#Full Picture Justice fund raiser

[remembertheplunge]

10/16/2024

I'm going to be doing the Alcatraz to San Fransisco Yacht Harbor swim on October 23, 2024 as part of a fund raiser for Full Picture Justice, formerly known as Community Initiative Resources (CRI) . They are a mitigation team that does extensive record and back ground search for clients in some of my big cases. They also do community outreach to those adversely affected by the criminal justice system which is the reason for the fund raising. Anything you can give will be much appreciated. I will be blogging about the swim and keeping you posted. Thank you.

[sinrau]

The former national security adviser shared his unease with the attorney general, who cited his own worries about the president’s conversations with the leaders of Turkey and China.

According to John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, Attorney General William P. Barr was concerned about President Trump’s conversations with autocratic leaders in two countries.Credit…Tom Brenner/Reuters

By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman

Published Jan. 27, 2020Updated June 17, 2020, 3:24 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.

Mr. Bolton’s account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.

Mr. Bolton recounted his discussion with Mr. Barr in a draft of an unpublished book manuscript that he submitted nearly a month ago to the White House for review. People familiar with the manuscript described its contents on the condition of anonymity.

The book also contains an account of Mr. Trump telling Mr. Bolton in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations of political rivals, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The matter is at the heart of the articles of impeachment against the president.

Early Tuesday, the Justice Department’s spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, posted a statement on Twitter disputing aspects of Mr. Bolton’s account.

“There was no discussion of ‘personal favors’ or ‘undue influence’ on investigations, nor did Attorney General Barr state that the President’s conversations with foreign leaders was improper,” the statement said. “If this is truly what Mr. Bolton has written, then it seems he is attributing to Attorney General Barr his own current views — views with which Attorney General Barr does not agree.”

A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment on Mr. Barr’s conversations with Mr. Bolton. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bolton, his publisher and his literary agency said they had not shared the manuscript with The Times.

“There was absolutely no coordination with The New York Times or anyone else regarding the appearance of information about his book, ‘The Room Where It Happened,’ at online booksellers,” Mr. Bolton, Simon & Schuster and Javelin said in a joint statement. “Any assertion to the contrary is unfounded speculation.”

Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, responded that “The Times does not discuss its sources, but I should point out that no one has questioned the accuracy of our report.”

Mr. Bolton wrote in the manuscript that Mr. Barr singled out Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Xi about the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE, which agreed in 2017 to plead guilty and pay heavy fines for violating American sanctions on doing business with North Korea, Iran and other countries. A year later, Mr. Trump lifted the sanctions over objections from his own advisers and Republican lawmakers.

Mr. Barr also cited remarks Mr. Trump made to Mr. Erdogan in 2018 about the investigation of Halkbank, Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank. The Justice Department was scrutinizing Halkbank on fraud and money-laundering charges for helping Iran evade sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department.

Mr. Erdogan had been making personal appeals to Mr. Trump to use his authority to halt any additional enforcement against the bank. In 2018, Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Turkey that Mr. Trump had promised to instruct cabinet members to follow through on the matter. The bank had hired a top Republican fund-raiser to lobby the administration on the issue.

For months, it looked as though the unusual lobbying effort might succeed; but in October, the Justice Department indicted the bank for aiding Iran. The charges were seen in part as an attempt by the administration to show that it was taking a tough line on Turkey amid an outcry over Mr. Trump’s endorsement of its incursions in Syria.

Image

Mr. Bolton has written a book about his time in the White House that is expected to be released this year.Credit…Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Listen to ‘The Daily’: How John Bolton Could Change the Impeachment

Details in a coming book by the former national security adviser are threatening to derail Republican senators’ plans for a speedy acquittal.

transcript

Back to The Dailybars

0:00/23:24

-23:24

transcript

Listen to ‘The Daily’: How John Bolton Could Change the Impeachment

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Rachel Quester and Luke Vander Ploeg, and edited by Paige Cowett and Lisa Chow

Details in a coming book by the former national security adviser are threatening to derail Republican senators’ plans for a speedy acquittal.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[music]

Today: A Times investigation reveals a firsthand account from John Bolton directly linking President Trump to the quid pro quo at the center of the impeachment. Maggie Haberman and Mike Schmidt on what that could mean for the final phase of the Senate trial.

It’s Tuesday, January 28.

Mike, Maggie, remind us when the discussion of John Bolton as a possible witness in the impeachment process starts.

michael schmidt

So John Bolton left the White House in early September. Trump said he was fired. Bolton said he resigned. A week later, we learn about the whistleblower’s complaint, and at that point, questions start to percolate. Why did Bolton resign, and what does he know? And in the coming weeks, as the House impeachment investigators summon White House officials to answer questions, we start to get different slivers —

archived recording

Bolton’s former aide, that’s Fiona Hill, testified yesterday before House impeachment investigators.

michael schmidt

— of Bolton’s concerns —

archived recording

Bolton reportedly called Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney this — “a hand grenade.”

michael schmidt

— and preoccupations with what was going on inside the White House.

archived recording

This is something that Fiona Hill said when she was talking about John Bolton, the former national security adviser.

michael schmidt

We don’t have a full picture, but we’re hearing things, like Bolton saying —

archived recording

Basically he said, you go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of any drug deal that Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and Mick Mulvaney are cooking up.

michael schmidt

— I didn’t want to participate in this drug deal that these administration officials were doing.

archived recording

The term “drug deal” here refers to the Ukraine probe that they were trying to initiate.

michael barbaro

Right, and that was his way of referring to this pressure campaign against Ukraine to start investigations into Democratic rivals.

michael schmidt

Correct. So we’re learning these different things, but we’re not hearing from Bolton.

archived recording

Let me read it one more time. “Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr. Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr. Morrison that I conveyed this message to Mr. Yermak on September 1, 2019, in connection with Vice President —”

michael schmidt

And one of the problems with the impeachment investigation —

archived recording

We’ve got six people having four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding.

michael schmidt

— was that the House was only really talking to people who were sort of outside the president’s inner ring.

archived recording

Ambassador, you weren’t on the call, were you? You didn’t listen in on President Trump’s call and President Zelensky’s call?

archived recording (william b. taylor jr.)

I did not.

archived recording

You’ve never talked with Chief of Staff Mulvaney?

archived recording (william b. taylor jr.)

I never did.

archived recording

You never met the president?

archived recording (william b. taylor jr.)

That’s correct.

archived recording

This is what I can’t believe, and you’re their star witness. You’re their first witness.

michael schmidt

A few of the witnesses dealt with the president directly, but many of them were simply relaying what was going on inside the White House.

michael barbaro

So Bolton becomes an even more tantalizing figure. He’s in the center of juicy tidbits coming out of the inquiry. He may be on poor terms with the president. It all seems to make him a perfect witness.

michael schmidt

He’s someone who Republicans trust. He has a long history in the Republican Party, and we were hearing then that he had these concerns. So what was it that he saw? What was it that he could add? He was in the room with the president. What did the president tell him?

michael barbaro

So Maggie, what efforts are made by House impeachment investigators to get Bolton to testify, to get him to just spill the beans?

maggie haberman

They asked him, back in I believe it was October, to come testify voluntarily. He said no, and he had been ordered by the White House not to take part, but the House decided not to submit a subpoena to try to force him to testify, because —

michael barbaro

Why not?

maggie haberman

Because they were concerned that it was going to be a protracted legal battle. They were very consumed with trying to wrap this all up quickly. In hindsight, a lot of Democrats say, at least privately, they think that that was a mistake. They think that they should have actually tried to get him to come there.

michael barbaro

Right. So he does not end up testifying before the House.

maggie haberman

No. Bolton never spoke before the House and didn’t indicate that he really wanted to at the time. He just said that he would not cooperate with this request for testimony. So they sent over the articles of impeachment without having a witness like Bolton, somebody who had a direct conversation with the president, where the withheld military aid for Ukraine was tied to the president’s desires for investigations. There were just people who were speculating on motives or had heard things secondhand, but there was no one with a firsthand interaction with the president.

