Pope Pans “Ticking Time Bomb” Derivatives Markets, Calls CDS “Unethical”

Warren Buffett famously called them “weapons of mass destruction,” and The Pope has damned the derivatives markets as a “ticking time bomb” warning of the “ethical void,”

“…which becomes more serious as these products are negotiated on the so-called markets with less regulation (over the counter) and are exposed more to the markets regulated by chance, if not by fraud, and thus take away vital life-lines and investments to the real economy.”

In a sweeping critique of global finance released by the Vatican on Thursday, that the Holy See singled out credit-default swaps for particular scorn.

“A ticking time bomb,” the Vatican called them.

“The market of CDS, in the wake of the economic crisis of 2007, was imposing enough to represent almost the equivalent of the GDP of the entire world. The spread of such a kind of contract without proper limits has encouraged the growth of a finance of chance, and of gambling on the failure of others, which is unacceptable from the ethical point of view.”

As Bloomberg’s Sridhar Natarajan reports,  the unusual rebuke – derivatives rarely reach the level of religious doctrine – is in keeping with Francis’s skeptical view of unbridled global capitalism.

The Holy See then put the sinning shadow bankers in his sights…

29.  It is no longer possible to ignore certain phenomena in the world, such as the spreading of the collateral banking systems (Shadow banking system). These, although well understood within themselves, and also the types of intermediaries whose functioning does not immediately appear disapproved, in fact have led to the loss of control over the system on the part of various authorities of national securities. Hence, they have knowingly favored the use of the so-called creative financing in which the primary aim of the investment of the financial resources is above all speculative in character, if not predatory, and not a service to the actual economy.  For instance, many agree that the existence of such “shadow” systems may be one of the contributing causes that advanced the development, and the global diffusion, of the recent economic-financial crisis started in the USA with subprime mortgages in the summer of 2007.   

Then Pope Francis took a shot at offshore tax havens…

30… Today, more than the half of the commercial world is orchestrated by noteworthy persons that cut down their tax burden by moving the revenues from one site to another according to their convenience, transferring the profits into fiscal havens, and the costs into the countries of higher taxation. It appears clear that all these have removed decisive resources from the actual economy and contributed to the creation of economic systems founded on inequality. Furthermore, it is not possible to ignore the fact that those offshore sites, on more occasions, have become usual places of recycling dirty money, which is the fruit of illicit income (thefts, frauds, corruption, criminal associations, mafia, war booties etc.). This represents, from the moral point of view, an evident form of hypocrisy.  

Who knew The Pope and his Vatican team were such experts in shadow banking, offshore tax havens, credit default swaps, gross collateral needs, and the entire derivatives market in general?

We have one simple question – which banker or ‘elite’ wrote this 11,000 word treatise on all that’s wrong with the world… in all its intricate detail that only an experienced banker would know?

Call us conspiracy geeks, but give The Pope’s Argentine heritage and the fact that Argentina’s CDS just exploded this week as its currency collapsed…

Is Argentina about to blame derivatives and speculators for its economic demise, and use The Pope’s derivative damnation to sell whetever their plan is to the 76.5% of the population that is Catholic?

 

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Rigged? Circuit Judge Says Ballots Were Illegally Destroyed In Wasserman Schultz’ House Race

Authored by Nick Givas via The Daily Caller,

Florida circuit court Judge Raag Singhal ruled the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office violated state and federal law Friday, after the office destroyed ballots from a 2016 House race for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s seat.

The elections office may also be on the hook for $200,000 in attorneys fees for Tim Canova, who brought a lawsuit against them after he lost to Wasserman Schultz in 2016, the Sun Sentinel reported. Canova lost by a final tally of 28,809 to 21,907 in a Democratic primary.

Canova requested a closer look at the paper ballots from the race to check for anomalies in March 2017, but Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes did not respond to his requests so he took her to court, according to the Sun Sentinel. Snipes had signed off on the destruction of the ballots in September 2017.

Snipes made a “mistake,” she said during testimony in court and claimed the boxes were mislabeled. She maintained the destruction of the ballots was entirely unintentional.

“When I sign, I sign folders filled with information,” Snipes said in her testimony, according to the Sun Sentinel.

“I trust my staff. They have the responsibility of giving me information that’s correct.”

Singhal ruled Snipes had wrongly destroyed public records because her office is required to maintain documents from the election for 22 months after it’s conclusion. Snipes destroyed the ballots after only one year.

