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Newly Unredacted Documents Reveal a Litany of Allegations Against Pompeo, His Wife, and State Dept. Staffers

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Newly unredacted records from a whistleblower complaint in the State Department have shed light on more allegations against former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and members of his former staff.

According to documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Pompeo and others were accused of misconduct.

The publication reports: “The alleged misconduct included false or misleading statements to the agency’s legal department, misuse of government resources on personal and political activities potentially prohibited by the Hatch Act, verbal abuse of employees by Mike and Susan Pompeo and directives to staff not to communicate in writing in order to evade transparency laws.”

The unredacted documents come two years after the redacted version of the whistleblower complaint was filed with the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG is said to have excluded many of the previous redactions in the version of the documents released to CREW.

“The complaint alleges “[s]everal senior career Foreign Service officials who held positions of responsibility within the Executive Secretariat” turned a blind eye to Pompeo’s “questionable activities” and, in some cases, “facilitat[ed]” them, according to CREW.

Employees in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser “expressed concern that some of these activities may have violated [the] Hatch Act or other regulations,” but the whistleblower was “unaware that any resolution was reached, potentially because senior officials in the Executive Secretariat repeatedly declined to seek clarification or guidance from [the Office of the Legal Adviser] despite requests from subordinates to do so.”

The new documents also detail the aftermath of former Inspector Steve Linick’s removal from his post, which was part of a larger Trump-led effort to oust inspectors. The report also indicated that staff members were “stunned” by the directive.

“[T]his is all so surreal three days later. I’m nervous about the future,” the OIG employee wrote in a May 18, 2020 email. In a later email, the official added, “I just heard Trump say we needed to get rid of the ‘Attorney Generals’ as a whole…Oh dear.”

CREW has also received other documentation as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit aimed at uncovering information about Pompeo’s attempts to hinder the investigation into the allegations of misconduct against him.

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JD Vance Causing ‘Surge’ In New Democratic Volunteers and Donors, House Minority Whip Says

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GOP vice presidential candidate and Ohio Senator JD Vance is responsible for a “surge” of new Democratic Party donors and volunteers, the House minority whip said on Monday.

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) was interviewed on CNN Monday morning by Kate Bolduan about the November election. During her interview, she talked about what voters “in purple, red and blue districts” thought about Vance.

“They don’t trust JD Vance to order doughnuts. They certainly don’t trust him to order American families on if, when and how they can have children. So we’re seeing a surge of volunteers, a surge of first time donors, and we know that Kamala Harris is the underdog going into this, but momentum remains on her side,” Clark said.

READ MORE: ‘Bullying Needs to Stop’ Says Ex-Beauty Pageant Winner After JD Vance Refuses to Apologize

The line about ordering doughnuts refers to an August stop by Vance to Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia that was broadcast by C-SPAN and went viral. In the awkward clip, Vance ends up asking for “just whatever makes sense,” instead of ordering a specific type of doughnut. Vance later expressed sympathy for the doughnut shop clerk who served him in an interview with NBC News.

“I just felt terrible for that woman,” Vance said. “We walked in, and there’s 20 Secret Service agents, and there’s 15 cameras, and she clearly had not been properly warned, and she was terrified, right? I just felt awful for her.

“We don’t want to have these scripted events — I don’t want to go and do three takes of buying Doritos at a Sheetz. I like to get out there and talk to people, and we want to make sure we’re doing it but definitely make sure that people are at least OK with being on camera, or we’re going to walk in and you’re going to have a person who has, practically, a panic attack because she’s got 15 cameras in her face.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has made headlines for the amount of funding it’s raised. During August alone, her campaign raised three times more money than former President Donald Trump’s campaign, according to the Guardian. And in July, at the very start of the Harris campaign, over 170,000 volunteers joined with her, according to Axios.

Current polling shows Harris and Trump in a dead heat. A New York Times poll published Monday shows Trump leading Harris by only 1%, with 48% of polled voters saying they’d pick the former president.

 

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Why Dick Cheney Will Be Voting for Kamala Harris, According to Liz Cheney

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Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney will cast his ballot in November for the current Democratic Vice President, Kamala Harris, according to his daughter, Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney.

Dick Cheney, now 83, is also a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, U.S. Congressman, White House Chief of Staff, and the first-ever White House Deputy Chief of Staff. (To put that in perspective, that was exactly 50 years ago. There are currently now three Deputy Chiefs of Staff.) He is from a generation ago and possibly not well-known to many Americans. A hard-core Republican, during his time in the public eye and behind the scenes in the White House as President George W. Bush’s Vice President, Cheney was reviled by many Democrats, especially for his role in what the Bush administration would come to call “the Global War on Terrorism.”

But Friday, at the annual Texas Tribune Festival, The Atlantic’s Mark Lebovitz interviewed the former Vice President’s daughter (full video), who also served as Vice Chair for the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Dick Cheney, your father, a beloved figure among Democrats for many, many years,” Lebovitz said, joking (video below). “Do you, if you know, who he will be supporting or who will be voting for? Do you care to share with us who he will be voting for?”

