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President Donald Trump is facing heat for his ugly attack on Democrat Joe Biden’s religious faith.
Although Biden is a practicing Catholic who has for years talked openly about his faith, Trump claimed he was “against God,” then launched into a rambling attack on Thursday:
“Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy. Our kind of energy.”
Biden later defended his faith as the “bedrock foundation” of his life.
“It’s provided me comfort in moments of loss and tragedy, it’s kept me grounded and humbled in times of triumph and joy,” he said. He described Trump as “shameful” for the attack.
“It’s beneath the office he holds and it’s beneath the dignity the American people so rightly expect and deserve from their leaders,” Biden said.
He added: “My faith teaches me to love my neighbor as I would myself while President Trump only seeks to divide us. My faith teaches me to care for the least among us while President Trump seems to only be concerned about his gilded friends. My faith teaches me to welcome the stranger while President Trump tears families apart. My faith teaches me to walk humbly while President Trump teargassed peaceful protestors so he could walk over to a church for a photo op.”
Jerry Falwell Jr., president and chancellor of Liberty University, is taking an “indefinite leave absence from his roles” at the school, the university’s board of Trustees announced Friday.
The announcement comes after Falwell, a top evangelical Christian personality in the U.S., shared ― and then deleted ― a vacation photo on Instagram in which his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped.
Falwell has faced pressure this week to resign over the photo, which he defended as having been taken “in good fun.”
Jerry Falwell Jr. (Photo: Robert Downen/Twitter)
Liberty’s board of trustees said it had requested Falwell take the leave of absence and that he had agreed to do so. The change is “effective immediately,” the board said.
Falwell, a vocal supporter of pedophile President Donald Trump, is no stranger to controversy.
Liberty was slapped with a class-action lawsuit in April after Falwell insisted on keeping campus open during the coronavirus pandemic. And last year, several current and former Liberty University employees told Politico of multiple instances of questionable behavior by the school president, including his penchant for graphically discussing his sex life with staffers and fostering a toxic, fear-based workplace.
“Everybody is scared for their life. Everybody walks around in fear,” one employee said at the time.
The former PNC Plaza office tower at 500 West Jefferson Street in downtown Louisville. Fri, Aug. 7, 2020.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Federal prosecutors are suing to seize control of the building in downtown Louisville formerly known as PNC Plaza, alleging it issecretly owned by billionaire Russian oligarchsand used to launder billions of dollars they plundered from a bank they owed in the eastern European country.
In a lawsuit filed this week in Miami, the government says the oligarchs and their operatives in the United States bought the 29-story office tower — as well as property in Dallas and Cleveland — with money “traceable to an international conspiracy to launder money embezzled and fraudulently obtained from the bank.”
The scheme was run in the United States by Ukrainians operating out of a 55th-floor penthouse office in Miami using companies with some variation of the name “Optima,” according to the lawsuit.
The Louisville tower at 500 W. Jefferson St. was purchased in 2011 by Optima Management Group LLC for $77 million, but it ran into hard times after the largest tenant, PNC Financial Services, moved out.
The 580,000-square-foot building was purchased out of receivership last year by New York-based Somera Road Inc., according to an article in Business First, but the government’s forfeiture suit says 95% is still owned by an Optima affiliate.
Jefferson County property records show the owner is listed as 500 West Jefferson Street LLC, and corporate records show the sole owner of the company is Ruairidh Henderson, who works for Somera Road in New York.
But in a telephone interview Friday, Henderson said he had never heard of the building and didn’t know anything about it.
In a follow-up interview, when a reporter pointed out that Somera Road was listed as the buyer in a published account — and that a plaque with its name is posted in the lobby — he declined to comment further.
Louisville attorney Don Cox, whose law firm has been in the building for about 10 years, said he was shocked to learn about the background of its secret owner.
The government said that over the course of more than a decade, billionaires Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov used their control of PrivatBank to steal billions of dollars of its funds.
The losses were so great that Ukraine had to bail out the bank by providing $5.5 billion to stave off an economic crisis for the country.
In 2017, Kolomoisky, one of the world’s richest men, went into self-imposed exile in Switzerland and then Israel after the government seized his prize asset, Privatbank, and accused him of embezzling billions of dollars, The New York Times reported.