Snipes’ attorney, Burnadette Norris-Weeks, also admitted her client made a mistake but said the ballots were scanned and preserved before being disposed of.

“It was a mistake [destroying the original ballots], but the ballots were preserved,” Norris-Weeks told the Sun Sentinel.

“They were scanned shortly after the election.”

Canova claimed he contacted the FBI twice to complain, but didn’t receive a response.

The ruling will allow for Canova to have his attorney fees reimbursed by the elections office, but he still wants Snipes fired for her role in the alleged fraud.

“I think dismissal is an appropriate remedy,” Canova told the Sun Sentinel.

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Mueller Files Unredacted Memo Revealing Scope Of Russia Probe, There Is Just One Problem…

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has handed over an unredacted memo to a Virginia judge on Thursday outlining the scope of his wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. There is just one problem: the memorandum, written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was filed under seal in the Eastern District of Virginia after judge T.S. Ellis, who is overseeing the case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, excoriated a Special Counsel attorney two weeks ago during a “motion to dismiss” hearing.

In other words, virtually nobody can read the 3-page memo that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote on Aug. 2, 2017, explaining why Manafort was a target of the special counsel; although now that it is in the “public arena” we fully expect its contents to leak within days: after all, if this was a memo with any Trump-damaging information, it would have been leaked by “sources” inside the FBI and NSA long before it was even submitted to the court.

During a May 4 hearing in which Judge Ellis made the demand to see the full, unredacted memo, after DOJ attorney Michael Dreeben argued at the hearing that the redacted version offered the relevant paragraphs about Manafort, Ellis said: “I’ll be the judge of whether it relates to the others.”

Meanwhile, as twitter commentators suspect, the presence of the memo “will fuel calls by Trump allies on the hill to obtain the memo themselves.”

Judge T.S. Ellis

A leaked transcript of a heated exchange between attorney Michael Dreeben and Eastern District of Virginia Judge T.S. Ellis revealed that the entire Manafort case was in jeopardy if the Special Counsel didn’t produce an unredacted copy of the original order from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein authorizing the original investigation.

Ellis also said that Mueller shouldn’t have “unfettered power” to prosecute Manafort for charges that have nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and called out the DOJ’s efforts in the case as an attempt by Mueller to gain leverage over Manafort.

“You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever. That’s what you’re really interested in.” –Judge Ellis

Ellis also noted that the Special Counsel’s indictment against Manafort doesn’t mention:

(1) Russian individuals
(2) Russian banks
(3) Russian money
(4) Russian payments to Manafort

To which Dreeben provided an unsatisfactory lawyerly response about how everything is connected to everything (including, apparently, whether Trump paid a woman to keep quiet about consensual sex). 

Ellis also gave prosecutors two weeks to show what evidence they have that Manafort was complicit in colluding with the Russians. 

Manafort faces two indictments by Mueller in Washington D.C. and Virginia, charging him with various crimes ranging from conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent, to bank and tax fraud. 

Manafort’s lawyers had asked the judge in the Virginia case to dismiss an indictment filed against him in what was their third effort to beat back criminal charges by attacking Mueller’s authority. In addition to pushing back against the Special Counsel’s argument for why Manafort’s bank fraud charges are related to the Russia investigation, the judge also questioned why Manafort’s case could not be handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, rather than the Special Counsel’s office, as it is not Russia-related. 

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How A Whistleblower Changed The World

Via ValueWalk.com,

Speak not because it is safe, but because it is right. So goes the ethos of Edward Snowden, the notorious NSA contractor who in 2013 leaked highly classified information detailing the government’s broad domestic and international surveillance powers.

fsHH / Pixabay

Where he was once seen as a traitor – or worse, a foreign spy – Snowden has become something of a pseudo-superhero over the years. In fact, since joining Twitter in 2015, Snowden has amassed more than 3.8 million followers. And while he’s a highly active Tweeter, he only follows one account in return: the NSA.

As a purveyor of truth and an advocate for more transparent privacy laws, Snowden has been an integral voice in the fight for freedom from overt and systemic government oppression. He’s chimed in on everything from the 2016 presidential election to the recent internet censorship happening Russia and more. He’s even schooled cable TV news pundits a time or two on the very meaning of surveillance.

In fact, it was Snowden’s work as a whistleblower that lead to both The Guardian and The Washington Post winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

He’s one of the strongest and most influential voices of reason in an age of countless government leaks and partisan whistleblowers; more than that, he’s one of the few prominent anti-government advocates who’s dedicated his life to working for the public (as stated in his Twitter bio).

