SoylentNews

A longtime business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted Friday on charges he conspired to obstruct justice as investigators probed a past secret lobbying scheme on behalf of Ukraine.

Konstantin Kilimnik was charged in a superseding indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. The new charges revolve around allegations that he and Manafort tried to influence two potential witnesses in a case involving the failure to register as foreign lobbyists.

Those accusations are part of a recent effort by the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to revoke or revise Manafort’s bail conditions while he awaits trial next month in northern Virginia. A hearing on the bail issue is scheduled for next week. The indictment also charges Manafort with obstruction and conspiring to obstruct justice.

Special counsel Mueller indicts Paul Manafort, Russian associate on obstruction charges

That brings the investigation by Mueller — derided regularly by President Trump as an unwarranted and unfair “witch hunt” — to a total of 20 individuals and three businesses that have either been indicted or admitted guilt and a total of 75 charges filed by the year-old probe.

Mueller’s ‘witch hunt’ snags another witch

While serving as secretary of State, Hillary Clinton disregarded an instruction from the Foreign Affairs Manual directing her to use State Department equipment for day-to-day operations. Clinton almost certainly did this for convenience — since she could not connect her smartphone to the State Department server, the directive made it harder for her to check her email on a mobile device — but the issue somehow became a first-tier national scandal. The bizarre prominence this story took on is worth revisiting given Monday night’s revelation that Donald Trump is doing essentially the same thing.

Trump continues to use personal phone because a secure phone is too inconvenient - LOCK HIM UP!

Trump’s clear double standard between Hillary Clinton’s emails and his own cell phones
Trump's Unsecured iPhones Make Clinton's Basement Server Look Like Fort Knox

The school shooting near Houston on Friday bolstered a stunning statistic: More people have been killed at schools this year than have been killed while serving in the military.

Initial estimates put the number killed at Santa Fe High School at eight, but, even without those deaths, nearly twice as many people were killed at schools than in the military. (The figures for the military were compiled from Defense Department news releases and include both combat and noncombat deaths.) Including only students who died in school shootings (excluding, for example, teachers) the total still exceeds military casualties.

2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than service members

President Trump on Wednesday hailed the release of three U.S. detainees in North Korea, but in negotiating with Kim Jong Un, the Trump administration may have played into Pyongyang's history of "hostage diplomacy," harshly criticized by National Security Adviser John Bolton when Barack Obama was president.

Bolton admonished Obama in 2009 for engaging in “political ransom” with North Korea after Obama dispatched another former president, Bill Clinton, to negotiate the release of two American journalists. Bolton argued it put humanitarian aid workers, academics and other Americans at risk. It also gave the north "political legitimacy" and emboldened Iran and other autocracies to take similar steps to gain leverage on the United States.

"Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so," Bolton, who worked as ambassador to the United Nations for President George W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that year.

"The reporters' arrest, show trial and subsequent imprisonment (twelve years hard labor) was hostage taking, essentially an act of state terrorism," Bolton added. "So the Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea, whether or not he carried an official message from President Obama.”

Trump adviser Bolton criticized Obama's 'hostage' talks; now welcomes them with North Korea

...worked out so well last time!

Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq

President Donald Trump and the truth have grown more distant in recent months, according to a new analysis.

The Washington Post has been tracking the president’s false or misleading claims since he took office in January of last year.

In total he has averaged 6.5 false or misleading claims a day, but that the number of those claims has crept up since the beginning of his presidency. In the first 100 days of his administration, Trump averaged just 4.9 of those claims a day. In the last two months, that rate has almost doubled to 9 false or misleading claims a day, according to the Post. However, that number is bolstered by Trump’s rally in Michigan last week, where he lied 44 times during an 80-minute speech.

DONALD TRUMP IS LYING MORE NOW THAN HE WAS AT THE BEGINNING OF HIS PRESIDENCY

Trump's longtime personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has now indicated that he intends to plead the Fifth Amendment in the civil case involving his hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, citing the fast-materializing criminal case stemming from that same payment.

"When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they are not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it is disgraceful." - Donald Trump.

“The mob takes the Fifth, If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” - Donald Trump

“Did you see her IT specialist? He's taken the Fifth,” Trump said. “The word is he's ratting her out like you wouldn't believe it.” - Donald Trump

"I am no fan of Bill Cosby but never-the-less some free advice - if you are innocent, do not remain silent. You look guilty as hell!" - Donald Trump

President Trump, in a stunning reversal, told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors on Thursday morning that he was directing his advisers to look into rejoining the multicountry trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he pulled out of within days of assuming the presidency.

Trump Reverses Course and Proposes Rejoining Trans-Pacific Partnership

Reversing his veto threat, Trump signs the $1.3 Trillion dollar spending bill.

National Review says it's the Biggest Spending Increase Since 2009.

Trump briefly threatened to veto it. Mostly because it didn't spend enough: “... the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,”

Spending wouldn't be such a problem except for the fact they also cut revenue by a over a $trillion with the tax bill.

I'm no mathematician but that seems to put a bit of crimp in his promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years.

Just in case we were wondering if arming teachers is a good idea:

As thousands of students walked out of their schools on Wednesday to pressure Congress to approve gun control legislation, three other students were healing from wounds inflicted when a teacher’s firearm accidentally discharged in a California classroom.

The teacher, Dennis Alexander, who is also a city councilman in Seaside, Calif., was showing the students a gun on Tuesday during his advanced public safety class at Seaside High School when the gun accidentally went off, Marci McFadden, a spokeswoman for the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Across the country, another school was also investigating a weapon that discharged accidentally this week. The Alexandria Police Department in Virginia said that a school resource officer accidentally fired his gun inside his office at George Washington Middle School on Tuesday morning. Nobody was hurt, the police said.

Teacher’s Gun Is Accidentally Fired During Public Safety Class, Injuring 3