michael barbaro

O.K. So that brings us to November.

maggie haberman

Right, and so we get to November, and John Bolton is starting to make noises, like he has something to say and he’s willing to share it. And we learn on November 10, that one place he might be planning to share it is in a book that he’s planning to write about his time in the White House.

michael schmidt

So it was a pretty odd situation. You had House investigators that wanted Bolton to talk. Bolton sort of signaling that he has something to say. And then the news that he’s writing a book that you presume is going to have some Ukraine details in it. So who’s going to get to that information?

michael barbaro

Right. So in this situation, what do you two do as reporters to try to figure out what he knows and maybe what he’s put in this book?

maggie haberman

So the House inquiry is over, but there’s all this secrecy around this book. We knew it was coming. We had heard Simon & Schuster would be putting it out. They wouldn’t even confirm that. We were scratching around with people who might know. And as we were trying to do this, Bolton then says, on January 6 — after not complying with the House efforts to get him to testify — he says that he would be willing to testify in the Senate, if there is a subpoena. It seemed like he was trying to do a dance, where he was trying not to make Senate Republicans angry at him, when he’s worked with them for years. And he needs them to back him, as he’s embarking on this post-White House life and trying to sell a book. But also trying to look like he was doing the right thing and not just making it about the book. And it was really hard to decipher what his motives were.

michael schmidt

As reporters, there is nothing that galvanizes us like a high-profile public figure in a major story saying, I have important information, but I’m not going to tell. And he’s essentially out there doing that — putting the bait for reporters to try and get to the bottom of what’s in the book.

maggie haberman

So we did what we normally do when we are handed some kind of bait, which is we continued to try to figure out what was there and what was in it. And whether it would include some damaging information about the president. Or whether it would include some exculpatory information and would be something that the president’s folks could even point to and say it would help him. We just, we didn’t know, but we kept scratching.

michael barbaro

Right. If the one great unanswered question was what Bolton knew, then the most obvious thing is to find out what is inside the book.

maggie haberman

That’s right, and we kept scratching and looking, and then we found out what was in the book, and it was quite damaging to the president.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

archived recording 1

Brand new reaction this morning from a bombshell New York Times report on John Bolton’s upcoming book.

archived recording 2

A trial that seemed to be on a steady and speedy path to certain acquittal has been hit by a seismic shock.

archived recording 3

Startling new report could upend the impeachment trial. According to The New York Times, former —

michael barbaro

So what did you learn was actually in this book?

maggie haberman

The biggest thing that is in there is that Bolton writes about a conversation that he claims to have had with President Trump in August of 2019, where he pushed the issue of this withheld military aid with the president. And the president suggested he didn’t want to end the aid freeze until Ukraine turned over materials that he wanted in connection with investigations into Democrats, who he thought had harmed him in 2016.

michael barbaro

So Bolton is having a conversation — he recounts in this book — with President Trump in which Bolton says, hey, Mr. President, I want to talk about this financial freeze on military aid to Ukraine, presumably in the context of Bolton wanting to end it.

maggie haberman

Bolton pushed this conversation with the president, because he, along with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, had been trying to get the president for weeks to end the freeze and turn the aid over, arguing that it was necessary for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. And so Bolton raised this issue to test where the president was, and the president met him back by saying he didn’t want to end this freeze until materials that he wanted were turned over in relation to investigations into Democrats he thought had damaged him.

michael barbaro

Wow. Democrats, including Joe Biden.

maggie haberman

Democrats, including Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

michael barbaro

So Bolton is confirming in this account that President Trump articulated — correct me if I’m wrong — a clear quid pro quo that explained why he was holding up the security aid to Ukraine. That it was in return for Ukraine investigating his Democratic rivals, like Joe Biden, and that of course is the central claim of the articles of impeachment. And what Bolton seems to be saying here is that that central claim is accurate, and there’s now a firsthand account of it from the mouth of the president himself.

michael schmidt

But you say confirms. This is the first time that we’re hearing anyone say this. This is the first time that someone who was in the room, who spoke directly to the president, says, yeah, the president didn’t want to release the money until he got the fruits of the investigations. This is new ground, and it’s significant, because the president’s lawyers have time and time again argued on the Senate floor —

archived recording (michael purpura)

— that there was no connection between security assistance and investigations.

michael schmidt

— that the aid and the investigations were not linked.

archived recording (michael purpura)

— the pause on security assistance was distinct and unrelated to investigations.

michael barbaro

So this directly contradicts the way the president’s own lawyers talk about the impeachment.

maggie haberman

Correct, or at least it undercuts their main argument, which is that there was not a connection between what the president wanted and releasing this aid.

michael barbaro

Am I right, Mike and Maggie, that this is as close to a smoking gun as it gets in a case like this?

michael schmidt

Maybe, but throughout the Trump presidency, we’ve learned similarly explosive disclosures, and the president has been able to weather them politically. So yeah, in a normal time, would the news of the president’s most recent national security adviser directly implicating him in a question that is at the center of an impeachment hearing be a smoking gun? Sure, but Trump has shown an ability to endure things like this that gives me reticence to say, yeah, that’s a smoking gun. Because when you say smoking gun, built into that is an assumption that the end would be near.

maggie haberman

I’m with Mike on that. I think that we are a ways away from knowing what this means. And as our colleague Peter Baker wrote today, it could end up being like when the “Access Hollywood” tape came out in 2016 in the campaign. And the big prediction was that this was going to be the end of Donald Trump, this was going to be the end of his campaign, and it obviously did not go that way. So we just don’t know yet.

michael barbaro

Well, what has been the reaction to this reporting, especially in the Senate, where the trial is well underway and where the question of calling witnesses is very much still alive?

michael schmidt

So we’re coming into the home stretch of the trial. And the question of whether Bolton will testify has still not been resolved.

michael barbaro

Right.

michael schmidt

The story comes out, and there’s increased pressure on Senate Republicans, those moderate ones who may be willing to go along with the Democrats. How much does this story move them?

michael barbaro

And Maggie, what’s the answer?

maggie haberman

So far, we are seeing the same moderates who have said they want witnesses before still say they want to hear from Bolton. So that’s Mitt Romney.

archived recording

Four of you need to say yes. Do you think there are four votes?

archived recording (mitt romney)

I think it’s increasingly likely that the other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton. And whether there are other witnesses and documents, well, that’s another matter. But I think John Bolton’s relevance to our decision has become increasingly clear.

maggie haberman

Susan Collins of Maine is another person who has said this is another factor that points to why there should be witnesses. But two other possible votes for witnesses, one is Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Andother is Lamar Alexander, who the White House is watching very closely to see what he’ll do. They have been more circumspect about whether they think our story changes anything. And so far, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to tell everybody to stay cool and just see how this plays out.

michael barbaro

I mean, there will be people hearing this — hearing that the national security adviser to the president observed him saying something that directly implicates him in this impeachment case — and will ask, why would any deliberative body sworn in as jurors not want to hear from that person? What would be the justification for not hearing from Bolton in this moment?

maggie haberman

So one thing that has come up from the senators in the last several hours is they’re saying, if this was so important to hear from Bolton, why didn’t the House subpoena him?

archived recording (john barrasso)

There’s nothing new here that John Bolton didn’t know before the House managers rested their case and stopped calling witnesses, and they never chose to call John Bolton.

maggie haberman

And you’re going to hear that, I think increasingly, if you don’t see a move toward witnesses. That’s going to be an argument that senators are going to point to.

michael barbaro

You missed your chance.

maggie haberman

Why are we doing your work for you? That part was in the House.

michael schmidt

And at another level, the reason why these senators are not going along with calling Bolton is that Trump doesn’t want that to happen. And they have been in lockstep with Trump for most of this.

