#Conspiracy emmet has arrived

[au-wannabe-the-very-best]

Misplaced Super Train au is soooo funny to think about when you imagine what's going on in the present. Because Ingo going missing? Okay, certainly news worthy. He's a well-known public figure, he's hugely important to a major battling institution, the people he left behind are pretty important, and his disappearance would cause a good few conspiracy theories. But people go missing all the time. While what actually happened to him is crazy, the easy guess is him being kidnapped or murdered or he died in the woods.

But an entire goddamn train? One filled with Battle Subway Staff as well as Ingo? There is no reasonable explanation for that. Where did all those people AND AN ENTIRE TRAIN GO! What happened? The sickening worry for all the people missing would be mixed with such an absurd sense of 'wtf happened?!' and it certainly wouldn't be settled as easily than if one, albeit well-known and connected, man disappeared without a trace.

It's absolutely MIND-BOGGLING. Like, the train was definitely heading to the main station, people SAW it leaving, the security staff were in contact with Ingo and everything was FINE. They could see the train's exact location on their screen, it was on time, things were running smoothly!

And then the signal just vanishes. No communications were going through. The train doesn't arrive. There is NO indication in the tunnels that they stopped or there was an altercation. The train and all the people in it were just GONE.

Interpol can't find any leads, and the general public eventually start treating it like a publicity stunt, rather than the very real tragedy it is. Reporters are getting bold and downright insensitive to the family and friends of those missing.

And it kind of makes sense why they're not treating this as a real problem! You could say there's a mental phenomenon happening, where whatever happened is so ridiculous and bizarre, it's actually very difficult for the brain to treat it as something real as opposed to something akin to watching a movie. It just doesn't really connect in their brains that this really happened.

Because shit like this just. Doesn't happen. It's unheard of. Therefore, this has to be a joke, right?

Emmet and the other loved ones are having a Bad Time.

[yanban-san]

for your mental image viewing pleasure bc thinking about this made me gigglesnort/cackle; emmet being like "FUCK." after elesa points out an angle he hadnt considered (or just something glaringly obvious he didnt notice bc he's got his rose colored glasses on and the prescription/lens' on them are Real Damn Thick like his skull (affectionate) and his di-) and throwing his darling conspiracy board marker down so hard he sends it to eeby deeby/breaks fhte fucking sound barrier or some shit

adfhjalkjdf I need to think of an extremely convoluted and intricate plan for something but yes he absolutely would

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Fandom-Specific Tag Directory

misc whatever that isn't expansive enough for its own section:

#fashion: ok i don't know if this belongs here but it feels weird to put it in the main directory. honestly just a "ooh pretty dress" tag

#swift plays (hollow knight / subnautica / flight rising / dragcave / deltarune / rune factory / half life / final fantasy 14): i sure do!

#dr analysis: deltarune bloggin. the narrative is ALIVE

#mv liveblog: malevolent podcast tag that WAS a liveblog and now is just a catchall

elden ring: i don't have an elden ring specific tag actually oops. it's been too long and now i don't feel like starting anything consistent. you get what you get.

this section is the fuckoff huge directory of pla-specific tags

#pla analysis: for meta, character Thoughts, whatever

#pokefic pitch: grab bag of au/fic concepts that were one-offs/i never did anything with. a lot of more involved aus also start here

#surveyfam: the survey corps is a family!!

#strong pokemon... weak pokemon... maybe the trainer should just git gud: making fun (affectionate) of ingo and emmet’s starters/teamcomp. i mean they have to be so good to make it work but also why the rock lee ankle weights my guys

#hisui timeline debate: it is NOT in the 1800s

#volo’s evil togekiss: my conspiracy theory that the reason that volo has a togepi he manages to evolve is bc it is also super on board with the “reach god through violence and rewrite the universe” idea

sneasel: the funny animal pokemon: drawings of quadrupedal sneasel line (mostly sneasler) bc i think they're fun

substantial aus/things with fics:

#jailbirds au: aka Ounce of Prevention, my currently longest-running fic. kamado puts the rift travelers in prison and also emmet finally arrives in hisui after an ATROCIOUSLY long delay. it got wildly away from me and now there’s politics and every single minor character is involved

#galactic commander emmet: aka Fate of a Lost Comet. an extremely tense alliance is developed between cyrus, who wants to imprison the gods to rewrite reality, and his new commander and right-hand man, who is openly planning to sabotage him as soon as he gets what he wants: dialga on a leash.

#gligar emmet: aka Copy Corruption/silent loyalty. ingo's partner gliscor is actually emmet, who got stuck in a pokemon body upon arriving at the same time he did. they can’t communicate, but he’s very worried about his brother and is determined to stick with him

#pladoption au: Sinnoh is Silent. an au where akari falls like, IN the temple of sinnoh, and then gets really lost and then ingo finds her and he just keeps her. very minimal plot. mostly just fluff.

#immortal volo: fic: Nobody Writes Them Like They Used To. volo's immortal, but it’s been a few thousand years since hisui and he’s matured. he’s normal now. ...then he finds a pre-hisui ingo in unova.

#warden fusion au: wardens can fuse with their nobles. yeah like in steven universe. this one has a fic too: Covalent Bonding

#warden emmet au: emmet falls in hisui alongside ingo but lands in the wrong spot and they get separated. whoops!

#lord zoroark: a subset of warden emmet- the forgotten lord of the mountain, zoroark, finds a dude in the snow and decides to keep him. emmet lives in a cave with his dogs now

#living history au: a bunch of major pla characters get yeeted into the future. ingo does not get to go with them.

the following are aus that were more just posting/throwing stuff around w/ no real fic or art or anything. in no particular order:

#leader swap: adaman's now the leader of the pearl clan, and irida's diamond. the wardens are still the same

#ley lines au: magic fantasy au with some real worldbuilding happening

#timeloop protag: a "pla protag loops time when they die" au, except ingo is also conscious of the loops happening and has no idea why they are

#surveyparents: the protagonist falls into hisui as a toddler. cyllene and laventon are parents now and also The Plot is their responsibility

#card fortune: did you know the miss fortunes used to be galaxy team? what if they took the protag (counterpart) with them when they left? ...akari, who’s akari, i only know the Bandit Card

#the magical misfortunes: spinoff of card fortune based on a couple random posts. they’re teen superheroes/magical girls in a modern setting

#origin visions au: due to consequences from falling through the spacetime rift unshielded, ingo now has prophetic dreams. sort of. it's complicated

#hisui n au: N takes the place of the pla protagonist and has a bad time in hisui

#hisui fallers au: ultra wormholes take mohn, anabel and looker to hisui along with ingo. also, there’s more wormholes and they’re extradimensional monster magnets

#frenzy swap: swapping which noble of a region is frenzied—wyrdeer, ursaluna, basculegion, sneasler, and braviary instead of the canon 5

#legends creation starters: instead of rowlet/cyndaquil/oshawott, when transporting the protagonist to hisui, arceus offers them a newly-created egg of one of the creation trio

#zoroark twins au: ingo is a unovan zoroark but still has amnesia, leading to some Complicated feelings about his human guise. meanwhile, emmet dies shortly after falling into hisui and comes back as a weird dog

#dragon champion ingo: ingo’s a chosen champion of the unova dragons but he forgot. one day he summons a deity by complete accident

#distortion subway au: gear station has always been a little Weird, actually

#rift ghost au: instead of falling through a rift into hisui, ingo gets trapped in the distortion world. wardens think the rifts are haunted. also, turns out staying in the distortion world long-term is not so good for human minds and souls

#twin dragon curse: ingo and emmet are descended from the original unovan heroes, and their bloodline is cursed

#guardian of ideals: arceus’ champion was sent to stop volo at any cost. ingo, zekrom’s champion and divinely-ordained guardian of ideals, was sent to save him.

#zero constructs: the area zero professor decides to use their time machine to recover Champion Dawn and Subway Boss Ingo from their place adrift in time. unbeknownst to them, and unfortunately for dawn and ingo’s loved ones, they do not have a time machine, they have a wish-granting machine, and it does NOT know how to put a dawn and ingo together

#magearna twins: “hey the shinies for regular/oc magearna look sort of familiar”

#platinum clan: spawned off of living history- the clan leaders and wardens never figure out how to get back to their original time and ingo becomes the de facto leader of both clans, eventually unifying them into one

#tringo: SUB-subclass of platinum clan. ingo goes to unova and gets turned into the three legendary dragons

#giratina champion ingo: much like the protagonist is arceus’s champion, ingo is giratina’s, unknowingly serving volo and giratina’s will

#emissary au: spawned off of giratina champion/living history—after the leaders vanish, ingo is approached by a shadowy entity that claims to be almighty sinnoh, and which makes it his priest. giratina Is Not Evil, and is in fact trying to protect reality from a greater threat... not that the rest of the world believes that

#anthro legends arceus: i’m doing a miserable job beating the furry allegations

#modern hisui: rei and akari, totally non-suspicious teen twins, wind up in a small town full of cryptid stories

#nobel lady sneasler: this one is fully a stupid joke that got out of hand. pseudo-1920s-au, pokemon all have recognized sapience, and the clans are two rival groups of scientists with their own pet theories, trying to prove themselves right in time for an upcoming award. get it. nobels

CROSSOVER STUFF:

#arc vessel: hollow knight au. ingo is the ghost and emmet is the hollow knight

#pokesouls: grab bag. some of it’s elden ring, some of it’s ds1, some of it’s ds2, some of it’s bloodborne. we are just vibing

#msaxpla: pla/mystery skulls animated crossover. unlike 99% of my crossovers this is a “the characters exist in the same universe” crossover bc we are hyperfixation multi track drifting. vivi is the protagonist, lewis died in hisui and became a zoroark, and arthur’s a depot agent doing really inadvisable things to one of the train engines (it’s fine emmet okayed it)

#subnautica au: ingo crashes on the degasi. several years later, emmet chases his voice recordings across the crater, hoping to catch up to him (and find him alive when he does) (they both end up fine dw)

#pla dhau: submas/pla dishonored au. no listen listen. ingo and emmet were twin princes, but one family assassination attempt and several years later, ingo’s an assassin-turned-vigilante with no memories and emmet’s smiling in the lord regent’s face while turning the palace against him behind his back.

