This metro-sexual thinks he is a bad ass because he grew a beard.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claimed in an interview this week that it was a “joke” when the social network described itself as the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”
Former Twitter vice president Tony Wang made the statement in 2012, declaring, “Generally, we remain neutral as to the content because our general counsel and CEO like to say that we are the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
In an interview with Wired this week, however, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reversed on Wang’s old statement, claiming it had been a “joke.”
“I think Vijaya [Gadde]’s op-ed in the Washington Post captures our position—our most evolved position—the best. And that is around this balance of people feeling safe to express themselves,” expressed Dorsey. “But certainly, this quote around ‘free-speech wing of the free-speech party’ was never a mission of the company. It was never a descriptor of the company that we gave ourselves. It was a joke, because of how people found themselves in the spectrum.”
The interviewer then responded to Dorsey, declaring, “But it was a joke that people took seriously and their respect for you increased because of it at the time.”
“Well, yeah, I don’t think it takes away from our defense of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. But we were not absolute absolutists,” Dorsey replied. “A lot of people come to Twitter and they don’t actually see an app or a service, they see what kind of looks like a public square. And they have the same sort of expectations of a public square. And that is what we have to make sure that we get right. And also, make sure that everyone feels safe to participate in that public square.”
Last year, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams claimed he was “wrong” about his previous beliefs that freedom of speech would make the world a better place.
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place… I was wrong about that,” proclaimed Williams, before apologizing for co-founding a company which allowed President Trump to speak freely during the 2016 presidential election.
In 2017, Twitter’s Vice President of Public Policy and Communications also announced it was “no longer possible to stand up for all speech.”
The top Treasury Department employee who was charged Wednesday with leaking confidential financial documents pertaining to former Trump officials was apprehended the previous evening with a flash drive containing the allegedly pilfered information in her hand, prosecutors said in court papers.
The dramatic arrest late Tuesday came on the heels of other high-profile, leak-related prosecutions under the Trump administration, which has pledged to go on the offensive against leakers that the president has called “traitors and cowards.”
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is accused of illegally giving a reporter bank reports documenting several suspicious financial transactions, known as Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”), from October 2017 to the present.
The financial transactions involved Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, campaign official Richard Gates, accused Russian agent Maria Butina and the Russian Embassy, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, is accused of leaking several confidential suspicious activity reports to a journalist. (Alexandria Sheriff’s Office)
An unidentified, higher-ranking Treasury colleague was cited in court papers as a co-conspirator with Edwards, but was not charged. That person, identified only as an “associate director” at FinCEN to whom Edwards reported, exchanged more than 300 messages with a reporter via an encrypted messaging application.
Edwards saved thousands of SARs, “along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information,” to a government-provided flash drive, prosecutors said. She transmitted the SARs to the reporter by “taking photographs of them and texting the photographs” using an encrypted application, according to charging documents, which said Edwards eventually confessed to doing so. FBI agents obtained a pen register and trap and trace order for Edwards’ cellphone during their investigation.
The files were allegedly saved to a folder on the flash drive with the file path “Debacle\Emails\Asshat.”
“Edwards is not known to be involved in any official FinCEN project or task bearing these file titles or code names,” federal authorities said.
The flash drive contained not only SARs, but also “highly sensitive material relating to Russia, Iran, and the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” prosecutors said.
During her interviews with FBI agents, Edwards initially denied any contact with the news media, and called herself a “whistleblower” who saved the SARs for “record-keeping,” according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors said Edwards had previously filed an unrelated whistleblower complaint, and had been in touch with congressional staffers regarding that complaint.
The journalist’s name Edwards allegedly spoke with was not disclosed in court papers. But the documents list about a dozen stories published by Buzzfeed News over the past year-and-a half, including an article headlined, “GOP Operative Made ‘Suspicious’ Cash Withdrawals During Pursuit of Clinton Emails.” Another article was titled, “These 13 Wire Transfers Are A Focus of the FBI Probe Into Paul Manafort.”
