Tag: dana rohrabacher
Assange Says Trump Promised Pardon If He Cleared Russians

Assange Says Trump Promised Pardon If He Cleared Russians

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

President Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he covered up Russia’s hacking of the DNC’s server, attorneys for the Wikileaks founder say, The Daily Beast reports.

Assange’s lawyers “said Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman, had brought the message to London from Trump.” The attorneys are arguing that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S., claiming the case was political and not criminal.

“Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange… said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks,” Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, told the court, relaying a statement produced by another Assange’s attorney.The case, however, is not political.

Assange, were he to be extradited to the U.S., reportedly could face 175 years in jail if charged and convicted on 18 charges including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

Rohrabacher, who claims he does not believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election, had earned the nickname “Putin’s favorite Congressman.”

The FBI in 2012 had to warn him the Kremlin considers him a valuable information asset – complete with a Russian code name.

In 2016 Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and other Republicans were speaking about Russia and Ukraine. McCarthy told the group, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”

‘Roll Call’s’ Ten ‘Poorest’ Members Of Congress For 2014

‘Roll Call’s’ Ten ‘Poorest’ Members Of Congress For 2014

By Steven T. Dennis, CQ Roll Call

WASHINGTON — Roll Call’s annual list of the 10 “poorest” members of Congress contains one majority whip, one party chairman, one formerly impeached judge and one senator.

As usual, the quirks of the disclosure rules make it impossible to know exactly how poor any one lawmaker is, or how rich he or she might be.

Mortgages must be reported as liabilities, but lawmakers don’t have to list home values — many Americans’ most significant investment — as an offsetting asset. As a result, someone could appear quite poor, even if they have a ton of home equity.

Listed in order of the lowest minimum net worth, the 10 “poorest” members are:

1. Rep. David Valadao (R-CA)

-$3.7 million minimum net worth

Valadao once again tops the list of “poorest” members, although his inclusion on the list could also be seen as a prime example of how imprecise congressional financial disclosure requirements are. Under CQ Roll Call’s minimum net worth calculation, we subtract minimum reported liabilities from minimum reported assets. But because they are reported in broad ranges, Valadao’s actual net worth is a mystery. His interest in a dairy farm is listed in two assets — one worth $1 million to $5 million (counted as $1,000,001 under our methodology), and another worth $500,001 to $1 million, which we count as $500,001. Five separate million-dollar-plus liabilities related to the farm drag him down.

2. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)

-$2.23 million

The longtime lawmaker still has legal debts dating from his impeachment as a federal judge in the 1980s, and still lists a single bank account with more than $1,000 as his only reportable asset. He also has a mortgage.

3. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

-$972,000

The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee has a lot of debt. In addition to mortgages on two homes and a home equity line of credit exceeding $250,000, she and her husband listed credit card debt exceeding $15,000 and a personal bank loan exceeding $100,000. Also of note, Wasserman Schultz listed $25,978 in income from her DNC gig.

4. Retiring Rep. Howard McKeon (R-CA)

-$943,000

The Armed Services chairman has two mortgages, each exceeding $500,000, and a single personal loan exceeding $10,000 that he’s had for more than a decade.

5. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)

-$924,000

Rohrabacher is new to the list, but his spot carries an asterisk. One of his biggest liabilities in the calculation — a mortgage exceeding $500,000 — was paid off during 2013. But reporting rules still require him to list that mortgage under his liabilities. Rohrabacher’s biggest reportable asset is an investment of more than $100,000 in a small biotech firm called ISI Life Sciences Inc.

6. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO)

-$848,000

A business loan from Bank of America exceeding $1 million drags down the net worth of the Methodist minister, who also has another bank loan and a mortgage alongside various pension and investment accounts. He wasn’t on last year’s list.

7. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL)

-$780,000

Quigley lists two mortgages and at least $80,000 in liabilities on three credit cards.

8. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM)

-$722,000

The only senator on the list, Heinrich reports a minimum $128,000 in assets against more than $850,000 in liabilities — all mortgages. Included in the assets was more than $100,000 for a rental property that ceased being used as a rental partway through the year, and assorted mutual funds. He didn’t make last year’s list.

9. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA)

-$700,000

Fattah’s been in the news a lot lately. His son was indicted last month and a former top aide and political adviser pleaded guilty to multiple campaign finance schemes. He reported $100,000 in assets from his wife’s investment in General Electric, against more than $800,000 in liabilities from various mortgages.

10. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)

-$671,000

The newly minted House majority whip has swank new digs in the Capitol, but is a relative pauper. He reported a minimum $4,000 in assets alongside $675,000 in liabilities. His new presence on the “poorest” list comes with a bold asterisk, too. Under the disclosure rules, Scalise has to list every liability he had over the course of the year — and because he refinanced $300,000 in mortgages, that has the effect of double-counting $300,000 in debt. Scalise ended the year with a mortgage exceeding $250,000 and a second mortgage exceeding $100,000. Still, it’s not like he’s sporting a net worth anything close to ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s multimillion-dollar Wall Street payday.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

This Week In Crazy: Obama Shot Down Another Plane, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: Obama Shot Down Another Plane, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Billy Johnson

In May, the NRA attempted to reach out to a younger audience by launching a new “Freestyle” network designed to reverse the decline in gun ownership by young Americans.

Let’s see how that’s working out for them.

In a new video for the network, titled “Everyone Gets A Gun,” NRA News commentator Billy Johnson explains how we could end America’s “anti-gun policy:” By forcing schoolkids to shoot guns against their will.

“Our gun policies are designed around the assumption that we need to protect people from guns,” Johnson says. Apparently, this is a bad thing — but thankfully, he has some solutions.

“What if instead of gun-free zones, we had gun-required zones?” Johnson asks.

