New Video Surfaces Of Trump Sexually Humiliating, Forcibly Kissing 2004 Miss Universe
October 30 | 2016
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Mike Pence
Cue the rewrite squad: Republicans are scrambling for new talking points. CNN reports that an attorney for Mike Pence has located “about a dozen” classified documents at Pence’s home in Carmel, Indiana.
That’s pretty amazing, considering the confidence with which Pence answered this question.
\u201cQuestion: Did you take any classified documents with you from the white house? \nPence: I did not.\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1674580298
From that same interview with Pence, in which he was feigning astonishment at the idea that Joe Biden might have left the White House with classified documents after his term as vice president, Pence said:
"There would be no reason to have classified documents, particularly if they were in an unprotected area."
Where were the documents found inside former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home? In an unprotected area.
That interview wasn’t the only time Pence claimed he had no classified documents. He has made this claim repeatedly, especially as Republicans have attempted to use documents found in the home of President Biden to make demands—ranging from more investigations of Biden, to claiming this makes Biden ineligible to run again in 2024, to insisting that the Justice Department drop the investigations into documents Donald Trump refused to return, to insisting that Biden should resign.
\u201cAs documents found in an office used by Pres. Biden are in the spotlight, fmr. VP Mike Pence tells CBS News' @costareports he remains "confident" his staff ensured no classified materials were taken from his time in the White House and remain in his possession.\u201d— CBS News (@CBS News) 1673478373
Pence’s attorneys now state that a “small number” of classified documents were “inadvertently” boxed and transported to Pence’s home in Indiana. The statement also insists that Pence was unaware of the documents.
We can only assume that the next step is for Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel. After all, Garland appointed an investigator to look into the documents at Biden’s home on January 12. In fact, Garland went out of his way to appoint an investigator who had been appointed as a U.S. attorney by Donald Trump and was well known as a hard-line conservative to investigate the documents at Biden’s home.
\u201cUpdated my handy dandy chart to make it clear which details the journos chasing the soccer ball are ignoring.\u201d— emptywheel (@emptywheel) 1674582665
Surely that means an attorney appointed by Biden or Obama will be appointed as a special counsel to look into the documents at Pence’s home. After all, Garland insisted that appointing such an investigator for Biden was necessary to show the independence of the Justice Department.
If Garland doesn’t appoint another such investigator now, it will be nothing short of a signal that the DOJ goes easy on Republicans. Scratch that. It will be another signal.
And when it comes to any comparison between what Joe Biden did and what Donald Trump is still doing
\u201cCorrect. When Joe Biden steps forward and says "I took them on purpose, those documents belong to me, and I'm not giving them back, and also I just magically declassified them in my mind," then we can both-sides it, but until then, this is just a (serious) screw-up.\u201d— Tom Nichols (@Tom Nichols) 1673480395
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
After being banned for almost two years, Twitter has officially reinstated the account of white nationalist leader Nick Fuentes, Rolling Stone reports.
Twitter banned Fuentes for "repeated violations" of the platform's rules in July 2021, and when he attempted to create another account in October after Musk took over, the platform banned him again.
\u201chttps://t.co/QfH909oAFo\u201d— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@Nicholas J. Fuentes) 1674563407
The reinstatement of his account comes two months after Twitter CEO Elon Musk posted a poll to Twitter, asking users whether the accounts — he, himself, suspended — that “have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam” should be reinstated. Following the majority “yes” vote from users, the billionaire began restoring accounts of MAGA Republicans, such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, who'd been banned from Twitter since 2013. Rolling Stone referred to "the return of extremist figures to Twitter" as a "hallmark of Musk's early tenure.
However, Musk is not treating all Twitter users equally. The tech CEO had suspended a select list of journalists, himself, last year from the platform "for, he said, violating the company’s terms of service." A few weeks later, he asserted that the journalists "were welcome to return to the platform" only if they would "abide by Twitter's rules."
Washington Post journalist Paul Farhi reported, “Twitter has privately demanded that the suspended journalists delete the tweets that drew Musk’s ire in the first place — a condition the reporters have refused to accept. The result is a stalemate: The suspended journalists remain in Twitter purgatory, unable to access their accounts.”
Unlike his treatment of the journalists, Musk is granting Fuentes, 24, free reign back on the platform.
The extremist first gained notoriety as a Boston University student attending the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he and other attendees chanted “Jews will not replace us.” He later founded the “America First Political Action Conference,” which has been attended by far-right MAGA Republican House of Representatives members like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
But more recently, the extremist anti-Semite met with former president Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West, now known as “Ye,” — who, at the time, also publicly spewed antisemetic remarks — at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
According to Rolling Stone, prior to reinstatement, Fuentes has been able to expand a "cult-like following" called the Groypers, and although the coalition describes itself as "Christian-conservative," members and followers often "weaponize antisemitic and racist tropes against their targets."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.