#pla rf4: rune factory 4 au. the wardens etherlink with their nobles to sustain both adaman and irida. if you know what that means congrats and also come yell with me about it

#poke slayer: demon slayer au that is, i will be honest, mostly about torturing former darkness hashira ingo

#the legends zone: taz balance au. an ipre consisting of ingo, emmet, elesa, prof. rowan, laventon, cyllene and one stowaway. emmet and elesa are liches, emmet gets stuck in a whistle, rowan voidfishes everyone and becomes kamado and founds the galaxy team to fix their mistake with the light of creation (arceus) and the nobles.

i don’t post much msa anymore and most of this is not particularly Up To Standard but i GUESS i’ll compile those tags too

#msa analysis: for meta

#fic pitch: approximately 2 billion msa au concepts that never went anywhere bc my brain is a pinball machine

#msa mermay: i did two of these! it’s mermaids! more or less 100% art!

#mystery hate blog: aka kitsune (derogatory). i DON’T hate him as a character but i DO bitch a lot about how Everyone Except Me Is Wrong About HIm

#mori and arthur are friends: i think it would be funny if they bonded

(most of the following are also au concepts that span maybe one sketchsheet or a few posts, because again, brain. pinball machine.)

#precave lewvithur: you can't textually prove that they WEREN'T all already dating and lewis just forgot

#search death au: arthur dies while looking for lewis and comes back as a ghost whose death mission is to find him. this uh, raises some conflcits with lewis’ own existing death mission

#ot3 fake dating: no cave no mystery skulls au where, for Reasons, lewis has to pretend date both arthur and vivi at the same time. not as a throuple just. two legally distinct fake couples he's gotten accidentally involved in. at once.

#spooky kids with magic powers: au based on the idea that lewis was a station experiment where they (lewis, vivi, arthur, reverb's also there i guess) are All science experiments

#vampires au: everyone in the gang is a "vampire” but they’re all following different cherrypicked rules about it

#shards of winter: a sort of ambiguously period au? lewis is a... something, vivi and arthur are... something else. this one is a fic! it's more interesting and coherent than it sounds here

#noir au: fantasy noir, vivi’s a detective and arthur enlists her to find lewis

#western au: fantasy western, specifically. arthur made a deal with the devil. lewis is a ghost.

#little mysteries: little nightmares au

#msa celeste: lewis, vivi, and arthur are all mountain climbers with their own issues to work through

#msa hk: vivi is hornet but also the protagonist? arthur is the vessel. it’s convoluted

#dishonored au: you know the grimdark stealth action game series dishonored yeah i made a msa au about it that i have brainworms for and almost exclusively talk about in the tags

i think that’s all the major ones but i’m almost definitely forgetting something anyway. whatever. i’ll pin this post i guess

[the-east-art]

So for your Legends AU, does Emmett go back to Hisui? And Ingo goes back home? Or what's exactly happening? Sorry I get confused lol

Are you talking about my latest video - Everything Stays? It’s a sequel to Touch Tone Telephone so it’s a continuation of that story. Basically after Ingo goes missing Emmet kinda loses it and pushes everyone away, just trying to find out where Ingo went and how to get there, leading him to fighting Arceus to force Arceus to send him back in time to Hisui. When he arrives he runs into Laventon who leads him to Ingos place. It turns out Ingo has gone missing, and inside of Ingos house Emmet finds a conspiracy board - similar to the one Emmet crafted in Unova - showing Ingo trying to recall his past and find his way back to Emmet. It is then implied that Ingo managed this along with Akari, meaning in a twist of irony Ingo and Emmet have effectively swapped places.

Emmet, at this defeat, finally let’s himself mourn and gets some good old catharsis. He realizes the spiral he has let himself go through and how is has hurt him in a way Ingo would never want. Laventon and Rei are there and Emmet settles into life in Hisui, trying to heal. And then, with time, Jngo once again finds a way back to Emmet.

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Ya know, I truly hope Miss Renesmee Carlie Cullen fully dedicates herself to just....being as out there and iconic as possible

first things first- ANYTHING with the loch ness monster on it, she owns. Posters, shirts, jackets, shoes, folders, buttons, iron-ons, there is always at least 5 pieces of Nessie merch on her at all times

once she gets old enough to start high school, the cover story is her and Edward are siblings that Carlisle and Esme took in, and sometimes her classmates will ask her what her biological parents were like and she will flat out be like 'oh, they're vampires' and Edward and Bella are like. 5 feet away trying not to scream

every Halloween she'll show up to school in an elaborate Nosferatu costume

goes out of her way to photobomb people in increasingly ridiculous ways so there will Always be a photographic record of her and in like 100 years she can get a huge kick out of teens on the internet trying to make a conspiracy about her

joins as many school clubs as she can, even if she has no interest in them- she just Really wants a concrete record of herself to exist lmao

ICONIC at school theater though. One of those demon theater kids that come to rehearsal purely to cause chaos and nothing else, but her voice is incredible so she secures every lead. One time she somehow managed to star in a show while also playing in the school band for it- her classmates still have no idea how she pulled it off

Always brings blood out in public in a CLEAR THERMOS and it stresses her family out so much but everyone else thinks she's just like, weirdly into tomato juice so the Cullens can't stop her

to everyone's surprise...her biggest chaos enabler is Jasper lmao. everyone thought he'd be a logical, responsible uncle but they're just. A Problem together. He'll 100% assist her in any prank she wants to pull, he gets her fake id's when she wants to sneak into a club with friends, he bails her out of jail without telling her parents, they figured out if she gets high and he reads her feelings he'll get high too and it's. So fucking funny.

she's always carrying some random instrument around school- like for a while it's a guitar or a harmonica, fine, but then she'll start lugging a cello around, a tuba (she doesn't even play, she stole it off a guy who was annoying her) and it escalates until one day she's wheeling a piano around the building. no one's even sure how she got in in the doors of the school. She keeps running kids over in the hallway with it

You know the Catherine Tate Lauren Cooper skit with David Tennant? Where she's being a terrible student and then perfectly recites Shakespeare? 100% Nessie

when she starts getting dates Jacob keeps trying to wing man and be over supportive and give her a ton of girl advice and it's embarrassing as hell so one day when he was on a spiel about How To Woo A Lady she looks him in the eyes and goes 'oh really? did that work on my mom?' and the Cullens fucking LOSE IT. Jacob had to go live in the woods for a few days because he couldn't cope

Emmet and Jasper: arrive to school in their jeep. Rose and Alice: arrive in a convertible. Edward: arrives in his dumb volvo. Bella and Jake: arrive to school on motorcycles. Nessie: arrives to school on a unicycle while juggling

one year she ended up getting nominated for prom queen and Edward read the minds of the teachers tallying the votes so he knew she won and he and Bella were so excited!! they're like we're gonna take so many pictures of our baby looking like a princess! And then she emerges from her room, actually drenched in pigs blood. Like she just did it to herself and went to the dance and accepted her crown like that

she regularly commits crimes against fashion. If she comes out of her room and sees Alice contemplating turning herself over to the Volturi, she KNOWS she's picked a great look

somehow gets ahold of Aro's cell number and sends him selfies of her blatantly breaking vampire laws captioned 'whatcha gonna do'. he keeps blocking her but she keeps managing to get through to him somehow

she illegally sells soda out of her locker and does people's homework for cash, while also paying other people to do her homework for her. she organizes every single senior prank. she's never gotten a detention in her whole immortal life because every teacher just Adores her for some reason

had 100% used her powers for deserved evil before. Like, if someone's being a dick at school, she'll sneak into their room at night and give them nightmarea threatening them to be a better person lol

sometimes she'll show up at the hospital unannounced and ask Carlisle, in front of his coworkers, 'yo can I raid the blood bank?'

her bedroom looks like a library. every wall, floor to ceiling books.

she's been publishing trashy romance novels under a fake name for almost 40 years now and no one in her family knows

one birthday Jacob takes her on a trip to vegas and they get wasted, at some point they were laughing about how ridiculous their lives are and they're like 'wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if we had a baby'. they then black out, hangover style, and wake up like a week later with a payment on her card to a fertility clinic. Jacob's like 😱 and Ness is just like 'you get to be the one to explain this to my parents'

Their kid is absolutely hilarious, they were correct, and at some point they realized 'wait...drinks blood..doesn't sparkle...can shape shift...we've somehow created a classic pop culture vampire' lmao

Edward had to threaten them to get them to not name the kid Vladimir

Also to be clear: Nessie and Jacob have the EXACT same dynamic as Will and Grace. that's canon.

says its her goal to star in a live action all female production of mamma mia and Carlisle is like 'honey you know you can't do anything on broadway or in hollywood' and she's like, 'no, in real life. I'm gonna go to greece and attract a bunch of women with abba songs' and he's like,,,,,ah

she loves all music but she goes out of her way to Only play stuff she knows Edward hates lmao

one day she remembers she doesn't need to breathe and can see under water and just. books herself a ticket to scotland and Finds The Loch Ness Monster

she actually personally finds a lot of monsters and cryptids like her hybrid aura just attracts all kind of weird shit and she LOVES it. She stops writing trashy romance novels and starts writing autobiographies of her traveling and hanging out with paranormal beings and everyone just assumes its fiction so she becomes a best selling fantasy author lmao

100% she's very into witchy stuff and only like...half in a trendy way. She's like what if on top of everything I've got going on I can cast spells? Think I deserve that power

when she's a couple decades old she catches Edward looking grossed out one day and she asks him what's up and he's like 'I really dont need to hear what creepy teachers think about my daughter' and she's like. oh. Dad we are gonna get SO MANY pedophiles arrested shdndjdn she gets him to expose teachers and she baits them then calls the police. queen.

She finds out she can get tattoos but they fade completely out of her skin within 5 years so she's always getting crazy tats

posts selfies on social media of her just like. hanging out with mountain lions or chilling on top of the space needle. her classmates think they're all photoshopped obvi but it drives her family insane

imagine you're 15 and you're on a nice hike in the woods and you come across your one classmate half naked, sacrificing a bear in some ritual, blood dripping down her face, bigfoot chilling on the rocks behind her filming the ritual on her phone...like on one hand, what would you do, but on the other hand. you've known this girl for a bit and you aren't surprised at all

anyway. stan Nessie Cullen.