So how has Snowden changed the world? Let’s take a look.

Snowden Signaled Sweeping Government Reforms

While the U.S. government (as well as governments abroad) had been spying on their citizens for decades, no one really knew how big or inclusive that system was. And while the Snowden leaks were certainly a tough pill to swallow, they gave the public a reason to force the government to undergo sweeping mass surveillance changes.

In 2015 the White House approved new reforms to limit the size and scope of their phone surveillance methods, and in the same year Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which drastically reduced the amount of data the NSA was able to collect.

While these were both steps in the right direction, it’s worth pointing out that some of that progress iscurrently being undone.

Snowden Promoted Greater Digital Awareness

As an enemy of the nation, Snowden has been in exile for more than five years, first taking refuge in Hong Kong and eventually seeking asylum in Russia. With public appearances few and far between, he does offer the occasional video conference. In one particularly eye-opening conference with The Intercept back in 2017, Snowden detailed how the NSA is currently using people’s appliances to spy on them. Here’s an excerpt:

“What they do is they wait for when these devices are being shipped to you, when you order them on Amazon or whatever. They go to them at the airports. They get the box. They use a little hair dryer to soften the adhesive. They open up the box. Then they put the USB stick in. They seal the box back all nice and perfect, and then they ship it on to you. And now your router, your computer, your TV is hacked. This is a very routine thing that happens, right?”

While Snowden may be issuing most of his statements via Twitter, he’s careful not to disclose too much information. In fact, he refuses to sign up for other social media sites and has stated time and again the importance of using an encrypted messaging service. When speaking on the issue of citizen surveillance, he’s quick to reframe the issue away from terrorism and instead towards manipulation. One of his more famous quotes puts the issue of government spying in a new light:

“These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”

Though limited physically, Snowden’s never shies away from offering his expertise on the current state of affairs. Still warning the public of the dangers of mass surveillance, he recently went on the offense and blasted Facebook over the company’s handling of sensitive user data in one of his most powerful statements yet:

Snowden Changed How the World Views Privacy

As one of the first public whistleblowers, Snowden received enormous backlash for his actions. Knowing he would immediately be chastised, brandished a traitor, and even jailed, he still followed his convictions.

“Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I’m no longer alone.”

It’s only years later that we can look back and see just how prophetic his warnings really were. With increased public scrutiny on data mining, social media scraping, and privacy swapping, it’s becoming clear how user data has become the ultimate weapon. And yet throughout all the noise, it was Edward Snowden who first warned us about the importance of keeping our digital lives private.

Check out VPNs to protect your privacy today.

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China Reportedly Offers $200BN Trade Deficit Reduction

While President Trump warned during a Thursday press conference that a trade deal with China is far from guaranteed, it appears the White House might have won at least one concession during talks with Vice Premier Liu He Thursday afternoon.

Reuters is reporting that China has offered the US a trade-deficit reduction package amounting to roughly $200 billion annually.

The dollar rose in a kneejerk reaction to the headline but its gains are fading fast.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates…

 

 

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Trump’s North Korea Summit May Not Happen

The prospects for a successful diplomatic summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are looking dimmer by the day.

Since the two governments began discussing a meeting between Kim and Trump, which would be the first between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader, diplomatic relations have been thawing. In April the North Korean government announced a suspension of nuclear and missile testing. That was followed by a meeting between Kim and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-In, both of whom committed to reaching a permanent peace agreement. Last week three Americans imprisoned in North Korea were returned to the United States.

The last few days have seen a sudden reversal of this good will. On Tuesday the North Korean government suspended talks with the South in response to its joint military exercises with the U.S. Hours later it issued an angry missive castigating National Security Adviser John Bolton for suggesting in April that the U.S. should follow the “Libya model” of denuclearization with North Korea. Such talk, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official said, was putting the summit in danger. Yesterday North Korea’s chief inter-Korean diplomat said that “unless the serious situation which led to the suspension of the north-south high-level talks is settled, it will never be easy to sit face to face again with the present regime of South Korea.”

The Trump administration’s response has been pretty sedate. When asked Wednesday whether the impending summit will still happen, Trump offered a cryptic “we’ll see.” White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday downplayed Bolton’s “Libya model” remark, saying the administration will follow “the President Trump model.”