michael barbaro

So the justification is keep the president happy.

maggie haberman

I think the justification is you have a lot of senators who are facing elections in their own states, and the base likes Trump. And in some states, like Lamar Alexander’s state, they want him to be loyal to Trump. And so those are the concerns that they’re measuring, — is do they let themselves be looked back on in history as turning away from evidence, which some people will say they did. Or do they say, voters don’t really want me casting that vote, and they decide to stick with the president’s desires.

michael barbaro

So how has all of this actually landed inside the White House?

maggie haberman

Well, the White House as a whole wasn’t happy about hearing about this. But for at least some of them, it wasn’t a surprise, because the White House had been given a draft of this manuscript about 3.5 weeks ago from John Bolton for a standard review process to look at classified information and whether there is any in the book.

michael schmidt

So that means at least some folks in the White House have had a sense of what Bolton would testify to in the impeachment investigation.

michael barbaro

If he testified.

maggie haberman

Correct.

michael barbaro

Wait. So does that mean that the president’s lawyers, including those who are currently defending him in the Senate trial, that they knew what John Bolton had written and knew what John Bolton had experienced, and then continued to make a case to the public that is quite contradictory to what Bolton is saying happened in this book?

michael schmidt

We don’t know the extent to which the manuscript, or the details about it, were circulated. But what we do know is that in the past several weeks, there has been a concerted effort by the president to stop Bolton from testifying. He’s made public statements about this.

archived recording (donald trump)

The problem with John is that it’s a national security problem. You can’t have somebody who’s at national security. And if you think about it, John, he knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive, and then I have to deal on behalf of the country? It’s going to be very hard. It’s going to make the job very hard. He knows other things, and I don’t know if we left on the best of terms. I would say, probably not. And so you don’t like people testifying when they didn’t leave on good terms. And that was due to me, not due to him. And so we’ll see what happens.

michael schmidt

And he has said it privately to aides.

michael barbaro

So my final question is, if John Bolton has something to say — and it feels like he does — and the world wants to hear it, senators want to hear it, House impeachment managers want to hear it, we all want to hear it. And it feels like he has an obligation to the Democratic process to say it, why doesn’t he just find a way to say it? Go on Fox. Go on CNN. Have a news conference. Why hasn’t he taken any of those opportunities?

maggie haberman

It’s a great question, and there’s nothing preventing him from doing so. If he wanted to issue some kind of a statement or say something publicly that didn’t violate executive privilege with the president, he could do that. He has yet to do any of that, and it’s not really clear why.

michael schmidt

But you know what, if John Bolton went on television right now and said everything he would testify to, unless he was subpoenaed to appear at that trial or if the comments from him were put into evidence, then it couldn’t be considered by the lawmakers. This is a trial, where evidence is brought forward. And if there is not enough votes to bring that evidence in, then it doesn’t matter whether he stands out on the highest point in town and says everything he knows. It only matters whether it’s entered into the record in the Senate.

[music]

michael barbaro

Maggie and Mike, thank you.

maggie haberman

Thank you.

michael schmidt

Thanks for having us.

michael barbaro

On Monday, a lawyer for the White House, Patrick Philbin, tried to tamp down talk of calling Bolton as a witness, saying that calling such a witness would be an effort to, quote, “redo” the House impeachment inquiry and would set a dangerous precedent for future impeachment trials. The record that the House Democrats collected during that process, Philbin said, shows that the president did nothing wrong. In a tweet, the president denied Bolton’s account of their conversation about Ukraine, writing, quote, “If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”

We’ll be right back.

[music]

michael barbaro

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Monday, as it sought to contain the coronavirus, the Chinese government broadened its quarantine to more than 50 million people and said that it would spend at least $9 billion to stop the outbreak. The U.S. government said it was organizing an evacuation of American citizens out of the epicenter of the illness in Wuhan. And the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson said it would begin developing a potential vaccine against the virus, joining several government agencies seeking to do the same. As of Monday night, the coronavirus had infected nearly 3,000 people and killed more than 80. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

Mr. Bolton’s statements in the book align with other comments he has made since leaving the White House in September. In November, he said in a private speech that none of Mr. Trump’s advisers shared the president’s views on Turkey and that he believed Mr. Trump adopted a more permissive approach to the country because of his financial ties there, NBC News reported. Mr. Trump’s company has a property in Turkey.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised dictators throughout his presidency. Last year, he said, “Where’s my favorite dictator?” as he waited to meet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Mr. Trump’s soft spot for authoritarians dates at least to his presidential campaign, when he praised Saddam Hussein for being “good” at killing terrorists and suggested that the world would be better off were Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan dictator who was killed in a violent uprising in 2011, “in charge right now.” Mr. Trump then suggested the ouster of both men was ultimately worse for the Middle East because the Islamic State had filled the void.

Mr. Trump declared himself “a big fan” of Mr. Erdogan as they sat side by side in the Oval Office last fall after Mr. Trump cleared the way for Turkish forces to invade Syria, though he warned Mr. Erdogan behind the scenes against the offensive.

Of Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump has been similarly effusive. When the Chinese Communist Party eliminated term limits, allowing Mr. Xi to keep his tenure open-ended, Mr. Trump extolled the outcome.

Mr. Xi had personally asked Mr. Trump to intervene to save ZTE, which was on the brink of collapse because of tough American penalties for sanctions violations.

Lifting the sanctions on ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications giant that also serves as a geopolitical pawn for its government, most likely helped Mr. Trump negotiate with Mr. Xi in the trade war between the two countries. But Republican lawmakers and others objected to helping a Chinese company that broke the law and has been accused of posing a national security threat.

Mr. Bolton’s reputation for muscular foreign policy was always an odd fit with Mr. Trump, who often threatens excessive force but rarely reacts with it. Mr. Bolton was pleased when Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, including the United States, that the Obama administration had entered into. Other Trump advisers had urged him against it.

But Mr. Trump’s lack of action after Iranian aggression against the United States rankled Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Bolton’s book has already netted significant sales. Shortly after the disclosure of its contents on Sunday night, Amazon listed the book for purchase. By Monday evening, it was No. 17 on Amazon’s best-seller list.

Eric Lipton contributed reporting.

[bigyack-com]

DealBook: Is This the Next Leader of the Fed?

Good morning. Fears about the spread of the coronavirus whacked stock futures this morning — and led to the cancellation of Mobile World Congress. More on that below. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

The race to be the next Fed chair is getting interesting

Judy Shelton, who has been nominated to the central bank’s board of governors, is scheduled to testify before the Senate today.She is a contentious choice for the job, Jeanna Smialek of the NYT notes:• Ms. Shelton has questioned whether America needs the Fed at all.• She favors pegging the value of the dollar to something like gold, an idea the U.S. abandoned decades ago.• She’s seen as open to bending her ideological positions to please President Trump, eroding the Fed’s political independence.But she appears to be moving into a prime position to become the next Fed chair if Mr. Trump wins re-election, Ms. Smialek adds. The president has openly derided the current chairman, Jay Powell, and could well pick someone more in tune with him ideologically when Mr. Powell’s term is up in 2022. Washington speculation had focused on a different candidate for Fed chair: Kevin Warsh, who was on the central bank’s board during the financial crisis. Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Warsh before, but some wonder whether a strong performance by Ms. Shelton today would give her the inside track.____________________________Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York and Michael J. de la Merced and Jason Karaian in London.____________________________

Is ‘Beyond Petroleum’ for real this time?

BP announced yesterday that it plans to be carbon-neutral by 2050, an ambitious target for one of the world’s biggest energy companies. What that actually means, however, is up for interpretation.The oil giant’s proposal is its latest climate-minded initiative, with a twist. Not only is the company seeking to reduce its own carbon emissions, it said, but it also wants to offset the emissions from use of the oil and gas that it produces.The proposal is more complicated than it looks. It has to do with the “scope” of emissions targeted by the plan: The bulk of pollution created by BP’s products are generated when customers burn the fuels, which are called Scope 3 emissions. BP’s net-zero pledge covers only its more direct operations, although the company plans to reduce Scope 3 emissions significantly.