The most recent Buzzfeed article cited in the charging documents was published on Monday.
“A review to date, pursuant to a judicially-authorized search warrant executed today, of Edwards’ personal cellphone has revealed that the cellphone contains the substance of many of these communications, including … communications in which Edwards transmitted or described” SARs to a reporter, FBI Special Agent Emily Eckstut wrote in an arrest warrant application submitted Tuesday.
“At the time she was questioned, Edwards was also in possession of a flash drive that appeared to be the same drive on which she saved the SARs,” Eckstut added. A spokesman for Buzzfeed declined to comment.
The case is apparently the first criminal prosecution arising from leaks about individuals targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in the course of its Russia investigation. Manafort was found guilty earlier this year of various bank and tax crimes; his associate, Gates, pleaded guilty.
In a hearing Wednesday afternoon, federal magistrate judge Theresa Buchanan released Edwards, subject to the custody of her parents. She and her parents also signed a $100,000 bond as part of her release. Edwards, who appeared in court wearing street clothes, faces two charges (one for unlawful disclosure and one for conspiring to unlawfully disclose), each one carrying a maximum sentence of five years and a $250,000 fine. She is due back in court Nov. 2.
Edwards is currently on administrative leave at Treasury, FinCen spokesman Steve Hudak said.
Banks must file the suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department when they spot transactions that raise questions about possible financial misconduct such as money laundering, but federal law strictly limits their disclosure.
“Today’s action demonstrates that those who fail to protect the integrity of government information will be rightfully held accountable.”
— FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr.
Over the summer, senators flagged an apparent leaking problem at the Treasury Department that they said raised “serious” concerns. In a letter sent in June, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requested that Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson investigate the apparent leak of a confidential request for SARs that Senate investigators had made to the Treasury Department as part of their probe into election interference.
The Senate Judiciary Committee made the confidential request in a letter in September 2017, and the letter was described publicly in media reports the next month.
“If an official at the Treasury Department leaked the letter in an attempt to obstruct a Congressional investigation, that would be a serious matter,” Grassley wrote. “There is some indication this may be a recurring problem. While I do not know if there is any connection, I note that there have been other stories relying on Treasury officials who were unauthorized to speak to the media and detailing another Committee’s requests for SARs relating to its Russia investigation. I also understand that your office has opened an investigation into the apparent leak of SARs related to Michael Cohen to Michael Avenatti.”
Edwards has not been charged in that apparent leak, and there are no indications that she or her unidentified alleged co-conspirator at the Treasury Department were involved in it.
“In her position, Edwards was entrusted with sensitive government information. As we allege here today, Edwards violated that trust when she made several unauthorized disclosures to the media,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement. “Today’s action demonstrates that those who fail to protect the integrity of government information will be rightfully held accountable for their behavior.”
Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, where the criminal complaint was filed, said Edwards “betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information.” Edwards also sent the reporter internal Treasury Department emails, investigative memos and intelligence assessments, prosecutors allege.
According to court papers, federal investigators obtained a court order to monitor the calls to and from the cellphone of the unnamed associate director who allegedly conspired with Edwards. That monitoring captured the frequency of contacts with the reporter via the encrypted messaging application.
Court papers do not detail the contents of those messages. “Protecting sensitive information is one of our most critical responsibilities, and it is a role that we take very seriously,” said Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The prosecution is the latest in a series of leak-related prosecutions brought by the Trump administration, which has vowed to combat unauthorized disclosures. Earlier this year, President Trump said that “leakers are traitors and cowards,” and he vowed that “we will find out who they are!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!
Edwards’ arrest comes after a former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee pleaded guilty to one count of giving a false statement to FBI agents looking into leaks of national security information to several reporters — including one now at the New York Times whom he dated before she joined the paper.
James Wolfe, who served as the Senate panel’s security director, lied to the FBI in December 2017 about contacts he had with three reporters, according to a statement of offense released Monday as part of his guilty plea. He also allegedly lied about giving two reporters non-public information about committee matters. His guilty plea on Monday to one count means that the other two counts against him will be dismissed.