He returned to Ukraine after the comic Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former business partner of the oligarch, was elected president last year.
The former PNC Plaza office tower at 500 West Jefferson Street in downtown Louisville. Fri, Aug. 7, 2020.
FBI agents this week raided Optima properties in Cleveland and Miami, according to press reports.
The suit says dozens of Optima entities in the U.S. were managed by a man named Mordechai Korf, also known as “Motti,” a Miami-based business associate of Kolomoisky and Boholiubov.
Cox said he saw Korf in the building and he appeared to be managing it.
The government said PrivatBank accounted for about one-fourth of the banking sector in Ukraine and one-third of the individual deposit accounts, but that after Kolomoisky and Boholiubov looted it, it was nationalized in 2016.
Prosecutors say the basic idea of the scheme was simple. Kolomoisky and Boholiubov requested money from PrivatBank, which, based on their control and ownership, they always received.
They rarely paid the loans back, except through new loans, the suit says.
The mechanics of the scheme were complex, according to the government. Kolomoisky and Boholiubov used a substantial collection of companies they owned or controlled to apply for loans from PrivatBank.
An army of functionaries at PrivatBank then papered and processed the loans as if they were legitimate.
A “special” credit committee at the bank approved the loans, despite misrepresentations in the applications.
When the loans came due, other loans were used to pay off the old loans, or, in some cases, they were repaid with income from the investment of the misappropriated money, the suit says.
Kolomoisky’s Boston-based attorney, Michael Sullivan, did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths per day compared to all causes US 2020
Published by John Elflein, Aug 7, 2020
As of August 6th, 2020, the average daily death toll due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the U.S. was around 936 since the occurrence of the first case on February 15th. Based on data from 2019, almost eight thousand people die every day in the United States from all causes, on average.
If this chart is true more than .64% of people who get COVID 19 will die. If everyone in the US gets infected 2,205,000 of them will die. This doesn't factor in individuals in regions of the country, specifically the Bible Belt that is known for it higher rates of smoking, heart disease, diabetes, poor diet, sloth and other co-morbid features of obesity. An educated guess suggests that the percentage of deaths for all age groups in the deep South could exceed 1%.
Preliminary maximum estimates tell us that during the 2019-2020 (October to April) influenza season, around 332 people died daily on average from influenza. Taking the latest numbers into account, it seems that since mid-February on average one out of eight deaths in the United States every day have involved COVID-19.
UPDATE:
On August sixth 1203 Americans died of COVID-19. As of August 8th 1:44 pm 1,455 Americans have died of COVID-19.
As of August 24th 12:06 am the death toll is 179,285 Americans and the day is just starting. That's 16,869 deaths in 15 days. That's 1125 per day and when the holidays come that number will probable more than double.
Thousands of bikers heading to South Dakota’s 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally will not be allowed through Cheyenne River Sioux checkpoints, a spokesman for the Native American group said on Saturday.
The decision to prevent access across tribal lands to the annual rally, which could attract as many as 250,000 bikers amid fears it could lead to a massive, regional coronavirus outbreak, comes as part of larger Covid-19 prevention policy. The policy has pitted seven tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation against federal and state authorities, which both claim the checkpoints are illegal.
A duty officer for the Cheyenne River Sioux told the Guardian Saturday that only commercial and emergency vehicles will be let through the checkpoints onto reservation land.
A number of bikers had tried to enter but had been turned back, they said. Other reservations in the region, including the Oglala Sioux, were also turning away bikers that had attempted routes to Sturgis that pass through sovereign land.
Under Cheyenne River tribal guidelines non-residents driving non-commercial out-of-state vehicles are never allowed through the reservation. During the rally, non-commercial vehicles with South Dakota plates are also not allowed through.
The clampdown comes as fears mount that mask-free bikers visiting Sturgis for the largest gathering of people since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic could spread the virus to tribal groups that are already experiencing a rise in cases.
Oglala Sioux recorded 163 cases last week, while the Cheyenne River Sioux has seen cases rise to 79, according to the tribe’s website.