[aion-rsa]

Critters: The Making of a Comedy Horror Cult Classic

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Rupert Harvey knew he was on to something with Critters after one memorable test screening.  Specifically, it was the scene where the Critters, who had already been terrorizing the Brown family, were standing on the doorstep of the family’s home talking in their guttural language with subtitles translating for the audience…until one of them is blown to gooey bits by a shotgun blast (wielded by none other than E.T. mom Dee Wallace), and the other lets out a subtitled “Fuck.”

“It totally destroyed the audience,” Harvey recalls. “They just howled. We lost the next scene because they were laughing so hard and I thought: ‘Okay, this is probably going to work.’” 

It had already taken a lot of work for Critters to get this far. 

Bringing Critters to Life

Released on April 11, 1986, the horror comedy about a small town and farm-dwelling family under attack from little furry space aliens with a taste for human flesh was unfairly dismissed by some as a Gremlins knock-off. 

But that did a disservice to the unique tone of Critters; a sci-fi comedy featuring belly laughs alongside genuine moments of terror. A film that owed as much to 1950s sci-fi B-movies as it did anything else, with its tale of picturesque Americana under attack from aliens. 

It also overlooks the film’s quirkier narrative aspect like the pair of shapeshifting alien bounty hunters who arrive on Earth to hunt the Critters down, with one of them assuming the form of a popular Jon Bon Jovi-esque rock musician. 

This surreal sci-fi tone, coupled with the copious violence, occasional bad language, and general unpredictability of it all helped give Critters the feel of a rebellious younger brother to the more mature Gremlins.  

To many, it was the cooler, edgier movie and one that boasted underlying themes that remain universal to this day. 

More importantly, the accusation of imitation was incorrect. If the two films were related, it wasn’t by design with screenwriter Brian Dominic Muir first writing the script for Critters back in 1982, two years before Joe Dante’s film hit cinemas.  

“I don’t think I saw Gremlins until we were in post-production,” Harvey, who produced Critters and worked on two of its three original sequels, tells Den of Geek. “It was certainly not something we were thinking about very much at the time, if at all. 

We were dealing with very different creatures and the fact that they were so different in concept meant I wasn’t terribly bothered by it. Gremlins were these mythical, earthbound, magical beings whereas Critters were extraterrestrial. People who say there are similarities are just influenced by the fact Gremlins was such a huge success, but it was a much bigger budget movie.” 

Muir’s script didn’t see the light of day for nearly three years before he showed it to friend and fellow budding filmmaker Stephen Herek who developed it further. That was where Harvey came in. 

The three men met while working on Android, a distinctive low budget sci-fi film Harvey was producing alongside independent movie trailblazer Roger Corman.  

“Brian gave me Critters to read and l loved it,” Harvey recalls. “It was an archetypal American story about foreigners invading the homeland. It’s quite prescient given the current state of politics in America. There was this quintessentially American setup with this almost pioneering family struggling through adversity to come out the other side.” 

35 years on, that notion of protecting the homeland is one Harvey feels is reflected in the inward-looking politics increasingly prominent in America and the UK today. That sentiment was already bubbling under the surface when Critters came out in the Reagan-era of the 1980s.

“It was novel to look at that then through the lens of Critters,” he says. “No one was seeing the film in those terms but that human fear of outsiders coming in has always been there and has been a fundamental part of cinema and drama since forever.” 

Harvey agreed to develop the film under his production company, Sho Films. Though he mulled over an offer to produce a low budget version of Critters with Corman, everything changed when Bob Shaye and New Line Cinema came calling. 

Writing Critters

“New Line was really a mom-and-pop operation at that point. They hadn’t made A Nightmare on Elm Street yet. They weren’t the New Line of today, but Bob offered to double our budget, so I did the deal.” 

Even so, Shaye took some convincing on the choice of director. 

Herek would go on to helm Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and a string of big budget Disney movies in the years that followed but had never directed prior to Critters, having previously worked as an editor. 

“Stephen, to his credit, even though he had no leverage other than a script we wanted to make, absolutely insisted that nobody would direct it but him and if he didn’t it wouldn’t get made,” Harvey says. “He stuck to his guns and there was never any shift in that position on Brian’s side. I had to convince Bob on several occasions to go ahead with us and, even during production, to actually stick with Steve. But we were all very glad that he did.” 

On the writing side, Harvey enlisted Sho Films’ in-house writer Don Opper. A fellow Roger Corman acolyte, Opper had written and starred in Android where he also worked with Herek and Muir. 

He was seen as the ideal candidate to work alongside Herek after Muir became unwell. 

“Brian, unfortunately, became quite ill not long after we started making Critters,” Harvey says. 

Muir was reportedly battling Hodgkin’s disease at the time. Though he recovered, the writer, who often wrote under the pseudonym August White for Full Moon Entertainment later in his career, sadly died from cancer aged 48 in 2010.  

“He was a very sweet, nice man,” Harvey recalls. “In Brian’s absence, Don worked with Stephen on polishing the script. One of the ways was to enhance the family and their relationships.” 

By then the distinctive looking Opper had also been cast in the pivotal role of Charlie McFadden, the town drunk and a conspiracy theorist convinced the fillings in his teeth are picking up signals from outer space.  

Like a cross between Randy Quaid’s deranged pilot from Independence Day and Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, Charlie would eventually emerge as a fan favorite, appearing in each of the three Critters sequels. 

He was one of several quirky locals introduced early on in Critters with much of the first third of the film dedicated to establishing the Brown family, their farm, and the characters of the fictional Kansas town of Grover’s Bend where the Critters land.  

In one picture postcard scene of the perfect nuclear family, the Browns gather round the breakfast table in a primary colored kitchen, blissfully unaware of the approaching danger and disruption to follow. 

That slow build-up may be less commonplace today, but it’s something Harvey believes was crucial to the success of the film. 

“That was one of the things that appealed to me about the script,” he says. “If you set that up properly and the audience is in there with you. They gain an understanding of the family dynamic right away and they are engaged. It helps you then feel for each one of them subsequently…The rules are the same, and they have been since the first Greek dramas; storytelling is still about humans and the human condition. Just making stuff about what the monsters are doing has no appeal.” 

Critters came during a time when horror comedies were commonplace in multiplexes.

“Studios started to notice in test screenings that the audience response was often bigger when you capped a scare or moment of high tension with a bit of wit or humor,” Harvey explains. 

Post-screening surveys bore this out; using humor to emphasize or punctuate a terrifying moment drew a bigger response from the audience. Regardless of the visceral impact of the scare itself. It made it more memorable to viewers.

The Cast of Critters

It helped that Critters boasted an impressive cast to bring the script to life.  

Blade Runner’s M. Emmet Walsh appeared as the grouchy local sheriff while Dee Wallace, who had starred in E.T. only a few years earlier, was also convinced to sign on as the Brown family matriarch Helen. Billy “Green” Bush was cast as the hardworking man of the house Jay Brown with Nadine van der Velde as his high school teen daughter April. 

Despite some impressive names, Harvey ranks the casting of future Party of Five and ER star Scott Grimes in the role of mischievous central teenage protagonist Brad Brown as the most significant. It’s Scott who first discovers the Critters and Scott that begins to fight back against them using his slingshot and potent firecrackers coming off like a hellish Kevin McCallister from Home Alone. 

“Scott was tailor-made for the role,” Harvey says. “He was at the center of the craziness and he had the audience’s sympathy and support because no one was paying attention to him.” 

For all the acting talent on display, however, much of the movie’s success rested on the tiny shoulders of a few hedgehog-like puppets. 

“The biggest challenge was making the Critters appear to be a viable threat as the antagonists,” Harvey says. “We were really fortunate that we found the Chiodo Brothers.” 

A trio of siblings who specialized in stop motion and animatronic work, the Chiodos were relative newcomers to the movie business and would go on to projects like Elf and Team America: World Police. 

“We knew from the script we were dealing with a fur ball that got around fast by rolling around and was all teeth and voracious,” Harvey says. “That was the extent of the design parameters. They came up with the drawings and the details as to how they would work.”

Harvey cites the Critters’ distinctive, almost limbless design as both a blessing and a curse.  

“From a construction and manipulation point of view, they were relatively straightforward,” he says. “But from an action perspective, there was not a lot you could do with them.” 

While other projects, like New Line’s later Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, would struggle with glitchy animatronics, there were no such problems with the Chiodos’ creations with each running impressively well thanks to a crack team behind the scenes.

“Even though the Critters were fairly simple creatures, there were times for some of those shots, when we had 10 guys running different cables and things to them to get them right,” Harvey recalls. “They had eye movement, mouth movement, lip movement even their little arms and legs move because these things needed to look as believable as possible. But it was still tough to make these things that rolled around something scary and frightening rather than cute and laughable.” 

That was where Billy Zane came in. A good horror villain needs a good victim. Cast in the role of April’s unsuspecting boyfriend Steve Eliot, the then unknown Zane ended up falling afoul of the Critters in arguably the film’s standout gory death after encountering the furry fiends while enjoying a makeout session in the family’s barn. 

“It was the first thing he’d ever done. I think he’d arrived in L.A. a week before,” Harvey says, recalling how uncomfortably hot that barn scene was for everyone involved. “It was 100 degrees in the barn. He had little furry creatures stuck to his stomach and was covered in fake blood. It was so hot and sticky. We stayed there for the whole day, getting all the inserts and various other bits and pieces to make the scene…But that setup in the claustrophobic space of the barn helped to make the scene much scarier because we could set it up in a kind of way that made the punchline, the payoff, much more visceral.” 

The Bounty Hunters

For all the machinations of the Critters themselves, it’s their pursuers from outer space, the two faceless bounty hunters, who almost steal the show.

Especially after one decides to take the form of fictional hair metal superstar Johnny Steele, the singer of “Power of the Night” a song so pitch-perfectly cheesy, you had to wonder if Steele is a real artist rather than musical theater actor Terrence Mann. 

