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NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, left, and Douglas Hurley are seen inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship shortly after having landed in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Three business owners explain how they are weathering the economic fallout.

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Architect Renzo Piano on his new design for the replacement for the collapsed Morandi Bridge.

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Kris Kobach, an immigration hardliner backed by the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, is battling congressman Roger MarshallIn usually deep-red Kansas, Democrats have the luxury of a sleepy primary contest for US Senate. Republicans do not.That’s because in the Democratic primary the Kansas state senator Barbara Bollier is the heavy favorite to win her party’s nomination and then run a competitive general election campaign fueled by a large war chest of cash.That prospect is sharpened because Republicans are having to go through a bloody primary between the Kansas congressman Roger Marshall and former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, the immigration hardliner and former Republican nominee for governor whose unpopularity – should he win the nod – could hand the Democrats a vital Senate seat they would never normally hope to win.Kobach’s candidacy is notable for its support from the billionaire Peter Thiel, the libertarian venture capitalist who has at times expressed the same type of hardline immigration stances as Kobach.Thiel’s support for Kobach has flowed through a pro-Kobach Super Pac called the Freedom Forever Political Action Committee. That support has allowed Kobach to effectively remain competitive with the more establishment-aligned Marshall. It has also meant that Republicans have had to sort out their contentious primary right up until the election on 4 August rather than focus on their Democratic opponent. Thiel’s support is not based on a longtime relationship with Kobach, despite comments by both of them that places them roughly in the same immigration hawk wing of the Republican party.Rather, Thiel’s support for Kobach stems from Ann Coulter, who connected the two and helped host a 2019 fundraiser for Kobach featuring Thiel. Other high-profile Republican donors such as Rebekah Mercer and Eric Prince attended. Kobach and Thiel first interacted in 2015, according to Recode. But Thiel really decided to support Kobach in 2019 after being pitched on supporting the pro-Kobach Super Pac, according to the Recode report.“Peter and Kris don’t actually know each other reasonably well,” said one well-entrenched Kansas Republican operative. “Ann Coulter’s one of Peter’s best friends, and he kind of does whatever she tells him to.”Thiel has poured over $850,000 into the race to support Kobach. That support has buoyed the Kansas secretary of state through a multi-candidate primary and sparked a string of stinging attacks between Kobach and Marshall.Super Pacs have played an influential role in this Senate race. A mystery Super Pac with ties to Democrats has tried to play spoiler in the Republican primary. Marshall also has a Super Pac supporting him.Some Republicans can’t see Kobach winning the primary, even with Thiel’s money behind him.“Republicans in Kansas want a proven winner, not a proven loser. Kobach’s toast, the edge goes to Marshall,” said the Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who is helping run the pro-Marshall Super Pac.But in the final few days before the primary internal campaign polling has found Marshall with a single-digit lead over Kobach, according to multiple Republicans with knowledge of those figures. More concerning for Republicans is that polling also shows Bollier competitive against either candidate.If Bollier won the Senate race, it could dramatically shift control of the Senate to Democrats. It would also end the eight-decade streak of Republican control of both Kansas Senate seats. Statewide Democratic victories in Kansas aren’t unheard of. In 2018 the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Laura Kelly, defeated Kobach after a grueling Republican primary fight. Now Republicans worry 2020 could be deja vu.There’s plenty Kobach and Thiel have in common.Thiel has donated money to NumbersUSA, the anti-immigration group that’s supported Kobach. Both have considered running for governorships – with Thiel weighing a bid in California. Both have ties to Trump. Thiel spoke at the 2016 Republican national convention for Trump, donated $1.25m to the Trump campaign, and had been in consideration to serve on the Trump administration’s intelligence advisory board.Kobach had been mentioned as a potential secretary of the Department of Homeland Security or immigration tsar but those talks fell apart after an unusually long list of Kobach’s demands to serve in the Trump administration became public.Both Thiel and Kobach have connections to extremely aggressive approaches to curb immigration. Software from Palantir, a company co-founded by Thiel, was used to target the relatives of migrant children, according to a report in the Intercept. Kobach has also laid out a blueprint for a federal registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.The Kansas Senate race has emerged as one of the more competitive races regardless of who wins. Trump does not plan to weigh in in the primary despite having endorsed Kobach when he ran for governor in 2018. Aides and advisers see Marshall as the more competitive opponent in the general election.On Wednesday on Air Force One Trump indicated he would stay out of the primary. During a conversation on that flight the Texas senator Ted Cruz reminded Trump that Marshall supported the former Ohio governor John Kasich and not Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.Cruz has ties to Thiel as well. Thiel has been a longtime donor to Cruz campaigns going back to Cruz’s initial interest in running for attorney general of Texas. So the forces pushing Kobach extend to multiple corners of the Republican party.Other parts of the party remain unconvinced. “I think if Kobach is going to be the nominee it’s over,” fretted a longtime Republican strategist.

