Rand Paul warns the US will 'emulate China' by banning apps like TikTok
March 29, 2023, 7:07 PM ET
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Trump allies are 'chasing shadows' in Capitol riot footage – but not finding bombshells: analysis
June 06, 2023
Donald Trump's allies have been hunting for evidence to exonerate the former president and his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but one analyst said they've been "chasing shadows."
House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave access to surveillance footage from the riot to two Trump-backing writers, Julie Kelly and John Solomon, after giving video to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, but none of them have managed to produce a bombshell to "reshape the obvious reality of the day," wrote Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.
"It’s been a week since the world learned that Solomon and Kelly would get access to the tapes," Bump writes. "In an interview on June 2, Kelly said that Solomon, who got access earlier, was 'going to have some really bombshell revelations in the next several days here on key controversies of that day.'"
"So what has he reported?" Bump adds.
Solomon, whose reporting on Ukraine was central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment, has revealed that then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi was evacuated "Hollywood-style" from the Capitol, that a door into the Capitol was left open -- which had been reported in October 2021 -- and that footage shown by the House select committee had grafted audio onto silent surveillance video.
Kelly hasn't done any reporting since viewing the video but insists she's seen enough to mind-bendingly suggest the riot was presented as a violent threat to democracy to indict Trump for his role in that violent attack on the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying President Joe Biden's election win.
"The existence of this cache of footage from the Capitol is simply one of several things ... that the right believes will prove their political positions correct," Bump writes. "To date, scrutiny of the material by sympathetic actors has not done so by any objective measure. But perhaps it might, so right-wing voices can continue to hype that possibility and keep their audiences on the hook."
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'Shocked and deeply offended': 9/11 families condemn PGA deal with Saudi-backed golf group
June 06, 2023
The men's PGA agreed to merge with the LIV Golf tour in a huge announcement Tuesday – much to the chagrin of families of 9/11 victims that have spoken out against the Saudi-backed LIV group for months.
A statement posted by Semafor reporter Max Tani revealed the group is "shocked and deeply offended" by the merger. They explained that the LIV Golf league is "bankrolled by billions of sports washing money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi operatives played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now it is bankrolling all of professional golf."
"PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA's unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia's reputation," said 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada.
"But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones. Make no mistake — we will never forget."
Last summer, Monahan made it clear that he was standing in solidarity with those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, the statement continued. He even "wondered aloud on national television whether LIV Golfers ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now — as does he. PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed. Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money — it was never to honor the great game of golf."
Last summer, the families also protested Donald Trump bringing the LIV tournament to his country club. Trump said he'd never heard of the 9/11 families and claimed that no one officially knows who was involved with the hijacking of the planes.
The 9/11 report from the Commission report revealed 16 pages that were declassified in 2021 by President Joe Biden, showing that the hijackers had ties to Saudi nationals living in the U.S.
"The document, written in 2016, summarized an FBI investigation into those ties called Operation ENCORE," said a 2021 NPR report. "The partially redacted report shows a closer relationship than had been previously known between two Saudis in particular — including one with diplomatic status — and some of the hijackers. Families of the 9/11 victims have long sought after the report, which painted a starkly different portrait than the one described by the 9/11 Commission Report in 2004."
"We have not found evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two hijackers," the Commission wrote about Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy. Ten years later, the FBI said that Thumairy "tasked" someone else to help the hijackers once they arrived in Los Angeles. About a year before the attacks, they were referred to as "two very significant people."
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A European spy agency told the CIA it knew of a Ukraine special operations team plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline three months before explosions damaged the undersea system last year, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The newspaper cited US intelligence allegedly leaked earlier this year by a low-level US Air National Guard computer technician who had access to large amounts of highly classified materials.
The leaked documents indicated that an unnamed European intelligence body told the US spy agency in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine military divers reporting directly to the country's military commander-in-chief were planning the attack.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, were rocked by underwater explosions on September 26, rendering them useless and cutting off a potential source of billions of dollars in earnings for Russia.
The apparent sabotage sparked a region-wide emergency as it cut off crucial supplies of energy for Europe just as the war had sent the price of oil skyrocketing.
Accusations were made against several countries including Russia, the United States and Ukraine, but all denied responsibility.
The Post, citing unnamed officials, said that after the Central Intelligence Agency learned of the alleged bombing plot, the United States told allies including Germany about it.
It said the original European intelligence on the plot made clear it was not a rogue operation, and that it was overseen by military chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi without the knowledge of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Post report is supported by information gathered by German investigators that a six-person team using false passports took a large sailboat from the German port of Rostock last September to undertake the operation.
The sailboat was rented by what appeared to be a front company.
According to German media reports last week, metadata from the emails used to rent a sailboat tie them to Ukraine, and the president of the front company also lives in Kyiv.
However, Danish media recently reported that a Russian navy vessel specialized in submarine operations was photographed near the location of the sabotage just before it happened.
© 2023 AFP
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