“I went to see Terrence who was appearing in Cats on Broadway. He’d been suggested by a friend and was seriously interested in doing the film,” Harvey says. “We had a friend in New York who was in the music business and had a recording studio. He put together some tracks and we created this imaginary band that he stole the identity of the lead singer from.” 

Despite some striking similarities to artists of the time, Harvey insists Johnny Steele wasn’t set up as a deliberate lampooning of any one artist.

“The band was generically inspired by particular bands of the time,” he says. “There wasn’t any one group or individual. We were post punk and before real heavy metal. There was more of a glam goth influence.” 

Teaming up with Charlie and Brad, the bounty hunters eventually destroy the Critters though it comes at a cost to the Browns, with the family home blown-up in the process. It was a powerful symbol of the way these invaders had shattered their lives but not their spirit. Unfortunately, New Line Cinema didn’t like it as an ending. 

“Bob wanted it changed so that the house was rebuilt in the end but I was against it so we had a few arguments about that, but it was Bob’s money, and we did it and it came out very successfully.” 

Shaye and New Line would occasionally prove tricky customers, with Harvey often forced to traverse the familiar pitfalls of independent filmmaking.

“We were in production and things were really tough and there was one point in time when Bob and I sat down in the trailer and he explained to me some things that I won’t go into,” Harvey says.  “Things were very tricky for a week or two financially, but they sorted themselves out. That was a typical attribute of an independent movie. ‘Oh God you’re spending $150,000 dollars a day, can you spend $100,000?’. Not unheard of but no fun at the time.” 

For all the trials and tribulations of the film, cast, and Critters themselves, however, he has fond memories of working on the film.

“We weren’t stuck in Los Angeles in some smoke-filled space,” he said. “The set was built on Newhall Ranch, this huge bucolic area of land outside of L.A and there we were for five weeks shooting in relatively hot temperatures.” 

Critters Sequels and What’s Next

After a quick turnaround in editing, Critters was released in cinemas, proving to be a hit with over $13 million made at the box office off a budget of $3 million. This kind of success made sequels inevitable.

Though Harvey was unavailable for the second film, he returned for the third and fourth movies, which were filmed back-to-back and released direct to video.

“By then video cassettes were a huge component to New Line’s early success and helped finance the Nightmare on Elm Street and Critters sequels and all of the other movies that they then started making in order to become the powerhouse they became,” Harvey says. “I think it funded something like 40 to 40 to 50 percent of New Line production for that period of time.”

Harvey was initially hesitant to get involved, citing Shaye’s wishes to make the sequels for even less money than the first film. However, he ultimately relented after agreeing to film them back-to-back.

Harvey has mixed feelings about the two sequels, particularly the third movie, which he had conceived as being “much darker and much more violent” than what eventually made it to the screen.

“I wanted to do a George Romero homage for the third film,” he says. “I was very much interested in the claustrophobia of the tenement building in New York City, that kind of atmosphere. Boy, did it ever turn out differently.”

Having also agreed to direct the fourth film, which was set in space and wrap up the franchise, he found himself too busy to oversee work on the third movie.

“It was different. I didn’t have as much to do with Critters 3 because I was directing the fourth film. We were shooting back to back. We had a week down in between the two. All the time we were shooting Critters 3 I was prepping Critters 4.”

While the fourth film featured both a young Angela Bassett and Brad Dourif on top scene-chewing form, the third entry has become among the most noted in the years since thanks to the presence of a young Leonardo DiCaprio in the main role.

“It’s the movie that shall remain nameless on Leo DiCaprio’s resume,” Harvey jokes.

He doesn’t have a lot of memories about DiCaprio on set though there was already a sense he was destined for big things.

“One day he told me he needed some time off. He had to go and audition for this movie. After he came back I asked ‘How did it go?’ and he said ‘Robert De Niro is really great’. he’d been off auditioning for This Boy’s Life…And of course, when he did that movie, it was like, ‘Holy shit. Well, where was that actor when we were making Critters 3?’” 

While Leo is unlikely to return to the Critters franchise anytime soon, Harvey, who had no involvement in a recent TV revival, believes that there is life in the old furballs yet.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“It’s not a franchise that’s going to go away,” he says cryptically. “Whatever comes next needs to be something that is responsive to contemporary sources. I can’t really say too much about it, because nothing is final. All I can tell you is that I don’t think this is the end.”

The post Critters: The Making of a Comedy Horror Cult Classic appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2RHGEEI

[filmstruck]

Crossing Genres with Peter Hyams by R. Emmet Sweeney

Peter Hyams is a journeyman director who has tried his hand at just about every genre you could think of, whether it’s gritty cop film (BUSTING, ’74), coming-of-age drama (OUR TIME, ’74), paranoid thriller (CAPRICORN ONE, ’74) or Western-inspired Sci-Fi (OUTLAND, ’81). And that’s only the first ten years of his varied career. Initially trained as a reporter (he worked for CBS TV for six years), he gained a foothold with the street-level detail of BUSTING, but then branched out into fantastic tales of faked Mars landings and space mining colonies. What connects them is a focus on the details of work – he’s a process-oriented director who likes to dig into the nitty-gritty of whatever occupation he’s depicting, whether it’s cops or space marshals. FilmStruck is streaming five of his films in its DIRECTED BY PETER HYAMS collection, and today I will focus on his breakout hit CAPRICORN ONE (’74) and his first ‘80s trip outside Earth’s atmosphere, OUTLAND (’81).

CAPRICORN ONE was one of the first scripts Hyams ever wrote, conceived while still a reporter at CBS. He received nothing but rejections for years until he was able to convince Lew Grade, head of ITC Entertainment, to back the project. Despite the box office failure of Hyams’ detective comedy PEEPER (’75), the time was right for CAPRICORN ONE, as the culture had been mainlining paranoid thrillers since the Watergate scandal broke, drawn to any depiction of government conspiracies.

CAPRICORN ONE, written and directed by Hyams, sets up a scenario where a NASA functionary fakes a Mars landing in order to keep funding for his space exploration program. A long-delayed launch has been endangered by faulty life support equipment, and Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) fears another failure will see the end to his dreams. The astronauts (led by James Brolin) reluctantly go along with the ruse after some threats on their wives’ lives. The only one with an inkling of the fraud is reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould), who starts sniffing around the story after the disappearance of one of his friends, who worked in the NASA control room. The astronauts, after being promised a safe (fake) return, soon realize that the perpetrators of this lie would only be safe with them dead. So an escape is hatched, and the chase is on.

Hyams spends little time on characterization, instead focusing on the nuts and bolts of the ruse, down to the distance between the video signal sent by the TV studio cameras which filmed the fake landing, and the messages being sent by the unmanned shuttle in space. This is an inherently undramatic approach, and the film does have its longeurs, though it is enlivened by supporting players like Karen Black as Gould’s acid-tongued colleague and Telly Savalas as a blustery, foul mouthed crop-dusting pilot who Gould hires on a job. They end up being the most fascinating of the many workers in Hyams’ film.

In OUTLAND, which Hyams also wrote and directed, Sean Connery stars as Marshall William T. O’Niel, in charge of a backwater space mining colony, where he uncovers a plot by the general manager (a rumpled Peter Boyle) of the mine to pump his employees full of drugs to keep productivity high, despite mental breakdowns later. Connery is expected to ignore the crimes to keep the money rolling in, but instead he cracks down, and soon professional assassins are on the way to take him out. 

Very much inspired by HIGH NOON, Hyams was eager to make a Western, and this was the only way he could make it happen. He told Empire Magazine that, "I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, 'You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western'. I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was.”

The production design is a honeycomb of worn out technology and grime-covered sleeping units. It borrows from ALIEN in this regard, of a future all used up. O’Niel’s family runs off early on, exhausted by the constant moves to grungy backwaters, his wife and son are headed back to Earth. This gives Hyams time to establish O’Niel’s routine, the daily reports from his unmotivated staff and his virtual tour of the rounds via omnipresent video cameras. 

It is this reliance on routine that leads to his survival, despite the complete lack of support from the colony dwellers, who await his death-by-assassin. Only the sympathetic Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) lends a helping hand – otherwise he’s on his own, just like Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON. Hyams emphasizes the similarities in the last act, with frequent cuts to the digital countdown clock heralding the killers’ arrival, much like the grandfather clock does in Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 Western. O’Niel survives because of his knowledge of the terrain, hiding shotguns in the walls and wiring passageways to blow (letting the atmosphere in and turning a pro killer’s heads inside-out). As ever with Hyams, hard work will get you anywhere you want to go.

[briangroth27]

The Exorcist Season 2 Review

I came into Season 2 wary of the show’s direction—in Season 1, I loved the Rance family plotline but found the papal conspiracy boring—so I was glad the show shifted focus almost completely to the “possession of the season.” Not only is a family in peril easier for me to relate to and invest in, but the conspiracy element has never felt very “Exorcist” to me and I’m glad it all but disappeared by the end of the season (even if the homage to Exorcist III’s famous hospital hallway scene was well done). In Season 2, a family was once again under siege by a demon and only Fathers Ortega (Alfonso Herrera) and Keane (Ben Daniels) could help them. This time, the family consisted of Andy Kim (John Cho) and the several foster children under his care (Brianna Hildebrand, Cyrus Arnold, Hunter Dillon, Alex Barmia, Amelie Eve, and eventually Beatrice Kitsos). I liked that the kids’ diversities—be they blindness, homosexuality, developmental issues, etc.—were utilized for characterization, but those were never the kids’ sole defining characteristics. I really hope fans didn’t take issue with the kids, Andy, and Rose (Li Jun Li) all representing some facet of diversity; this is what the world looks like and I’m glad the show fully embraced it. It’s also cool that a foster home run by a single dad was treated as just as viable a family as a traditional nuclear family.

