RAND PAUL 2 9%

---

8/16 big in anti-union and green

vlad courier? UKRAINE WAR

doctor --> BS

---

https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/rand-paul

15* 9%

couple non green noms

---

gmail 7 26 zeteo pt 2

Leading virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen dives into what the evidence actually shows about the origins of the Covid pandemic. Spoiler alert: It's not what Trump, RFK Jr. and Gabbard are telling you

...as Tulsi Gabbard departed her role as the director of national intelligence, she released what she characterized as a bombshell reveal that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about masterminding virology research that created SARS-CoV-2, which leaked from a lab and caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), has done the same, releasing a trove of similarly uninformative documents this week, which mostly show some of my co-authors joking around, discussing politics, and changing their minds when faced with evidence (full disclosure: they mention me in the context of complimenting my Twitter game). Paul claims this is evidence that they conspired with Fauci to help him cover up the truth about the lab leak by writing a paper for a scientific journal.

Upgrade to paid

These documents are not proof of anything besides showing that, yet again, efforts across multiple intelligence agencies and the Senate HSGAC failed to uncover any hard evidence that a “lab leak” occurred. That’s because the sole piece of evidence supporting that version of events is that the pandemic began in Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies coronaviruses. There was also a market, where live animals were sold.

This is the second part of a two-part series. In Part 1, I examined how disinformation about the “lab leak” is being weaponized to attack science and persecute scientists, including Fauci, furthering the advancement of authoritarianism and erosion of democracy in America. Part 2 discusses what the evidence actually shows about the origin of the pandemic – and none of it indicates that it started in a lab.

What Evidence?...

---

NO LNX

Thom Hartmann February 04, 2026

The British newspaper Daily Mail is out with a deeply researched investigative report, the result of a long collaboration between columnists Glen Owen and Dan Hodges, along with Mark Hookham (Assistant Editor Investigations), and Daisy Graham-Brown (Investigative Reporter).

It’s shocking in its detail and its implication that Vladimir Putin has basically owned Donald Trump for years, even before Trump ran for president in 2016.

They note of last week’s partial (about 50 percent) Epstein document release:

“The files include 1,056 documents naming Russian President Vladimir Putin and 9,629 referring to Moscow. [Jeffrey] Epstein even seems to have secured audiences with Putin after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.”

Essentially, they’re arguing that Epstein was running an operation on behalf of the KGB/Putin that lured wealthy and powerful men to Epstein’s New York and Palm Beach mansions and his island where they were surreptitiously filmed having sex with underage girls.

That material was then presumably passed along to Putin, who used it for leverage when he needed it:

“Intelligence sources believe Epstein was running ‘the world’s largest honeytrap operation’ on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates.”

In return for giving Putin videos of wealthy, famous men in criminally compromising positions, Putin reportedly arranged for massive amounts of corrupt Russian money to be handed to Epstein to launder in the US.

Such money typically comes from illicit drug and oil deals, outright theft, sanctions evasions, and Russian organized crime oligarchs (including Putin and his associates) and is frequently laundered in this country using real estate. It’s the Mafia’s favorite, too.

America has the most lax and largely useless real estate transaction laws in the developed world, so a main way to launder such dirty cash is through cash-based real estate transactions (which are illegal in almost every other developed country).

And we know that Trump and his sons, when US and European banks refused to loan him any more money after his multiple bankruptcies, started taking in enough money to ensure the survival of his little real estate empire and it was all coming from Russia.

As Don Jr. told wealthy attendees to a 2008 real-estate conference:

“In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S., Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”

Similarly, Eric Trump told a friend, who later testified about it:

“‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’”

This is one of the reasons Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee (that oversees US banking) has been demanding access to Epstein’s finances and even introduced legislation (the Produce Epstein Treasury Records Act) to require that disclosure, which Republicans are currently blocking.

That alone is worth a call to your two US senators.

The documents released last week included a series of email conversations between Epstein and senior European officials close to Putin. This is way beyond Gary Hart and Monkey Business; this is the President of the United States being in the pocket of a foreign power and profiting from it. They pretty much openly suggest Epstein knew about ways to “handle” Trump:

“Other messages revealed Epstein claimed he could give the Kremlin valuable insight into Mr Trump ahead of a summit with Putin in Helsinki. …“In a June 2018 exchange, Epstein indicated that Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, ‘understood Trump after our conversations.’ …

“Earlier that month Epstein had also messaged Steve Bannon, a Trump ally, to tell him Mr Jagland was due to meet Putin and Lavrov and was then staying overnight with him at his mansion in Paris.” [Emphasis added]

Epstein, of course, died under deeply suspicious circumstances in jail while Trump was president (and now Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved to a country club type of facility where she reportedly spends the days training puppies). As Republican consultant Harlan Hill noted on Twitter at the time of Epstein’s supposed suicide:

“Dead men tell no tales. Just as Jeffrey Epstein starts to name names, he decides to kill himself? Mkay. Totally believable.”

So, if Epstein had given Putin video of Trump having sex with underage girls, and Trump knows it and has for decades, how might that have changed Trump’s behavior?

Might it provoke him to hang a photo of Putin in the White House?

Or go along with Putin’s daily slaughter of Ukrainian children?

Give Putin’s top diplomat information that burned a spy and an anti-Russia operation?

Tell the world that he trusts Putin over the US intelligence services?

Put a Putin-friendly conspiracy fan in charge of all US intelligence?

Severely damage NATO, a perpetual thorn in Putin’s side?

Shatter our alliances with the EU and other democratic nations in ways that may well last for generations?

Refuse to make America’s dues payments to the UN, causing that body to have to shut down, perhaps permanently, this summer?

Steal US intelligence secrets, including top-secret nuclear information, and put it in a place where Russian spies or their associates can easily access and photocopy it?

Unleash ICE in a way that turns Americans against each other leading to the “Second US Civil War” that Russian media and Putin’s #2 man (Medvedev) have been gleefully predicting?

Gut America’s soft power around the world by shutting down USAID, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands mostly children, in the Third World while opening opportunities for Putin and Xi to pick them up as new alliances?

In 2019 The Washington Post revealed that, throughout his first presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Putin (over 20 have been identified so far, including one just days before the 2020 election).

The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documents more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings, all just leading up to the 2016 election.

The manager of his 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort — who was previously paid tens of millions by Vladimir Putin’s people to install a pro-Putin puppet as Ukraine’s president in 2010 — has admitted that he was regularly feeding secret inside-campaign strategy and polling information to Russian intelligence via the oligarch who typically paid him on their behalf.

Throughout the campaign, he regularly let Russia know where Trump needed specific types of help, and how, and when.

With that help, an army of bots, shills, and trolls were unleashed on social media to successfully swing the young white male vote toward Trump.

Trump pardoned Manafort, which got him out of prison. He’s still fabulously rich from his work for Russia and his unpaid efforts to elect Trump.

As The New York Times noted in 2020:

“[I]nvestigators found enough there to declare that Mr. Manafort created ‘a grave counterintelligence threat’ by sharing inside information about the presidential race with Mr. Kilimnik and the Russian and [pro-Russian] Ukrainian oligarchs whom he served.”

There is no known parallel to this behavior by any president in American history — one could argue it easily exceeds Benedict Arnold’s audacity — and criminally bringing stolen top secret documents to Mar-a-Lago is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Washington Post reported that Trump had a habit of carrying top-secret information that could severely damage our national security, leaving it in hotel rooms in hostile nations.

Was he bringing these documents with him to sell? Or just to show to leaders or oligarchs in those countries to impress them? Or because Putin told him to?

Trump doesn’t put all that effort into hauling things around unless he’s terrified.

“Boxes of documents even came with Trump on foreign travel,” The Post noted, “following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries considered foreign adversaries of the United States.”

When Robert Mueller’s team tried to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia and his possibly sharing sensitive military information with Putin, they were stonewalled.

The Mueller Report identified ten specific instances of Trump trying to obstruct the investigation, including offering the bribe of a pardon to Paul Manafort, asking FBI Director Comey to “go easy” on General Flynn after Flynn’s dinner with Putin, and directing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s ability to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.

As the Mueller Report noted:

“The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.“For instance, the President attempted to remove the Attorney General; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions un-recuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.”

It adds, detailing Trump’s specific Obstruction of Justice crimes:

“These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”

There are, after all, credible assertions from American intelligence that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, celebrating a victory they believed they made happen.

And apparently Putin and his intelligence operatives had good reason to be popping the champagne in November, 2016. They were quickly paid off in a big way.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador in what he thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting” (the Russians released the photo to the press), resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” that spy.

The undercover agent was apparently working in Syria that year against the Russians, who were embroiled in the midst of Assad’s Civil War and indiscriminately bombing Aleppo into rubble (creating a brown-skinned refugee crisis in Europe, which both Putin and Orbán exploited).

That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime American spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

As CNN noted (when the story leaked two years later):

“The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.“According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.”

The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned or was about to burn our spy inside the Kremlin was so great that — at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may even have otherwise helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine — they pulled our spy out of Russia in the first year of Trump’s presidency, 2017.

Similarly, when they met in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is fluent in English) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large empty ballroom in which they met.

The Washington Post reported, after a leak six months later, that when Trump met privately for those two hours with Putin the CIA went into “panic mode.” A US intelligence official told the Post:

“There was this gasp’ at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters. You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”

Three weeks after Trump’s July 16, 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a document or package of documents from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown, although Paul told the press it was a “personal” letter of some sort.

Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s and Putin’s side with regard to the Ukraine war: he single-handedly blocked a $40 billion military aid package in the Senate. When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, he responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act, which Jack Smith was prepared to charge Trump under. Paul further suggested the FBI may have “planted” Secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Ten days after Paul’s trip to Moscow, The New York Times reported that the CIA was worried because their sources inside Moscow had suddenly “gone silent”:

“The full reasons the sources have gone silent are not known,” the Times reported, but Trump having intentionally burned a man working for the FBI — whose job at that time was to find and reveal Russian agents involved in or close to the Trump campaign — may also have had something to do with it:

“[C]urrent and former officials said the exposure of sources inside the United States has also complicated matters,” noted the Times. “This year, the identity of an F.B.I. informant, Stefan Halper, became public after [Trump-loyal MAGA Republican] House lawmakers sought information on him and the White House allowed the information to be shared. Mr. Halper, an American academic based in Britain, had been sent to talk to Trump campaign advisers who were under F.B.I. scrutiny for their ties to Russia.”

Things were picking up the following year, in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.

In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a presidential visit that month to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.

In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump “made promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.

As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress”:

“Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.”

On the last day of that month, July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin.

