USA - Australian relations: Donald Trump asked Australian PM to help divert Russia inquire by Mueller

It was recently reported that Trump also asked Australian PM to help divert Russia inquiry by Mueller in a phone conversation

The revelation comes as Mr Trump faces impeachment proceedings at home over a call with another foreign leader.

Read more at: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49887733

USA: Donald Trump launches furious attack on Robert Mueller and Russia Probe as the noose starts to tighten around his neck

Donald Trump launches furious attack on Robert Mueller

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47430996

Brexit: Britain's messy EU divorce faces new showdown - by Kim Hjelmgaard

 British Prime Minister Theresa May will try to win the support of her divided Cabinet on Wednesday for a draft deal to leave the European Union after months of stalled talks, bickering and setbacks that have threatened the messy divorce known as Brexit and May's leadership.

Britain is due to leave the bloc in March. On Tuesday, it broke a four-month-long logjam with EU negotiators over the terms of its withdrawal, including a plan to keep the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland open after Brexit.

But pro-Brexit lawmakers in May’s divided Conservative Party are angry, saying the agreement will leave Britain tethered to the EU after it departs the bloc. Failure to secure Cabinet backing will leave May’s leadership in doubt and Brexit in chaos.

"Theresa May’s Brexit agreement is the worst deal in history," Nigel Farage, the British politician and broadcaster who helped engineer the June 2016 Brexit vote, tweeted. Farage represents Britain in the European Parliament in Brussels and is also under investigation by the US Mueller probe as to his involvement with the Russians and Donald Trump's "Hanky Panky" with the Russians during his Presidental election campaign, and after his election as President.

May herself told lawmakers on Tuesday that the draft deal "takes us significantly closer to delivering what the British people voted for" when they decided to leave the bloc. She said the deal means that Britain will "take back control" of its laws and borders "while protecting jobs, security and the integrity of our United Kingdom."

Note EU-Digest: a majority of the British population in the latest polls show they want a new Referendum on Britain's  EU membership. 

 Read more: Brexit: Britain's messy EU divorce faces new showdown

USA: The Mueller Probe: Mueller seeking more details on Nigel Farage, key Russia inquiry target says

Robert Mueller is seeking more information about Nigel Farage for his investigation into Russian interference in US politics, according to a target of the inquiry who expects to be criminally charged.

Jerome Corsi, a conservative author, said prosecutors working for Mueller questioned him about Farage, the key campaigner behind Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, two weeks ago in Washington.

Corsi said investigators for the special counsel also pressed him for information on Ted Malloch, a London-based American academic with ties to Farage, who informally advised Donald Trump and was interviewed by FBI agents earlier this year.

“They asked about both Nigel and Ted Malloch, I can affirm that they did,” Corsi told the Guardian on Tuesday. “But I’m really not going into detail because I respect the special counsel and the legal process.”

Mueller’s interest in Farage comes amid questions in the UK about whether Russia attempted to influence the June 2016 vote to leave the European Union, and Brexit’s most vocal political supporters.

Note EU-Digest: Nigel Farage - the King of the British Brexit drama is now also eyed by the Mueller investigation, in particular, as it relates to his connection with the Russians and Donald Trump. 

Once again we see how dangerous populism is to basic human rights values, whether it comes from Donald Trump, Marian LePen, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Jörg Haider ,Jair Bolsonaro, Victor Orban, Lech Kaczyński, and the list goes on and on.

 Populism is a fast growing danger and must be stopped, before it destroys humanity..

Read more: Mueller seeking more details on Nigel Farage, key Russia inquiry target says

USA: What is next - Martial Law? Trump Is Taking Out His Enemies And Turning Toward Mueller - by Jonathan Chait

Donald Trump: the US self appointed Fuhrer

A history professor of mine once attempted to explain to our class why Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, when the virtual impossibility of a land invasion of a country as vast as Russia was already well known in 1941.

The answer, he concluded, was that Hitler was put on earth to invade Russia. His loathing of Bolshevism, his twisted Darwinian mania for the acquisition of land and resources, and his fixation with his own military genius all led him to a decision that was both inevitable and impossible.

This is a good way to think about President Trump’s approach toward the Robert Mueller investigation. Trump is not a Nazi or a fascist, and I am not drawing any moral parallel between the two. The similarity, rather, lies in the way an apparently irrational decision can be made logical and necessary by a certain kind of twisted internal logic that can escape outsiders. I have long believed Trump is headed toward a confrontation with Mueller, and those who doubt he will finally take the plunge are making the mistake of judging Trump by the standards of a normal president and not his own demonstrated pathologies. The sacking of FBI staffer Andrew McCabe for alleged unauthorized leaking to the news media, and comments by Trump’s lawyer John Dowd calling for the firing or Robert Mueller add to an ominous drumbeat.