Full spoilers…

I liked what all the kids brought to the family, particularly when their differences collided with each other, like Shelby’s religious beliefs and Verity’s torture at the hands of “pray out the gay” conditioning. However, it did seem like there might’ve been one too many children to fully dig into in terms of screentime. It felt like they all had solid, distinct personalities; they just didn’t have much to do. Early on it seemed like Caleb might have a bigger role to play, but outside of his initial adventure on the old well and a few moments of his blindness being used to create tension when he couldn’t see the possessed Andy, it felt like his story was a little thinner than it could’ve been. Ditto for Truck, who was sent away midway through the season. I definitely expected Shelby to become something of a junior exorcist when Marcus and Tomas arrived at the Kim household, but not doing so didn’t feel unfinished (particularly when you take into account what we learned of Marcus’ past with eager exorcists). I liked that he was identifying the unholy signs early on, though, and perhaps they could’ve nodded at him wanting to become an exorcist one day in the future. Harper didn’t get much time at the Kim house before things went crazy, but I did like that we got to see how the family adjusted to a new kid through her introduction. Verity got the most mileage out of the writing and Hildebrand crafted a compelling teen who didn’t always get along with her new family, but clearly loved them despite the front she sometimes put up. Going back for a book Andy had given her was a touching moment and I was happy she was the one to stick by Andy longest. I totally fell for the trick that “agoraphobic” Grace wasn’t real, though her “brave face”—the creepiest pillow case-turned-mask ever—should’ve been a major clue.

John Cho brilliantly balanced Andy’s grief over his wife Nicole’s (Alicia Witt) suicide, guilt for not seeing the signs of her depression, care for the kids, affection for Rose, and the demonic side that overtook him as the series progressed. I loved the layers of hallucinations the demon inflicted on him as it attempted to bond with him permanently by enticing him with a “fairy tale” life with his wife. Witt did a great job playing both the caring and troubled Nicole and the maliciously tempting demon trying to entrap him. I’m a fan of puns, so “the kids are in the garden” was a particularly fun bit of dark and ominous humor from her. The battle for Andy’s soul was intense and I liked that Andy had moments of lucidity where he was able to keep the demon from harming Verity, despite the demon’s attempts to convince him the kids distracted him from seeing Nicole’s depression and that Verity might’ve had a hand in driving Nicole to suicide by mocking her issues. Andy’s final act—keeping the demon tethered to his soul so it couldn’t possess anyone else, even if killing it meant dying with it—was tragically perfect. I wanted him to survive, but Verity was right: once he started killing people, no one would believe him. It wouldn’t have been much of a life for him to be arrested for murders he didn’t commit, but maybe he could’ve gone on the run with the priests or something. As things turned out, Andy’s sacrifice worked on an emotional level and the final battle with the demon was tense, touching, and scary in all the right ways; Andy’s goodbye to his kids almost made me cry. I liked that the kids got to start a new family with Rose, who Li Jun Li had made into a solid, supportive, and strong presence the entire season. I also liked that Rose was so open to inviting exorcists into the home to examine Andy; usually there’s a lot more skepticism to break through before the people around the possessed open themselves up to that possibility.

The tests of Tomas’ resolve when it came to saving Andy this season worked very well. I had a hard time knowing when he was in reality and when he wasn’t, making for some great twists and putting me in his confused mindset perfectly, particularly when the demon turned the exorcism around on Tomas. The demon dangling a vision of Tomas as a bishop was great, especially when it included Casey Rance (Hannah Kasulka) to try and guilt him for leaving his parishioners in Chicago to become an exorcist. I was a little surprised they didn’t have the demon play up Tomas’ temptation to stray from the strict celibacy commanded by the church, as we saw in Season 1, but I suppose we’ve already seen that and Tomas has grown. His apology on behalf of the church officials who tried to force Verity to be straight was a great moment and a nice recognition that not everyone in the church—even priests—is opposed to homosexuality. It was good getting to know Ben Marcus’ past more this year. Both his tragic family history and his past with Mouse (Zuleikha Robinson) worked well to illuminate him. I was surprised he left Mouse behind after her possession and I liked that his inaction then was juxtaposed with his resolution to stay and kill the demon possessing Andy in the present. Not wanting to repeat that mistake has probably driven much of his dedication to exorcising demons, even after falling from grace within the church. Marcus’ father killing his mother was also a clever tie to the island’s history of parents killing their families. Finding a bit of romance with Peter (Christopher Cousins) rather than continuing to drown in sadness was another nice touch. I wonder if Marcus actually did get a message from God at the end. If so—and if they can do something different than what Supernatural and Constantine have done—bringing in angels and God could be an interesting, fresh spin on The Exorcist mythos. Mouse joining Tomas as his new partner should make for a cool change in the exorcist dynamic, given she’s much quicker to jump to killing whoever needs to be killed as long as the demons are vanquished. That should play off Tomas’ relative pacifistic nature very well, unless he’s been changed by the experience with Andy. Mouse having been possessed herself and Tomas’ mental link with the demon here—opening him up to being possessed as well—should also give them a unique background to bond over. Since Tomas’ true desire was to see the demon die moreso than an eventual shot at the papacy, I wonder if Mouse will propel him along a more violent path or if she’ll recognize her own past eagerness to be an exorcist in him and council him against it. Either way, the two of them are going to have some very interesting discussions about a lot of things, including being mentored by Ben! And if Marcus has a new directive that’s different from anything we’ve seen from exorcists or the church, it should throw the three of them into an even more interesting dynamic. What if he shows up saying that demons possessing people is somehow part of God’s plan and they should stop exorcising demons altogether?

I really enjoyed the evil history of the island and the season’s shift to a self-contained demon after revisiting Captain Howdy (Robert Emmet Lunney) and Reagan MacNeil (Geena Davis) in Season 1 proved the series doesn’t need to rely on direct connections to The Exorcist to create compelling monsters. The demon forcing multiple parents to kill their children was scary, particularly played against a found family like this one, where the foster kids depended on Andy to keep them together. The series once again found a polished yet creepy aesthetic that didn’t avoid gore, but also never reveled in it. That worked very well to set the tone and setting things on a remote island gave the season a totally different feel than Season 1’s Chicago. Making everything more remote worked to establish classic horror tropes, but the season never felt derivative. If the show gets another season, I wonder where they’ll take it to create an entirely different feel this fall.

Like last season, I'm content with where the story ended with the priests and the Kim family, so if they end up not getting a third season, I would accept it. I like that it's mostly contained each year; focusing on a single family in danger makes for smart insurance against cancellation. It would be a shame to lose characters like Tomas, Marcus, and Mouse, though. Even if I’m not a fan of the papal conspiracy, seeing them grow with each new case and the threat of each new demon makes for a strong series arc for them. A message from God does seem like it holds more promise than whatever the demons are planning with the papacy, so it would be a shame to see this always solid show end here.

[progressiveparty]

Federal prosecutors gear up for fight with Flynn over his guilt by attempting to use his former lawyers against him

Former US National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn arrives for his sentencing hearing at US District Court in Washington, DC on December 18, 2018. Federal prosecutors want to use Michael Flynn's former defense lawyers against him as they resist his attempts to get out of his guilty plea for lying to the FBI in 2017. The court filing from prosecutors on Sunday could bring a new and consequential twist in the Flynn case, aligning the Justice Department and a major force in DC's legal establishment against President Donald Trump's first national security adviser. The filings even hint that DOJ would be willing to charge Flynn with perjury, or to take Flynn to trial if the judge allowed him to change his plea to not guilty . In his guilty plea deal, Flynn admitted to lying to FBI agents interviewing him in the White House about his late-2016 conversations with the then-Russian ambassador. The episode ultimately led to his departure from the Trump administration, a series of events where special counsel Robert Mueller investigated Trump for obstruction of justice, and Flynn sharing extensive information about the President and his 2016 campaign with Mueller. As his sentencing approaches later this month , Flynn has claimed his former attorneys, from the law firm Covington & Burling, withheld information from him and pressured him into taking a plea deal during the Mueller's investigation. Flynn now claims he is innocent of lying to investigators, a crime to which he pleaded guilty two years ago. Michael Flynn should get up to 6 months in jail for lying to FBI, prosecutors say But the prosecutors, from the DC US Attorney's Office, asked District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Sunday to give Covington permission to counter Flynn's claims, according to a new court filing. If allowed, the defense lawyers could even be called to testify against Flynn in future court proceedings, the prosecutors noted. Flynn's recent moves to unravel his plea "put the representation of his former attorneys directly at issue," prosecutors wrote in a filing Sunday. "To make certain and clear that counsel may take the necessary steps to vindicate their public reputation by addressing and defending against the defendant's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, and equally to vindicate the integrity of this Court's previous proceedings, the government asks this Court to" allow Covington to discuss its representation of Flynn with the prosecutors, the court and potentially in a public hearing. Prosecutors wrote in a second court filing on Sunday they believe Covington would be willing to share information about Flynn if the judge orders that they can. Previously, following Flynn's accusations against his former attorneys, a spokesman for Covington told CNN, "Under bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly even to allegations of this nature, absent the client's consent or a court order." Flynn has so far won delays for his sentencing several times by telling new stories to the court. Some have been unproven conspiracy theories that the Justice Department and judge later shot down. This Piece Originally Appeared in www.cnn.com Read the full article

[thisdaynews]

The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn’s Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-maga-lawyer-behind-michael-flynns-scorched-earth-legal-strategy/

The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn’s Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy

Misty Keasler for POLITICO Magazine

Keith Kloor is a writer in New York and adjunct professor of journalism at New York University.

The three-day conference in November 2018 was called “Operation Classified” and promised attendees they would “come away with a comprehensive understanding of the Deep State.” Featured speakers, gathered at a Hilton hotel in a Dallas suburb, included militia leaders, anti-vaxxers, a UFO activist, as well as a former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell, who delivered a somber, noteless recitation in a folksy Southern accent.

Powell was there as a leading proponent, on cable news and in op-eds, of a conspiratorial narrative advanced by the far right: that special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was part of a plot by the intelligence communityto force President Donald Trump from office. Her talk was titled “Creeps on a Mission to Destroy the President,” a phrase she had coined on “Hannity” and then turned into a pro-Trump, T-shirt-selling website to denounce Mueller and his team of investigators. “This goes so deep and so wide, it is unbelievable,” Powell said with a heavy sigh during her 40-minute speech.