Many journalists portrayed North Korea’s shift as another example of Kim’s aggressiveness, erraticism, or both. The New York Times said the move was part of “a pattern by the unpredictable regime: diplomatic outreach, followed by erratic behavior and, in many cases, an outright rejections of peace overtures.” In a CNN opinion piece, David Rothkopf said Tuesday’s “verbal pre-emptive strike” was aimed at seeing how far Trump would go to save a summit in which he has invested so much political capital. Ethan Epstein, writing in The Weekly Standard, said “the North’s seemingly irrational threat to walk away is in fact part of a long-established pattern: pushing and probing. The regime likes to see how far it can bend its adversaries.”

Yet North Korea’s reaction to Bolton’s “Libya model” comments is understandable given what happened to Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi after he surrendered his nuclear weapons program in 2003. “Perhaps the simplest and biggest reason North Korea doesn’t like the Libya model is what happened to the Gadhafi regime,” Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, a political science professor at Olso University and author of a book on the Iraqi and Libyan nuclear weapons programs, told The Washington Post. “In 2011, it was toppled by a domestic uprising and a NATO-led coalition.”

The North Korean government said as much on Tuesday, declaring that the “world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq which have met [a] miserable fate.” That Bolton’s comments were followed by joint military drills involving some 100 U.S. warplanes would be enough to spook a lot of governments, let alone a deeply paranoid one like North Korea’s. “North Korea’s message should be interpreted not as an attempt to spoil the mood but rather as encouragement to do a better job,” an unnamed South Korean official told The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper.

Trump has said his summit with Kim could be “a very special moment for World Peace!” He has set the difficult goal of convincing the North Korean regime to completely surrender its nuclear arsenal. It’s an open question whether that result is achievable, but bellicose rhetoric from hawkish advisers, combined with conspicuous military drills, surely do not make it easier.

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Was Gina Haspel, Trump’s New CIA Chief, Involved In Secret Spy Op On Trump Campaign?

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) expressed concern on Fox News Tuesday over CIA director-designate Gina Haspel’s potential involvement in a recently exposed surveillance campaign against Donald Trump’s campaign, noting her close relationship with former CIA Director John Brennan. 

Speaking with host Neil Cavuto, Paul said he doesn’t want “people running our intelligence agencies that have an axe to grind or have some sort of partisanship lurking beneath the surface.”

Paul connects the dots: 

Well, you know, I’m concerned that there are reports that John Brennan, the former head of the CIA under President Obama that he was cooperating with British intelligence to spy on the Trump campaign. This is a big deal.

…

I think that she is a close acolyte of John Brennan. So, I think some have called her a protégé. 

…

There are some accusations it was actually ordered by President Obama`s administration, either through John Brennan or others. Gina Haspel is the acting director of the CIA. She is high enough up in the CIA. I think we should know what she knows about whether the Trump campaign was surveilled upon. 

The biggest dot?

Yesterday we profiled a puff piece “planted” in the New York Times which effectively attempts to mount a public defense of the FBI ahead of a much anticipated report later this year by the DOJ’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz. Horowitz’s first report on the Clinton email investigation is expected within weeks, however he is also investigating the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 US election. 

And as we found out last week, it’s looking fairly certain that the FBI embedded at least one mole, and possibly more, inside Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The NYT piece reveals that the FBI launched “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” against the Trump campaign, sending anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok to London 90 days before the 2016 election to meet with Alexander Downer. According toi the Times, Strzok and Downer met to describe his meeting with Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos – in which Papadopoulos purportedly said he knew that the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails. 

The meeting with Downer was described as “highly unusual,” and “helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation.” The FBI kept details of the operation secret from most of the DOJ – with “only about five Justice Department officials” aware of the full scope of the case.

Moreover, we know that several other meetings of high profile individuals involved in the anti-Trump effort occurred in London, where former MI6 agent Christopher Steele is based. Steele

What does this have to do with Haspel? OAN’s Jack Posobiec lays it out: 

Brennan, by all appearances, was deeply involved in the operation against the Trump campaign. As Paul Sperry of RealClear Investigations reported on Wednesday, Two former colleagues of ex-CIA Director John Brennan have contradicted his claim that the unverified “Steele Dossier” was not part of the US Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Brennan was feeding some of the dossier material to President Obama and passing it off as credible, reports Sperry.