U.K. regulators investigate Barclays C.E.O.’s ties to Epstein

Barclays disclosed this morning that British financial regulators have opened an investigation into ties between its chief, Jes Staley, and the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.The context: The two men had known each other since at least 1999, when Mr. Staley led JPMorgan Chase’s private bank, where Mr. Epstein was a client. The financier had helped funnel dozens of wealthy clients to Mr. Staley, and the two men stayed in touch even after Mr. Epstein was accused of sexually abusing scores of women.Mr. Staley has the backing of the Barclays board, for now. The bank said he had been “sufficiently transparent” about the nature of his ties to Mr. Epstein, and the C.E.O. said that he hadn’t had any contact with the disgraced financier since taking up his post in December 2015.

Mobile World Congress was canceled. Does anybody care?

Mobile World Congress, the annual jamboree for the telecom industry in Barcelona, was canceled yesterday over fears about the coronavirus outbreak. It raises an interesting question: Do these kinds of conferences matter?Last year, MWC drew around 110,000 attendees (including 7,900 C.E.O.s) from 200 countries. Cancellation of this month’s edition was inevitable, after major exhibitors like Nokia, Ericsson and Amazon pulled out over the past week or so.This presents a natural experiment in the value of industry events, seen by some as essential for networking and deal making and by others as price-gouging junkets. Thousands of meetings that would’ve taken place at MWC this year now won’t happen, which could have knock-on effects later in the year. (Or not.)The view from a veteran: We spoke with Ben Wood, a telecom analyst at CCS Insight in London who would have made his 23rd consecutive appearance at MWC this year.• For the companies that blow huge portions of their marketing budgets on MWC, “if you find that you can cope without going, and the costs associated with it, you may choose to deploy your resources in different ways,” he told DealBook.• That’s harder for small companies that rely on “serendipitous moments” with big buyers or potential partners wandering the halls of events like MWC, he added.No touching. In the meantime, conference etiquette will change. The organizers of a big tech event in Amsterdam now underway praised attendees for “safe greeting practices such as fist or elbow bumps.” Generally speaking, it must be said, handshakes are incredibly unhygienic.

Credit Suisse’s chief leaves on a defiant, awkward note

Tidjane Thiam delivered his final earnings call as the Swiss bank’s chief this morning, after being pressured to resign amid controversy over a spying scandal.He presented the growth in net income of 69 percent as the result of his changes in the structure and strategy at the company. “We’ve built something of quality, the numbers are coming through,” he said at a press conference.There was a notable moment of reflection on his uneasy tenure at the bank, notes the NYT’s Amie Tsang, who was listening in on the call. “There are differences within Switzerland in how people feel about me,” Mr. Thiam said. “Every second I’ve done the best I could. I am who I am, I cannot change who I am.”

How Marc Benioff sold Trump the trillion-tree idea

President Trump has openly dismissed climate change activists as “prophets of doom.” But Marc Benioff of Salesforce managed to win him over on one particular environmental initiative, Lisa Friedman of the NYT writes.Mr. Benioff pitched Jared Kushner, a top White House adviser and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, about the initiative to plant one trillion trees to help offset carbon emissions. The idea eventually — and unexpectedly — wound its way into Mr. Trump’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.“Trees are the ultimate bipartisan issue,” Mr. Benioff told the NYT. “Everyone is pro-tree.”There are two lessons to draw from this:• Successfully lobbying Mr. Trump is an unconventional process that involves back-channeling with trusted advisers.• The idea of one trillion trees appears to have taken hold with the president because, as Ms. Friedman notes, “it was practically sacrifice-free.”

Jeff Bezos’ latest takeover: David Geffen’s L.A. mansion

The Amazon chief has continued his real estate splurge with two new acquisitions, according to Katy McLaughlin and Katherine Clarke of the WSJ:• David Geffen’s palatial Los Angeles home, which Mr. Bezos bought for $165 million — setting a record for the city in the process.• A plot of undeveloped land in the L.A. area, purchased from the estate of the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.They follow Mr. Bezos’ $80 million purchase of the top four floors of a Manhattan apartment building last year, reportedly with the goal of turning them into a gigantic pied-à-terre.It’s a windfall for Mr. Geffen, who bought the L.A. mansion — the former estate of the movie mogul Jack Warner — for $47.5 million in 1990.

The speed read

Deals• The parent company of T-Mobile reportedly wants to renegotiate the price of its takeover of Sprint. (FT)• The venture capital firm Battery Ventures has raised $2 billion for its two latest funds, which will focus on investments in enterprise software companies. (Bloomberg)• Meet the Korean hedge fund that scored big by backing “Parasite,” the movie that won the Academy Award for best picture. (Bloomberg)Politics and policy• Moderate Democratic leaders are slowly warming up to Mike Bloomberg as Senator Bernie Sanders becomes the front-runner in the party’s presidential race. (NYT)• Larry Ellison of Oracle is doing a rare thing in Silicon Valley: hosting a fund-raiser for President Trump. (Recode)• The Education Department is reportedly investigating Harvard and Yale over their sources of foreign funding. (WSJ)Tech• The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, has reportedly said in private conversations that he expects a criminal antitrust case in Silicon Valley in the next few months. (Hollywood Reporter)• Read up on Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to crisis management. (Wired)• Britain plans to give its media regulator additional oversight over internet content. (NYT)• Huawei of China is said to be in talks to fund research into 5G wireless technology at the London School of Economics — for £105,000, or $136,000. (FT)Best of the rest• Massachusetts’ attorney general sued Juul yesterday, accusing the vaping company of buying ads on youth-focused websites to target young nonsmokers. (NYT)• The coronavirus outbreak cost Bernard Arnault his title of world’s richest man. (Fortune)• Charlie Munger on the world today: “There’s too much wretched excess.” (CNBC)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com. Read the full article

[filosofablogger]

Once again it is that jolly day of the week, the day we start the week with a spot of coffee, a sweet treat and a chuckle or two.  How was your weekend?  We spent some family time together, which was nice, and Chris is just now finishing up the orange lights around the windows, so our house is looking festive and has a warm glow.  And now, let us see if we can start this week off right …

How To Launch An Airplane …

I’m sorry, but I just don’t think this is going to work.  No matter how many people join in pulling that aircraft, I don’t think they can get it in the air.  What?  They aren’t trying to get it in the air?  Ohhhhhh …

This is part of an annual fund-raiser held in Newark, New Jersey, to benefit the Special Olympics.  50 teams of 20 people each took turns trying to haul the Boeing 737 a distance of 10 feet. Awards were handed out to the team able to complete the task the fastest, and to the team with the lowest total weight able to achieve the feat. The weight of the plane?  93,000 pounds!

“It’s a lot of fun and people practice for this year round,” said Robert Belfiore, a retired police chief and current director of the New Jersey Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics. All for an excellent cause!

The event was hosted by United Airlines and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Proceeds were donated to the Special Olympics of New Jersey.

The case of the missing traffic cone …

Paul Baxter, a 50-year-old British postal worker, was convinced he had lung cancer.  He had suffered a nagging cough for a year or so, when a bout of pneumonia led to a chest x-ray, where doctors noted what appeared to be a tumour.  So, the docs scheduled Mr. Baxter for a bronchoscopy, a procedure that allows doctors to look at the bronchial tubes, and also remove small bits of lung tissue for biopsy.

The ‘tumour’, however, turned out not to be a tumour, but a traffic cone!  No no no … not the kind you see alongside the highway, but the kind that comes in a Playmobil toy set.  The cone had been in Baxter’s bronchial tube since he was 7 years old, when he received the toy set for his birthday.  He said he vaguely remembered swallowing it … only he apparently aspirated it, rather than swallowing it.

