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Michael Flynn: foreign lobbyist for Turkey

9/20/2020

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PicturePhoto by U.S. Institute of Peace , distributed under a CC-BY 2.0 license.
The Mueller investigation discovered that retired Gen. Michael Flynn worked for the government of Turkey during 2016 without registering with the U.S. government as a foreign agent. In March 2017 he eventually did file his Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statement, but he omitted information about the true nature of the work, for which the Flynn Intel Group was paid more than $500K.




For example,  Flynn's firm was hired to influence
  • American opinion about who orchestrated the recent attempted-coup against Erdogan
  • efforts to get cleric Fethullah Gulen, a legal resident of the U.S. whom Erdogan accused,  extradited to Turkey
FLYNN'S SUPPLEMENTAL FARA STATEMENT, MARCH 2017

In Dec 2017 Mr. Flynn admitted to doing the above, in addition to lying to the FBI while serving as Trump's transition team and as national security adviser about the content of his telephone conversations/negotiations with Russian officials about sanctions recently imposed by the U.S.
SIGNED STATEMENT OF OFFENSE
  
In 2020 the DOJ (under AG William Barr) surprisingly moved to drop the charges against Flynn for lying to the FBI, though Flynn had already pled guilty. Consequently the lead prosecutor, Brandon Van Grack, resigned in protest. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan does not want to drop the case without examining whether doing so is in the
 public interest. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will review the judges request.
 
Update 10/7/2020:

Attorneys for both Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok filed letters accusing the government of recently  altering evidence provided to Flynn's defense team for their Sept. 24 filing to dismiss Flynn's case:
  • misdating a page of Peter Strzok's notes to imply that Joe Biden initiated discussion of the Logan Act, even though other disclosed documents reveal that idea had been discussed previously at the FBI.
  • heavily redacting and misdating a page of Andrew McCabe's notes

Now the Justice Department has admitted that it "inadvertently" altered evidence provided to Flynn's defense by adding sticky notes to pages of FBI notes before scanning them.
COURTHOUSE NEWS SERVICE ARTICLE ABOUT ALTERED NOTES
 
Update 11/26/2020: Pardoned by Donald Trump
Update 01/05/2021: Spoke at the pro-Trump rally in Washington D.C., on the eve of the capitol insurrection.
Update 01/27/2021: The Defense Department inspector general's office closed their investigation against LTG Flynn and forwarded several administrative matters to the Acting Secretary of the Army for review and appropriate action.

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He liked showing how easily fake news spreads, and making $ while doing so

9/13/2020

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PictureDenver Guardian/Public Domain
Case study: Jestin Coler
CEO of Disinfomedia and founder of ~25 domains, including The Denver Guardian, a blog (2016 - 2018),  NationalReport.net (a satirical website) and others

Incentives: The game of showing how easily fake news spreads, and the income from the ads on his websites
Excerpts from Laura Sydell's NPR article about Mr. Coler, November 23, 2016
  • "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.
  • He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it.
  • And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn't give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him.
  • "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says.
  • Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.
After retiring from the fake news industry, Jestin was interviewed by NewsWhip, May 24, 2017 . Excerpts:
  • "A lot of the things that contributed to our success wouldn’t translate that well to a reputable publication. We did more guerrilla techniques, building Facebook users that were fake, infiltrating groups that were susceptible to the content we were going to spread around."
  • "The confirmation bias is what you’re going for. You don’t need a story that’s over the top or clickbait. As long as your site looks legitimate and you have these fictional stories that people want to be true, they’ll spread it all around. You’re just fitting into the mentality that a lot of people already have."
  • We talk a lot about anger and politics, are there other emotional trends that work?
    "The things that make people happy always safe bets. Videos of cute dogs, soldiers returning home—those feel-good type stories that no matter what party you’re from, you’ll enjoy. Humor and satire, in my experience, doesn’t sell nearly as well as stories that invoke anger or fear. The only thing that sells better than sex is fear."
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The Faithless foundation

9/12/2020

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PicturePhoto by Donald J. Trump Foundation / Public domain
The Donald J. Trump Foundation, a "charitable" organization, was dissolved by court order in 2019 due to misuse of funds for personal, business and political purposes taking credit for some donations to the Foundation that were made by others failure by the Trump family (directors) to provide oversight or adopt legally required policies and procedures.
AG SUMMARY OF NEW YORK SUPREME COURT ORDER  


The $1.8 million remaining assets of that foundation, as well as a $2 million penalty, were subsequently distributed among eight legitimate New York charities. Donald J. Trump agreed to 19 "admissions" acknowledging his personal misuse of funds. Meanwhile Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump completed compulsory training on the duties of officers and directors of charities.   
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Dual flush toilets

9/11/2020

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Picture



Save water by installing a dual flush toilet in your home, such as
KOHLER WELLWORTH

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Get free credit reports

9/10/2020

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The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 also permits you to request at least one free credit report per year from each of the four major credit reporting agencies. Only one website, annualcreditreport.com, is officially sanctioned for getting reports from the largest three agencies: Equifax and Experian and TransUnion. It will be necessary to provide your Social Security number and answer some questions to prove your identity.

The free reports do not include your credit score. If you click on a button trying to get your score, that is not part of the free service. The button you want looks like the red one above. If you encounter any screen asking you to enter credit card information, you have detoured away from the free service.

GET FREE EQUIFAX, EXPERIAN AND/OR TRANSUNION REPORTS

The fourth  agency is less well-known.
GET FREE REPORT BY POSTAL MAIL FROM INNOVIS

  
Adverse credit history may impede your ability to rent an apartment, obtain loans at favorable interest rates, or apply for a job -- especially a job handling finances or sensitive data. File a dispute to get your data corrected if you find errors in a credit report. Monitoring your credit reports can also help you detect an occurrence of identity theft.
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Opt out of prescreened offers of credit

9/8/2020

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Reduce junk mail and your risk of identity theft by opting out of prescreened offers of credit and insurance. The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), provides consumers the right to opt out.

Official website: OPTOUTPRESCREEN.COM

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