“Brennan put some of the dossier material into the PDB [presidential daily briefing] for Obama and described it as coming from a ‘credible source,’ which is how they viewed Steele,” said the source familiar with the House investigation. “But they never corroborated his sources.” –RCI

And while Brennan was feeding Obama unverified information from the Steele dossier, his “Acolyte” Gina Haspel ran the London CIA station – in very close proximity to nearly the entire cast of characters involved in the alleged setup.

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The Great Oz Revealed

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

For eight years (2008–2016), the US liberal media touted the brilliant accomplishments of the liberal president, whilst the conservative media groused that nothing he did was of value.

Today, the conservative US media are touting the brilliant accomplishments of the conservative president, whilst the liberal media grouse that nothing he does is of value.

So, which is it? Who is correct here? Well actually, neither is correct.

Neither president is the Great Oz. Neither one is in fact, “running the country.” Behind the scenes, the great machine of government churns along, often in complete disregard to the president or his stated policies.

However, the media credits or lambastes the president of the day as though he and he alone is in charge of the country. Whatever happens is treated as his accomplishment or failure.

And, typically, presidents play into this—taking personal credit for perceived accomplishments within the country and disavowing blame for perceived failures.

At present, the conservative media is emphasising low unemployment as an achievement, just as the liberal media did during the Obama Administration.

And yet, since the Clinton Administration, the unemployment figures have been consistently fudged.

Those who work only part-time are defined as “employed.” Those who have given up pursuing employment are removed from the unemployment equation. If those numbers were plugged back in, US unemployment would be in the double-digits—during both the Obama and Trump presidencies.

The conservative media also touts Mister Trump for the increase in the stock market. Of course, the liberal media did the same in Mister Obama’s time. Stocks have been on the rise in both administrations.

But, wait. Is this a barometer of America’s economic health? The debt levels in the US are far beyond anything that has ever existed in the history of the world. The stock market is not reflective of sound investment, but of a bubble—one of epic proportions. And of course, bubbles always burst. The bigger the bubble, the worse the crash. Therefore, we are on the cusp of history’s worst crash.

And yet, the conservative media are blindly crediting Mister Trump for the expanded bubble. And when the crashes do come, the liberal media will, of course, blindly blame Mister Trump for them.

Recently, the conservative media has gone all-out to shine a light on the perceived success of the “Trump tax cuts.” Of course, Mister Trump was most certainly not the only cog in the wheel of creating tax cuts, yet, he is credited for it.

It’s quite true that the tax cuts will provide an uptick in business activity, much in the way a shot of amphetamine provides a quick boost to the human body. However, the benefit will not be sustained. Tax cuts only work if there’s a corresponding cut in government spending.

Unfortunately, Congress (both republicans and democrats) is voting for large increases in spending, which will result in an economic downturn after the brief amphetamine rush of tax cuts. As any housewife knows (or should know), you can’t cut your money supply and increase spending at the same time. You end up broke.

Just as many liberals were falsely buoyed up by Mister Obama’s mere presence in the White House, many conservatives are falsely buoyed up by Mister Trump’s presence. Unfortunately, neither president is “The Great Oz.” At some point, Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal that it’s the folks behind the curtain who are creating false images of prosperity and providing misinformation to the media.

In reality, neither president is deserving of either the extreme praise nor the extreme criticism that they receive. The machine of government goes on as intended, regardless of who happens to be in the White House. The rest is a mere distraction.

Mark Twain famously said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

Quite so. It might be wise to view the media (both conservative and liberal) with a jaundiced eye. And, in the bargain, refuse to be a cheerleader for any political leader.

The political agenda in most any country carries on no matter who the latest elected figurehead is. In order to see the ongoing shell-game more clearly, it might be best to recognize that government, in its entirety, is the problem – not whoever happens to be playing the role of the Great Oz at the moment.

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Rejecting Rand Paul’s Budget, Republicans Commit to Fiscal Irresponsibility

If Rand Paul’s budget proposal was, as he said, a litmus test for conservatives, most of them failed it.

The Senate on Thursday resoundingly rejected the Kentucky Republican’s plan to balance the federal budget by 2023, voting 76 to 21 against a bill that would have required a $400 billion cut in federal spending next year, followed by 1 percent spending increases for the rest of the next decade. Republican hawks took the floor to blast Paul for trying to undermine the American military, even though his proposal would have let Congress decide how much to cut from each department, including the Pentagon.

“Let me tell you what that means to the military,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) before voting against the bill. “Devastation. This budget throws our military in the ditch.”