The White House spokespeople told Congress and the press that Trump said that he and Putin discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…

But the following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had that week asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Perhaps just by coincidence, months after Trump left office with cases of classified documents, The New York Times ran a story with the headline Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants:

“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week,” the Times’ story’s lede began, “about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.“The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.”

In the years since, Trump continues to maintain a close relationship with Putin; most recently he revealed that he’d asked “a favor” of the Russian dictator to “pause” his murderous, war-crime bombing of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine “for one week.” Putin, being in the power position, chose to laugh at Trump and continued his assault on the nation, although he did throw Trump a bone by pausing his hits on Kiev for a few days.

These aren’t just “a few bad judgment calls” or a president with “strange foreign policy instincts.” These stories (and literally hundreds of others) point to a man who’s behaved, consistently and predictably, like someone under leverage, someone whose personal fear of exposure of some sort of major crime — like the ones we know Epstein was holding over other billionaires — outweighs his loyalty to the nation he swore to serve.

If Americans don’t demand real investigations, genuine accountability, and impeachment and jail time for what sure looks like the greatest counterintelligence failure in our history, we may lose what’s left of our democracy before the 2028 elections can fix things.

If Democrats can take control of either branch of Congress and if Schumer and Jeffries get spine transplants and begin a serious investigation into Trump’s destruction of the United States and our historic role in the world, they’ll have enough to keep them busy for years.

This is not about politics or personality. It’s about whether a country can survive being led by someone who looks captured and compromised by a foreign power. If even half of this is true, then staying quiet is the same as going along with it.

We must demand real investigations and real consequences, or accept that the presidency can be bought, blackmailed, and used against the country itself.

Let your elected officials know your thoughts on this, and don’t forget to demand your elected Republicans step up and defend America, too. You can reach your member of Congress and both your Senators via the congressional switchboard at: (202) 224-3121.

See you in the streets on March 28th!

---

LCV

2021

500Sung Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2021459Restoring the Voting Rights ActJustice and Democracy

2021426Pérez Confirmation (Second Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2021420Voting Rights and Democracy ReformsJustice and Democracy

2021401Stone-Manning Confirmation (BLM Director)Other, Public Lands/Forests

2021357Build Back Better Budget ResolutionClimate Change, Clean Energy, Environmental Justice, Public Lands/Forests

2021346Promoting Polluting Energy SourcesDirty Energy, Climate Change, Air

2021320Eliminating Safeguards on Fossil Fuel ProductionDrilling, Dirty Energy, Climate Change, Oceans, Public Lands/Forests

2021303Defunding the Civilian Conservation Corps and Wildland FirefightingClimate Change, Public Lands/Forests, Other

2021298Restarting Construction of the Harmful Border WallWildlife, Public Lands/Forests, Environmental Justice

2021279Kim Confirmation (DOJ-ENRD Assistant Attorney General)Other, Environmental Justice

2021246Voting Rights and Democracy ReformsJustice and Democracy

2021236Fox Confirmation (EPA Assistant Administrator)Water

2021231Jackson Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary, Climate Change, Justice and Democracy

2021203Clarke Confirmation (DOJ-CRD Assistant Attorney General)Justice and Democracy, Other

2021178Investing in Water InfrastructureWater

2021175Repealing Assault on Methane Pollution SafeguardsClimate Change, Dirty Energy

2021150Mallory Confirmation (Council on Environmental Quality Chair)Other, Environmental Justice

2021125Becerra Confirmation (Health and Human Services Secretary)Other, Environmental Justice

2021123Tai Confirmation (United States Trade Representative)Other

2021119Haaland Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Other, Public Lands/Forests

2021116Regan Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Other, Climate Change, Water, Air, Environmental Justice

2021114Garland Confirmation (Attorney General)Other, Justice and Democracy

2021113Fudge Confirmation (Housing and Urban Development Secretary)Other, Environmental Justice

202186Striking Provisions to Help Farmers of ColorEnvironmental Justice, Agriculture

202170Raimondo Confirmation (Commerce Secretary)Other, Oceans

202166Granholm Confirmation (Energy Secretary)Other, Clean Energy

202159Impeachment for Incitement of InsurrectionJustice and Democracy

202143Bolstering the Dirty Water RuleClean Water

202132Supporting the Destructive Keystone XL PipelineDirty Energy, Environmental Just===

---

2021}:

28Promoting Drilling for Fossil FuelsDirty Energy, Drilling

202111Buttigieg Confirmation (Transportation Secretary)Other, Transportation

20212Certifying Pennsylvania’s Electoral VotesJustice and Democracy

20211Certifying Arizona’s Electoral VotesJustice and Democracy

2020224Barrett Confirmation (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2020222Barrett Cloture Vote (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2020168Inadequate COVID Relief PackageOther

2020126Inadequate Policing ReformJudiciary, Other

2020125Wilson Confirmation (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2020123Walker Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2020121Great American Outdoors ActLands/Forests

2020118Defeating Effort to Derail the Great American Outdoors ActLands/Forests

202072Danly Confirmation (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)Dirty Energy, Clean Energy, Climate Change

202060MacGregor Confirmation (Interior Deputy Secretary)Dirty Energy, Climate Change, Lands/Forests, Oceans, Drilling, Wildlife

202041Kindred Confirmation (U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska)Judiciary

202036Brasher Confirmation (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

202014USMCA Trade DealClimate Change; Other

2019339Undermining the Land and Water Conservation FundLands/Forests

2019324Stopping Rollbacks of Carbon Pollution Limits for Power PlantsClimate Change

2019313Scalia Confirmation (Labor Secretary)Other

2019300Jorjani Confirmation (Interior Solicitor)Other, Lands/Forests

201977Bernhardt Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Climate Change, Drilling, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other

201968Wyrick Confirmation (District Court for Western District of Oklahoma)Other, Justice and Democracy

201944Rao Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Other, Justice and Democracy

201933Wheeler Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water

201929Miller Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Other, Justice and Democracy

201922Public Lands PackageLands/Forests

201920Undermining the Antiquities ActLands/Forests

201919Blocking Permanent Reauthorization of the Land & Water Conservation FundLands/Forests

2018259Farm Bill Conference ReportClimate Change, Clean Wat

---

AN 1 26

On Thursday morning, January 8, five Republican senators — Maine's Susan Collins, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Kentucky's Rand Paul, Missouri's Josh Hawley, and Indiana's Todd Young — joined Senate Democrats in voting to advance a resolution to block President Donald Trump from using military force against Venezuela. And Trump responded by personally attacking the senators in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump wrote: "Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again. This Vote greatly hampers American Self Defense and National Security, impeding the President’s Authority as Commander in Chief."

Trump went on to attack the senators for invoking the War Powers Act in their resolution.

The U.S. president posted: "In any event, and despite their 'stupidity,' the War Powers Act is Unconstitutional, totally violating Article II of the Constitution, as all Presidents, and their Departments of Justice, have determined before me."

Trump's post is drawing a lot of responses on X.

MAGA Republican Breanna Morello, formerly with far-right network Newsmax, applauded Trump's post, writing: "President Donald Trump calls out The RINO Senators that are teaming up with Senate Democrats to undermine the White House. This includes Senators Susan Collins, Rand, Paul, Lisa Murkowski, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young."

Eric Daugherty of the right-wing Florida's Voice News posted, "The White House CONFIRMED this would be vetoed."

But CNN's Aaron Blake, formerly of the Washington Post, argued that Collins is important to Republicans holding the U.S. Senate in the midterms.

Blake posted, "Collins is up for reelection this year and is key to Trump keeping a Senate majority."

MS NOW's Mychael Schnell tweeted: "Woah. President Trump blasts the 5 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the Venezuela war powers resolution. 'Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again.' Republicans should be 'ashamed' of them, he adds."

The Missouri Independent's Jason Hancock wrote: "Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Todd Young of Indiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska split with their party to act as a check on the administration's use of military forces."

Bloomberg News' Steven Dennis tweeted: "5 Republicans defied Trump on Venezuela, with some citing his talk of running the country indefinitely: Todd Young (Served as a Marine) Josh Hawley Susan Collins Lisa Murkowski Rand Paul."

Dennis, in a separate tweet, also posted: "Trump issued a veto threat, so passing this in the Senate - expected next week after today's 52-47 vote - is 15 votes shy in the Senate of an override (and needs 2/3rds in House too.)…. Still this is a very rare rebuke of Trump 2.0. (He's also lost votes on his tariffs on Canada)."

---

AN 7 25

One three-term Senate Republican is now claiming responsibility for throwing doubt on the confirmation of President Donald Trump's latest Cabinet appointment.

Axios reported Wednesday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) acknowledged that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scuttled a planned confirmation vote for former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who Trump picked as his administration's next ambassador to the United Nations (UN). Because Republicans have only a slim 12-10 majority in the committee, a single Republican defection would lead to a tie, making confirmation impossible.

"They pulled it for now," Paul said of Waltz's planned confirmation vote. "We're going to see what happens over the next week."

During his confirmation hearing last Tuesday, Paul grilled Waltz over his past support for keeping approximately 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan when Waltz was a member of the House of Representatives. The Kentucky Republican said during the hearing that he resented Waltz's vote — noting that he took the same position as one of Trump's biggest political opponents.

IFrame Content

"The idea that Congress should be involved with declaring war is sort of passé. It's old-fashioned," Paul said at the time. "But when it comes to ending a war, you voted with Liz Cheney and the others to say that the president couldn't end the war."

If Waltz hopes to make it out of the committee and have his nomination advanced to the full Senate, he would need one Democratic senator to vote with Republicans. Should his nomination fail, Axios reported that one likely replacement could be Richard Grenell, who was Trump's one-time acting director of national intelligence and who is currently involved in an overseas real estate development project with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Trump initially nominated Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as UN ambassador, though her nomination ended up being stalled for months as Republicans were hesitant to lose her vote due to their slim House majority. Stefanik gave up her position as House Republican Conference chair in anticipation of her confirmation. She's now reportedly mulling a run for governor of New York in 2026.

Click here to read Axios' full article.

---

:{:{Alternet+ no lnx}:

Trump’s appointees are the Trojan horse that could lead to America’s strategic collapse

Thom Hartmann November 21, 2024

The mainstream media is baffled: Why would Trump promote candidates to oversee critical agencies with millions of employees and multi-billion-dollar budgets who have little to no management experience and have openly expressed hostility toward the institutions they’ll oversee?

I’ve seen legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who wrote several books about Trump, on three different TV shows this week asking to the effect of, “What could Trump possibly gain from these incompetent appointments?

If he just wanted loyalty, there’s no shortage of rational, competent members of the military and intelligence community who’re loyal to Trump.