He then proposes a new public education system, in which students would need to pass gun tests to graduate.

“Just like we teach them reading and writing, necessary skills, we would teach shooting and firearm competency. It wouldn’t matter if a child’s parents weren’t good at it. We’d find them a mentor,” Johnson says. “It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t want to learn. We would make it necessary to advance to the next grade.”

What could possibly go wrong?

“Gun policy driven by the assumption that we need guns would probably mean that our government would subsidize it,” Johnson added. “Perhaps we would have government ranges where you could shoot for free or a yearly allotment of free ammunition.”

Because if there’s one group of people that loves government handouts, it’s the gun rights movement.

4. Pat Robertson

Televangelist Pat Robertson checks in at number four, for a bizzare segment on his 700 Club program which advised young women on how to avoid looking like a “hoochie momma momma.”

Things got uncomfortable almost immediately.

“A lace stocking is more sensual than a bare leg,” Robertson insisted to co-host Wendy Griffith. “It’s the illusion that there’s something behind there.”

“Modesty’s hottest,” the 84-year-old added. “Once it becomes cool, then it will catch on. Until it is cool, then the girls want to be cool, they want to be hip, they want to do what’s in.”

Here’s a tip for the ladies out there: If you’re taking advice on how to be “hip” (or, even more horrifically, “sensual”) from Pat Robertson, you are doing it wrong.
3. Dana Rohrabacher

Dana_Rohrabacher

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In addition to being a terrible historian and one of the world’s least competent criminals, Dinesh D’Souza is also the director of the new right-wing film, America. The film is doing decently at the box office, but D’Souza thinks it should be doing better — and it would, if Google weren’t censoring him.

According to D’Souza, potential moviegoers who search for America are having a hard time finding the right information (and this is obviously due to Google’s liberal bias, not D’Souza naming his movie “America). Given his history of presenting himself as the victim of massive conspiracies, this claim was not particularly surprising or noteworthy.

But now Congress is getting involved.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who is best known for blaming global warming on dinosaur farts, arm-wrestling Vladimir Putin, and joining the mujahideen in Afghanistan, wants to see the tech giant held accountable.

“This doesn’t deserve to be ignored. We need to verify the statistics in some way, and I will be suggesting the appropriate committee or subcommittee have some kind of hearing on this,” Rohrabacher toldThe Hollywood Reporter. “We know there were significant incidences, and that would suggest there was intent behind Google’s nonperformance.”

Who says Congress never does anything important?

So, just to be clear: If a business wants to stop you from getting birth control coverage, that’s OK. But if it wants to stop you from seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s awful movie, that’s TYRANNY.

Of course, if Rohrabacher really wants to protect against online discrimination, he could support net neutrality. But he has repeatedly voted against legislation that would bar broadband service providers from giving preferential treatment to certain content.

2. Jody Hice

Screenshot: YouTube

Screenshot: YouTube

On Tuesday night, pastor and right-wing radio host Jody Hice became the Republican nominee for U.S. House in Georgia’s 10th congressional district.

This could be a problem for Georgia Republicans.

ThinkProgress has compiled a handy cheat-sheet of Hice’s positions, which include a belief that Muslims are not eligible for First Amendment protection, that the reasons for the Civil War “are still being debated,” that women should only enter politics if they have their husband’s permission, and that the separation of church and state was responsible for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

With this in mind, it may not surprise you that Hice’s response to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is not exactly nuanced and policy driven. In an interview with Liberty Conservatives, Hice correctly predicted that Texas would send National Guard troops to the southern border — and then all but encouraged people to open fire on the children attempting to enter the country.

“That is the reason we have a Second Amendment,” Hice said. “Ultimately, it comes down to the right of defending ourselves against tyranny should our government ever become a threat to our liberties. And when you are talking about a government that refuses to secure our borders, you are talking about a government that is not taking seriously its responsibility to defend us.”

Hice’s position is actually even worse than it looks, considering that he thinks that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to own “cannons and bazookas and missiles.”

So congratulations, Georgia: You’ve managed to replace Paul “lies from the pit of Hell” Broun with someone even more insane.

1. Erik Rush

Screenshot: Youtube

Screenshot: YouTube

After Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky, it was only a matter of time before someone on the right blamed the horrific tragedy on President Barack Obama. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Erik Rush won the race to the bottom.

In his latest column for the reliably crazy WorldNetDaily, Rush made a case that President Obama and the Ukrainian government teamed up to falsely pin the attack on Russian-backed separatists.

“From the earliest reports breaking the news that Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down over Eastern Ukraine, my suspicions were aroused,” Rush writes.

“[O]n Monday, President Obama accused Russian separatists controlling the crash site of tampering with evidence and intimidating international investigators by firing their weapons into the air. He said that this ‘begs the question, ‘what exactly are they trying to hide?'” the paranoiac continues. “Considering the Alinskyite penchant for projection so often employed by this White House, for me the question immediately became one of what Washington and Kiev might be trying to hide.”

Naturally.

Rush then goes on to suggest that all of the overwhelming evidence suggesting that pro-Russian separatists were responsible for the attack was fabricated (and anyway, evidence is for liberals).

“Given the geopolitical climate and the duplicity of the Obama administration, we may never know the whole truth, but the fact is that Washington and Kiev would have had quite a bit to gain politically in the intentional downing of this jet and the implication of pro-Russian militias,” Rush explains.

At least in this case, Rush realizes how crazy he sounds.

“Oh, yes – I realize that this will be viewed by many as another anti-Obama far-right conspiracy theory,” he says, “but I believe that it is at least as viable a proposition as the administration’s narrative.”

Once again, Rush is just asking questions. Just like he did the last time a Malaysia Airlines plane went down (like most things in life, that was also Obama’s fault).

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

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