In the audience was Joseph Flynn, brother of Michael Flynn—the retired three-star lieutenant general who had served briefly as Trump’s first national security adviser before agreeing to cooperate with the Mueller probe and pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. The conference, in fact, was part of a fundraiser for Flynn’s legal defense fund, of which Joseph is a trustee, along with his sister Barbara Redgate. For more than a year, Michael Flynn had been defended by Covington & Burling, the powerful white-shoe law firm, but his siblings believed their brother’s guilty plea was “a decision made in haste,” as Joseph put it to me. They wanted to fight, not surrender. Michael Flynn did too, according to Joseph: “He never felt he was guilty. He never felt he committed any crimes. We only pled guilty because he had shitty legal counsel on this.” (Covington & Burling declined to comment.)

At the Dallas conference, Joseph Flynn introduced himself to Powell, who already knew his sister. The two spoke at length over coffee, finding that they saw Michael Flynn’s case the same way, they both told POLITICO Magazine. Powell believed that Flynn, like Trump, was a victim of a purported deep state plot, and that he had pleaded guilty only because he was coerced by overzealous prosecutors. “She was very much in tune with General Mike’s case,” Redgate told me. “Sidney,” Joseph says, “is a fighter”—which he says he emphasized to his brother.

Seven months later—after Powell had publicly exhorted Michael Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea and consider finding another lawyer—Flynn fired his team at Covington & Burling and hired Powell as his lead attorney. It was a striking turnabout: Flynn went from seeming to take the high road, by cooperating with the Mueller investigation, to seeking legal counsel from a Fox News pundit who thought Mueller was the perpetrator and Flynn the victim.

While Trump praised the new hire on Twitter, calling Powell a “GREAT LAWYER,” legal observers scratched their heads. Powell, who is in her 60s (she would not confirm her exact age), had shared content from social media accounts associated with QAnon, the wide-ranging conspiracy movement holding in part that Trump is doing battle with demonic, pedophile-loving Democrats and members of the deep state. The timing was also odd. Flynn’s sentencing had been delayed at that point because of procedural issues, but it was expected soon. And Mueller had recommended that Flynn receive no prison time because of the “substantial assistance” he provided in the special counsel investigation. (Flynn, under Powell’s advisement, is not speaking to the media.)

It was clear soon enough that Powell was taking a different tack. In August, she moved to have Flynn’s case dismissed for what she called “pernicious” prosecutorial misconduct, and requested that Emmet Sullivan, the presiding District Court judge, hold prosecutors in contempt for allegedly hiding FBI documents and communications that she said proved Flynn was pressured to plead guilty. In a court brief filed in October, she asserted that Flynn had been “deliberately targeted for destruction” by the intelligence community. The government countered that it had already relinquished any relevant material and that Powell was advancing “conspiracy theories” to fish for evidence that did not exist.

When I met Powell in Manhattan early last month, I asked if she was concerned the new aggressive legal strategy might backfire; Flynn had already reaffirmed his guilty plea a year ago in a testy hearing before Sullivan, who is respected as a fair-minded, no-nonsense jurist. But Powell was feeling bullish. “There’s not going to be a sentencing,” she said to me over breakfast at the W Hotel in Times Square. She wore a beige turtleneck sweater and a diamond necklace that sparkled, like the glint in her eye when she made her prediction.

“I don’t know how, but I can read the way these particular government lawyers say things to know that they are lying and hiding things,” she explained, referring to the prosecutors in the Flynn case. “And I knew as soon as I started hearing and seeing what was going on with General Flynn that he had been set up.” (The lead prosecutor in the Flynn case did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

Reality struck several days after our breakfast, when Sullivan unequivocally rejected Powell’s requests for additional government documents and for the case to be dismissed. He also spurned her argument that Flynn had been framed, writing in an icy 92-page opinion that the retired general’s false statements to the FBI were “undisputed.” Sullivan set January 28 as Flynn’s new sentencing date. Shortly afterward, government prosecutors recommended that Flynn receive up to six months in prison—a reversal of the earlier recommendation that he not be incarcerated. “Maybe Hiring Sidney Powell Was a Huge, Monstrous Mistake for Michael Flynn,” one headline suggested.

This week, Flynn officially sought to withdraw his guilty plea “because of the government’s bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement,” as Powell wrote in a court brief. Sullivan pushed back the sentencing by another month to consider the unusual request. But, says Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney specializing in national security matters, “The scorched-earth strategy that Powell is using is rarely effective with judges.”

That Powell was seemingly blind to this likely outcome speaks to her full embrace of the Trumpian ethos of grievance and “alternative facts.” Which wasn’t always her M.O.: A federal prosecutor herself for a decade, Powell turned on her own ilk and spent years making a forceful case against prosecutorial overreach—a legitimate issue. It was when her cause came to align with Trump’s and Flynn’s plight as targets of Mueller’s probe that she worked her way intoa deep state-hating, MAGA-loving network that landed her a high-profile client.

But the MAGA echo chamber, it seems, doesn’t always benefit its residents once they’re outside that bubble. While a strategy of denial and attacking the enemy might have worked for Trump during the Mueller investigation (and might yet work for him in his impeachment trial), Michael Flynn is not the president. If her client ends up in prison, it might be because of the Trumpian strategy Sidney Powell embraced.

“Crackpot conspiracy theories get easy traction on the internet,” says John Schindler, a former NSA analyst who has been critical of Flynn, but also of Hillary Clinton and the FBI. “They’re less likely to do well in federal court.”

Sidney Powell’s story,up to a point, is the very model of a high-achieving lawyer.

She knew from an early age what she wanted to do with her life. “My mother said I used to come home from kindergarten and watch ‘Perry Mason,’” recalls Powell, who grew up in a tight-knit working-class family in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was 19 when, in 1974, she was accepted into law school at the University of North Carolina, after rushing through her B.A. at UNC. “I was on student loans,” Powell explains. “My family couldn’t afford to help. … I knew what I wanted to do. I didn’t see any reason in stringing it out.”

Powell’s close friends describe her as smart, fearless and intensely driven. At the outset of her career, in the late 1970s and early 1980s she worked as a federal prosecutor in the Western District of Texas, along the border, which back then “was on the front lines of the drug wars,” says Carl Pierce, her colleague at the time, who headed up a special drug trafficking unit. It was a harrowing period, he says: “They were trying to kill our witnesses, assassinate our prosecutors.” A judge in one of Pierce’s cases was killed six weeks after Powell arrived on the job. According to Pierce, there were times when the government attorneys had to wear bulletproof vests and be escorted by federal marshals. “I was trying these [drug] cases, and Sidney was keeping them convicted on appeal,” Pierce says. “She’s a superb appellate lawyer.”

After roughly 10 years with the Justice Department, Powell struck out on her own as a federal appellate lawyer. She would go on to represent an array of private-sector clients, appealing judgments and sanctions related to health care, medical malpractice and environmental issues, among other areas. As she would later boast in a 2015 talk, “People usually call me when the ox is kind of deep in the ditch,” and needs a way out.

A turning point for Powell came in the 2000s when she spent nearly a decade representing executives caught up in the Enron scandal, in which the chief executives of the Texas-based energy company were convicted for financial fraud. Some of the government’s Enron-related cases, including two of Powell’s, were eventually overturned by higher courts for various legal reasons. Whether government prosecutors involved in Enron-related cases were just being aggressive or had abused their power is a matter of debate. Powell, for her part, came away from the experience believing the prosecutors had bent the law to unfairly prosecute her clients and were never held to account for their actions. She became convinced that “prosecutorial misconduct,” in the form of suppression of evidence favorable to the defense, was a widespread problem in the judicial system.

In 2014, she laid out her case in a self-published book,Licensed to Lie, which, as Powell puts it on her website, “reveals the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power to the highest halls of our government.” Powell says she wrote the book “because I couldn’t get the system to work.” (When professional legal associations wouldn’t act on her ethics grievances against the prosecutors, Powell says, she considered quitting law altogether.) In his foreword to the book, Alex Kozinski, an influential federal judge who retired abruptly in 2017, after multiple accusations of sexual harassment, heaped praise on Powell but stopped short of endorsing her sweeping claims. Still, he wrote,Licensed to Lie“should serve as the beginning of a serious conversation about whether our criminal justice system continues to live up to its vaunted reputation.”

That didn’t exactly happen. In fact, for several years after it was published, Powell and the book were largely ignored, which infuriated her. Powell believes the media, even on the right, made “a significant effort to kill this book with silence,” as she put it in a 2015 talk. The conspiracy evidently extended to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which, she claimed, made her book difficult to buy. “I actually thought we had freedom of press until I wrote the book,” she said in her talk at “Operation Classified.” (While reporting this article, I bought a copy at my local Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn.)

Powell says she does not care for politics, and there may have been some truth to this at one point: As the 2016 presidential campaign was ramping up, she took off for a six-month, around-the-world cruise and then athree-week trip to Antarctica, which she made a video about and posted to YouTube. But after the 2016 election, she eagerly hopped aboard the Trump train and startedplugging her book on Twitter, fruitlessly tagging conservative luminaries like Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and raving that it “reads like Grisham but it’s true!” Again, she was met with silence.

In the summer of 2017, Powell’s luck changed. The team of legal investigators Mueller assembled for the Russia probe included several Justice Department alumni who happened to have been the same prosecutors she had villainized inLicensed to Lie. Robert Mueller, she tweeted, was “hiring out of my book!” Powell issued red alerts via Twitter and op-eds: “It’s all about WHO they want to get & they’ll do ANYTHING to win,” she tweeted in June, tagging Newt Gingrich, Hannity and the White House press secretary. This time, her somewhat niche interest aligned with Trump’s own circumstances, and conservative power brokers heeded her call. Over the summer, Gingrich began promoting Powell’s book all over the media.Licensed to Lie,the former GOP House speaker and Trump ally said on Twitter, was “about to become a very important book.”

Powell rode her sudden wave of celebrity to political relevance and began appearing on the shows that had previously ignored her, embracing Trumpian talking points about not only the Mueller report but other issues, too. On Dobbs’ show, to take one example, Powell suggested that “the continued invasion of this country” by immigrants might be the cause of “diseases spreading across the country that are causing polio-like paralysis of our children.”

“Sidney the Media Figure,” as Powell describes herself on one of her websites, is a somewhat amped-up version of her real-life persona. One of Powell’s neighbors in Dallas, Patricia Falvey, an author of historical fiction who does not identify as Republican, told me Powell’s friends aren’t all in “lockstep” with her politically; Falvey and Powell mostly talk about family, travel and charity work. (Powell has a grown son from a marriage that ended in divorce decades ago, and she has long done volunteer work for women’s shelters, among other causes.)

