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Welcome, readers, to the Good Men Project Daily Brief!
To keep with yesterday’s music theme, today we’re going to look at some stories about heroes and villains. In 1967, the Beach Boys released their epic B-Side Heroes and Villains which told the story of the ambiguous protagonist. It doesn’t have anything to do with Democracy, but it sure is a good song.
Today we’ll talk about protagonists in the news who there are strong disagreements about which side of the hero/villain debate they stand on. I’ll throw ‘em all out there and let you decide which is which.
My name is Mckay Williams and this is your Daily Brief:
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Cohen Banking Records Were Leaked by Law Enforcement Officer
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Remember those files that Storm Daniel’s attorney Michael Avenatti published the other night? We all sat around wondering where in the world he got those. Turns out, an unidentified Law Enforcement Officer, was compiling a case based on the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARS) that Cohen’s bank issued to alert authorities that something weird was going on when suddenly 2 of the 3 SARs mysteriously disappeared from a secure database. This Law Enforcement Officer, whomever they are, then feared that someone was deliberately trying to obstruct justice by deleting the files and felt they must make them public.
It is important to note that the disappearing of the files is pretty suspicious, but isn’t automatically evidence of a cover-up. There is some speculation that if they were removed, it is possible they could have been removed for prosecutorial reasons unknown to the LEO. Heroic whistleblow or villainous leak?
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President of the United States Calls Immigrants “Animals”, Claims Nothing Wrong with That
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Here’s what he said: “We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them,” Trump said after Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims complained about state restrictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.” The President now claims he only meant members of MS13, an American born offshoot of the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha.
The most hyperbolic of estimates claim that there are approximately 10,000 members associated with the gang MS13 in the United States, somewhere around 1% of the total known gang affiliates in the entire country.
Now, I don’t know about you, but the argument that he didn’t mean “ALL these people only SOME of these people” doesn’t make it any less like the Nazi party comparing Jews to rats in an effort to dehumanize those they considered enemies.
It doesn’t take a political analyst to note the problems of racist attacks of people of Hispanic descent in the United States.
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Senate Confirms Gina Haspel to Run CIA
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Gina Haspel is the very definition of a hero or villain, depending on our point of view. As a lifetime civil servant with the CIA she has put her life in danger to protect ours. She also ordered the torture of captured middle eastern men who had not been provided habeas corpus protections. She is the first woman to serve in the role of CIA Director and is among the most qualified ever to hold the post. She also ordered the coverup of Geneva Convention violations and the destruction of evidence of those crimes.
We will see who Gina Haspel is in the days to come.
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BREAKING: Paul Manafort’s ex son-in-law flips
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According to The Hill and confirmed by MSNBC, former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort’s son-in-law has flipped to become a cooperating witness with the Mueller probe.
This has just broken, I’m sure we’ll touch back on it tomorrow as the story develops.
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Click for more from Mckay Williams
Click for more from Mckay Williams
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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