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The governors of Virginia and North Carolina declared states of emergency, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared an emergency for some counties.

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You didn’t become vice president just for future opportunities. You want to make a difference now. There’s good news and bad news.

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Authorities closed the gym Monday, when they charged the owners with contempt and disorderly persons offenses.

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Two homes owned by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein before his suicide in prison have gone on the market for a combined $110m (£84m).The billionaire child sex offender’s sprawling Manhattan townhouse is listed for $88m (£67m), while his waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida, has an asking price of $22m (£17m.)

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President Trump on Friday said he will ban the popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States, either via executive order or another method, such as a designation. But its loyal users may not have too much to fear in the long run — Trump's threat may be a "negotiation tactic" to make sure the app is sold to a U.S. company and completely severs ties with China.> Sources tell @KurtWagner8 and me they believe Trump’s pledge to ban Tiktok is *negotiation tactic.* He’s pressuring TikTok owner into selling 100% to a US company/fully disentangling from Chinese—which they haven’t yet agreed to. Transfer details big issue for @stevenmnuchin1.> > — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 1, 2020As Tiktok, which is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has increased in popularity, the Trump administration has increasingly scrutinized the app, which appears to be a result of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing. Earlier in July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. was looking into banning the app because of national security concerns.In response to Trump's most recent announcement, a Tiktok spokesperson told NBC News the company has created jobs in the U.S. and is committed to protecting users' privacy. Meanwhile, Microsoft has reportedly been working to buy TikTok from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, for some time. Trump reportedly said he wasn't a fan of the idea, but if Bloomberg's sources are right, that could just be another part of the strategy.More stories from theweek.com 5 brutally funny cartoons about Bill Barr’s brand of justice The housing crisis is here Could America split up?

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Egypt invited the billionaire to visit, after he appeared to tweet support for conspiracy theorists.

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The top-tier contender to be Joe Biden's running mate said in a statement she was trying to find an “area of agreement” with the church.

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Justin Stuller is now sporting two dozen stitches and a small limp after tangling with an eight-foot lemon shark in the Florida Keys.

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As the US grapples with the world's worst coronavirus outbreak, a new threat is emerging as Asian giant hornets – known as “murder hornets” due to their lethal sting to humans – are gaining a foothold in the country.After they were first found in Washington State in May this year, the 2-inch (5cm)-long hornets have now been trapped for the first time – giving officials an indication – firstly that their traps work, and secondly of where nests could be situated.

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Some Marine Corps tank companies have cased their colors, winding up decades-long missions.

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Talks on a huge coronavirus relief measure resumed Saturday, focused on restoring a newly expired $600-per-week supplemental unemployment benefit, a fresh $1,200 direct payment to most Americans, and hundreds of billions of dollars in other aid to states, businesses and the poor.

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A recently unsealed interview revealed that Virginia Giuffre alleged she saw Bill Clinton on the private island with "two young girls."

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Forecasters say temperatures could rise to 50C on Saturday in parts of Utah, Nevada and California.