But anyone watching Powell’s media hits or following her rat-a-tat Twitter feed—all operated on her own, she tells me—could see she was now an enthusiastic resident of MAGA-world.

Perhaps it was inevitablethat Powell and Flynn would come together in common cause. Flynn has always been something of a maverick, but he too had a transformation. A respected, if hard-charging, patriot, he grew disgruntled during his time as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Obama administration. By the 2016 presidential election, Flynn was spreading outrageous conspiracy theories—including the accusation that Hillary Clinton was involved with a child sex trafficking ring—and found himself chanting, “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention.

Over the course of his legal battle, Flynn has attracted a group of supporters with similarly controversial views. By all accounts, Flynn’s legal ordeal has taken an enormous financial toll on him and his family; as of July 2019,he owed more than $4.6 million dollars in unpaid attorney fees, according to court records. Flynn’s legal defense fund, set up in the summer of 2017, does not officially disclose the identities of its donors or how much it has raised. Joseph Flynn told me the fund does not accept donations from non-U.S. citizens or the Trump organization, but other than that, “We will accept help from anyone who wants to help us.”

That includes John B. Wells, who organized the 2018 Dallas fundraiser, which, according to Wells, raised “a healthy five-figure donation” for the legal fund. Wells, 62, is a voice-over actor turned itinerant radio host with an internet-streaming show; Flynn called in one time during the 2016 campaign. Wells appeared on Alex Jones’ show, “Infowars,” in 2013 and talked about how “it’s been pretty much established that the CIA and al Qaeda are almost one.” In his opening remarks at“Operation Classified,” he spoke of the “criminal cabal we refer to as government,” and he praised QAnon, the conspiracy movement that seems to believe a global gang of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the media, Hollywood and the political establishment is secretly running the world. “Q is a real thing,” Wells said to cheers in the audience. (Wells did not respond to a request for comment.)

Michael Flynn himself was set to appear at a QAnon-related fundraiser on his behalf this past summer, but he pulled out after news of the event became public. (It was around this time that the FBI listed the amorphous fringe group as a potential domestic terrorism threat—QAnon supporters have been linked to acts of violence.) Redgate and Joseph Flynn have also amplified QAnon, though both siblings deny having “any relationship to QAnon,” as Joseph put it to me. When I asked him about his and Redgate’s retweets, he responded: “There’s a lot of people that do investigative research on Twitter.”

Similarly, Powell, who told me she is being paid out of the Flynn legal fund but reduced her rates “dramatically” for him, has retweeted QAnon accounts too and, according to reporting by Media Matters, appeared on a QAnon-affiliated YouTube show, where she thanked the host for his “huge and extremely helpful” support. I asked Powell about this, and she responded in an e-mail: “I don’t know anything about Q Anon, or Q. I couldn’t tell you what that was. I speak [at] SCADS of places and would go to the gates of Hell and talk to the devil himself if it would help stop the abuses of law and prosecutorial power and corruption I have seen in our government.”

While “FlynnLand,” as Joseph calls it, has embraced Powell (“We love Sidney!” Redgate gushes), it was never clear that Sullivan, Michael Flynn’s judge, would follow along.

Powell, it seems clear, expected Sullivan to be on her side. In a 2018 article for theDaily Caller—more than a year before she would be hired by Flynn—she asserted that Sullivan was “ready, willing and able to hold Mr. Mueller accountable to the law and who has the wherewithal to dismiss the case against General Flynn—for egregious government misconduct—if Mueller doesn’t move to dismiss it himself.” Sullivan actually is known for bringing the hammer down on overreaching prosecutors, as in the trial of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. “Emmet G. Sullivan is one judge who knows a cover-up when he sees one,” she wrote in a 2014Observercolumn. “I love this man!” Powell has exclaimed in some of her public talks.

“Let me put me put it this way,” she said at our breakfast in New York. “If I were in the government’s shoes, I would move to dismiss this case before Judge Sullivan does anything else.”

Her conviction was bolstered by the release, in early December, of the long-awaited report by the inspector general for the Justice Department, which found that the FBI’s initial investigation into possible ties between Russia and Trump campaign officials (the precursor to the Mueller probe) was marred by sloppy and improper methods. Powell felt that the IG findings lent weight to a key component of her argument: that FBI agents manipulated the notes from their interview with Flynn to make him look guilty.

But in mid-December, Sullivan rejected the idea that the original FBI counterintelligence investigation of former Trump officials—Flynn included—was a deep state plot against Trump, and that Flynn had been tricked into his perjury by unscrupulous FBI agents. At the close of his ruling, Sullivan wrote: “the Court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea. The record proves otherwise.”

Powell stayed mum for nearly a month. She was careful not to respond to Sullivan’s rejection or reveal her next move—until she filed her own brief earlier this week, announcing that Flynn wanted to rescind his guilty plea. She sounded a defiant tone: “It is beyond ironic and completely outrageous that the prosecutors have persecuted Mr. Flynn, virtually bankrupted him, and put his entire family through unimaginable stress for three years.” Powell argued that government prosecutors had violated the terms of his plea agreement and asked for Sullivan to delay his sentencing to consider her argument and allow time for the government to respond.

“Withdrawing the guilty plea seems like an odd strategy at this stage,” McQuade, the law professor, says. “Her portrayal of Flynn as a victim of government overreach suggests that her strategy is to seek sympathy from a segment of the public and a pardon from President Trump.” (“It’s bullshit. Total bullshit,” Powell says about the prospect of fishing for a presidential pardon.)

It’s unclear how Flynn’s case will end, and what it will mean for Powell. Her defiance, in spite of Sullivan’s scolding, reminded me of an exchange I had with her toward the end of our early December meeting in New York. I had asked her about the widespread accusation that she was a conspiracy theorist. “I think it’s hilarious,” she said, smiling.

“Maybe you will get the last laugh,” I politely offered.

“I think I will,” she said firmly. “Let me put it this way: I will not quit until I do. The only question is, are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?”

It wasn’t until we both stood up to leave that I realized how tall Powell was (six feet) and that she was wearing tight-fitting leopard print pants and matching boots with two-inch heels and gleaming spikes. She saw my eyes grow wide at the sight of the boots. “I call these my attitude adjusters,” Powell said with a big smile. “And I don’t mean my attitude.”

Read More

[gyrlversion]

Barr will release findings from Mueller report around 3:45 pm today

Attorney General William Barr will release the ‘principal conclusions’ from Robert Mueller’s Russia probe to Capitol Hill at approximately 3:45 pm today, according to reports.

‘DOJ has just sent us a very brief letter about the Mueller report, which we will share shortly,’ House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler tweeted Sunday afternoon. 

Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein arrived at the Justice Department Sunday morning to finish their work in summarizing Mueller’s report for lawmakers.

While they worked, Robert Mueller attended church Sunday a mere 500 feet from the White House.   

Mueller and his wife were spotted at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the yellow stucco church across Lafayette Park from the White House where President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attended service last Sunday. 

Robert Mueller and Ann Mueller attended St. John’s Episcopal Church, the yellow stucco church across Lafayette Park from the White House

Attorney General William Barr leaves his Virginia home to head to the Justice Department

Robert Mueller and Ann Mueller attended the same church President Trump and first lady Melania Trump attended last weekend

Barr’s motorcade arrives at the Justice Department on Sunday

But there has been no word on when or what he’ll deliver.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that he has not heard from the Justice Department how detailed or when he will receive a summary of Mueller’s findings. 

He will be one of the first lawmakers to receive it in his role as chairman. 

And President Trump returned to Twitter on Sunday for the first time since Mueller handed in his report but the president merely offered a cheerful greeting as the White House says it still has not seen the findings from the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election.

‘Good Morning, Have A Great Day!,’ the president wrote from Mar-a-Lago, where he is spending a long weekend with first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron.

‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,’ he added, touting his signature campaign theme.

He headed to his Trump International Golf Course on Sunday morning after his tweets. 

Trump’s deputy communications director Hogan Gidley confirmed that, as of Sunday morning, the White House has not yet received or been briefed on the Mueller report. 

President Trump (right) played golf with Kid Rock (left) at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Saturday

President Trump broke his Twitter silence Sunday

But he made no mention of the Mueller report

President Trump reads the newspaper while on his way to his golf course Sunday morning

The president still has not commented publicly on the report, which is in the hands of the Justice Department where Attorney General William Barr spent Saturday holed up reading its findings.

Those findings could land on Capitol Hill on Sunday where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called on them to be made public.

Democrats and Republicans alike are preparing their spin: Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will reject any attempts by the Justice Department to hold a classified briefing on the report, which would prevent lawmakers from speaking about it in public. 

House Democrats are also threatening to use their subpoena power to speak to Mueller, Justice Department officials and obtain any underling documentation that contributed to the special counsel’s final report. 

And Republicans point out there are no further indictments coming out of Mueller’s probe, which they note is a win for the president. Although Mueller has wrapped up his investigation, the Southern District of New York – which is probing the president’s businesses – and other jurisdictions are still investigating cases that came from the special counsel’s initial prob. 

Democrats on Sunday pointed out that no matter what is revealed in Mueller’s findings, their investigation of the Trump and his administration will continue. 

Barr will deliver his report on Mueller’s findings to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees

Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler (left), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Adam Schiff (right), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said their investigations of Trump will continue

‘We know there was collusion,’ Nadler said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ 

‘The Justice Department believes that as a matter of law, the president, no matter what the evidence, can never be indicted,’ Nadler said. ‘If that is the case then they can’t hold him accountable and the only institution that can hold the president accountable is Congress and Congress, therefore, needs the evidence in the information.’

He added: ‘The special counsel was looking and can only look for crimes. We have to protect the rule of law. We have to look for abuses of power. We have to look for obstructions of justice, we have to look for corruption in the exercise of power, which may not be crimes. They may be, but they may not be crimes. We have a much broader mandate and we have to exercise that mandate to protect the integrity of government and protect the integrity of liberty and the country.’ 