The Biomedical Journal Case Reports explains that “This may be because aspiration occurred at such a young age that the patient’s airway was able to remodel and adapt to the presence of this foreign body.”  Mr. Baxter’s symptoms have now mostly subsided and he is relieved to know that he does not have lung cancer.

Do not feed the elephants …

The man, a tourist in Sri Lanka, was trying to be nice — he saw the elephant and wanted to share his food.  So he stopped the tuk tuk he was driving, got out, and gave the elephant a bite of his lunch.  To show his appreciation, the elephant … well, just watch …

Lessons to be learned from this:  1) elephants are greedy, 2) elephants are unappreciative and will always want more, 3) elephants are bigger than tuk tuks.

Now I want a tuk tuk … aren’t they just the cutest thing?  I wonder how much one costs? Hmmmm … can’t you just picture me bopping ‘round da hood in this?  Might make a nice Christmas present … Herb, Chris, Miss Goose?

I would prefer blue … 

More not-so-bright criminals …

23-year-old Ushio Sato decided to steal a car in Numazu City, Japan.  It was just after midnight when Sato approached an unlocked car.  Imagine his surprise when he very stealthily opened the door and began to enter the car, only to realize that there were two undercover police officers already occupying the car … an unmarked police car!

He tried to run, but the police were quicker.

Tea for two, a wedding for one …

I talk to myself often.  Sometimes just because I am trying to work something out in my mind, and I need a second opinion, other times just because I am trying to talk some sense into myself.  So, a two-sided conversation with only one person I get.  But a wedding with only one person?

Two years ago, Laura Mesi, then a 38-year-old fitness instructor and vlogger from a small town near Milan, Italy, broke up with her significant other after 12 years.  At the time, she bemoaned that she had yet to find her ‘soul mate’ and said that if she had not found one by the time she was 40, she would just marry herself.

And that is what she did. And she did it up right … no Justice of the Peace for she and herself!  She had a full-blown wedding ceremony complete with white dress, three-layer wedding cake, bridesmaids and 70 guests. The wedding cost her around 10,000 €, or nearly $12,000 USD.  I can only picture some of the conversations:

“Honey, would you mind bringing me a cup of tea?”  “Get it yourself, I’m going to shower.”  Or how about this one … “Where have you been?  I was worried …”. “Well, if you don’t know, I’m sure not going to tell you.”

Now, it turns out that this is a current ‘trend’, marrying oneself, called sologamy.  I cannot find information regarding how many people have married themselves, but it appears to be more popular in Europe than the U.S.  I try not to be judgmental, but truly I find this just a bit strange.  What do you guys think? I don’t anticipate ever getting married again, but if I do, I really rather want somebody besides myself waiting at the altar.

Don’t look up …

It was rather reminiscent of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, but on a smaller scale.

Traffic Scotland shared an image of a spider dangling directly in front of one of its traffic cameras on the M8 motorway giving the appearance of a giant spider floating in the sky. They played it up with the following tweet:

*NEW* ⚠

LARGE spider 🕷 invading the #M8 at Livingston❗

Our advice…RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN 🏃 😆#edintravel @SETrunkRoads

6:02 AM – Sep 28, 2017

Twitter followers joined in on the fun comparing the “giant” spider to monsters from horror films and asking when the roads would be safe again. Before any serious damage was reported as the result of a the “threat” it was announced that the spider was “long gone.” All in good fun, but can you imagine if that happened in Washington D.C. at evening rush hour?

Oysters on the half … ????

When I was a kid, you could get soda, potato chips or cigarettes from a vending machine.  Not surprisingly, I usually opted for cigarettes, and compred to $6+ a pack today, a quarter, twenty-five cents, didn’t seem too bad.  Since that time, however, things have changed and we shouldn’t be surprised at anything we find in a vending machine.  Sandwiches, personal items, birth control … you name it.  But still, I was surprised by this one …

I love shrimp, scallops and crab, but never could quite bring myself to eat oysters, snails, or calamari.  But I’m not sure, even if I like oysters, that I would want them from a vending machine.

Well, friends, as you can see by the clock, it is time for us all to get busy and start this week off on the right foot … or left foot … whichever.  I hope you found something that brought a smile to your face, and please remember to share that smile, for it means so much and you all have such beautiful smiles … it would be a shame to keep them hidden!  Keep safe and I hope you have a great week!  Love ‘n Hugs!

M Is For Monday … Jolly Monday!!! Once again it is that jolly day of the week, the day we start the week with a spot of coffee, a sweet treat and a chuckle or two.  

[rawstreetjournal-blog]

Russian Lawyer sent to entrap Trump Jr. Got Visa into U.S. by Hilary Campaign

Washington, DC - She didn't have a valid U.S. visa and in fact, she had been refused a visa before. So how was Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer, able to meet with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential campaign? How was she able to enter the country?

To understand the full details of the political intrigue, we first need to understand the Trump family and the Trump business empire. President Donald Trump insists he has no ties to Russia and insofar as he does not have any personal connections with the Russians, that part is factual. President Trump only just met with Russian President Vlaidimir Putin for the first time on the sidelines of the recent G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. President Trump's businesses however represent a whole other story.

The Trump Organization is HUGE 

The Trump Organization is one of the 35 largest privately held companies in the U.S.

Not many of us would have had experience running a huge multi-billion dollar real estate empire and the amount of trust and delegation that goes on in such a large organization. Even in small, tight-knit organizations like Berkshire Hathaway and even with the best corporate governance in place, it's not always easy to watch every single detail. In 2011, legendary investor, Warren Buffett fired David L. Sokol, Sokol was once one of Buffett’s top lieutenants and considered a potential successor to Buffett. He ran MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. and helped turn around NetJets, another Berkshire unit.

Sokol abruptly resigned in March 2011 after it was revealed that he had bought about $10 million in shares of stock in Lubrizol Corp. before suggesting that Berkshire buy the chemical company (it did). While Buffett initially said he didn’t feel the trades were "in any way unlawful," within weeks he called it "inexcusable" and said the trades violated Berkshire’s code of ethics.

The trouble with running large multi-company conglomerates is that it's not easy and often times not even possible to be on top of what everyone is doing all of the time. Even in a relatively small outfit like Berkshire, errors of judgment were made.

So although President Trump, the man, may not have had any personal or direct links to Russia or Russian interests, The Trump Organization has.

What are these alleged 'Russian' connections? 

Felix Sater is pictured here at a Democratic even fund raiser. Early on in his life, President Donald Trump had been a supporter of the Democratic party and had even donated to Hilary Clinton's causes.

First, there's Felix Sater. The Russian-born Sater worked at Bayrock, a New York-based firm that partnered with The Trump Organization on real estate deals in the early 2000s. Back in the early 2000s, Russia was just coming out of the Cold War and was on an economic boom. The free market reforms brought in countless opportunities which The Trump Organization was keen to take advantage of. Sater worked on an exclusive deal with The Trump Organization to develop a Trump-branded project in Russia and in 2006, Sater spent time in Moscow with Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.

A year after the Trump branded project in Russia, the New York Times report in 2007 revealed Sater's criminal past. Before working at Bayrock, Sater was a Wall Street broker and had served a year in prison for stabbling a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight. He was also an FBI informant, tapping leads to suspected financial crimes for the FBI.

Emin Agalarov announcing a winner at the Miss Universe pageant which had been brought to Russia by the Agalarov family for $7 million.

The second Russian connection to The Trump Organization is Emin Agalarov, the aspiring pop star. Emin works with his billionaire father, Aras Agalarov developing real estatate projects and in 2013, paid The Trump Organization $7 million to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow. The Moscow pageant went so well that the Agalarovs put together another plan with The Trump Organization to build a Trump Tower in Russia. However, before they could the plans very much, by then Donald Trump had announced his candidacy for president and the project was put on hold. According to Emin,

"If he hadn't run for president, we would probably be in the construction phase today."