Hardly. Even if the entire $400 billion cut Paul proposed were applied to the Pentagon, America would still spend far more on the military than any other nation. But even the suggestion that defense spending could be cut is enough to scare most Republicans away from facing fiscal reality. As Paul pointed out on Thursday, the national debt and $1 trillion deficits are bigger threats to America’s long-term national security than a reduction in funding for the Pentagon. “There is waste from top to bottom in every department of the government, including the military,” Paul said, noting that one Pentagon agency managed to misplace $800 million, according to a recent audit.

But Paul’s proposal never really had a chance of passing, coming as it did just months after Congress approved enormous spending hikes that busted Obama-era caps once championed by Republicans as necessary for fiscal restraint. Combined with last year’s tax reforms, the spending bill will produce annual deficits of at least $1 trillion for the rest of the Trump presidency, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says. If Congress does not allow individual tax rate reductions to expire as planned in the middle of the next decade, they will add another $722 billion to budget deficits through 2028. By that year, even if the tax cuts expire, the CBO projects that the national debt will equal the nation’s overall economic output, with our debt-to-GDP ratio reaching levels “far greater than the debt in any year since just after World War II.”

Relative to current baseline projections, Paul’s proposal called for a $404 billion spending cut in fiscal year 2019, which begins on October 1. During the next 10 years, Paul’s plan would have spent about $13.3 trillion less than the current CBO projections, although federal spending still would have increased by more than 14 percent over the decade. Paul’s plan would have balanced the budget by 2023, as long as revenue met current CBO projections. By 2028, his proposal envisioned a $700 billion surplus instead of the $1.5 trillion deficit currently projected by the CBO.

“When the Republican Party is out of power, they are a conservative party,” Paul said just before the vote. “The problem is that when the Republican Party is in power, there is no conservative party.” Thursday proved, once again, how correct that assessment is.

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Giuliani Rejects “Fishing Expedition”, Mueller Agrees To Reduce Scope Of Trump Questions

While it’s unclear whether he has the authorization to do so, Rudy Giuliani has just proposed a new timeline for the Mueller probe – which celebrated its one-year anniversary on Thursday – saying an interview with President Trump could happen by July, with a final report issued by Mueller by Labor Day.

In an interview with the Washington Times, Giuliani said that Mueller has agreed to avoid a “fishing expedition” by narrowing the subject of questions that he might ask President Trump during a possible interview. Giuliani added that he believes James Comey “is not going to be worth anything as a witness,” and wouldn’t be a threat to the president.

“He’s eliminated a lot of subjects that would have indicated he was fishing,” Mr. Giuliani told The Times on Thursday. “He’s eliminated those and he’s into a much more relevant area where we know the answers and we know the answers really can’t be effectively contradicted.”

He has contended from the start that there is no evidence of Trump collusion in Russian election interference. The other two major topics: whether the president somehow obstructed justice in the firing of Mr. Comey, a Mueller friend, and whether he might commit perjury in answering questions under oath.

Mueller

However, Giuliani emphasized that nothing had been agreed to yet, and that there was no guarantee that Trump would go through with an interview.

Mr. Giuliani is a longtime Trump friend who was brought in to try to bring an end to Mr. Mueller’s inquiry re the president. He said a final agreement on testifying would include: the subjects; an exchange of questions and any Trump objections; a place and time; and a schedule for a final report.

“What I’m telling you none has been agreed to,” he said, putting the chance of an interview at 50-50. He said he could agree to a two to three-hour interview.

On perjury, the issue would be Mr. Comey’s word in contemporaneous memos he wrote of discussions with the president versus Mr. Trump’s recollection.

Mr. Comey leaked his memos to the press with the express purposes of prompting the appointment of a special counsel, on which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein complied.

Mr. Comey said Mr. Trump urged him to end a probe into retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, his brief national security adviser. Mr. Trump says he did not.

Giuliani added that Mueller’s team is focusing on obstruction because the Russian collusion narrative has “gone nowhere.”

“I think they are relying more on obstruction and they wish perjury from their point of view than they are on collusion with the Russians. I think every time they’ve gone up the collusion alley it’s gone nowhere. That becomes the biggest obstacle to our testifying. Why are we going to get them to use the president’s word against himself? He’s already given all the explanations that they need to make a decision in his public comments. His comments under oath are not going to be materially different than this public comments. And if they would be we would tell them that. ‘On further reflection, he remembers this and that.’ So far there haven’t been too many further reflections.”

Any meeting between Trump and Mueller would take place after the summit with North Korea, which is set for June 12 in Singapore.

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