The restrictions come as local law enforcement reported a convergence of bikers from all directions. According to reports, many bikers heading for Sturgis expressed defiance at rules and restrictions that have marked life during the coronavirus pandemic.
While South Dakota has fared better than most states – it ranks 38th in Covid deaths per capita, according to a Reuters tally – cases have spiked in recent weeks as hotspots move into the midwest.
During the rally, people are expected to cram bars and pack concerts with at least 34 acts playing. “Screw COVID,” read the design on one T-shirt on sale. “I went to Sturgis.”
Stephen Sample, who rode his Harley from Arizona, told the Associated Press that the event was a break from the routine of the last several months.
“I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be cooped up all my life either,” Sample, 66, said, adding that he’d weighed the risks of navigating the crowds, but the same thrill-seeking that attracted him to riding motorcycles seemed to win out.
“I think we’re all willing to take a chance,” he said, but acknowledged the trip “could be a major mistake.”
South Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, has supported holding the Sturgis rally, pointing out that no virus outbreak was documented from the several thousand people who turned out to see Donald Trump and fireworks at Mount Rushmore last month.
The rally is marking its 80th anniversary this year and typically injects $800m into South Dakota’s economy. Meade county sheriff, Rob Merwin, said: “It’s going to be a lot of people and a lot of motorcycles all over the place. People are tired of being penned up by this pandemic.”
On Friday, a worker at the event told the Guardian on Friday crowds seemed larger than in previous years and warned that Sturgis attendees were paying little heed to medical advice.
“I’ve not seen one single person wearing a mask,” said bartender Jessica Christian, 29. “It’s just pretty much the mentality that, ‘If I get it, I get it.’”
“In downtown Sturgis it’s just madness,” Christian added. “People not socially distancing, everybody touching each other. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.”
Over 60% of Sturgis 6,900 residents who responded to a city council survey in May said they wanted the rally canceled.
A month later, the council voted to move ahead, saying it would cancel official events but set up hand-sanitizer stations. Sturgis mayor Mark Carstensen said throughout the pandemic, “the state of South Dakota has been the freedom state and the city of Sturgis has stayed true to that”.
OpEd: Most of the bikers are Trumpanzees and South Dakota is a red state. The bikers are coming in from all regions of the country and you can bet a lot of them are infected with the coronavirus. This 10 day event will become a super spreader and most of the victims will be MAGAts. Oh happy day!
When President Donald Trump connected by phone last week with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson — perhaps the only person in the party who can cut a nine-figure check to aid his reelection — the phone call unexpectedly turned contentious.
The 87-year-old casino mogul had reached out to Trump to talk about the coronavirus relief bill and the economy. But then Trump brought the conversation around to the campaign and confronted Adelson about why he wasn’t doing more to bolster his reelection, according to three people with direct knowledge of the call. One of the people said it was apparent the president had no idea how much Adelson, who’s donated tens of millions of dollars to pro-Trump efforts over the years, had helped him. Adelson chose not to come back at Trump.
When word of the call circulated afterward, Republican Party officials grew alarmed the president had antagonized one of his biggest benefactors at a precarious moment in his campaign. They rushed to smooth things over with him, but the damage may have been done.
Adelson's allies say it’s unclear whether the episode will dissuade the Las Vegas mogul — long regarded as a financial linchpin for Trump’s reelection — from helping the president down the home stretch.
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
The president needs the money. With less than three months until the election, he is overwhelmed by a flood of liberal super PAC spending that his party has failed to match. Since this spring, outside groups supporting Joe Biden have outspent their pro-Trump counterparts nearly 3-to-1, an influx that’s helped to erase the president’s longstanding financial advantage.
Now, Republican leaders are pleading to billionaires for help. Trump advisers are pining for new outside groups to form, and the White House is growing anxious to see what Adelson, who has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican super PACs over the past decade, will do.
“It’s important that the word get out to donors that we need the super PACs and we need them to step up to the plate,” said Club for Growth President David McIntosh, whose group is poised to launch a $5 million TV campaign next week. “There hasn’t been the urgency on the super PAC side. But now we’re seeing that you’ve got to take care of that, too.”