READ MORE: ‘Traitor’ Trump Trashed for Response to DOJ Kremlin Cash and Russia Disinfo Indictments

“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Liz Cheney replied, to howls and cheers from the audience. She had endorsed Harris for President earlier this week, and became one of hundreds of prominent Republicans who publicly have said they will not just not vote for  Donald Trump, but will vote for Harris for President.

“If you think about the moment we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes — and he said publicly — there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is,” Cheney explained, as The Texas Tribune reported.

Two years ago Liz Cheney posted video of her father endorsing her bid for re-election, and denouncing Donald Trump.

She continued her remarks on Friday, explaining that, “obviously Vice President Harris and I have had and have policy disagreements on some issues, but I have been really impressed watching, for example, the Democratic Convention, listening to her speech at that convention, learning about her life story, learning about, you know, the story of her success, and the the extent to which it’s an American story and and I think we all have to walk ourselves back from this abyss that we’ve looked over in our politics and and work together to build a better future for this country.”

The former Congresswoman lost her seat over her opposition to Donald Trump and her participation and leadership on the January 6 Committee. On Friday she went even further in announcing her endorsements.

“One of the most important things we need to do as a country as we begin to rebuild our politics is we need to elect serious people,” Cheney continued. “Here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for U.S. Senate.”

READ MORE: ‘Incoherent Gibberish’: Experts Trash Trump’s ‘Incomprehensible’ Answer to Policy Question

“It’s not Ted Cruz,” she said, announcing her support for Texas Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by the GOP Senator.

Imagine telling yourself in the early oughts that Dick Cheney would one day endorse the Democratic candidate for president because the GOP’s 2024 nominee poses an existential threat to American democracy,” remarked Democratic strategist DJ Koessler. “The stakes in this election are truly historic.”

Political scientist David Darmofal commented, Kamala Harris’s “coalition now extends from AOC to Dick Cheney. She’s a uniter, not a divider.”

Watch Cheney’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Something’s in Play Here’ Says Ex-Trump NatSec Official on DOJ Russian Disinfo Indictment

Image via Shutterstock

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‘Traitor’ Trump Trashed for Response to DOJ Kremlin Cash and Russia Disinfo Indictments

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Donald Trump’s latest attack on American rule of law and the U.S. Dept. of Justice is facing condemnation. The GOP presidential nominee and convicted felon awaiting sentencing, while speaking at a courthouse press conference on his efforts to appeal a $5 million judgment in a New York sexual abuse and defamation civil case, called the DOJ’s bombshell indictments in the Kremlin cash and Russian disinformation case a “scam.”

“It’s always the same,” observed foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf. “Defend Putin. Defend Russia. Defend corruption. Accuse those who are enforcing the law of being engaged in a scam. Why does he sound this way? Because he is a traitor and a criminal.”

Trump told reporters Friday, “This is a long and complicated web and story, but it all goes back to the DOJ and Kamala and sleepy Joe and all the rest of them.”

“We have a whole rigged election system,” he declared, as he often does, promoting his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen while appearing to be paving the ground for the same response should he lose in November.

READ MORE: ‘Incoherent Gibberish’: Experts Trash Trump’s ‘Incomprehensible’ Answer to Policy Question

“Nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening now. I understand yesterday, they’re bringing up Russia, Russia, Russia again, that they’ve done for years. Never found anything,” Trump falsely claimed. “But they should be looking at China, China, China, Iran, Iran, Iran, lots of other places.”

“I haven’t spoken to anybody from Russia in years. They know that, but it’s a scam,” he claimed. “But, it all goes back to the DOJ because we had a trial today. It’s an appeal of a ridiculous –.”

Trump was referring to this week’s indictments that reveal a U.S. media outlet that platformed several far-right pro-Trump influencers was funded with millions of dollars from Russia in a scheme to help Trump.

“The allegations,” NBC News reported on the indictments, “came as part of a wide-ranging move by the Departments of Justice, State and Treasury to target what the Biden administration says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election.” In a separate report NBC News calls the influencers, “paid messengers for Russian propaganda.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a former White House speechwriter for Republican President George W. Bush, responded to Trump’s remarks, saying: “The only topic on which Trump never flip flops.”

READ MORE: ‘Something’s in Play Here’ Says Ex-Trump NatSec Official on DOJ Russian Disinfo Indictment

The liberal super PAC American Bridge responded to Trump’s comments by pointing to an Associated Press article and writing: “YESTERDAY Trump’s former senior campaign aide was charged for accepting $1 million to spew Kremlin talking points.”

Podcaster Fred Wellman remarked: “I’m a bit of a news hound and I didn’t see anyone saying that Trump had been talking to Russia yesterday. He is incapable of not blurting out confessions.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Can’t Even Find a Complete Sentence’: Trump’s ‘Gobbldygook’ Childcare ‘Solution’ Slammed

 

 

 

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