Source: Bloomberg

By Christian Berthelsen, Greg Farrell, and Chris Strohm
June 29, 2021, 8:57 AM EDT

DOJ inquiry is separate from criminal probe of Ukraine work

U.S. could order ex-NYC mayor to register as foreign lobbyist

Rudy Giuliani is the subject of a Justice Department inquiry into possible foreign lobbying for Turkish interests separate from a criminal probe of his activities in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.

For almost a year, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump has been fielding questions about whether he was acting for Turkey when he pushed the Trump administration in 2017 to drop money-laundering charges against gold trader Reza Zarrab and deport exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Zarrab later pleaded guilty and implicated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a sanctions-evasion scheme, while Erdogan claims Gulen was behind a failed 2016 coup against his government.

The Turkey inquiry, which has not been previously reported, is not criminal, in contrast to the Ukraine investigation, which resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation seizing Giuliani’s electronic devices in April 28 raids on his Manhattan home and office. Though both matters focus on whether Giuliani lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of foreign interests, the Justice Department usually takes a softer approach when it thinks failure to register wasn’t intentional.

Giuliani has denied lobbying for either Turkish or Ukrainian interests, and the government has not accused him of wrongdoing in either matter. In the Turkey inquiry, if the government decides that Giuliani acted for a foreign interest, it could issue a determination letter requiring him to register as a lobbyist and also disclose all details of contacts he had with U.S. and Turkish officials concerning Zarrab and Gulen.


Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/giuliani-facing-inquiry-into-whether-he-lobbied-trump-for-turkey

BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO - 06/29/21 09:56 AM EDT

CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan spoke with several supporters of former President Trump ahead of his first post-presidential rally on Saturday, many of whom told him they fully expect the real estate mogul to be reinstated before the end of the summer and warned of potential political violence in America if he is not.

"He didn't lose, I know he didn't lose," one woman told O'Sullivan, indicating she believes unfounded claims made by Trump and other Republicans that widespread voter fraud led to an unfair election that swung in President Biden's favor.

Many of the supporters who gathered for the Saturday rally in Wellington, Ohio, wore memorabilia and carried signs with slogans like "Trump won" and "Biden sucks" displayed across them.

"It's about all of them, and 2020 and the next one," another woman told O'Sullivan about her "Trump won" T-shirt.

more
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/560681-trump-supporter-warns-cnn-reporter-of-civil-war-if-former-president-not

PUBLISHED TUE, JUN 29 202110:56 AM EDT

Christina Wilkie
@CHRISTINAWILKIE

KEY POINTS

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Surfside, Florida, on Thursday to visit the site of a deadly condominium tower collapse.

The White House had said Biden would wait to visit until he was certain that presidential security and logistics would not interrupt search, rescue and recovery efforts underway at the Champlain Towers.

Search and rescue operations continued at the site, north of Miami Beach, five days after the 12-story condominium tower collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Surfside, Florida, on Thursday to visit the site of a deadly condominium tower collapse.

Biden told reporters of the upcoming trip as he boarded Marine One on Tuesday morning, en route to Wisconsin.

Search and rescue operations continue at the site, north of Miami Beach, five days after the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium tower collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning.

As of Tuesday, eleven people were confirmed dead and 150 were unaccounted for, according to local officials.

more
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/biden-will-visit-surfside-florida-condo-tower-collapse-site-on-thursday-.html

BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO - 06/29/21 10:51 AM EDT

Washington Post fact-checkers have shot down claims from members of the Republican Party in recent months that President Biden supports defunding or disbanding police departments in America.

"During the 2020 election, the Trump campaign desperately tried to claim that Joe Biden was a supporter of the 'defund the police' movement advocated by some elements of the Democratic Party," fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote Tuesday, before adding, "Biden firmly rejected calls from left-wing activists to defund police and in fact said he would double funding for a community policing program that would put more officers on the street."

Citing comments from Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Kessler reported that members of the GOP "are still making this false claim," even after Trump relentlessly tried to tie Biden to calls for radical police reform following the murder of George Floyd and other African Americans who have died in recent months at the hands of police.

“The problem isn’t guns and it isn’t COVID either. It’s violent rioting and the Defund the Police movement, both of which were supported, financially and rhetorically, by the Biden admin," Banks tweeted last week.

more
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/560693-wapost-fact-checker-shoots-down-gop-fiction-on-biden-and-defund-the-police

Philip Bump 1 day ago

The first time that Donald Trump blamed voter fraud for his failure to get more votes than his opponent was on Nov. 27 … of 2016. Two weeks after his presidential win over Hillary Clinton had been confirmed, his anguish over having lost the popular vote was manifested in a claim on Twitter that there had been “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.”

Then, as now, there was no evidence of fraud, but nevertheless he persisted. He hyped random, obviously noncredible allegations and, after being inaugurated, leveraged the presidency to try to bolster his rhetoric. The White House task force focused on fraud soon collapsed both because of its sweeping demands for voter data and for the same reason that a concentrated effort to capture the Loch Ness monster might not last long: There’s not a lot to work with.