So why is he selecting people like Hegseth, Gaetz, and Gabbard to run agencies that could directly involve confrontations with Russia?

Trump wants Gaetz for the job as our nation’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General (who oversees the FBI), where he could block the FBI from investigating Trump’s embrace of Putin and Russia’s spying and disinformation efforts here in the US.

Why? Gaetz, after all, has called for Trump to “defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI…”; he apparently hates the agency that investigated and threatened to prosecute him.

Pete Hegseth, who Trump wants to put in charge of our Department of Defense, is openly critical of our NATO allies, saying they are, “self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to.”

Who else hates NATO? Vladimir Putin. Hegseth has also echoed Putin’s assertion that he doesn’t have designs on the Baltic states, arguing that he doubted Putin would go “much further” than the Polish border.

And both Hegseth and Gaetz have a history of lurid, possibly illegal sexual activity that could subject them to blackmail by a foreign power…like Russia.

Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump wants to put in charge of all 18 of America’s intelligence agencies — giving her full access to America’s darkest secrets and our spies buried deep within Russia and China — has repeatedly and openly embraced Vladimir Putin’s positions on world affairs.

Regarding Ukraine, she argued that Russia was forced to invade that country because, echoing Putin, she falsely claimed Ukraine was developing (with US help) biological weapons and conspiring with NATO to put troops on Russia’s border.

Former Secretary of State Clinton said Russia was “grooming” Gabbard, and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was equally blunt:

“There’s no question I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset.”

And JD Vance, also selected by Trump and now our vice-president elect, has famously said:

“I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” no doubt bringing cheers from the Kremlin.

So, what’s really going on here?

Is it possible that Trump isn’t trolling us or trying to do “dominance plays” with Congress, but actually wants these people to injure or destroy the agencies he’s putting them in charge of?

Is it even conceivable that Trump, in league with Putin (or at least sharing his goal of weakening and damaging America), actually wants our intelligence, defense, and investigative agencies to be gutted to the point of impotence?

That these appointees could be Trojan horses he’s planning to use to destroy America from within?

That he’s that angry with the country whose past leaders have ridiculed him, whose elites have rejected him all his life, and that has even tried to put him in prison?

That he’d like our country — which he disdains — to be brought to its knees?

That his loyalty, perhaps for years, has been to a country and system of government very different from America and what our founders envisioned?

In 2019 The Washington Post revealed that, throughout his presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Russia’s President Putin (over 20 have been identified so far, including one just days before the 2020 election).

Just months ago, we discovered that he and Elon Musk have both been having regular, secret conversations with Putin for at least the past two years.

This embrace of a foreign dictator first cranked into visibility in 2016.

The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documented more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump 2016 campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings just leading up to that year’s election.

Throughout the campaign, he let them know where Trump needed help, and when. Speculation is that they used that information for their successful 2016 Facebook campaigns.

Trump pardoned Manafort, which got him out of prison; he’s still fabulously rich from his work for Russia.

As The New York Times noted in 2020:

There is no known parallel to this behavior by any president in American history — one could argue it easily exceeds Benedict Arnold’s audacity — and bringing documents to Mar-a-Lago is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Washington Post reported two years ago last August that Trump had a habit of carrying top-secret information that could severely damage our national security, leaving it in hotel rooms in hostile nations.

Was he bringing these documents with him to sell? Or just to show to leaders or oligarchs in those countries to impress them? Or for bragging rights to impress dignitaries, businessmen, or ladies he brings back to his room?

Trump doesn’t put all that effort into hauling things around unless it’s extraordinarily important to his ego or he thinks he can make money off them.

When Robert Mueller’s team tried to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia and his possibly sharing sensitive military information with them, they were stonewalled by the Trump administration.

The Mueller Report identified ten specific instances of Trump trying to criminally obstruct the investigation, including offering the bribe of a pardon to Paul Manafort, asking FBI Director Comey to “go easy” on General Flynn after his dinner with Putin, and directing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit former FBI Director Mueller’s ability to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.

As the Mueller Report noted:

“For instance, the President attempted to remove the Attorney General; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions un-recuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.”

It adds, detailing Trump’s specific Obstruction of Justice crimes:

There are, after all, credible assertions from American intelligence agencies that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, celebrating a victory they believed they made happen.

And apparently Putin and his intelligence operatives had good reason to be popping the champagne in November, 2016. They were quickly paid off in a big way.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli/American asset/spy to the Russian Ambassador in what he thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting” (the Russians released the photo to the press), resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy.

The undercover agent was apparently working in Syria that year against the Russians, who were embroiled in the midst of Assad’s Civil War and indiscriminately bombing Aleppo into rubble.

That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that another longtime American spy, this one buried deep inside the Kremlin, was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

As CNN noted (when the story leaked two years later):

“According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.”

Similarly, when they met in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’ translator (Putin is fluent in English) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the large empty ballroom in which they met.

The Washington Post reported, after a leak six months later, that when Trump met privately for those two hours with Putin the CIA went into “panic mode.” A US intelligence official told the Post:

“There was this gasp’ at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters. You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”

Three weeks after Trump’s July 16, 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a document or package of documents from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown, although Paul told the press he believed it was a “personal” letter of some sort.

Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s and Putin’s side with regard to the Ukraine war: he single-handedly blocked a $40 billion military aid package in the Senate. When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, he responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act. He further suggested the FBI may have “planted” Secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Ten days after Paul’s trip to Moscow, The New York Times reported that the CIA was worried because their sources inside Moscow had suddenly “gone silent”:

“[C]urrent and former officials said the exposure of sources inside the United States has also complicated matters,” noted the Times. “This year, the identity of an F.B.I. informant, Stefan Halper, became public after [Trump-loyal MAGA Republican] House lawmakers sought information on him and the White House allowed that information to be shared. Mr. Halper, an American academic based in Britain, had been sent to talk to Trump campaign advisers who were under F.B.I. scrutiny for their ties to Russia.”

Things were picking up the following year, in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.

In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a presidential visit that month to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.

As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress”:

On the last day of that month, July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin.

The White House spokespeople told Congress and the press that Trump said that he and Putin discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…

But the following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had that week asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all of our spies) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Did Trump ever return that document to the intelligence agencies? I can find no record of a news story suggesting that he did. It appears to have vanished.

“The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.”

If it turns out the Trump has been acting as an agent for Russia, a Trojan horse right here in America, how long might this have been going on?

Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) first started paying attention to Trump back in 1977, as documented by the German newspaper Bildwhen the StB’s files were declassified.

It began when Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova, his first wife, recently buried on his golf course in New Jersey after she fell down a flight of stairs and died.

Czechoslovakia at that time was part of the Warsaw Pact with the Soviet Union, and Ivana and her family had been raised as good communists. Now that a Czech citizen was married into a wealthy and prominent American family, the StB saw an opportunity and started tracking Trump virtually from his engagement.

As 2016 and 2018 investigations by The Guardian found:

“Ivana’s father, Miloš Zelníček, gave regular information to the local StB office about his daughter’s visits from the US and on his celebrity son-in-law’s career in New York. Zelníček was classified as a ‘conspiratorial’ informer. His relationship with the StB lasted until the end of the communist regime.”

An investigative reporting breakthrough by Craig Unger for his book American Kompromat led Unger to Uri Shvets, a former KGB spy who’d been posted to Washington, DC for years as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS.

Shvets told the story — from his own knowledge — of how Trump and Ivana visited Moscow in 1987 and were essentially recruited or seduced by the KGB, a trip corroborated by Luke Harding in his book Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.

Their trip was coordinated by Intourist, the Soviet travel agency that was a front for the KGB, and the Trumps’ handlers regaled Donald and Ivana with Soviet talking points, presumably about things like the horrors of NATO.

The KGB’s psychological profile of Trump had determined he was vulnerable to flattery and not a deep thinker, so they told him repeatedly how brilliant he was and that he should run for president in the US.

Much to the astonishment and jubilation of the KGB, Trump returned from Moscow to the US to give a Republican presidential campaign speech that fall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He then purchased a large ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe on September 1, 1987 that questioned America’s ongoing support of Japan and NATO, both thorns in the side of the USSR and their Chinese allies.

Trump’s ad laid it on the line:

“Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests? ... The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

As The Guardian reported in 2021:

“The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful ‘active measure’ executed by a new KGB asset.

“’It was unprecedented,’ [Shvets said.] … It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.’”

Meanwhile, Putin was making friends with powerful influence over American foreign policy.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who flipped his nation into a strongman neofascist state following an unsuccessful attempted coup in 2016 (he imprisoned and tortured numerous journalists and political opponents), has been deepening his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin ever since that US election year.

In 2017, Erdoğan apparently gained access to America’s deepest secrets by secretly paying off General Michael Flynn even as Flynn became Trump’s National Security Advisor; he also had at least one secret phone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after Flynn started working in the White House.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December of 2017 to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI about one of those conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. Flynn was also charged as an unregistered agent of a foreign government (Turkey) while working in the White House: prosecutors said he had taken about a half-million dollars from Erdoğan.

Around the time he was leaving office, Trump pardoned Flynn, essentially burying the entire story.

The plot thickened when America learned, from a blockbuster 2022 report in Axios by Jonathan Swan, that just before leaving office, back on October 21, 2020, Trump had signed Executive Order 13957.

It would allow him to instantly fire as many as 50,000 senior federal employees encompassing the Civil Service management of every government agency including the FBI, CIA, NSA, large parts of the Pentagon, and DHS, and allow Trump to replace all of them with nakedly political loyalist appointees.

And it wouldn’t stop there. As Donald Moynihan wrote for Slate about this “Schedule F” Executive Order:

“Schedule F would burn down the civil service system. It would be a government of the lawless leading the incompetent. …

“Government data unfavorable to the administration would be suppressed or altered. Public statements about what government actors are actually doing would become rarer and less believable. And questionable actions by the security forces to target political enemies and protect friends could become routine.

“Career public employees would be forced to choose between their oath to the Constitution—in effect, their oath to serve the public—and keeping their job. They will have their loyalty questioned based on which political organizations they associated with in college, or voter registration, or social media activity. Some will not go along with the program. They will be fired. Or never join the government in the first place.”

Trump didn’t have the time to push that executive order through the federal bureaucracy, but it gives us a clear picture of his vision for a second Trump administration, particularly since this is still on the Project 2025 agenda.

Campaigning to destroy NATO; opposing aid to Ukraine; demolishing the free world’s confidence in America’s ability to keep top secret information confidential; utterly destroying our senior-most intelligence and military agencies; installing Trojan horses to lead them: Trump’s goal appears to be, to paraphrase Ron DeSantis, to “Make America Russia.”

What are Trump’s real goals with these appointments?