Read more: Trump Is Taking Out His Enemies And Turning Toward Mueller

USA: Mueller Investigation: Russian tycoon's son-in-law Alex Van Der Zwaan admits lying to US election investigators

The son-in-law of a Russian oligarch has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

Dutch lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan, 33, admitted to the US District Court in Washington he misled US Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office about communications with political consultant and lobbyist Rick Gates.

Mr Gates was deputy to Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump in the run-up to the presidential election, who has also been indicted.

London-based Van Der Zwaan is married to the daughter of German Kahn, a Ukrainian-Russian billionaire who made his money in oil and is one of Russia's wealthiest men.

The lawyer admitted he lied to FBI investigators about conversations related to a report he helped prepare on the trial of a Ukrainian politician, Yulia Tymoshenko, as part of his work for Ukraine's justice ministry.

Read more: Russian tycoon's son-in-law Alex Van Der Zwaan admits lying to US election investigators

USA - the Russian investigation - the noose is tightening: Indictment Makes Trump’s Hoax Claim Harder to Sell - by Mark Landler and Michael D. Shea

He brushed it off as a hoax. He mused that it might be China, or a guy from New Jersey, or “somebody sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds.” He said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had assured him it wasn’t true. And, he added, “I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.

President Trump has never stopped belittling the charge that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. But on Friday, with the indictment of 13 Russians for orchestrating a vast, well-funded operation to interfere in the election, those denials collided with a mountain of evidence arrayed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

For Mr. Trump, who has tried to discredit Mr. Mueller’s investigation as a politically motivated witch hunt, it was a direct assault on the version of reality that he has sought tirelessly to create.

By laying out a meticulous case for how Russia tried to tip the electoral scales toward Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Mueller has made it much harder for the president to dismiss the investigation as mere politics. He may also have made it harder for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller himself, since, as some Democratic lawmakers argued, that would look like an attempt to help Russia further undermine American democracy.

On Friday afternoon, after Mr. Trump left Washington for his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, the White House issued a defiant statement claiming that the investigation had uncovered no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“It’s time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories, which only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia, and do nothing to protect the principles of our institutions,” the president said in a statement.

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, argued that any attempts to remove Mr. Mueller or Mr. Rosentein “will have to be seen as a direct attempt to aid the Russian government in attacking American democracy.”

Read more: Indictment Makes Trump’s Hoax Claim Harder to Sell - The New York Times

USA: Trump partisans attack America from within – by Dana Milbank

Thursday was Pearl Harbor Day, the anniversary of one of the deadliest attacks on American soil and perhaps the most unifying day in American history.

This year some of us marked Pearl Harbor Day by attacking America from within.

For five hours on Thursday, President Trump’s partisans delivered a reckless and sustained attack on the FBI and the special counsel. They amplified Trump’s claim that the FBI’s “reputation is in Tatters — worst in History” and that Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe, which has already secured guilty pleas from two Trump campaign officials and the indictments of two more, is part of a system that is “rigged,” “phony,” “dishonest” and using a “double standard.”

Shamefully, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee launched an all-out assault on the special counsel and the FBI — choosing to protect Trump at the cost of Americans’ faith in the justice system and the rule of law.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairman, echoed Trump’s “tatters” claim and told FBI Director Christopher A. Wray that Mueller’s probe and the Clinton email probe have been tainted by “bias.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he has a “hunch” that “pro-Clinton, anti-Trump bias” at the FBI was behind a secret “warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., called former FBI director James B. Comey an “egomaniac rogue” and speculated that the FBI paid for the “dossier” on Trump’s activities in Russia.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., speculated that anti-Trump bias led the FBI to conclude that Russia interfered in the U.S. election, and he threatened Wray: “I think you’re walking into a contempt of Congress.”

Trump routinely attacks institutions, including the courts, the media, the electoral process, the intelligence community, the IRS, the United Nations, foreign allies, the Justice Department and the pope. That’s the strategy of the autocrat: Don’t believe the courts or the justice system or the electoral process or the legislature or the media or my accusers. Believe me.

When lawmakers back up Trump, however, they give a cue to Republican voters that such out-of-bounds attacks on our system are legitimate. That’s how they normalized Trump. That’s how we’re getting Moore. That’s why Republicans are being convinced the FBI and federal prosecutors are corrupt.

The FBI is one government agency Republicans historically held in high regard (70?percent had a favorable view in a 2015 Pew Research Center poll), but a poll by the University of Texas in June — after Trump’s attacks began — found favorable views of the FBI among Texas Republicans at 43?percent.

Likewise, multiple polls found that Republicans are far more likely to believe sexual-harassment claims against Democrats than against Republicans; Democrats see the claims as credible regardless of the perpetrator’s party.

This tribalism is meant to help Trump, and Moore. It undermines America.

Read more: Trump partisans attack America from within – The Moderate Voice