For a long time, President Trump has delegated the running of The Trump Organization to his children, in particular, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Trump may have been given overviews of the many interests The Trump Organization was involved in, but it's rare, if ever that Trump would have dived into the details, and certainly not the backgrounds of each and every individual The Trump Organization worked with.

Who is the Russian Lawyer? 

Natalia Veselnitskaya, circled in the above photo is seated behind the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul for a House of Representatives hearing on U.S. Policy Toward Putin’s Russia. The photo and the hearing occurred days after Veselnitskaya had met with Donald Trump Jr.[/caption]

Which brings us back to Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer in the middle of all the controversy. Veselnitskaya has been known to the State Department for a long time now and likely as far back as when Hilary Clinton was Secretary of State. She played a significant role in a Russian public relations offensive against the Magnitsky Act, named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who was arrested and died in a Russian prison after he discovered massive fraud by corrupt Russian officials. The Clinton campaign would have known that even a phone call with Veselnitskaya, let alone a meeting, could be damning, as if the press ever found out would have a field day concocting conspiracy theories.

Veselnitskaya is a controversial character, and following a string of run-ins with the Justice Department, her visa status to travel to the U.S. was denied in January 2016. Veselnitskaya however, filed a letter with the court claiming she had been denied a visa but obtained a "parole letter" that allowed her to travel to the U.S. solely for the purposes of defending her client, Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of a Cyprus-based investment company called Prevezon Holdings, who was under investigation by the Justice Department for money laundering tied to a $230 million corruption scheme. Veselnitskaya also has a penchant for the high life, with 18-course $800 meals and $1,000 a night stays at the Plaza Hotel, paid for by the American taxpayer even though she was not officially deposed by the Justice Department. According to a Justice Department source,

"I couldn't tell you if she was pro-Trump, pro-Clinton or pro-Putin but she is definitely pro-money."

Veselnitskaya has worked both sides of the table, acting sometimes on behalf of the Justice Department in an informal capacity and at other times at the behest of the Russian government. It wouldn't be surprising therefore if she was trying to play both the Hilary and Trump camps against each other for her own financial gain.

How did the Russian lawyer get a visa to enter the U.S.?

The way "parole letters" work is that they allow an individual to enter the U.S. but for a specific purpose and for a fixed period. The question that begs asking then is how did Veselnitskaya manage to enter the U.S. to meet with Donald Trump Jr. without a visa.

Records reveal that for the duration of the meeting, Veselnitskaya was issued a non-immigrant visitor visa to enter the U.S. which is highly unusual. What had changed that from the time her visa was denied in early 2016, just slightly more than six months before meeting Donald Trump Jr., to the time she actually met with Donald Trump Jr.? What material change occurred that her visa was allowed. Sources inside the State Department told us that,

"Veselnitskaya was denied a visa previously because of her ties to the Russian President Vladimir Putin in early 2016, but by mid-2016, when it was thought that there was the remote possibility that Trump might win, people inside the Clinton campaign weighed in on the State Department to approve her visitor visa."

Throughout all of 2016, the State Department was filled with Hilary-era appointees and she would have had considerable residual influence in the Department. According to another source,

"Veselnitskaya, because her visa had been denied previously would have needed a sponsor within the country to vouch for her, so she could get a visa."

"The easiest way would be for the State Department or the Justice Department to declare that the earlier concerns regarding her entry into the U.S. were no longer valid."

"It'd be nothing more than an administrative stroke of the pen to let Veselnitskaya into the country."

That was exactly what happened. The Department of Justice cleared Veselnitskaya under "extraordinary circumstances" to enter the U.S. in June 2016 and embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared Donald Trump Jr.

So why didn't the Hilary Campaign break news of the meeting in 2016?

By sheer bad luck, the Hilary camp couldn't use the Donald Trump Jr. meeting with Veselnitskaya in their campaign to bring down Trump's campaign. On the day of the meeting, Trump Jr. had a very full day of meetings and was just back from travel, so he wanted Veselnitskaya to get to the point quickly. Veselnitskaya was not expecting that. Having dealt with the Hilary campaign people, she assumed that if she enticed Trump Jr. with some bait of incriminating evidence on Hilary, he would take the bait and enter into a long protracted discussion to ensnare him further. Unfortunately for Veselnitskaya, that's now how business people operate. Trump Jr. told her straight off the bat that if she truly had any incriminating information that could be used against Clinton, she had best be up front with it, otherwise the meeting was a waste of time. For politicians, such an approach would be unusual, but for Trump Jr., that's just the nature of business. Every meeting should be short and have a specific, clear and precise outcome.

Unfortunately for the Clinton camp, Veselnitskaya wasn't able to whet Trump Jr.'s appetite for more information. She then switched tact and tried to get Trump Jr. to agree that if his father was elected, they would look at Russian sanctions, so that Russian children could be adopted by Americans again. When it became apparent that all she wanted to talk about was the American adoption of Russian children, Kushner left the room and Paul Manafort (President Trump's former campaign manager) started clearing emails from his phone. Shortly thereafter, the meeting was over.

When Veselnitskaya reported back to the Clinton camp, the news was disappointing because there just wasn't anything there they could use. To make matters worse, the Clinton camp was in fire-fighting mode and trying to put out the damage caused by the email server controversy that wouldn't die. Now was not the time for an offensive against the Trump campaign.

So what now?

There have been voices both from the left and the right who have called Trump Jr.'s actions treason, but that would be a stretch. Constitutional lawyers have suggested that there just isn't anything in the email chains released by Trump Jr. to even remotely suggest treason. Trump Jr. has not breached any laws and short of any form of recording of the meeting, there is just no way to know what happened there to form the basis of any inquiry.

The Democrats are still reeling from the loss of the 2016 presidential election as well as seats in both the House and the Senate and all of the special elections held in 2017. When a party gets this desperate, it has no choice but to turn to desperate measures and the Trump Jr. email conspiracy theory is one of those measures. There still remains, within the Democratic party a group of individuals who still believe that the impeachment of President Trump is still possible and will pursue any and all leads to try to live out this fantasy, which is why we are where we are today, flipping nothing burgers.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Nora Spurgin supports New York Times claim - US Members friendly with the KCIA

http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/naf/NAF-1970-11-00.pdf

New Age FrontiersNovember 1970Page 23

Nora Spurgin - More Inspiring Give and Take in Korea

October 14...A visit to the Korean CIA was scheduled for us in the afternoon. We were given a guided tour through exhibitions of North Korean culture and history; a briefing on statistics about present North Korea; a movie on North Korea; and discussion (questions and answers) with a spy who had defected from North Korea.

http://www.tparents.org/UTS/DoH3/DoH3-2c.pdf

New York Times - May 25, 1976

Moon's Sect Seeks to Build Support in the U.S. for South Korean Regime

Page 13 (EXCERPTS)

Representative Donald M. Fraser, Democrat of Minnesota, whose subcommittee on international organizations has been investigating the operations of the Korean C.I.A. in this country, plans to hold hearings next month on the Moon movement's political activities here. According to Mr. Fraser, and to a spokesman of the Justice Department, those activities are part of a broader picture of widespread South Korean attempts to influence the American political process.

"We have received information which strongly suggests that certain persons and associations close to Sun Myung Moon have had a cooperative relationship with the Korean Government and Korean C.I.A.," Mr. Fraser says. "Our information shows a pattern of activity that raises serious questions as to the nature and purpose of Moon's various organizations."

Members of the church in the United States have also established the Freedom Leadership Foundation, which conducts political propaganda activities in Washington and the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, also in Washington, which is devoted to improving the image of South Korea in the United States.