As the old saying goes, “Watch what he does, not what he says.”

NOW READ: Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, the Democrats will live in Trump’s America

---

11 24 oppose mil mass deport? an

---

nOVEMBER 1, 2023 LAST AIRED NOVEMBER 26, 2023### *Deception*

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took a critical look at former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. This event was hosted by Hillsdale College at their…

---

4 23 kos

rand Paul weighed in on Wednesday to brownnose billionaire trollboy Twitter owner Elon Musk in Musk's still-unexplained and one-sided battle against ... NPR, of all things. Earlier in the week Musk had, after getting through his previous top priorities of stripping The New York Times of its "verified" Twitter status and replacing the Twitter logo with a "doge" meme, told the site's engineers to add a "state-affiliated media" warning label to NPR's site account.

He did this despite NPR plainly and factually not qualifying for that "state-affiliated" tag according to Twitter's own declared rules—which became awkward when journalists and internet meanies alike took screenshots of those rules in which Twitter itself had used NPR as a named example of a media account that wouldn't qualify for the tag. Twitter eventually removed NPR as its example, but didn't change the public rules it had presented.

Twitter itself explains that the "state-affiliated" warning label is meant to designate media sites "where the state exercises control over editorial content," such as Russian media site RT. It's a designator to warn Twitter users against propaganda sites sponsored by foreign governments.

The American government does not have any means of controlling the editorial content of NPR, however—it can apply no pressure other than by whatever regulatory pressures it might use against any other media organization. NPR doesn't get any significant direct funding from the federal government. It was created by Congress a half century ago, but in its current incarnation receives its funds from sponsorships, foundational grants, donations, and "membership" fees paid by public radio stations that broadcast NPR-produced shows like Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Those public radio stations themselves get the vast majority of their funding through sponsorships and pledge drives, but they do get some federal grants. These come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which ... is not NPR.

So Elon, whose companies rely extensively on government money and have been repeatedly saved from bankruptcy due to that federal money, is just flat-out wrong on this one. If anyone cares.

That brings us toRand Paul weighed in, that canker sore of a phrase that never makes anything better. Perennial twit and sitting Sen. Mike Lee weighed in to be even wronger than Elon was.

"To be clear, NPR is state-funded media," Lee tweeted with a link to the story.

Nope! Calling it "state-funded" is much, much wronger than Elon's "state-affiliated" label is. Mike Lee, who has been in the Senate long enough to know how to look these things up, is just lying.

But Rand Paul can do better! "If @NPR doesn’t want to be state-run media, we could always cut off their federal taxpayer funding…" Rand tweeted.

See now, that's just a flat-out lie and then some. Calling NPR "state-run" is disinformation. It's simply a hoax. NPR was spun off from a congressional edict a half century ago, and the "state" has not a damn speck of influence in NPR's programming. If NPR lost all of its "federal taxpayer funding" tomorrow, it would be ... just fine. Absolutely fine. The same cannot be said of Tesla or of SpaceX; government subsidies and contracts are the stuff that keeps Elon Musk's companies from collapse.

If SpaceX stopped getting federal money they'd be well and truly screwed, but you're not going to get Elon Musk or his "conservatism except with legal weed" fanboys to admit that. And heaven knows the white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups Elon is nurturing into site prominence aren't going to have a peep to say about it.

While it is tempting to believe that Paul and Lee are sucking up to Musk on Musk's website because they are spineless little weasels looking for his attention, it's probably more accurate to say that this is about Republicanism's hostility towards the news media in general. Musk is not alone in his belief that any media story questioning his extreme alleged brilliance amounts to a conspiratorial hit piece against him; this has been the stuff of Republican whines for decades before Musk became rich enough for his tantrums to matter.

Paul, in particular, has been fuming at the media for not going along with his disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul is quite convinced that Anthony Fauci helped China build COVID-19 in a Chinese laboratory, or something (?) like that, and he is peeved that neither scientists nor the free press is buying what he’s trying to sell.

Again, though, what's going on here is that a narcissistic billionaire has bought himself a social media mini-empire so that he himself can spread disinformation against his perceived enemies, and high-profile Republicans like that very much. That's precisely what they've wanted all along. If the news makes you look bad, goes the Republican mantra, call it fake and invent a "better" version of the news that makes you look better.

Couple this with Elon Musk's new efforts to boost the known state-sponsored propaganda sites that Twitter used to police, and Twitter's turning into quite the Elon Musk-centered free-for-all. Musk is just fine with disinformation on the site. His only concern is how to best monetize it.

Eeeesh. I still say this ends with Elon either selling Twitter for a massive loss or with the site simply crashing and staying crashed due to a lack of anyone left who both knows how to fix it and gives a damn, but Musk is getting into weird Howard Hughes territory with this obsessive need to retaliate against news organizations that report on him. It's not going to be long before he's using his Twitter powers to change news account icons to dog pictures or sneaking into the system to write "I love Elon Musk" tweets from the accounts of The Washington Post or other high-profile accounts that have pissed him off.

---

Our planned Ukraine episode will have to wait, as Donald Trump is being arraigned in New York City for his role in falsifying records to hide hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. This is the first of a potential slew of indictments coming Trump’s way, and we are here for a celebration of karmic justice—and to talk about what happens to the Republican Party after this.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/joe-biden-pledges-support-kentucky/

rand paul mcc not flood visit

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-bolling/newsmax-promotes-rand-paul-campaign-ad-attacking-college-swimmer-lia-thomas-whose

---

thom an 8 22

...

It adds, detailing Trump’s specific obstruction of justice crimes:

These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.

Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. For example, the President’s direction to McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed was followed almost immediately by his direction to Lewandowski to tell the Attorney General to limit the scope of the Russia investigation to prospective election-interference only—a temporal connection that suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose with respect to the investigation.

There are, after all, credible assertions that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, explicitly celebrating a victory they truly believed they helped make happen.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador, resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy. That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime US spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

As CNN noted when the story leaked two years later:

The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.

According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.

The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned the spy was so great that, at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may have helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine, we pulled the spy out of Russia in 2017.

Similarly, when they met in Helsinki, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is alsofluent in English and German) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large room in which they met.

Things were picking up in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.

On July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…
The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’sBetsy Swan reported that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”
Within a year, The New York Timesran a story with the headline: “Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by Donald Trump himself.

Also in 2019, when the international press verified that Putin was paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American service members in Afghanistan (and 4 had died as a result), Trump refused to demand the practice stop, a possible sign that Putin ran him, not the other way around.

As The New York Times noted at the time:

Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence... But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.

Instead of stopping Putin, Trump shut down every US airbase in Afghanistan except one (there were about a dozen), crippling incoming President Biden’s ability to extract US assets from the country in an orderly fashion.

In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a visit to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.

In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump made “promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.

As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaintthat spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress":

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.

Along his journey toward converting America into a full-blown oligarchy (as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class), Trump has picked up quite a few democracy-skeptical allies.

As early as 2018, for example, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a private note from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown.

Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s side with regard to the 2020 election and, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago this month, responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act. Perhaps he had ambitious plans for a role in the Trump administration after the planned end of American democracy?

With that backstory, consider more contemporary events to see if they fit together.

In January of last year Trump stole and moved to Florida information that, multiple sources assert, would reveal the identities of many of our spies, as well as our nuclear plans and capabilities.

---

gop only recycle dirty tricks, golden fleece helps with/builds on anti-science coke quail sex habits trms 6/21 indirect attack on biden spending?

---

he feels compelled to do medical stuff b/c it's his niche? another goose to fauci fight which maintains profile/ relevance and boosts fundraising

rand Paul claims the COVID vaccine increases heart health risks but fails to mention that the virus could do more harm

Meaghan Ellis

January 22, 2022

poses a much greater risk for myocarditis.Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is criticizing the COVID-19 vaccine while failing to mention key details that change the scope of his assessment. On Friday, January 22, the Kentucky....

---

an 3 23

Rand Paul staffer suffered life-threatening injuries Saturday afternoon in a stabbing attack in Washington D.C., the Republican senator from Kentucky said in a statement.

Glynn Neal, 42 of Southeast, D.C. was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the attack, police said in astatement.

The victim’s status wasn’t immediately known.

“This past weekend a member of my staff was brutally attacked in broad daylight in Washington D.C. I ask you to join Kelley and me in praying for a speedy and complete recovery, and thinking the first responders, hospital staff and police for their diligent actions,” Paul said in astatement obtained by WUSA 9's Lorenzo Hall.

Officers at around 5:17 p.m. Saturday responded to the 1300 block of H. St. NE on the report of a stabbing, D.C. Metropolitan police said.

A witness told police they were with the victim walking eastbound in the 1300 block of H. St. NE when the suspect, who was hiding in a corner “popped out of the corner and proceeded to stab (the victim) multiple times,” police said in a news release.

The victim was able to grab the suspect’s arms, at which point the witness tackled the suspect to the ground, leading to a struggle.

“We are relieved to hear the suspect has been arrested,” Paul said....

---

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is under fire for remarks he made Tuesday during a Senate hearing with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that are being called “propaganda” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Saying that if Ukraine had become part of NATO, or will in the future, U.S. soldiers would be “fighting in Ukraine,” Paul called it “something I very much oppose.”

President Joe Biden and his administration have repeatedly stated he opposes American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

“If you look at the countries that Russia has attacked,” Blinken reminded Paul, “over the last years: Georgia…Moldova, and then repeatedly in Ukraine, these are countries that were not part of NATO. It has not attacked NATO countries for probably very good reasons.”

Paul defiant and argumentative, retorted in a jaw-dropping statement, “You could also argue that the countries they’ve attacked were part of Russia.”

Stunned, Secretary Blinken struggled for words to respond, giving Paul time to amend his remarks to say, “or were part of the Soviet Union.”

“I firmly disagree with that proposition,” Blinken replied. “It is the fundamental right of these countries to decide their own future.”

https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-paris-agreement-2430226599.html

Paris Exit Was 'Victory Paid and Carried Out' by Republican Party for the Koch Brothers

nolink

The 22 Republican senators who sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests.

The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The Guardian calculated that the 22 senators received a total of $10,694,284 from oil, gas and coal money in just five years. (See the breakdown below.

However, that sum does not even come close to the amount of undisclosed funds coming from the deep pockets of Charles and David Koch's coal, oil and gas conglomerate, Koch Industries, and other outside groups.

As the Guardian explains:

"Visible donations to Republicans from those industries exceeded donations to Democrats in the 2016 election cycle by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include so-called dark money passed from oil interests such as Koch industries to general slush funds to re-elect Republicans such as the Senate leadership fund.

"At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics."

Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, shared recently his views on Trump's climate walkout.In an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Sachs referenced the senators' letter and specifically cast blame on the billionaire oil barons for pulling the strings of Republican party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who both supported exiting the Paris accord.

"This is the victory paid and carried out for 20 years by two people, David and Charles Koch," Sachs said. "They have bought and purchased the top of the Republican party. Trump is a tool in this."

Notably, most of the Republican signatories of the letter do not support the belief that human activity contributes to climate change.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Democratic Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts explained why he thinks his Republican colleagues do not believe in the science of climate change.

"This Conservative party in the United States is funded by the Koch brothers [and] it's funded by the coal industry," Markey said. "[They] insist that Scott Pruitt—the Attorney General of Oklahoma that actually sued the EPA 19 times on clean air, clean water, soot, mercury issues—becomes the head of the EPA in our country."

The 22 Republican signatories' funding from Big Oil, Gas and Coal in the past three election cycles (2012, 2014 and 2016):

James Inhofe, Oklahoma

Oil & gas: $465,950 + Coal: $63,600 = $529,550

John Barrasso, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $458,466 + Coal: $127,356 = $585,822

Mitch McConnell, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $1,180,384 + Coal: $361,700 = $1,542,084

John Cornyn, Texas

Oil & gas: $1,101,456 + Coal: $33,050 = $1,134,506

Roy Blunt, Missouri

Oil & gas: $353,864 + Coal: $96,000 = $449,864

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $198,816 + Coal: $25,376 = $224,192

Michael Enzi, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $211,083 + Coal: $63,300 = $274,383

Mike Crapo, Idaho

Oil & gas: $110,250 + Coal: $26,756 = $137,006

Jim Risch, Idaho

Oil & gas: $123,850 + Coal: $25,680 = $149,530

Thad Cochran, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $276,905 + Coal: $15,000 = $291,905

Mike Rounds, South Dakota

Oil & gas: $201,900 + Coal: none = $201,900

Rand Paul, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $170,215 + Coal: $82,571 = $252,786

John Boozman, Arkansas

Oil & gas: $147,930 + Coal: $2,000 = $149,930

Richard Shelby, Alabama

Oil & gas: $60,150 + $2,500 = $62,650

Luther Strange, Alabama (Appointed in 2017, running in 2017 special election)

Total: NA

Orrin Hatch, Utah

Oil & gas: $446,250 + Coal: $25,000 = $471,250

Mike Lee, Utah

Oil & gas: $231,520 + Coal: $21,895 = $253,415

Ted Cruz, Texas

Oil & gas: $2,465,910 + Coal: $103,900 = $2,569,810

David Perdue, Georgia

Oil & gas: $184,250 + Coal: $0 = $184,250

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Oil & gas: $263,400 + Coal: $0 = $263,400

Tim Scott, South Carolina

Oil & gas: $490,076 + Coal: $58,200 = $548,276

Pat Roberts, Kansas

Oil & gas: $388,950 + Coal: $28,825 = $417,775

---

rand paul vs fauci https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/rand-paul-fauci/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/fauci-rand-paul-hearing/

'There you go again': Dr. Fauci destroys Rand Paul for 'distorting virtually everything' in explosive hearing

Meaghan Ellis

Fauci claims public disagreements with Trump would lead former president to do 'terrible things'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement January 11, 2022

U.S. Senator Rand Paul once again combatively attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday, falsely blaming him for the deaths of 800,000 Americans from the coronavirus.

Dr. Fauci was forced to defend himself against Paul's false attacks during the Senate Health Committee's televised hearing on COVID-19.

"In usual fashion, you are distorting everything about me," Fauci told Sen. Paul. "You just do the same thing every hearing."

“You're distorting virtually everything," Fauci charged. "You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning that you do that.”

“You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning that you do that.”

— Dr. Anthony Fauci to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who repeatedly asks Fauci about Fauci’s emails. pic.twitter.com/AFaYp5K3fq

— The Recount (@therecount) January 11, 2022

“In usual fashion, Senator, you are distorting everything about me.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) asks him about one of his emails. “There you go again, you just do the same thing every hearing.”

“You are absolutely incorrect … as usual.” pic.twitter.com/An6kgOctS9

— The Recount (@therecount) January 11, 2022

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

How do fireworks work? A pyrotechnics chemist explains the ... ›

WaPo analysis dismantles Rand Paul claim that masks don't protect ... ›

Watch: Angry constituent curses out Rand Paul during town hall ... ›

Fireworks erupt at Senate hearing as Fauci clashes with ... ›

Rand Paul tells vaccinated Americans to 'mind your own business'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 05, 2021

U.S. Senator Rand Paul blasted millions of Americans who are fully vaccinated, telling them to "mind your own business" after complaining about those who say they don't want to eat in restaurants where everyone...

---

A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious ...https://www.nytimes.com › 2020/12/08 › technology › a-...

Dec 8, 2020 — Hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug that President Trump has heavily ... Dr. Jane M. Orient, a prominent skeptic of vaccines, ...

TECHNOLOGY

A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious claims about the coronavirus

Tracking Viral Misinformation: Latest Updates

A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious claims about the coronavirus

Dec. 8, 2020

By Linda Qiu

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, at the Capitol last week, has embraced the role of the Senate’s leading contrarian on the coronavirus.]

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, spent much of this year promoting investigations into Hunter Biden, trying fruitlessly to show corruption on the part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now Mr. Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is more focused on another narrative sympathetic to President Trump if not to established science: that the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic has been overblown and that public health officials have been too quick to come to conclusions about the best ways to deal with it.

So on Tuesday, for not the first time, Mr. Johnson lent his committee’s platform to the promotion of unproven drugs and dubious claims about stemming the spread of the coronavirus while giving prominence to a vaccine skeptic.

In a move that led even most members of his own party on the committee to avoid the hearing, Mr. Johnson called witnesses who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The National Institutes of Health guidelines recommend against using either drug to treat coronavirus patients except in clinical trials.

Hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug that President Trump has heavily promoted but has shown disappointing results in many clinical trials. Ivermectin is used to treat parasites in humans as well as to prevent heartworms in dogs; research on its effectiveness in treating the coronavirus has been mixed.

Despite the regulatory warnings and the lack of substantial scientific evidence for their efficacy, Mr. Johnson claimed that “discouraging and in some cases prohibiting the research and use of drugs that have been safely used for decades has cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people their lives.”

Just three other senators on the 14-member committee attended Tuesday’s session — “such low participation,” Mr. Johnson acknowledged at one point.Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, criticized the hearing in opening remarks but left before asking questions. On the Republican side, only Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri made appearances.

For about two and a half hours, the participants continuously challenged public health consensus, sometimes advancing inaccurate and previously debunked claims.

One witness, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, a cardiologist in Washington, argued that “masks do not work” and “social distancing doesn’t work” by citing a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study tracked virus transmission among Marine Corps recruits who underwent quarantine. But two of the study’s authors refuted Dr. Oskoui’s interpretation. Rather, they said, the study showed that nonpharmaceutical interventions like masks and social distancing cannot be relied on alone to eliminate transmission.

“For me, drawing the conclusion from our study that masking is not effective is like claiming that car brakes are not effective in preventing crashes because accidents still occur when they are used,” said Dr. Stuart C. Sealfon, the senior author of the study and a professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “This is either a mistaken or a deliberately misleading interpretation of the results of the study.”

Dr. Sealfon added: “In view of the preponderance of evidence in the scientific literature supporting the benefits of mask wearing in reducing the transmission of SARS-COV-2, no reasonable scientist would conclude that these measures are ineffective. They are very effective, but they are not foolproof.”

Throughout the hearing, Dr. Oskoui also promoted prescribing zinc and vitamin D. He said that the United States should follow the example of Britain and distribute vitamin D supplements to older people.

The N.I.H. also recommends against using zinc to treat the coronavirus except in clinical trials. The British government has offered 2.5 million people free vitamin D to keep bones and muscle healthy, especially as more people stayed indoors, but the National Health Service has noted that “there is currently not enough evidence to support taking vitamin D to prevent or treat coronavirus.”

Dr. Jane M. Orient, a prominent skeptic of vaccines, also cast doubt on mask wearing, suggesting that “maybe instead of putting masks on everybody, we should be putting lids on the toilet or putting Clorox into it before you flush it.” While there is some evidence that toilet bowls can be infectious, the virus is most commonly distributed through close contact with others, and masks do offer some protection.

:{:{}:

Dr. Orient also cited “192 studies compiled on hydroxychloroquine with all showing some benefit when used early.”

:{:{}:

That appeared to be an exaggerated reference to a database of studies gathered by an anonymous group. Of those studies, about 40 were categorized as researching use of hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment, and about two dozen of those concluding that the drug demonstrated “positive” effects.

Mr. Hawley criticized lockdowns as harmful to mental health, accurately citing a government survey showing that a quarter of young adults seriously thought about suicide in June. He then repeated an inaccurate claim from Mr. Trump that the World Health Organization no longer recommends lockdowns.

Mr. Johnson himself echoed praise for hydroxychloroquine, claiming that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also “talked” about the drug. While it is true that Dr. Fauci has discussed hydroxychloroquine in the pandemic, he has warned against its use.

As the hearing drew to a close, the senator offered his opinion of the severity of the pandemic.

“It’s certainly worse than the flu, but is it that much worse to cause that much economic devastation with that severe of a human toll?” Mr. Johnson asked.

That prompted almost immediate pushback from one of his own witnesses, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya of Stanford University School of Medicine, who told the senator: “It is worse than the flu.”

---

an 521 me

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was left flustered on Monday when a mysterious package of white power was left at his doorstep. Almost immediately after the discovery, he sounded off and pointed the finger because he believed he knew who was behind it: 80s pop singer Richard Marx.

In a statement to Politico, Paul sounded off about the package as he described himself as a "repeated target of violence." He also slammed Marx, whom he described as "a C-list" celebrity who is encouraging violence against him. According to Paul, a tweet Marx shared on Saturday likely influenced whoever left the package at his home.

"As a repeated target of violence, it is reprehensible that Twitter allows C-list celebrities to encourage violence against me and my family," Paul said in the statement to the publication. "Just this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder-filled letter."

However, Marx argues otherwise. The "Right Here Waiting" singer insists his tweet was nothing more than "a wise-crack about Rand Paul's neighbor."

When a critic asked Marx about Paul's accusatory remarks, he fired back with a sarcastic statement of his own. "I'm the only person on Twitter who's ever referenced Rand Paul's neighbor," Marx tweeted, adding, "Must have been me."