And, just weeks ago, once-secret text messages revealed that anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had discussed a “media leak strategy” amid the Russia probe. Strzok and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were both fired for their conduct during that probe.
“I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go,” Strzok texted Page on April 10, 2017, according to Meadows, who cited newly produced documents from the Justice Department.
On April 22, Strzok wrote, “article is out! Well done, Page,” and on April 12 he told her that two negative articles about Page’s “namesake” would soon come out, according to Meadows. That was an apparent reference to Carter Page, the former Trump adviser whom the FBI surveilled for months after obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
Republicans have charged that the FBI provided misleading or inaccurate information to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. In particular, the FBI incorrectly suggested to the FISA court that a Yahoo News article provided an independent basis to monitor Page, when that article relied on the same source the FBI had cited earlier: ex-spy Christopher Steele, who worked for a firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Page on Monday announced he was suing the DNC and other entities for allegedly spreading false and defamatory reports about his supposed dealings with Russians.
“There have been so many lies, and look at the damage it did to our democratic systems and our institutions of government back in 2016,” Page told Fox News’ “Hannity” this week. “And I’m just trying to get some justice.”
No one with half a brain would say these people are damn crooks.
The Mueller witch hunt is effectively over — not because Mr. Mueller had not planned to drag this out until he could concoct a crime against Mr. Trump or a member of his family but rather because the jig is up.
Have you noticed how long it has been since anyone even suggested that the president sit down with the “special counsel” for an interview?
Mueller’s raison d’etre was the outrageous and purposely propagandized prevarication that the Trump campaign and even Mr. Trump himself “colluded” with Russia to rig the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton.
The Democrats who perpetrated this fraud are not only masters of projection and deception, but they took their playbook of personal destruction to a whole new level.
There is more evidence by the day that the Clinton cabal, in and outside of government, weaponized our most venerable law enforcement institutions and agencies, abused protected government data, unmasked citizens and lied to our courts to destroy the political opposition.
Enough evidence has been forcibly extracted from various sources to establish that the actual crimes — conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice, espionage act violations and no doubt others — were committed by Clinton and her campaign with the calculated help of their power-crazed cronies within the FBI, CIA, NSA, Obama White House, the Department of Justice, the State Department, FusionGPS and probably even partners in the law firm of Perkins Coie who helped craft the “mosaic” of lies.
Heaven knows that is not what Mueller and his Clinton-loving cabal of prosecutors wanted to find — and they clearly avoided looking for it.
President Trump holds all the cards now.
The White House has seen enough of the actual documents to know the real conspirators were willing to destroy the Constitution and innocent lives to elect Hillary Clinton, protect Barack Obama, and destroy Donald Trump. As Congressman John Ratcliffe explained to Maria Bartiromo, these documents were classified only to protect the wrongdoers—not national security.
Indeed, each time documents have been unredacted, we’ve seen even more evidence of egregious wrongdoing.
While many are thrilled that the president—and no doubt Robert Mueller–know the truth, there is even more at stake here than exoneration of the president.
Americans have witnessed the annihilation of our most important law enforcement institutions. It is simply not enough for the president to know the truth and for Mueller’s witch hunt to end.
For the country to recover from this previously unfathomable cover-up of Clinton’s crimes and the criminalization of our election process and justice system, every individual whose fingerprints appear on any of these crimes must be publicly exposed and held to account.
The deliberate and subversive conduct of all involved were not only crimes against Mr. Trump — now the president. They were crimes against our Constitution, law enforcement institutions, federal courts, every American, and the Rule of Law writ large.
The president must declassify the following for the sake of the American people:
The names of the private contractors to whom FBI Director Comey gave unlawful access to raw FISA data in 2015 — if not before — as shown in the opinion of FISC Chief Judge Rosemary Collyer in April 2017.