The leaders of both organizations are Unification Church members as are almost all the members of the Freedom Leadership Foundation, and both organizations also have links with the South Korean Government or its C.I.A.

In addition, Mr. Moon's organizations, including the church and the overtly political International Federation for Victory Over Communism, have received financial support from such Japanese ultrarightists as Ryoichi Sasagawa and Yoshio Kodama, the power broker who has been implicated in the Lockheed scandals in Japan.

Lieut. Col. Bo Hi Pak, Mr. Moon's translator and closest associate, maintains that "there is no common line between our movement and the office of the President of Korea. "In no case are they trying to use us or exploit us or are we trying to use them," he said.

The active political efforts of the Unification Church in the United States apparently date from 1969. At that time...Mr. Moon ordered Neil A. Salonen to found an anti-Communist movement...the Freedom Leadership Foundation as a non-profit educational corporation. Mr. Salonen is the president ofthe Unification Church in America as well.

According to a statement made by Mr. Salonen to the Internal Revenue Service in 1974, the foundation has no relation to the Unification Church except for the fact that the two organizations have some members, offices and directors in common.

Allen Tate Wood, president of the foundation in 1970 and active in the church until 1974, maintains, however, that the foundation was entirely funded by the church and was made up almost entirely of church members a statement supported by several other former Moon followers.

The secretary general ofthe Freedom Leadership Foundation, Dan Fefferman, confirms that it "has been carried out almost exclusively by church members."...As for Mr. Moon's relationship to the foundation, Mr. Fefferman says that the organization simply consults with him from time to time.

an organization formed by members called American Youth for a Just Peace...according to Mr. Wood...eight Unification Church members and four nonmembers were rewarded for their work with 15-day trips to South Vietnam and Cambodia as guests of those countries...Several of these people, including Mr. Wood, then went on to visit the Moon organizations in Japan and South Korea, where they were given a tour of the Korean C.I.A. building and told by church members in Seoul that the church wanted to "make friends" with the intelligence agency.

Mr. Wood states that Charles Colson, then a special assisstant to the President, also influenced several private individuals to make contributions of a few thousand dollars to American Youth for a Just Peace...Mr. Colson...confirmed this, noting that the Moonist "peace group" had cooperated with the "youth people" in the White House in their support of the war effort. "So I recommended their cause to some friends who had been helping us." he said.

Mr. Fefferman denies that the foundation conducts any lobbying activities, although he confirms that the Unification Church does have an active program on Capitol Hill, maintaining a "liaison with Congress."

According to an active church member who prefers to remain anonymous, this effort is conducted by 50 church members at a time, who visit Washington from all parts of the country. Each is given a list of members of Congress to cultivate, first by befriending and offering help to their staffs, and eventually by inviting the legislators to a suite in the Washington Hilton Hotel, where dinner, films and a talk on Mr. Moon's religious and anti-Communist views are presented.

The lobbying procedure, according to this woman and others, was first taught to church members by a group of Japanese "Moonies" who had experience in lobbying in the Japanese Parliament.

"We were told to be somewhat vague when dealing with the Capitol Hill contacts in order to protect our presence there, but we were to try to influence our contacts to support Moon and South Korea," says Ann Gordon, a northern California woman in her late 20's who left the church in October 1975 after being "deprogrammed."

The Unification Church's efforts to influence the American political process are not confined to Washington. In January and March of this year two prominent members of the church, Daikan K. Ohnuki and Michael McDermott, attempted to see Laurance S. Rockefeller at his office at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York. On both occasions they brought gifts...Neither Mr. McDermott nor Mr. Ohnuki could be reached for comment.

Michael Runyon, official spokesman for the Unification Church in America, said yesterday that the church had no lobbying groups...Mr. Runyon denied that support for South Korea was tied in with this work.

If Mr. Moon's political activity in this country is hidden in shadows, his allegiance in South Korea is completely open. It has been apparent for several years that the multi-millionaire industrialist, who has interests in gun factories, ginseng products and titanium, pharmaceuticals and stone works companies, and his cult both enjoy the special favor of the Park Government.

The South Korean Government reportedly gave a Moon company the right to build a factory for the exclusive manufacture in South Korea of M-16 rifles, under license from Colt Industries, as part of the American program of military assistance to South Korea.

When asked about this contract, a spokesman for Colt confirmed that the rifle was being manufactured under license in South Korea, but said that the terms of the agreement, at the insistence of the Korean Government, forbade revealing the name ofthe Korean licensee.

Although a South Korea Presidential decree forbids all public political demonstrations. Moon-related groups have held a number of giant rallies, including a gathering of 1.2 million people in Seoul last year.

Mr. Moon also operates, through the Unification Church-controlled International Federation for Victory Over Communism, an anti-Communist indoctrination school for Korean Government employees, although in South Korea the C.I.A. is explicitly in charge of "internal propaganda and anti-Communist indoctrination."

It has been confirmed that individuals in the Unification Church in the United States are able to bring money into this country through diplomatic channels. Sang Ik Choi, a leading organizer and fund-raiser for the church, told an American businessman recently that the organization was growing so fast and spending so much money in the United States that it had to bring funds in from abroad, some through diplomatic means.

According to a former embassy official, Jai Hyon Lee, at least three American secretaries in the South Korean Embassy were hired in the early 1970's upon the recommendation of the Freedom Leadership Foundation, of which Mr. Moon is "founder and chairman of the board." Mr. Lee has testified that the foundation furnished the names of prospective employees at the request of the embassy's C.I.A. agents.

Mr. Moon's most direct links with the South Korean regime seem to run through Colonel Pak...Colonel Pak maintains that there are no official ties between his cultural foundation and the Unification Church, except that he is currently devoting full time to working for the church, and that three members of the board of his foundationare church members.

in 1972 Colonel Pak filed tax exempt income tax returns as president of both the cultural foundation and the Unification Church of McLean, Va. The next year, in the foundation's tax-exemption form, he stated that the organization was not "related through common membership, governing bodies, trustees, officers, etc., to any other exempt or non-exempt organization," although he himself headed the Virginia church, and roughly half the foundation's board at that time was made up of church members.

Robert Roland, a United Airlines pilot and an acquaintance of Colonel Pak's during the colonel's Washington days, says that the colonel told him that as assistant military attache at the South Korean Embassy, his duties were to act as a liaison between Korean intelligence and the United States intelligence agencies. At that time Colonel Pak was already a devoted Moon follower...Colonel Pak concedes he knew Mr. Roland, but says that the allegation of a Korean C.I.A. link is "absolutely false,1,000 percent wrong."

In 1964 Colonel Pak left government service to establish the cultural foundation, which he says was conceived by the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the late Yang You Chan, a former South Korean ambassador to the United States...The first honorary chairman of the cultural foundation was Kim Jong Pil, founder of the Korean C.I.A., an associate of Yoshio Kodama and, from 1971 until last December, Prime Minister of South Korea.

Some six years after his departure from the Korean Embassy, Colonel Pak still apparently had access to the embassy's highest communications channels, according to a statement by Jai Hyon Lee, chief cultural and information officer of the embassy from 1970 until 1973, who defected to the United States in 1973 when he could no longer support the increasing authoritarianism of the Park Government.

In 1970 or 1971 the Korean Ambassador, Kim Dong Jo, in Mr. Lee's presence, approved the sending of a message from Colonel Pak to Seoul through a cable channel that went only to the President, the Foreign Minister, or the head of the Korean C.I.A.

And a former American Government official recently told the Fraser subcommittee in executive session that he had seen an intelligence report identifying Colonel Pak as one of a group of individuals, including President Park, at a meeting in the Presidential mansion in connection with raising money for a cultural foundation project, the Radio of Free Asia.

In July of 1971, in response to a State Department request, the Justice Department agreed that the evidence suggested that Radio of Free Asia was "acting under the direction of and control of the Korean Government," as the Justice Department memorandum put it, and an investigation was undertaken.