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence committee warned Sunday there is ‘significant evidence of collusion.’

‘There’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy,’ he said on ABC’s ‘This Week.’

‘The investigation is a criminal investigation. Congress’s responsibility is very different, and that is, it’s our responsibility to tell the American people these are the facts. This is what your president has done, this is what his key campaign and appointees have done, these are the issues that we need to take action on, this is potential compromise,’ he added.

Trump, who is spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, relaxed on Saturday, spending about five hours at his golf course

Trump (seen left with his lawyer, Emmet Flood, at Mar-a-Lago on Friday) has reportedly been in a good mood as word came down that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will likely not recommend any further indictments

President Trump is spending the weekend with first lady Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago, they are seen here on Friday greeting Caribbean leaders, hours before the report was handed in

But the president has been notably silent since Mueller’s report – which he has repeated labeled a ‘witch hunt’ – was handed in to the Justice Department on Friday.

He relaxed on Saturday by hitting the links with rocker-rapper Kid Rock while his attorney general was seen arriving at his Virginia home after spending the day at the Justice Department reading the Mueller Report.

The president was photographed smiling next to the Bawitdaba crooner at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Saturday.

Kid Rock, who posted the image on his Twitter account, was appropriately dressed for the occasion.

He wore a red sweater vest over a white collared shirt, which complemented his American-flag style slacks and what looked like a gold belt. 

Trump was standing next to him in his red ‘USA’ hat, white collared shirt, and blue slacks.

‘Another great day on the links!,’ the Michigan-born musician wrote.

‘Another great day on the links!,’ the Michigan-born musician wrote. ‘Thank you to POTUS for having me and to EVERYONE at Trump International for being so wonderful.’

‘Thank you to POTUS for having me and to EVERYONE at Trump International for being so wonderful.

‘What a great man, so down to earth and so fun to be with!!

‘KEEP AMERICA GREAT!!’

Kid Rock is an outspoken supporter of Republicans and was one of the first to back Trump during the GOP primary in 2015. He also considered running for the U.S. Senate seat from Michigan. 

Meanwhile, Barr was seen arriving at his home in McLean, Virginia on Saturday evening after he spent the day at the Justice Department reading over the Mueller Report.

Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein huddled at the Justice Department all day on Saturday to over Mueller’s findings.   

Attorney General William Barr (left) is seen arriving at his home in McLean, Virginia on Saturday evening

Trump waved to supporters from his motorcade on Saturday

A supporter salutes as the motorcade carrying President Donald Trump leaves Trump International Golf Club on Saturday

Trump spent about five hours on Saturday at his Trump International Golf Course with sunny skies above and a high of 77 degrees. 

Upon leaving the club shortly after 2 p.m., he was spotted smiling and waving to supporters who lined the motorcade route.   

On Friday, a senior Justice Department official said that Mueller will file no more indictments with federal courts, meaning the president, his inner circle of present and former confidants and his family members are out of immediate legal jeopardy.

Trump had already arrived at his Florida retreat on Friday afternoon when Barr revealed that he had received the report.

The president learned of the development as he sat on the tiled patio at Mar-a-Lago with the First Lady and their son Barron, according to CNN. 

Later, he appeared on stage at an fundraiser for the Palm Beach Republicans in the club’s ballroom, but did not mention the Mueller report in his remarks, according to the network. At the event, Senator Lindsey Graham called on the FBI to investigate Hillary Clinton, sparking chants of ‘lock her up!’ 

President Trump spent Saturday and Sunday at his Trump International Golf Club; he’s seen in his motorcade on Sunday

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has turned in his report and has yet to speak publicly on his investigation

The White House has not received a copy of the report or been briefed on it, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said late Friday.

‘The next steps are up to Attorney General Barr, and we look forward to the process taking its course,’ Sanders said in a statement. 

Mueller, a DOJ employee, is obligated only to submit his report to Barr.

Barr decides what to make public.  

The post Barr will release findings from Mueller report around 3:45 pm today appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress https://www.gyrlversion.net/barr-will-release-findings-from-mueller-report-around-345-pm-today/

[marilynngmesalo]

Key findings coming on Mueller report — but not quite yet

Key findings coming on Mueller report — but not quite yet Key findings coming on Mueller report — but not quite yet https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr spent Saturday reviewing the special counsel’s confidential report on the Trump-Russia investigation, but Barr’s “principal conclusions” summary for Congress was not coming for at least another day.

No summary for Judiciary Committee leaders — or the public — just yet, said a senior Justice Department official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the review process.

Barr has said he expected to send his version to the lawmakers as soon as this weekend after determining what should be made public. Special counsel Robert Mueller sent the attorney general the final report Friday on his 22-month investigation that cast a dark shadow of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Even with the details still under wraps, Friday’s end to the 22-month probe without additional indictments by Mueller was welcome news to some in Trump’s orbit who had feared a final round of charges could ensnare more Trump associates, including members of the president’s family.

The report was accessible to only a handful of Justice officials while Barr prepared to summarize the “principal conclusions.”

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "PyOZDJVnfNM", "pn_video_299100", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

Trump, who has relentlessly criticized Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” was at his golf club in Florida on Saturday, and House Democrats were planning to gather by phone late in the day as they waited for Barr’s summary.

Word of the report’s delivery to Barr on Friday triggered reactions across Washington, including Democrats’ demands that it be quickly released to the public and Republicans’ contentions that it ended two years of wasted time and money.

The next step was up to Barr, who declared he was committed to transparency and speed.

The White House sought to keep some distance, saying it had not seen or been briefed on the report. Trump, surrounded by advisers and political supporters at his resort in Florida, stayed uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter.

With no details released at this point, it was not known whether Mueller’s report answers the core questions of his investigation: Did Trump’s campaign collude with the Kremlin to sway the 2016 presidential election in favour of the celebrity businessman? Also, did Trump take steps later, including by firing his FBI director, to obstruct the probe?

But the delivery of the report does mean the investigation has concluded without any public charges of a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, or of obstruction by the president. A Justice Department official confirmed that Mueller was not recommending any further indictments.

That person, who described the document as “comprehensive,” was not authorized to discuss the probe and asked for anonymity.

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "jXLb8flanXU", "pn_video_778366", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

That was good news for a handful of Trump associates and family members dogged by speculation of possible wrongdoing. They include Donald Trump Jr., who had a role in arranging a Trump Tower meeting at the height of the 2016 campaign with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was interviewed at least twice by Mueller’s prosecutors. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Mueller might have referred additional investigations to the Justice Department.

All told, Mueller charged 34 people, including the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and three Russian companies. Twenty-five Russians were indicted on charges related to election interference, accused either of hacking Democratic email accounts during the campaign or of orchestrating a social media campaign that spread disinformation on the internet.

Five Trump aides pleaded guilty and agreed to co-operate with Mueller and a sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.

Justice Department legal opinions have held that sitting presidents may not be indicted.

The conclusion of Mueller’s investigation does not remove legal peril for the president. Trump faces a separate Justice Department investigation in New York into hush money payments during the campaign to two women who say they had sex with him years before the election. He’s also been implicated in a potential campaign finance violation by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who says Trump asked him to arrange the transactions. Federal prosecutors, also in New York, have been investigating foreign contributions made to the president’s inaugural committee.

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "_jizUR8pJrg", "pn_video_846743", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

In his letter to lawmakers, Barr noted the department had not denied any request from the special counsel, something Barr would have been required to disclose to ensure there was no political inference. Trump was never interviewed in person, but submitted answers to questions in writing.

The mere delivery of the confidential findings set off swift demands from Democrats for full release of Mueller’s report and the supporting evidence collected during the sweeping probe.

As Mueller’s probe has wound down, Democrats have increasingly shifted their focus to their own congressional investigations, ensuring the special counsel’s words would not be the last on the matter.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared it “imperative” to make the full report public, a call echoed by several Democrats vying to challenge Trump in 2020.

“The American people have a right to the truth,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement.

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "Gh5v0l4lO80", "pn_video_270877", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

It was not clear whether Trump would have early access to Mueller’s findings. Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders suggested the White House would not interfere, saying “we look forward to the process taking its course.” But Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told The Associated Press Friday that the president’s legal team would seek to get “an early look” before the findings were made public.

Giuliani said it was “appropriate” for the White House to be able “to review matters of executive privilege.” He said had received no assurances from the Department of Justice on that front. He later softened his stance, saying the decision was “up to DOJ and we are confident it will be handled properly.”

The White House did receive a brief heads-up on the report’s arrival Friday. Barr’s chief of staff called White House Counsel Emmet Flood on Friday about 20 minutes before sending the letter to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary committees.

The chairman of the Senate panel, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, was keynote speaker Friday night at a Palm Beach County GOP fundraising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump made brief remarks to the group but did not mention the report, according to a person who attended the event, which was closed to the press.

Barr has said he wants to make as much public as possible, and any efforts to withhold details are sure to prompt a tussle with lawmakers who may subpoena Mueller and his investigators to testify before Congress. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House intelligence committee, threatened a subpoena Friday.

Mueller ends Russia-Trump probe, delivers report

Trump says public should see ‘ridiculous’ Mueller report

Donald Trump appreciates Nancy Pelosi’s ‘statement against impeachment’

Such a move would likely be vigorously contested by the Trump administration.

No matter the findings in Mueller’s report, the investigation has already illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts.

The special counsel brought a sweeping indictment accusing Russian military intelligence officers of hacking Clinton’s campaign and other Democratic groups during the 2016 campaign. He charged another group of Russians with carrying out a large-scale social media disinformation campaign against the American political process that also sought to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

Mueller also initiated the investigation into Cohen, who pleaded guilty in New York to campaign finance violations arising from the hush money payments and in the Mueller probe to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal. Another Trump confidant, Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied about his pursuit of Russian-hacked emails ultimately released by WikiLeaks.

Mueller has also been investigating whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation. Since the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017, Trump has increasingly tried to undermine the probe by calling it a “witch hunt” and repeatedly proclaiming there was “NO COLLUSION” with Russia.

One week before Mueller’s appointment, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, later saying he was thinking of “this Russia thing” at the time.

Click for update news Bangla news https://ift.tt/2FuQi4C world news