According to The Washington Post, the package also included an image of Paul weraring a neck brace and had a message that read, "I'll finish what your neighbor started." The message was in reference to Paul's physical altercation with his neighbor Rene Boucher. In 2017, Paul and Boucher had "an argument over yard waste from the neighboring home." The incident escalated to a physical fight that left Paul with six broken ribs.

The current incident involving the mysterious package is being investigated by Capitol Hill police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Rand Paul laughs out loud about not wearing a mask on the Senate floor

David Edwards Raw Story

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) defended his refusal to weak a face mask on the Senate floor by calling other senators "science deniers."

Paul made the remark...

---

recall that just bef insurr evac, shouting match honor code BS by dude who was packing (and refuses to stop)

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/rand-paul/ liar call me?

---

aha alt fact/ Big Lie = fascism = rw media [soc med bubble?]= lie win any cost

an 221

js ed bd

This afternoon will see the first leg of Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the United States Senate. The whole journey will last about a week or so. (Roll Call has an excellent item explaining the ins and outs of the proceedings.) The House Democrats will try to prove the former president's guilt in leading an attempt to overthrow the republic. The Senate Republicans will pretend they can't sit in judgment, because sitting in judgement of a former president, they have said, is unconstitutional.

Let me put this as plainly as I can. The very fact that Donald Trump's impeachment trial is happening at all, and that it will be happening over the next seven to 10 days, means it's constitutional. Full stop. The United States Congress is the first branch of the United States government. (Its constitution, after all, is Article I of the United States Constitution.) There is no higher authority. No, the United States Supreme Court is not a higher authority, not when it comes to impeachments and trials.

The very fact that Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate is happening, and that it will be happening over the next seven to 10 days, means it's constitutional. Full stop.

Quite literally, the Senate Republicans are saying it's unconstitutional to prosecute a former (Republican) president, because they want it to be unconstitutional to prosecute a former (Republican) president. But the fact that a former (Republican) president is being prosecuted—starting today—invalidates the premise of their constitutional argument. Indeed, it wasn't an argument. The truth is in plain sight. When it came to a Democratic president who lied to a grand jury, the authority of the Congress would not be denied! When it comes to a (former) Republican president involved in the attempted murder of his enemies, that authority is a bit much, don't you think?

Gerald Ford, when he was the House minority leader during the Watergate era, famously said "high crimes and misdemeanors" are "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers them to be at a moment in history." Same thing for the question of whether it's constitutional to prosecute a former president. If a majority of the United States Senate (or rather a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate in the case of conviction) says it's constitutional, it's constitutional ipso facto. So, again, with feeling: Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate begins today. That it's happening at all, and that it could lead to conviction, means it's constitutional.

With there being zero chance of the United States Supreme Court getting involved in a dispute between the branches of the United States Congress, the question is settled. It's over. Indeed, there never was a question. (The truth has been in plain sight.) Because there never was a question, we should ask ourselves: why are the Republicans pretending there's a question when there's no question? Once you start asking yourself that question, the trial's outcome, which is not in doubt, starts to be less important than the reason the Senate Republicans are asking the question in the first place.

The reason the Senate Republicans are questioning a certainty (i.e., Jesus *God*, yes, it's constitutional to prosecute a former president, will you please knock it off already?) is the**same reason all Republicans are so often certain about things that might actually be in question. The truth is always a threat. Deference to truth is always tyranny. What's important is authority. Their authority. Their authority over you *and everyone you love*. And once you start seeing the deep authoritarianism of most of the Republicans in the Congress, once you start seeing the deep authoritarianism of millions of your fellow Americans**, you also start seeing lying isn't something they do merely to get what they want. Lying is something they do, because lying is the point.

Remember that Rand Paul and other Senate Republicans have something you don't. **They have a global right-wing media apparatus to not only amplify their lies, but *bend perception* away from political reality and toward a favorable fictional one. To lie at this grand a scale is to create a world in which morality is perverted, politics is barbarous, and whole populations can be pushed around and told what to believe, and not only that: they *want to believe*, because the lies have become so totalizing that everything being upside down, backwards and prolapsed seems normal, rational and worthy of defended in the name of *muh freedom***. When everyone says the sky is green when the truth is in plain sight, everyone is not merely trying to deceive you. Everyone is maintaining a perversion in which speaking truthfully could inspire your murder.

The House Democratic impeachment managers are going to push through the Republicans' lies in order to reveal the whole truth to the American people about their former president, which is this: Donald Trump committed a heinous presidential crime worthy, at the very least, of being disqualified for life from holding public office. This is as it should be, but let's not forget what the lies themselves reveal.

====

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/rand-paul/

late stop steal

---

aha omg: in post-truth, JOK video dr is SOP // Neg attack ad, strip of context, hype anger, pix bypass brain

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/gop-conspiracy-theories/

it's been happening for decades — but the transformation is now complete.

It started with the Whitewater investigation, went through all of the Benghazi investigations, and ramped up in recent years when Republicans turned around to falsely claim that the investigation into Donald Trump's ties with a Russian conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election was as a "hoax," ignoring the overwhelming evidence of rampant collusion. On Wednesday, the transformation of the GOP from a real political party to a conspiracy theory cult was finally fully completed.

Wednesday was the day Senate Republicans spent hours and a hefty chunk of taxpayer money to bolster the lie that Democrats "stole" the 2020 election, with their only evidence being the say-so of a narcissistic sociopath whose only spoken language is lying. No one, especially no Republican politician, sincerely believes that Trump was the "real" winner of the 2020 election, or that there's any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud or election irregularities of any real importance. As Sen. Gary Peters, D.-Mich., the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee declared during his opening remarks, "this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies" and " is a grave threat to the future of our democracy."

Of course, that is the point.

As the committee chair, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and his fellow Republicans understand, their party can no longer win fair elections or campaign on ideas, since the public rejects most policies the GOP stands for. So the party's only recourse is to dish out a steady stream of conspiracy theories meant to distract from the policy debate while leveraging their power to undermine democracy.

As the mainstream news coverage of the hearing dutifully noted, no evidence of voter fraud was presented during Wednesday's hearing and Democrats on the committee repeatedly emphasized that Trump's claims of "fraud" have been presented before the courts dozens of times and thrown out for lack of evidence. Indeed, anyone who actually watched the hearing or read responsible coverage of it would walk away with the impression that the Republicans were a bunch of raving madmen and the Democrats were the only people speaking any sense.

What the Republicans running the hearing understand, however, is that their audience, the Republican base, neither watched the hearing nor consumed the mainstream media coverage of it. Instead, the purpose of the hearing is to generate footage that can be edited, often misleadingly, into clips that are fed into right-wing media sources and circulated through social media.

Evidence is not needed, nor is proof, nor convincing arguments. All that's needed are clips of the Republican senators, looking officious in the trappings of a Senate hearing, railing about "stolen" elections and defending the honor of those who purport to believe that Joe Biden stole the election. And all those poignant and convincing rebuttals from Democrats? Those can be chopped and edited to make the Democrats look "crazy" and like they're unleashing "unhinged" attacks on the noble Republicans.

None of this is about keeping Trump in office.

Senate Republicans not only understand that he lost, but that his coup efforts are failing. Their crusade now is about exploiting his lies of a "rigged" election for their own political purposes. Feeding the GOP base's victim complex and riling them up with conspiracy theories keeps them too busy obsessively hating Democrats to notice that the Republicans have run the country into the ground. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri showcased the strategy perfectly, with a maudlin speech about how actual evidence of a rigged election wasn't the point, because "the constituents back at home" told him "theyfeltthey had been disenfranchised."

"These are normal, reasonable people. These are not crazy people," he said.

For someone actually watching the hearing, this is maddening. The folks Hawley is talking about are just rabid Republicans who back Trump's coup and are willing to stand by outrageous bad faith arguments to defend their belief that certain voters — namely Black voters in big cities — simply shouldn't have the same right vote.

But when Hawley's remarks about are inevitably cut into a video that removes all this context and fed into right-wing disinformation channels, all that audiences will see is Hawley defending his voters as "normal, reasonable people" who are "not crazy". It will read as him defending the honor of conservatives against those elitist, condescending liberals who are always calling them "crazy", instead of what actually happened, which was that Hawley said conservative "feelings" about the election matter more than the fact of who actually won.

Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky declared during the hearing that the election "in many ways, was stolen." He did not offer evidence, much less proof for this claim, which was a blatant lie. But it doesn't matter. He knows that his statement will be cut into a video and disseminated. He doesn't need evidence, so much as a quick clip with him looking authoritative as he offers this lie without rebuttal.

That's what GOP politics is all about these days. It's not about making a policy case to voters, since Republican politicians know that will never fly. Instead, it's about identity politics and stirring up hate, however ridiculous, against liberals. Hawley is hoping his constituents be so angry at the alleged liberals calling them "crazy" that they focus on getting their revenge by voting Republican, rather than asking hard questions about, say, why the Republican-run Senate has abandoned them to economic devastation during this pandemic.

This is all the Republican Party is these days: A propaganda engine churning out fake "scandals" meant to send their voters down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or stir irrational right-wing grievances. Anything, really, but ever talk about actual policy or governance, which Republican politicians know is territory they will always lose on.

That's why Republicans have fully committed to Trump's lies about the 2020 election. It's not that they care one whit about Trump — I suspect many of them are glad to see him go since he's a miserable person to be around — but because this conspiracy theory is so useful. Republicans can now focus their voters, ideally for four years, on nursing a grudge over losing an election they "should" have won, if only the votes of those meanie Democrats had been thrown in the trash.

After all, what's the alternative?

Republicans know they'd lose a reasonable debate about policy differences with Democrats. So this is what they've turned themselves into: A conspiracy theory cult that is always dashing from one mad lie to another, stirring up the base with nonsense and hoping the voters will never catch onto what a con the whole thing is.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

rand Paul tells Fox News viewers that 11 million Americans should throw away their masks

===

4 22

Saying that if Ukraine had become part of NATO, or will in the future, U.S. soldiers would be “fighting in Ukraine,” Paul called it “something I very much oppose.”

President Joe Biden and his administration have repeatedly stated he opposes American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

Paul defiant and argumentative, retorted in a jaw-dropping statement, “You could also argue that the countries they’ve attacked were part of Russia.”

Stunned, Secretary Blinken struggled for words to respond, giving Paul time to amend his remarks to say, “or were part of the Soviet Union.”

“I firmly disagree with that proposition,” Blinken replied. “It is the fundamental right of these countries to decide their own future.”

---

an 820

Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, has invested heavily in a mill that the North American company Braidy Industries has planned for Eastern Kentucky — and according to a Senate Intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Rusal is a “proxy for the Kremlin.”

