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Michael Cohen Files for Restraining Order to Silence Michael Avenatti

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Avenatti Has Become Known for His Ubiquitous Appearance on Cable News

President Donald Trump’s lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen filed for a restraining order Thursday night against Michael Avenatti to prevent him from speaking publicly about the case of his client, Stormy Daniels.

The legal motion was first reported by Emily Jane Fox of Vanity Fair.

Avenatti represents Daniels, a porn star whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, in her lawsuit against Cohen and Trump which aims to overturn a hush money agreement she signed to stay quiet about an affair she says she had with the president. Avenatti has become a staple of cable news in recent months and frequently criticizes Trump and Cohen on air.

The court documents read as follows:

Defendant Michael Cohen (“Mr. Cohen”) will and hereby does move ex parte for an order restraining Plaintiff’s counsel of record, Michael Avenatti, from communicating with the pros and/or public regarding the merits of this case.

As this Court has probably already surmised, Ms. Avenatti’s actions are mainly driven by his seemingly unquenchable thirst for publicity. Mr. Avenatti’s publicity tour, wherein he routinely denigrates Mr. Cohen with claims of alleged criminal conduct, is contrary to the California Rules of Professional Conduct, likely to result in Mr. Cohen being deprived of his right to a fair trial, and threatens to turn what should be a solemn Federal Court proceeding into a media circus.

Avenatti responded to the motion on Twitter in short order.

“The motion for a gag order is a complete joke and baseless,” he said. “Mr. Cohen and Brent Blakely can’t deal with the truth, the facts, and the law, so they have to resort to unethical, meritless motions. This must be their birthday present to Mr. Trump.”

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YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS

Donald Trump Couldn’t Even Get the Twitter Handle for His Twitter Knockoff

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Donald Trump, the former president, launched his Twitter knockoff social media platform and app late Sunday night.

Called Truth Social, the platform has already been ridiculed after countless attempted users tried to sign up, only to be told “something went wrong,” or that they have been waitlisted.

At least one social media user noticed the logo for Trump’s newest venture, like the app itself, seems to be a knockoff. The logo is quite similar to a British solar energy company’s.

But it is also strange that a former president and supposed billionaire wasn’t able to secure the company’s name on Twitter.

@TruthSocial on Twitter is currently held by a company that created the account more than a decade ago, posted one tweet that year – 2010 – and does not appear to have tweeted since.

There are ways to request a Twitter handle that’s dormant for a long period of time, and if that doesn’t work it likely would be possible to try to pay the “owner” of that handle for it.

It appears the original @TruthSocial owners were in control of the truthsocial.com domain, as it’s listed in their profile.

Instead, Trump – or his Truth Social CEO, the far right former U.S. Congressman Devin Nunes – opted to open @TruthSocials as their Twitter handle. After more than 12 hours Trump’s new app has just 345 followers.

 

 

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Trump Administration Claims Reuniting Families Is a ‘Burden.’

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A detention facility in McAllen, Texas

As part of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Administration officials have admitted that it would take too much effort to reunite families the government separated before it implemented its zero-tolerance policy towards asylum seekers and others that the government enacted last April.

The administration also does not refute a report from the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services released in January that claims “thousands” more families had been separated that had previously been mentioned, and that family separations were ongoing prior to the formal introduction of the policies that have led to 2,800 children being separated from their families from April to June of 2018. 

HHS has also said that they simply do not know how many children have been separated from their parents — and that because no one implemented any form of record keeping on these separations, it would be an undue “burden” to do so.

Jallyn Sualog,  deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said that, “In my judgment, ORR does not have the requisite staff for such a project,” indicating that it would take 100 analysis from the ORR without full eight-hour days somewhere between 7-15 months to “even begin reconciling” the requisite data.

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt, via a statement. “The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”

A Federal Court required that the government reunify all separated families with 30 days last June. By September, the government told the court it has reunified or released 2,167 of the total 2,551 children under 5 that had been separated from parents. It is unclear how many more children may now me wholly lost within the system.

Public Domain image by US Customs and BorderPatrol via Wikimedia Commons 

 

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YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS

Republican Claims Blacks and Whites Were Lynched at Equal Rates in MLK Day Message

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A Colorado state representative chose Martin Luther King Jr. day to promote a blatant and racist falsehood.

The Greeley Tribune reports that Rep. Lori Saine claimed blacks and whites were lynched for being Republican in similar numbers.

Saine made the statements Friday on the floor of the Colorado House. She posted footage of her speech to Facebook Monday, and noted that it was meant to bolster House District 49 Rep. Perry Buck, who tried to introduce a resolution honoring King.

“How could I honor Martin Luther King today without shining a light on injustice myself?” Saine said. “My colleagues, how can you redeem your marginalized voice by marginalizing ours? Our march toward justice is not over when a colleague of ours is barred from introducing a resolution on this floor because of the color of her skin.”

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