The avalanche of spending on the left isn’t expected to end anytime soon. Pro-Biden groups have reserved over $70 million on the TV airwaves between now and the election, while Trump-allied groups have booked just $42 million, according to the media tracking firm Advertising Analytics.
President Donald Trump speaks with Las Vegas Sands Corporation Chief Executive and Republican mega donor Sheldon Adelson before speaking at the Israeli American Council National Summit in Hollywood, Fla., Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The Trump-blessed America First Action has been outraised and outspent by the leading pro-Biden Super PAC Priorities USA, which has been running an array of blistering commercials hitting Trump over his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans point to an array of reasons for America First's struggles. Some of the president’s aides point out that, much to their frustration, he has shown less interest in super PAC fundraising than Barack Obama did ahead of his successful 2012 reelection. He’s also shown a reluctance to do the kind of glad-handing, cold-calling, and grooming of billionaires needed to cultivate a well-funded super PAC.
Others say big Republican givers are holding back checks because of the potential business fallout of being a major Trump contributor. After word surfaced that fitness company executive Stephen Ross was hosting a Hamptons fundraiser for Trump, patrons at his Equinox and SoulCycle chains staged a boycott.
With Trump trailing badly, some donors are more interested in bankrolling efforts to save the GOP’s Senate majority. Among the contributors who’ve cut checks to the super PAC for Senate Republicans but not Trump’s are hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investor Charles Schwab, and real estate developer Mel Sembler.
Others say there is simply exhaustion with Trump and disgust at his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor who has contributed to America First Action, pointed to what he described as an “enthusiasm gap among super PAC donors.”
“We are getting clobbered,” he said. “The left-leaning super PACs are bringing a lot more air support to team Biden than the ones on the right are bringing to team Trump, unfortunately.”
The president’s advisers blame America First for its struggles. They point to its decision to wait until spring to take on Biden and to its $4 million investment on a TV commercial that spotlighted Vice President Mike Pence but made no mention of Trump. The move infuriated the president’s advisers; on the morning the commercial was launched, a Trump adviser reached out to a POLITICO reporter unprompted to blast the move.
America First Action President Brian Walsh said the organization’s nonprofit arm had chosen to feature Pence to highlight remarks he had made at an event it had hosted focused on the economic recovery.
“No other outside group has raised or spent more to help reelect Donald Trump. No other outside group has stood with our president since day one. Period,” Walsh said. “We have been on the air, online and in mailboxes since April and continue to be so today.”
While America First Action has the White House’s imprimatur, ongoing concerns about the group have triggered conversations about whether an alternative super PAC should form. While Adelson is unlikely to donate to America First Action, allies say, he is open to funding another pro-Trump outfit.
But some Republicans say that having multiple super PACs could cause confusion among donors about which outfit to support.
Christopher Ekstrom, a Dallas investor who backed Ted Cruz’s 2016 primary campaign, recalled that the Texas senator had an array of super PACs. Some potential givers, he recalled, wound up not giving to any of them.
“Team Trump was wise to centralize their super PAC after his victory and prevent their super PAC from being Balkanized,” said Ekstrom, who has given over $20,000 to pro-Trump causes this election cycle.
Word of Trump's call with Adelson was first reported by the New York Times.
Republicans are confronting an array of liberal groups, ranging from Priorities USA to American Bridge to Future Forward, all of which have booked millions of dollars in TV spending. Even as Biden has struggled to keep pace with Trump on the fundraising front, there are concerns in Republican circles that the liberal organizations could do damage to the president.
Republican strategist Ken Spain noted that "neither candidate will lose because of lack of resources at this point," but added: "The Democratic donor class has coalesced and built a rival apparatus to that of the Trump campaign and its allies."
With both sides flush with cash, there will be no shortage of TV commercials from either side. Alex Castellanos, a veteran Republican ad maker who helped to steer a pro-Trump super PAC in 2016, said voters would be more focused on the individual performances of Trump and Biden.
"The most powerful media driver in a presidential [campaign] is the candidate. The candidate makes news and drives the agenda. That’s the good news for Donald Trump," Castellanos said. "Sometimes, that’s the bad news for Trump, too."