In 2019, journalist Morgan Watkins reports in the Louisville Courier Journal, Rusal agreed to invest $200 million in Braidy’s mill. And the bipartisan Senate Intelligence report, released on August 18, describes Russian oligarch and Rusal co-owner Oleg Deripaska’s ties to the Kremlin.

According to the report, “Deripaska’s companies, including Rusal, are proxies for the Kremlin, including for Russian government influence efforts, economic measures and diplomatic relations.”

Watkins notes that according to a Securities and Exchange Commission report that Braidy filed in June, Rusal had provided $75 million for the mill as of December 31, 2019 but had discontinued contributions until Braidy could secure another $300 million in funding.

the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Rusal, but Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Sen. Rand Paul and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — have voted against keeping the sanctions in place. Watkins notes that on August 19, the Kentucky Democratic Party “questioned McConnell’s decision to support lifting the sanctions on Rusal in light of the Senate Intelligence Committee report’s identification of Rusal as a proxy for the Kremlin.”

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/throwing-a-hissyfit-sen-rand-paul-slammed-by-critics-after-attacking-dr-fauci-at-senate-hearing/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/us-senator-rand-paul-tests-positive-for-coronavirus/

cpac?

neglected? (not) surprise pro trump?

CNN interview with Rand Paul goes off the rails after lawmaker cornered over Trump administration corruption

A “State of the Union” interview with Sen Rand Paul…

120 AN tries to out whistleblower?!

Rand Paul storms out of Senate to tweet after Chief Justice John Roberts declines to read his question a second time

an 1119

no lnx

Russian state media is outing the alleged whistleblower after Rand Paul’s reckless outbursts: report

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story November 6, 2019

President Donald Trump’s allies are trying to retaliate against the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the Ukraine scandal. And no one is doing so more enthusiastically than Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who tweeted out a link to a right-wing article in Real Clear Investigations that purported to reveal the whistleblower’s name, occupation at the CIA, and photograph.

Thus far, although that article has been live for several days, the mainstream media has ignored it, resisting any effort to spread information about the whistleblower that would compromise their federal legal protections and open them up to reprisal or threats.

But according to The Daily Beast, there is one group of media outlets that is eagerly promoting Paul’s reckless attempt to out the whistleblower: Russian state media.

Not only did sites like Russia Today, TASS, and Rossiya-1 disseminate this same information shortly after Paul did, one of the sites falsely claimed that the original source was the Washington Post rather than Real Clear Investigations, apparently to give the information more legitimacy.

This, notes The Daily Beast, marks the latest in a long string of efforts by Russian propaganda networks to boost Trump and attack the impeachment investigation — which in addition to attempting to remove a president Russian officials broadly think is strategically useful to them, also centers on his apparent efforts to extort the government of Ukraine, a nation which Russia is violently occupying and from which they are annexing land.

anti- commie book 10/19 book tv gaetz

Why is the media ignoring Rand Paul’s disastrous and extreme plan to gut the federal government?

Cody Fenwick

. Rand Paul and 21 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate voted in favor of a radical and destructive budget proposal on Monday, but nobody seemed to notice.

The Kentucky lawmaker has been pushing similar measures for years. He has an austere vision for government, and under his plan, more than $11 trillion would be cut from federal spending over the next decade. The aim would be to reach a “balanced” budget within five years, a goal that would require drastic to cuts to every program other than Social Security. In 2020 alone,Roll Call reported, $183.1 billion would be slashed from the federal budget.

tweet which refers to Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) delivering a letter from President trump to President Putin. Here’s the story from Politico back in August of 2018. It also links to a CNN story about a sanctioned Russian corporate giant “investing $200 million in a Kentucky mill.”

Russia to deliver a secret letter from Trump last year. Last week Russian Company, Rusal, invested in a 200 million dollar company in Paul's home state of Kentucky #PutinsGOP . https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/04/15/business/rusal-russia-kentucky-aluminum-mill/index.html …

trms he constantly proclaims himself a maverick, but inevitably caves eg Pompeo for SOS

---

Rand Paul says we shouldn’t be “giving up on liberty” by ensuring kids get vaccinated.

At a moment in our country when previously-eradicated deadly childhood illnesses like measles are resurging in the United States, Sen. Rand Paul wants to speak out against mandatory childhood vaccinations — not, he stressed, because he believes they don’t work or because he buys conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism, but because gosh darn it, parents deserve freedom.

“As we contemplate forcing parents to choose this or that vaccine, I think it’s important to remember that force is not consistent with the American story, nor is force consistent with liberty our forefathers sought when they came to America,” said Paul in a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday. “I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweigh the risks, but I still don’t favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security.”

Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a former physician, smacked him down, saying, “I’ve seen people who have not been vaccinated who required liver transplantation because they were not.”

https://www.alternet.org/watch-cnns-jake-tapper-lectures-gop-senator-equating-nato-russian-aggression

Pruitt also has targeted clean water safeguards. In July 2015, he sued the EPA over the Clean Water Rule, which the agency and the Army Corps of Engineers had just issued to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act. The rule was in response to two Supreme Court decisions—in 2001and in 2006—that called into question whether the federal government had the authority to protect smaller streams, wetlands and other water bodies that flow into drinking water supplies. From a scientific perspective, it's a no-brainer. As EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy explained in a statement: "For the lakes and rivers we love to be clean, the streams and wetlands that feed them have to be clean, too."

Pruitt doesn't see it that way. In a March 2015 column he co-wrote with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul for The Hill, Pruitt called the Clean Water Rule "the greatest blow to private property rights the modern era has seen." Pruitt and Rand maintain that states should be responsible for protecting the environment within their respective borders, not the federal government. Never mind that air and water pollution do not honor political boundaries and state legislatures are all too often dominated by corporate interests.

Pruitt has even started losing support from House Republicans. Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo posted a call for Pruitt's resignation or firing on Twitter Tuesday, writing: “Major policy differences aside, @EPAScottPruitt‘s corruption scandals are an embarrassment to the Administration, and his conduct is grossly disrespectful to American taxpayers.” Rep. Curbelo was seconded by Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who made her comments in an interview with CNN, and New York Republican Elise Stefanik, who announced her opposition Thursday.

In contrast, Senators Rand Paul andTed Cruz emphasized their support for Pruitton Twitter, tweeting out messages that were picked up by The Daily Caller, calling Pruitt “the bravest” (per Rand Paul) and claiming that Trump is “too cagey to be duped and bullied” while citing a pro-Pruitt blog (Ted Cruz). Adding another repetition to theecho chamber, FreedomWorks then promoted the Daily Caller piece to its more than quarter-million Twitter followers while pushing a #StandWithScottPruitt hashtag.

As of Thursday evening, Pruitt's supporters apparently still include not only professional climate science deniers and Senators Paul and Cruz, but also thePresident. “I think he’s done a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, Politico reported. “I think he’s done an incredible job.”

On Friday, Trump seemed to double down on that message, but muddied the waters by mixing in a reference to reports he was considering promoting Pruitt to Attorney General, a move that Pruitt, a former Republican Attorney Generals Association member, is said to be lobbying the president to make. “Do you believe that the Fake News Media is pushing hard on a story that I am going to replace A.G. Jeff Sessions with EPA Chief Scott Pruitt,” Trump tweeted, “who is doing a great job but is TOTALLY under siege?”

---

hillary bs deflection

Senators are getting in on the act as well. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wants Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe fired because his wife is a Democrat and he's suspected of having been hostile to Trump during the election (which apparently translates into him covering up Hillary Clinton's crimes). Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has become downright hysterical:

Senator Rand Paul

@RandPaul

Time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!

---

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/rand-paul-2016-kent-sorenson-iowa

Update, 8/5/15: The Justice Department has indicted Paul world operatives Dimitri Kesari, John Tate, and Jesse Benton on numerous charges including making false statements, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice in connection with the alleged scheme to payoff then-Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson for his endorsement of Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential bid. Read the indictment here.

On December 26, 2011, a week before Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, an influential Republican state senator named Kent Sorenson and his wife, Shawnee, arrived at a steak house in Altoona, a suburb of Des Moines. A goateed Mr. Clean look-alike, Sorenson was a hot commodity. His deep ties to the state'sevangelical leaders and home-schooling activists made his endorsement highly sought after by GOP presidential hopefuls, particularly the second-tier contenders who had staked their campaigns on a strong Iowa showing. Sorenson had picked his horse early, signing on as Michele Bachmann's Iowa chairman in June 2011—a coup for the Minnesota congresswoman's upstart campaign.

Joining the Sorensons was a bespectacled political operative named Dimitri Kesari, the deputy campaign manager of Rep. Ron Paul's 2012 presidential bid. As caucus day neared, Ron Paul's campaign was surging in the polls but needed a late boost if he wanted to meet his goal of finishing in the top three.

That's where Sorenson came in.

When the state senator left to use the restroom, Kesari produced a $25,000 check—drawn from the account of Designer Goldsmiths, a jewelry store run by his wife—and gave it to Shawnee Sorenson. Two days later, Kent Sorenson left a Bachmann campaign event, drove straight to a Ron Paul rally, and declared that he had defected.

"It'

As it turned out, Paul's inner circle had been secretly negotiating for months to lure Sorenson away from the Bachmann campaign. In an October memo to Paul campaign managerJohn Tate, a Sorenson ally outlined the state senator's demands, which included an $8,000-a-month payment for nearly a year, another $5,000-a-month check for a colleague of Sorenson's, and a $100,000 donation to Sorenson's political action committee. The memo explained that these payments would not only secure Sorenson's support in the near term but also help to "build a major state-based movement that will involve far more people into a future Rand Paul presidential run." Kesari's $25,000 check, in other words, amounted to more than a down payment on an endorsement for Ron Paul; it was an investment in Rand Paul 2016.

The Kentucky senator officially declared his candidacy on Tuesday. With the 2016 Iowa caucuses nine months away, this scheme could become a liability for the latest Paul presidential enterprise. The Sorenson deal exploded into public view in 2013, thanks to a pair of whistleblowers from the Ron Paul and Bachmann campaigns, and the episode now hangs over Rand Paul and his inner circle like a dark cloud.

The Sorenson scandal has sparked state and federal investigations. After resigning his seat in 2013, Sorenson pleaded guilty last year to two criminal charges for which he faces up to 25 years in prison. The episode involves central figures in the Paul family's political apparatus, including Kesari and Jesse Benton, who served in senior roles on Rand and Ron Paul's recent campaigns. (Benton is also married to Ron Paul's granddaughter and Rand's niece.) And it has pulled back the curtain on the roguish band of advisers, political organizers, and fundraisers whose sometimes sketchy tactics have fueled Rand Paul's political ascent. This crew—call it Paul World—reflects the damn-the-rules, libertarian worldview of the candidate himself. But as Paul may find out, the brash operatives largely responsible for his political rise could end up posing a major threat to his presidential ambitions.

