More I think about it, the stranger this is. Pardons are typically handled by the DAG, and don’t go to the AG or his office at all. Really no reason he should be aware of pardon documents in the normal course.

A U.S. Army regiment held its annual ball last night at the Trump Hotel DC— so soldiers were potentially sending money up the chain of command. And pics of them in dress uniform in front of the hotel's logo made it to social media.

Commander-in-chief’s hotel hosted The Old Guard’s fourth battalion’s ball

The Army’s 3rd U.S. infantry regiment’s fourth battalion held its annual ball last night at commander-in-chief Donald Trump’s D.C. hotel.

“There were no government funds spent, no appropriated funds spent on this,” said Maj. Stephen Von Jett, director of communications for the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment. “It was funded through ticket sales and fundraisers that some of the soldiers did internally, down at the company level.”

The 356 tickets that were sold to the event cost $80 each and came with a free beer voucher, per the event’s invite. Soldiers attending ranged from battalion commander LTC Jeffery Burroughs though the most junior members, Von Jett said. President Trump, of course, still owns the hotel and can profit from it—meaning money from soldiers in the U.S. Army could have gone right to the top of the military’s chain of command.

https://zacheverson.substack.com/p/old-guard-parties-commander-in-chief

On July 27, 2017, Johnny Wheatcroft was a passenger in a silver Ford Taurus when a pair of Glendale, Arizona,
police officers pulled in front them in a Motel 6 parking lot.

The stop was for an alleged turn signal violation.

Minutes later, Wheatcroft was handcuffed lying face down on the hot asphalt on a 108-degree day. He'd already been tased 10 times, with one officer kneeling on his back as another, Officer Matt Schneider, kicked him in the groin and pulled down his athletic shorts to tase him a final time in his testicles, according to a federal lawsuit and body camera footage obtained by Scripps sister station KNXV-TV.

The scene was witnessed by his 11- and 6-year-old sons.

“I have never seen anything like this before... This is just beyond the pale. It’s outrageous conduct.”

Multiple independent law enforcement experts, who agreed to review the incident, said the officers’ conduct was unlawful, potentially criminal, and one of the most cruel and troubling cases of police misconduct they’ve ever seen.

https://www.kshb.com/news/national/abuse-of-force-body-camera-video-shows-man-tased-11-times-by-officers-in-arizona

A retired actor found what he thought was an ideal place to live in Greenwich Village in 1955, for $90 a month. He never left.



It was 1955 when Albert S. Bennett moved into the building on Morton Street.

“I came around the corner and saw all these trees and the Morton Street Pier. There was a Norwegian American liner docked there,” Mr. Bennett said. “The apartment was this tiny space downstairs. It was absolutely perfect.”

Sixty-three years and six landlords later, he still thinks so.

Over the decades, many things have changed, of course: His rent, which was $90 a month when he moved in, is now nearly $900; the Morton Street Pier and Norwegian America line no longer exist; and he has lived on the second floor since the early 1960s.

But his affection for his building, an 1854 townhouse, has never waned. And in the 1980s, after he inherited some money from the estate of his mother, he offered to pay significantly more than the $200 a month the landlord was charging for his rent-controlled apartment.

“Hardly anyone had taken any automatic rent increases, and I felt bad paying so little,” said Mr. Bennett, now 93. “I had this beautiful apartment. She was a good landlord and never asked for automatic increases. And I liked the house so much. So I made a generous offer.”

Does he regret it?

“Oh yes! I’ve said many times that was the worst decision of my life,” Mr. Bennett said. “I got what looked like a huge amount of money to me in 1984, but it turned out it wasn’t.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/realestate/the-perfect-rent-controlled-apartment.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

I LOVE @NatashaBertrand. She is the Hermione Granger of the Trump era news media. As JK Rowling put it “The brightest witch of her age.” #WhereIsHerPulitzerAt?

This pretty much sums it up 🤣 had such a great time on @RealTimers tonight!

President Donald Trump’s businesses received nearly $3.8 million from political committees during the two-year 2018 campaign cycle, according to the latest disclosure reports. The top political customers: Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican Party.

Trump’s campaign committee spent more than a million dollars at Trump businesses during the midterm elections, including renting space at the Trump Tower in New York City, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, Trump hotels in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Washington and golf clubs in Virginia, Los Angeles, Miami and Bedminster, N.J., cashed in as well, as venues for events by political groups large and small. Candidates and political operatives also billed hotel stays to Trump’s network of luxury resorts.



https://about.bgov.com/news/trump-businesses-get-a-boost-from-republican-party-patronage/

A company owned by Keith Schiller, President Donald Trump's former longtime bodyguard, has received $225,000 from the Republican National Committee for security consulting since he left his job as White House director of Oval Office operations in September 2017, according to interviews and newly released campaign filings.

Schiller was originally hired by the RNC to help select a site for the 2020 convention. But once the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, was announced in July, Schiller's firm was kept on to "work on other security needs for the committee," a party official told CNBC, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The official declined to go into detail about what the committee's security needs might be but confirmed that the work is ongoing.

The RNC's characterization of Schiller is different from how the committee described his work a year ago, when CNBC first inquired about it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/08/firm-owned-by-trumps-longtime-bodyguard-has-received-225000-from-rnc.html

Here’s why her story doesn’t hold up.

In an interview aired Friday, Ivanka Trump told ABC News that she knew “literally almost nothing” about her family’s secret pursuit of a deal to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. Her claim, however, is contradicted by various sources, including information released by special counsel Robert Mueller and emails cited in media reports, which indicate that the president’s eldest daughter was closely involved with the controversial project.

Much information on Ivanka’s involvement in the deal comes from President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who was spearheading the Trump Tower-Moscow negotiations. Cohen, who has been sentenced to three years in prison, described his work on the project to prosecutors after he pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress and campaign finance violations.

In a December memo describing Cohen’s cooperation, Mueller noted that Cohen had said that he “briefed family members” of Trump about the Moscow project. Those briefings clearly included Ivanka. She has acknowledged that in November 2015 she emailed Cohen to suggest he contact Dmitry Klokov, a Russian weightlifter who said he could help secure a meeting for Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to help facilitate a Trump Tower-Moscow deal. According to Buzzfeed, which first reported these communications, Klokov told Cohen that he could broker a meeting with Trump and Putin to help secure the deal. (In the December memo on Cohen, Mueller said Klokov had offered to help the Trump campaign achieve “synergy on a government level” with Moscow.)

In late 2015, Ivanka also suggested an architect for the Moscow project in an email to Cohen, according to the Associated Press and other outlets. Under the preliminary deal, she received the right to have a spa under her name in the building. CNN last year reported that deal documents show that the Trump Organization, as part of an initial agreement, secured the option to “brand any or all portion of the spa or fitness facilities as ‘The Spa by Ivanka Trump’ or similar brand.” If the spa was named after her, Ivanka or her designee would be given sole power to approve “all interior design elements of the spa or fitness facilities.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/what-did-ivanka-know-about-trump-tower-moscow-it-wasnt-almost-nothing/

North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he won’t surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!

My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!