All emails or texts among any government officials in any agency or the Obama White House that mention the Steele dossier, unmaskings of American citizens, or “Russia collusion” prior to your inauguration and thereafter until Mueller appointed Special Counsel.
All memos, FBI 302s, and emails indicating the targeting and interview of General Flynnonce he joined the Trump team and any recording — oral, reported or written — of the remarks of Andrew McCabe that mention Flynn or Donald Trump.
All the FISA applications, including the ones the court first denied, that were based in any part on the “Steele dossier” and the names of all persons in the FBI or DOJ who worked on those applications.
The classified section of the Inspector General’s report regarding the pre-election conduct and leaks by the FBI and DOJ.
The laptop of Anthony Weiner on which the New York FBI agents reported seeing the “entire Clinton email file” — 675,000 emails.
All documents demanded by Congress that have not yet been produced and on which the FBI and DOJ continue to stonewall.
The chips must fall as they may. No rational American can trust our institutions of government again until the Truth is outed and so is everyone whose fingerprints have touched any aspect of this calculated corruption of justice.
Bo Knows Football, and Whoopi Goldberg Knows Ugly.
Whoopi Goldberg claimed Saturday that women in Hollywood used sex with “ugly-ass” men to forward their showbiz careers, and emphasized the importance of “[teaching] young women better.” She also accused American white men of “coming after” women.
At a recent live show in Leeds, U.K., Goldberg touched upon the issues surrounding the #MeToo movement, according to RadarOnline.
“Now there’s some things my mother always said to me that I knew were true,” Goldberg explained in a profanity-laden monologue.
“It’s like, if some guy said to me we’re gonna have a meeting up in my hotel room… you don’t f***ing go — you don’t go. And if you do, cop to it. Say, ‘That’s right, I went up there and had sex with that ugly-ass man so I could get an Oscar and a Tony,’” Goldberg continued.
“Am I talking about myself?” she asked rhetorically. “No. We have to teach young women better.”
Goldberg then attacked American white men, saying, “Apparently American white men are angry … ’cause they’re top of the food chain, they can get anything they f***ing want but it’s not enough — so they’re coming after women.”
“Women are saying, ‘Are you kidding me?’ You can’t put this genie back in the bottle’. Women are not taking any bulls**t.”
Goldberg’s comments are the latest in a string of recent statements she has made on sexual topics. Last week, she admitted to the possibility of having made inappropriate sexual comments to actor Neil Patrick Harris when he was a young teenager. The week before that, she drew the ire of Donald Trump, Jr., when she implied that his young sons might have “tendencies” toward sexual assault.
A biological male who identifies as a transgender woman won a women’s world championship cycling event on Sunday.
Rachel McKinnon, a professor at the College of Charleston, won the women’s sprint 35-39 age bracket at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles.
McKinnon, representing Canada, bested Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen of the Netherlands and American cyclist Jennifer Wagner to take home the gold.
McKinnon celebrated the victory on Twitter, writing: “First transgender woman world champion…ever.”
“We cannot have a woman legally recognized as a trans woman in society, and not be recognized that way in sports,” McKinnon told USA Today.
“Focusing on performance advantage is largely irrelevant because this is a rights issue. We shouldn’t be worried about trans people taking over the Olympics. We should be worried about their fairness and human rights instead.”
McKinnon also compared restrictions on biological males competing in women’s events to racial segregation.
“This is bigger than sports, and it’s about human rights,” McKinnon said to USA Today.
“By catering to cisgender people’s views, that furthers transgender people’s oppression. When it comes to extending rights to a minority population, why would we ask the majority? I bet a lot of white people were pissed off when we desegregated sports racially and allowed black people. But they had to deal with it.”
Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson criticized hip-hop artist Kanye West’s appearance in the Oval Office earlier in the day with President Donald Trump.
Dyson hammered West for various aspects of the White House appearance and accused the West of being a vehicle for white supremacy.
“This is white supremacy by ventriloquism,” Dyson said. “A black mouth is moving, but white racist ideals are flowing from Kanye’s mouth.”
