republicans attacking the LGBTQ community on Tuesday, saying the reason right-wing lawmakers have decided to target them is they don’t want to talk about their “radical positions,” including opposing President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure law and other accomplishments, like $35 insulin.
Appearing on MSNBC, Secretary Buttigieg was asked to weigh in on the Human Rights Campaign’s declaration earlier in the day, of a national emergency in the U.S. for LGBTQ people.
“We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year,” the organizations says on its website. “More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record.”
HRC also published a detailed chart by state on various issues, including bans on gender-affirming care, sports participation, drag, or support for forced student outing.
And while HRC points to the more than 75 bills that have been signed into law this year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says it’s currently tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills across the country.
“Our country is at a very real risk of backsliding on freedom and equality but that is exactly why we continue to push. There has been extraordinary work that’s been done just in this presidency,” Buttigieg said, responding to HRC’s national emergency declaration. He specifically pointed to “the President being able to sign the Respect for Marriage Act.”
“And if you zoom out to the progress that’s been made in the last 10 or 15 years, including the ability of somebody like me to be standing here doing this job, it’s extraordinary, and yet, now you see the attacks on the LGBTQ community, especially on the trans community and what they’re going through,” Buttigieg, who is the first out gay U.S. Cabinet Secretary, told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing.
“And I think it’s being done out of the perception that it is politically convenient to target vulnerable groups. And honestly, I think where it largely comes from is folks who don’t want to talk about why they were against the infrastructure loans, building roads and bridges. They don’t want to talk about why they were against $35 insulin that the President delivered for Medicare recipients. They don’t want to explain why they were for these radical positions that speak to what those people are worried about their everyday lives.”
“So they’re focused on targeting some of the people who already do not have a very easy time going about everyday life,” he said.
"Think about how hard it is to be a teenager to begin with. But think about how hard it is to be a teenager when you realize that you are different when you’re coming to terms with your gender identity or you’re coming to terms with realizing that you’re gay or lesbian.”
“The last thing you need in your life are politicians trying to score political points by making things worse for you. We’re gonna stand together, whether it’s pride or just on any given day and say no, we’re going to expand, not withdraw, the freedoms and equalities we won in this country, and we’re going to build on them.”
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Less than a week after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration held its first public hearing one year into its study into Unidentified Flying Objects or Unidentifed Aerial Phenomena, "a former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin."
According to a report published on the science website the Debrief on Monday by investigative journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal – who authored the 2017 New York Times exposé revealing the Pentagon's secret UFO division — David Charles Grusch "filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegalretaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time. Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record."
Grusch, "a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA's co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force," per Kean and Blumenthal.
Grusch spoke exclusively with News Nation about what he knows.
Recovery units "are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed," Grusch told correspondent Ross Coulthart. "I thought it was totally nuts and I thought at first I was being deceived, it was a ruse,” Grusch told Coulthart. "People started to confide in me. Approach me. I have plenty of senior, former, intelligence officers that came to me, many of which I knew almost my whole career, that confided in me that they were part of a program."
The outlet noted that it "confirmed Grusch's credentials and resume, but has not seen or verified the alleged proof he said he provided to investigators. Grusch said he can’t show NewsNation the evidence for national security reasons. Grusch also said he has not seen photos of the alleged craft himself, but has spoken extensively with other intelligence officials who have."
Nonetheless, Grusch said that "there is a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting the US populist which is extremely unethical and immoral" and declared that "we're definitely not alone. The data points, quite empirically that we're not alone.”
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