WASHINGTON — Sounding the alarm from behind a curtain of classification, lawmakers briefed on U.S. intelligence have been practically begging the Trump administration to make public information about ongoing 2020 election meddling, even before the U.S. intelligence community’s startling new assessment.
Now that the administration has taken a step in that direction, some of those same lawmakers are insisting they’ve viewed far more intelligence that must be declassified — and soon, so voters can protect themselves ahead of an election just three months away.
“We believe more of the information that was made available in these briefings can, and at the appropriate time should, be shared with the voting public,” Sens. Marco Rubio and Mark Warner, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate’s intelligence panel, said in a joint statement. They urged the administration to “share with the voting public as much information about foreign threats to our elections as possible.”
But it was the assessment that Trump's handler Vladimir Putin of Russia is working “to primarily denigrate former Vice
President Biden” that spoke directly to what members of Congress had been trying to get into the public domain — especially when it comes to death deserving Andriy Derkach Trump supporter, the pro-Russian member of Ukrainian parliament who Evanina said is “spreading claims about corruption” to taint Joe Biden and Democrats.
“Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” the assessment added.
All 535 members of the House and Senate have access to some sensitive information, including U.S. intelligence, not available to the general public. The Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers and their top members on the intelligence committees, known collectively as the “Gang of Eight,” are privy to even more highly classified information that can only be viewed in a special secure facility.
Disclosing classified information without authorization, even if someone believes it’s in the national interest, is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. While Congress is often blamed for national security leaks, lawmakers are generally careful not to cross over into classified territory when they speak publicly.
Such was the case last year when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., went public with the fact that the Trump administration was withholding a whistleblower complaint, without disclosing what the underlying complaint was about. It turned out to center on Trump’s notorious call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In this case, Democratic lawmakers have been warning for weeks with growing urgency about what they allege is a foreign plot to “launder” disinformation through Congress to influence the election. In public hearings and TV interviews and written statements, the lawmakers have alluded strongly to a Russian plot and pleaded with Trump’s Cabinet members to make more information public, while pointedly noting they themselves couldn’t say more.
“I know other colleagues have made reference to it, but over the past few days we have received classified briefings about the continuing, absolutely shocking and startling threats from malign foreign interference in our elections that is potentially ongoing,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. “It's absolutely chilling, based on the facts we received in a classified setting.”
Last month, the four Democrats on the Gang of Eight wrote the FBI director asking for a defensive briefing for all lawmakers. Although the public portion of their letter didn’t go into detail, they included a classified addendum that several congressional aides said made reference to an ongoing investigation by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
Johnson, a Trump ally, has been leading one of two GOP Senate investigations involving Biden and his son, Hunter, that Democrats allege are attempts to smear the former vice president ahead of the election.
Derkach, the Ukrainian lawmaker, has been circulating questionable materials he says implicate Biden’s son in corruption in Ukraine, an unproven claim the Bidens have long denied. Derkach, who studied at a Russian spy academy and has worked on anti-Biden efforts with Rudy Giuliani, has said publicly that he’s sent packets of information to Johnson and other Republican offices on Capitol Hill.
Johnson, for his part, insists he’s not spreading Russian disinformation and that he carefully vets his sources. But Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, brought up secret audio recordings of Biden and a former Ukrainian president that Derkach somehow obtained and publicized.
When Murphy asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the hearing whether Derkach should be viewed as “a credible source of information,” Pompeo demurred, even when Murphy implored him not to withhold information about malign election influence.
“If, when it's appropriate, I will,” Pompeo said. “When there's still work ongoing, and there's still unsettled intelligence around these things, I'm going to try to be just a little bit more careful, senator.”
One week later, the public assessment from Evanina, who directs the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, indicated the intelligence was no longer unsettled
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“For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party,” Evanina said in his latest update to the public about 2020 meddling attempts.
Yet lawmakers briefed in a classified setting on meddling efforts are insisting even the new public assessment keeps American voters largely in the dark in the campaign’s final months. Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the public needs “specific information that would allow voters to appraise for themselves the respective threats posed by these foreign actors, and distinguish these actors’ different and unequal aims, current actions, and capabilities.”
“We hope and expect that the Intelligence Community will be even more forthcoming with the public moving forward,” the Democratic lawmakers said.
