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Welcome, readers, to the Good Men Project Daily Brief!
You know, I’m stuck today on processing the sheer volume of breaking news. There’s no better descriptor for the news today than the revelation by the New York Times of the codename for the secret investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane.
Like Jumpin’ Jack Flash himself, the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server and Donald Trump’s possible collusion with a hostile foreign government to win an election were born howlin’ at the rain, waiting for shoes to drop. Any comment on either could spin American democracy wildly in one way or another.
News is sometimes a light drizzle, sometimes a steady rain. Today it’s a crossfire hurricane, and as always, it’s a gas, gas, gas.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A quick correction to yesterday’s Daily Brief as pointed out by reader Darren Clark: In my commentary on ZTE I erroneously claimed that Chinese company ZTE had been under US sanctions for their backdoor software, but ZTE had been under sanctions for selling to North Korea and Iran in violation of US policy.
Thanks, Darren!
My name is Mckay Williams and this is your Daily Brief:
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New York Times Reports on Secret Investigation in 2016 into Trump Campaign
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This just broke and sadly this writer hasn’t been able to dissect this the way it deserves, but the TL;DR is the FBI had a concurrent investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign while investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal. It was deemed so sensitive that the FBI limited the investigators to a close hold investigation directly from FBI headquarters in Washington DC. Another HUGE story from Matt Apuzzo.
Look for future stories trying to figure out how the investigation into Hillary Clinton was known to the public, and the Donald Trump investigation was held a secret.
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Net Neutrality Might Be Reinstated?
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The Senate has challenged the FCC’s decision to repeal Net Neutrality, which is the idea that the internet is “the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.”
This comes on the heels of news that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai may have secretly met with AT&T after they paid Michael Cohen money for access to the President before he unilaterally revoked the Obama era Net Neutrality news.
Important to note, that the bill still needs to pass the House which has been unlikely to diverge from President Trump’s agenda.
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Senate Probe into Russia contradicts House Investigation and Agrees with Intelligence Community
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The two forks of the Legislative Branch widened the philosophical gap between the House and Senate with the news that the Senate probe agrees with the US and most of the Western democracies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and that it was most likely directly ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Last month, the House committee said that they found no evidence of Russian interference despite the fact that all intelligence organizations in America, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have all agreed that there was.
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And a bunch of other stuff…
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President Trump releases his 2017 Financial Disclosures The disclosures now state that President Trump repaid Michael Cohen for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in direct conflict with his 2016 filing. That could be a crime, as these are filed under penalty of perjury.
Giuliani claims that Mueller cannot indict a sitting President, most lawyers say that’s not a certainty. Surprising to see the lawyer for the President being the first one to use the “i” word, indict. We’ll see what that means.
Mueller has issued a subpoena for Roger Stone aide. I have a feeling that Roger Stone is wrapped up right in the middle of this and this subpoena could have some weight to the investigation.
Rueter’s reporting on the Myanmar crisis. Some great reporting on the genocide in progress.
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Click for more from Mckay Williams
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