"It's a strange universe," says a conservative strategist who's well acquainted with members of the Pauls' inner circle. "You've got the real Star Wars cantina identified—Hammerhead, Greedo—and let's be honest, a lot of these guys would not have work in the mainstream, even in the tea party."

Many of the central players in Paul World hail from the National Right to Work Committee, the leading anti-union group where these operatives spent their formative political years. Doug Stafford, who is Rand Paul's Karl Rove, is a former NRTWC vice president. John Tate, Ron Paul's former campaign manager, worked with Stafford at the NRTWC; he is now the president of Campaign for Liberty, the political group founded by the elder Paul. Kesari—described by someone who knows him as "like Radar from M*A*S*H"—previously led the NRTWC's government affairs department. Mike Rothfeld headed the committee's direct-mail operation in the late '80s and early '90s; he now runs the fundraising firm of choice for Rand Paul's PAC, as well as the NRTWC and Campaign for Liberty.

Thanks in large part to this crew, Rand Paul has broken into the political mainstream, a feat never achieved by his father. But some of the operatives who have formed the backbone of his machine have at times thought little of stretching the rules to win elections and acquire power. And their past tactics may come back to haunt Paul during what could be the most important campaign of his political career.

Of the GOP's current presidential hopefuls, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is most closely associated with an anti-union agenda, due to his 2011 law curbing collective bargaining for the state's public-sector unions. But the Republican whose policy stances pose the most direct threat to labor is Rand Paul. In the eyes of the National Right to Work Committee, one former NRTWC staffer told me, "he is the golden child."

After Paul was sworn into the Senate in 2011, one of the first pieces of legislation he cosponsored was the National Right-to-Work Act, the committee's holy grail. The bill—also championed by Ron Paul—would make every state in the union a so-called right-to-work stateand eviscerate organized labor as we know it. (Twenty-five states currently have such laws, banning unions from collecting dues from nonmembers to pay for representing those workers and bargaining on their behalf.) Since 2013, Paul has twice more introduced the legislation. (The bill never has gotten out of committee.)

Paul has credited John Tate, a former NRTWC vice president, with playing a "crucial role" in assembling his 2010 Senate campaign, including introducing Paul to Stafford, now his closest adviser. NRTWC donated $7,500 to that campaign and deployed field staffers and other personnel to Kentucky to support Paul during his primary fight against establishment-backed Trey Grayson. In an email sentthe day after Paul's primary upset, an NRTWC staffer congratulated the committee's field organizers: "What a week of History, and you get to say you were a part of it. Nice job!"

He has frequently lent his name to NRTWC fundraising emails andpetitions drumming up support for the bill and the group. Days after Paul took office,an NRTWC email blast went out under his name spelling out his intentions: "They snickered when I said I came to the US Senate to change Congress," it reads. "But their laughter stopped when I sponsored the National Right to Work Act to free US workers from forced unionization and break Big Labor's multi-billion dollar political machine forever."

Just as the libertarian-leaning Pauls have worn the Republican label with unease, the 60-year-old NRTWC hasn't always played well with the conservative movement or the GOP. (The mantra inside NRTWC, says an ex-staffer from the 1990s, was: "We're Right-to-Work. We hate everybody.") The group's origins on the far right (its longest-serving president, Reed Larson, was affiliated with theJohn Birch Society) and fixation solely on defeating labor unions created a cultlike atmosphere in which even allies on the right were viewed with suspicion."There has been a culture from the beginning of isolation and hyper-self-reliance," says a former NRTWC senior staffer. "It's the hermit kingdom of the conservative movement."

Still, throughout the '80s and '90s, the committee gained respect for its brutally efficient political operation. It was one of the first outside groups to create an in-house phone bank to influence elections around the country, an operation that proved so successful that NRTWC spun it off into a stand-alone firm namedLiberty Phone Center, Inc. Mike Rothfeld, a heavily caffeinated, hard-charging mentor to a generation of Virginia political consultants, cut his teeth running NRTWC's direct-mail shop; he went on to form his own fundraising firm,Saber Communications,the Paul World's go-to consultancy. (A born-again Southerner whose office features a mural of Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, Rothfeld is no libertarian: He once referred to Ron Paul's most die-hard supporters as "cwazy wabbits.")

Over the years, NRTWC has served as a training ground for operatives drawn to the group's zealous focus and its bare-knuckled style. Former staffers say NRTWC instilled a cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest mentality in its employees. One former staffer from the 1990s recalls that the group hired nine people for only five or six positions, pitting the new hires against each other to see who came out on top. The group was also notorious for its low pay—until the early 2000s, midlevel staffers got less than $20,000 a year and worked overtime to eke out a living.

To earn extra cash, NRTWC staffers also moonlighted for political candidates who supported the right-to-work cause—a practice supported by the top brass—often spending lunch breaks and evenings helping candidates with their mail programs or fundraising pitches.

The near-religious devotion to the cause, the hard-ass attitude, and the freelancing all melded to create a win-at-all-costs approach that sometimes saw NRTWC, a tax-exempt nonprofit, disregard campaign laws banning outside groups from coordinating with candidates and officeholders. "They treated the rules as guidelines," the ex-staffer from the '90s says.

The circuitous path to the Kent Sorenson debacle leads, of all places, through a dilapidated meth house on the outskirts of Denver. That's where boxes of files and bank records belonging to Western Tradition Partnership, an energy-company-funded Montana nonprofit created to fight environmentalists, were discovered and handed over to Montana's Commissioner of Political Practices. As the commissioner later concluded, these files indicated that Western Tradition Partnership and its leader, an operative named Christian LeFer, had possibly broken the law by directly coordinating with candidates for Montana's Legislature.

"The

LeFer was a key cog in the right-to-work movement. Internal NRTWC emails depict him as the committee's man on the ground in Montana, where, in addition to Western Tradition Partnership, he ran Montana Citizens for Right to Work. NRTWC funded LeFer's group to the tune of $217,600 in 2010 and $56,500 in 2011, tax records show. After the meth house documents came to light, LeFer and his wife, Allison, sued to reclaim them, but a state judge dismissed their suit in October 2013, and the documents remained in the hands of a federal grand jury investigating Western Tradition Partnership.

Two thousand miles away, at his home inrural Virginia, a former NRTWC staffer and Ron Paul aide named Dennis Fusaro watched the drama unfolding in Montana with growing alarm. Fusaro knew all too well who LeFer was—in 2009 and 2010, Fusaro worked for NRTWC in Iowa and had been included on many email chains with LeFer. He feared the Montana investigation could spark a probe of NRTWC activities. Fusaro says he tried to bring his complaints to NRTWC leadership, but was rebuffed. (NRTWC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

So, in what Fusaro says was an effort to save his own skin, he went public, eventually releasing to conservative bloggers a trove of emails, memos, and other records showing potentially illegal coordination between the NRTWC and a host of GOP candidates. But the biggest bombshell he dropped had to do with Kent Sorenson, whom Fusaro knew well from his days as an NRTWC operative in Iowa. Fusaro had been included on Paul campaign correspondence about securing Sorenson's endorsement. Attached to one of those emails was the three-page memo outlining Sorenson's demands for joining Ron Paul's presidential campaign; its publication in August 2013 fueled the criminal investigation that eventually brought Sorenson down.

Fusaro's documents also laid bare how NRTWC may have overstepped the rules banning outside groups from coordinating with political candidates. (We'll spare you the legalese, but coordination is a campaign finance no-no because it provides a way to circumvent contribution limits to political campaigns.) Fusaro's documents show NRTWC was involved in creating and sending out mailers on behalf of dozens of Republican candidates for the Iowa Legislature in 2010. Mailers ostensibly authored by candidates or their spouses were written on NRTWC computers and later approved by the candidates. In some cases, candidates instructed NRTWC on the mix of Republican and independent voters that should receive their mailers. Helping oversee this NRTWC mail program were two Paul World fixtures: Doug Stafford and Dimitri Kesari. (Stafford, emails obtained byMother Jones show, also worked on Rand Paul's 2010 Senate campaign while he was an NRTWC employee. Stafford declined to comment.)

Not only did Fusaro's documents show evidence of coordination, but on their 2010 tax forms NRTWC and a Midwestern affiliate told the IRS they didn't plan to get involved in any political work that year. Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer who from 1990 to 2000 ran the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, says that filing false tax reports "could not only be a civil problem but a criminal one."

While it is unclear whether Fusaro's documents have prompted IRS scrutinyof NRTWC, they caused a world of hurt for Kent Sorenson. Nearly three years after his dramatic switch to the Ron Paul campaign, Sorenson pleaded guilty to covering up payments from both the Paul and Bachmann campaigns—her campaign was secretly paying him as well—and to obstructing an investigation into the payments. Sorenson never ultimately cashed Kesari's jewelry store check, but he admitted to receiving payments totaling $73,000, which an Iowa Senate ethics investigation all but concluded came from the Paul campaign.

Had the Sorenson saga ended there, Rand Paul and his presidential team could probably breathe easy. But on February 19, a Justice Department lawyer requested a delay in sentencing Sorenson because the feds were"making progress" on a "larger investigation" into the scandal. This prompted conservative radio host Steve Deace to tweet: "Asteroid coming. Impact could produce potentially large blast radius." The DOJ did not say who else was in its crosshairs, but emails and internal documents show that Benton and Kesari both played roles in the deal. Sorenson, for his part, isn't holding anything back. "He's cooperating and answering their questions about all the information that he knows," says F. Montgomery Brown, Sorenson's attorney.

In the meantime, Paul World has lawyered up. Ron Paul's 2012 campaign has shelled out $364,000 in legal fees since August. Reached on his cellphone, Kesari said he wouldn't comment and hung up; Benton and his lawyer did not respond to repeated interview requests. At least publicly, Rand Paul has said little to suggest he's worried about the legal headaches that may ensnare Paul World fixtures. In December—before the Justice Department's latest announcement but after emails showed Jesse Benton's involvement in the Sorenson deal, prompting Benton's resignation as Sen. Mitch McConnell's 2014 campaign manager—Paul defended Benton to the *Hill* newspaper as an "honest" political operative who would be "welcome" on his 2016 team. "He'll help us," Paul said.

But as Rand Paul launches his presidential campaign, questions linger about how long his cadre of advisers and operatives will last under the merciless glare of the national stage. "They are in such a bubble in this Rand Paul universe, and I think the bubble's going to pop real quick in the heat of the primaries," says the conservative strategist familiar with the Pauls and their allies. "They are not ready for prime time."

---