East year Mr. Moon told Miss Gordon that income from the worldwide churches and his many businesses amounted to $60 million.

a former Korean embassy official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the Korean Government had been embarrassed by press hints of an affiliation between the Park regime and the church, and had ordered the embassy staff to avoid overt contact with Moon associates. "It doesn't matter to Colonel Pak," he added. "He knows the ambassador is only a pygmy. He would rather deal with the President directly."

[bigyack-com]

DealBook: A Peek Inside YouTube’s Money Machine

Good morning. Silicon Valley is buzzing over Sheryl Sandberg’s engagement, nearly five years after the death of her husband, Dave Goldberg. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

Alphabet draws back a curtain on YouTube’s billions

The tech giant surprised Wall Street yesterday when it offered some financial information about YouTube, long a closely guarded secret. But the new information was part of a quarterly report from Alphabet, the parent company, that didn’t meet investor expectations.YouTube collected over $15 billion in revenue last year, which Rob Copeland of the WSJ says was on the “lower end of projections.” It suggests that YouTube took in less than $8 a year from each of its two billion users.• YouTube’s revenue figure is higher than Viacom’s for its 2019 fiscal year, our colleague Kevin Roose points out.• But Alphabet didn’t say how much profit YouTube earned.• And our colleague Shira Ovide notes that YouTube reported “gross” revenue — which includes the money that the service pays out to content creators and is not the whole financial picture.Investors weren’t impressed, and Alphabet shares fell 2.7 percent in after-hours trading. The company’s overall revenue growth was less than expected, while its losses from its “moonshot” projects increased 53 percent.Still, the limited disclosure introduces some transparency to tech giant financials, Ms. Ovide adds. What if Alphabet’s move successfully puts pressure on Microsoft to break out its Azure cloud sales, or on Facebook to disclose Instagram’s revenue?____________________________Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York and Michael J. de la Merced in London.____________________________

We still don’t have an Iowa caucus winner

Blame new reporting results, a faulty app or some other factor, but as of this moment there are still no results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses.The official line: “A spokeswoman for the state party said there was no issue with the integrity of the vote but it was taking longer than anticipated to collect and check the reported data for irregularities,” Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin of the NYT write.One potential culprit is a new app being used to report caucus results. It was created by Shadow, a tech company affiliated with a prominent Democratic nonprofit, Acronym. (Our colleague Sheera Frenkel says poor training on how to use the app, not a hack, appears to be at fault.)What we are watching for:• Whether Bernie Sanders, who has been surging in the polls, will officially become the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination.• How Democratic business leaders will respond. If Joe Biden underperforms in Iowa, will they flock to, say, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar?An event to watch: Top Wall Street executives are planning a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden in New York on Feb. 13, with entry at $2,800 a head, according to an invitation we have seen. Organizers include Roger Altman of Evercore; Blair Effron of Centerview Partners; Marc Lasry of Avenue Capital; and Faiza Saeed and Christine Varney of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

OPEC weighs effects of coronavirus on oil prices

The group is meeting today and tomorrow to figure out a response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, which has pushed down oil prices, Stanley Reed of the NYT reports.• The epidemic has reduced demand from China and affected other big consumers of oil, like airlines.• OPEC is expected to discuss whether to cut production by up to a million barrels a day, Mr. Reed adds.• It may also push an emergency minister-level meeting to this month, several weeks ahead of schedule.The group is moving because oil prices keep dropping. The price of Brent crude has fallen about 19 percent over the past month to less than $55 a barrel, erasing the effects of a production cut announced in December.But there’s not much OPEC can do. One oil trader estimated that Chinese oil demand over the last two weeks has fallen about 2.5 million barrels a day, or close to 20 percent compared with the previous year. And China has cut the size of its March orders from Saudi Arabia.More: The outbreak is likely to delay China’s ability to meet targets in the recent trade deal with the U.S. And the Chinese authorities’ efforts to halt the disease’s spread have turned neighbor against neighbor.

Goldman’s latest bid for Main Street: Amazon loans

First Goldman Sachs partnered with Apple on a credit card. Now it may work with Amazon to lend to small businesses as it tries to become a more mainstream financial giant, writes Laura Noonan of the FT.• “Goldman has begun building technology to facilitate the offering of loans to small and medium-sized businesses over Amazon’s lending platform,” Ms. Noonan writes, citing unnamed sources.• Goldman has sought to push beyond M.&A. advice and trading into other businesses, like consumer banking, wealth management and lending.• Amazon would benefit, too: It could expand its services for merchants without having to take on additional risk.

Are regulators dashing start-ups’ dreams?

There’s potentially a lot at stake as the Federal Trade Commission sues to block the $1.4 billion sale of the upstart shaving brand Harry’s to Edgewell, the owner of Schick — including the fate of many start-ups.• The F.T.C. argues that the deal would “eliminate one of the most important competitive forces in the shaving industry.”• Over its nine years, Harry’s grew in popularity by selling sleekly styled razors online and in stores, chipping away at the market share of Gillette and Schick.• Harry’s “has forced its rivals to offer lower prices, and more options, to consumers across the country,” said Daniel Francis, the deputy director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Competition.Harry’s founders said they were disappointed by the move. They told Michael last year that they had considered going public and remaining independent, but decided that selling to Edgewell was the best way to keep growing.This could spell trouble for other start-ups. Many investors support them in the hope that they will either sell themselves or hold an I.P.O. Not all start-ups can go public, so preventing them from selling to bigger rivals could deter investors from backing them in the first place.

Bernie Ebbers, ex-WorldCom C.E.O., is dead

Mr. Ebbers, who built a telecom giant only to go to prison after its collapse after the dot-com boom and become a symbol of corporate greed, died on Sunday. He was 78.• He turned his small Mississippi company into WorldCom through more than 40 takeovers, including the $37 billion acquisition of MCI, Kit Seelye and Daniel Victor of the NYT write.• But WorldCom collapsed in 2002 — its bankruptcy was the biggest ever in the U.S. at that time — and Mr. Ebbers was later arrested on charges of corporate fraud.• “Former employees testified that Mr. Ebbers had urged them to inflate WorldCom’s financial results to make the company appear more profitable than it was.”• He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and came to be seen as a corporate villain alongside Jeff Skilling of Enron and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco.• Mr. Ebbers was released from a federal prison in Texas in December after his lawyers and family members said his health was deteriorating.

The speed read

Deals• The financial services company Worldline agreed to buy Ingencio, a big maker of point-of-sale payment terminals, for $8.6 billion. (TechCrunch)• The bankrupt retailer Forever 21 agreed to sell itself to two major landlords and Authentic Brands for $81 million, subject to higher offers. (WSJ)• Asana, the productivity software company co-founded by a founder of Facebook, filed to go public through a direct listing of its shares. (TechCrunch)Politics and policy• The U.S. auto industry wanted more lenient emissions rules. Instead, it got chaos. (WSJ)• Britain plans to ban the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered cars by 2035. (BBC)• Washington is again abuzz with speculation over the identity of the anonymous Trump administration official who wrote an NYT Opinion piece and a book criticizing Mr. Trump. (Politico)Tech• Recent earnings reports show that the tech industry is increasingly divided between a few big giants and everyone else. (NYT)• Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, is said to have recused himself from the department’s competition review of Google because of past work he did for the company. (NYT)• Drew Houston, the C.E.O. of Dropbox and a friend of Mark Zuckerberg’s, has joined Facebook’s board. (Business Insider)• Democrats may be taking shots at the tech industry, but Silicon Valley moguls are still among their biggest donors. (Recode)Best of the rest• Citigroup reportedly suspended a senior bond trader in London over accusations of theft from the office cafeteria. (FT)• The conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said he had advanced lung cancer. (NYT)• The Super Bowl broadcast on Fox drew 102 million viewers, up slightly from last year. (Bloomberg)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com. Read the full article