What is important about this bit of history is that, over the 14 months between his election loss and the abandonment of his fraud commission, no member of his own party challenged Trump in any significant way on his claims. This was in keeping with how Trump had been handled since late 2015: The fervor of his base and his own penchant for throwing mud disinclined Republicans to push back on the obviously false or dangerous things Trump was saying, with Republicans generally preferring to either try to quietly undermine Trump or simply wait him out. This is a central story of the Trump era, that his putative allies were almost never interested in challenging him and his dishonesty. And on voter fraud, that pattern began before he was even president.

Trump alleged fraud in the Iowa caucuses in 2016, without repercussion. He alleged fraud after the 2016 election, with his party humoring him. He alleged fraud in Florida in 2018, echoing false and inflated claims made by Gov. Rick Scott (R). On that occasion, he was asked to curtail his rhetoric by incoming governor Ron DeSantis (R). But that, according to the New York Times, was only done quietly and “through intermediaries.” (That article also reports that “Mr. DeSantis, 40, is intent on turning down the temperature in perpetually overheated Florida,” which does not seem to be the approach that DeSantis has since employed.)

more/NO PAYWALL
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bill-barr-wants-his-legacy-to-be-his-mumbled-opposition-to-trump-on-fraud-not-his-shouted-agreement/ar-AALxzB4

Rep. Scott Peters’ opposition to so-called international reference pricing language is notable, as he voted for similar provisions in 2019 and 2020

By Peter Cohn
Posted June 28, 2021 at 8:01am

Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., says he’ll vote against a sweeping budget reconciliation package that expands health care coverage, defrays child care and college expenses and more if party leaders include drug price negotiation provisions in it to help offset the multitrillion-dollar cost.

Peters led a group of 10 House Democrats on a letter recently calling for any legislation aimed at lowering drug costs to be bipartisan. But his outright opposition to so-called international reference pricing language, which Peters confirmed in an interview, is notable considering he voted for similar provisions in 2019 and 2020 as part of broader health care legislation.

“I will not vote for that,” Peters said, even if it’s paired with an expansive fiscal package that's a top priority for President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders. “If you institute it, you won’t have cures because you’ll dry up all the private investment that does that research. ... It’s a false promise of generating revenue because that industry is going to implode — it’s going to go someplace else. Just as when Europe started regulating, over-regulating the industry, they moved here.”

House Democrats have just four votes to spare on the massive budget bill that party leaders want to pass this fall that's a cornerstone of Biden's agenda.

more
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/06/28/onetime-backer-of-drug-pricing-bill-turns-foe/

Vincent Fusca, who looks nothing like JFK Jr. is being mistaken for JFK Jr. (Photos: Paler and Wikipedia Commons)

John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette in 1999, but some supporters of Donald Trump believe that he's still alive and supports the former president.

Such was the case during Trump's rally in Ohio over the weekend, where the man, Trump supporter Vincent Fusca, takes photos with people who think he's the son of the late president.

The Twitter account ParlerTakes has been posting photos that Trump fans took with Fusca thinking that he's JFK Jr.

-snip-

Photos of the two men side-by-side show that they look very different. When the photos are merged together, lined up with the chins, it's easy to see that their eyes are in a different place, their noses are different, and their ears are in different places. JFK Jr. also didn't have dimples as Fusca appears to.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supporters-think-man-jfkjr/

BOOK EXCERPT 6:00 A.M.

By Michael Wolff

Seems like quite a few crazies,” said the president.

A little more than three weeks before rioters and revelers stormed the Capitol on January 6, several thousand Trump fans and fanatics gathered in Washington, D.C. There were the Proud Boys in elaborate dress, ZZ Top beards, and tie-dyed kilts — Enrique Tarrio, a Proud Boy organizer, got in line and took a public tour of the White House — who seemed to have appointed themselves Trump’s protectors and vanguard, as the Hells Angels had once done for the Rolling Stones. There were Trump impersonators and a wide variety of other made-for-the-cameras MAGA costumes. There were veterans — or people in military gear trying to suggest patriotism and firepower. There were older men and women, too — more Las Vegas than Altamont. Virtually all without masks.

“It’s like Let’s Make a Deal,” said Trump the next day to a caller, referencing the long-running game show from the 1960s — many of his references have never left this psychic era — on which audience members dressed up in foolish costumes to get the attention of the host.

The speakers at the December 12 event were themselves a retinue of Trump attention seekers: Michael Flynn, the former general who had briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser before being rolled out of office for lying to the FBI, had, after pleading guilty, reversed himself and abjectly reaffirmed his Trump loyalty, finally getting his pardon just days before the rally. Sebastian Gorka, a figure of uncertain provenance and function in the Trump White House during its first months, was one of the early oddballs to be pushed out when John Kelly became chief of staff and had pursued a Trump-based media career ever since. Also speaking: MyPillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell, a former drug addict and a current fevered conspiracist.

more
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/michael-wolff-landslide-final-days-trump-presidency-excerpt.html