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A US intelligence official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been reassigned following revelations that his office compiled "intelligence reports" on journalists and analysed communications between protesters amid ongoing demonstrations in Portland, Oregon.Brian Murphy was removed from his post following a report in The Washington Post revealing that the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis sent open source intelligence reports to federal law enforcement agencies containing information from two reporters who had published leaked unclassified government documents while covering Black Lives Matter protests.

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* Arrest warrant issued for campaigner and US citizen Samuel Chu * Britons also among those wanted for ‘incitement to secession’Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for six pro-democracy activists living in exile, the first time the city’s authorities have used a sweeping new law to target campaigners living outside Hong Kong.They include Samuel Chu, an American citizen who lives in the US, Nathan Law, a prominent campaigner who recently relocated to the UK after fleeing Hong Kong, and Simon Cheng, a former British consular staffer who was granted asylum in the UK after alleging he was tortured in China.Chinese state media reported that the six men were wanted for “incitement to secession and collusion with foreign forces”.The move comes a month after China introduced a controversial national security law in Hong Kong. China said the legislation targets the crimes of “secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces” and carries penalties as severe as life in prison.Critics warned that it would be used to target legitimate opposition, and highlighted the unusual decision to make the law applicable to both Hong Kong residents and non-residents. That apparently gives China jurisdiction beyond its own borders.Chu, who runs the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington DC-based advocacy organization dedicated to furthering Hong Kong’s freedom and democracy, is the first person targeted under this aspect of the law.He said China was sending a clear message to other activists by ordering his arrest.“I would really emphasize how outrageous this really is,” Chu told the Guardian. “I am the first non-Chinese citizen that essentially is being targeted. I think they do intend to try to make this an example.”Several countries have since suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong, including the UK, Australia and Germany, as a possible safeguard against attempts to use the national security laws to round up activists abroad. The US ordered an end to Hong Kong’s special economic status earlier in July.Chu, who has lived in the US as an American citizen since 1996, said the charges amounted to China “targeting a US citizen for lobbying my own government”.“We always knew that when the national security law went into effect there was a very troubling and illogical, irrational idea that they were claiming jurisdiction over anyone who is not even a Hong Kong resident, who is anywhere in the world, doing anything that they deemed threatening,” he said.> HK police is targeting a US citizen for lobbying my own gov't. I might be the 1st non-Chinese citizen to be targeted, but I will not be the last. If I am targeted, any American/any citizen of any nation who speaks out for HK can-and will be-too. > > We are all Hong Kongers now. pic.twitter.com/KQYGcStY1e> > — Samuel Chu 朱牧民 (@samuelmchu) July 31, 2020The other activists charged wereRay Wong, Wayne Chan and Honcques Laus.Wong, who is currently in the UK, told Reuters the charges showed that the Chinese government was afraid of the advocacy work of Hong Kong activists internationally.“I think they want to cut off our connection with people in Hong Kong … it will make people fear that they may violate the national security law by contacting us,” Wong said.

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14 protesters have accused jail staff in Sacramento of unhygienic practices, citing clogged toilets, cramped cells, and no sanitation.

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A reader says "thank you" is not enough to convey the gratitude this country ought to have for the late Rep. John Lewis.

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NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, left, and Douglas Hurley are seen inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship shortly after having landed in the Gulf of Mexico.

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The Wall of Moms was started two weeks ago to protect protesters in downtown Portland after federal agents were sent to the city to quell the unrest.

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President again contradicts his own health expert after doctor highlights troubled US response to virusDonald Trump launched an extraordinary attack on his own top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, arguing against the doctor’s claim that high rates of infection in the US stem from a less aggressive reaction to the virus in terms of economic shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.“Wrong!” countered the president as he retweeted a video of Fauci making the point in recent congressional testimony.Fauci had explained that differentiations between surging US infections and a sharp decrease seen across Europe could be explained by the different reactions to the virus. Fauci said most European countries shut their economies down by 95%, while the US only shut down its economy by half.Trump countered: “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy, France & Spain do? Now Europe sadly has flare ups. Most of our governors worked hard & smart. We will come back STRONG!”But Fauci’s point accurately describes the US situation. While some states followed Centers for Disease Control guidelines when they started to re-open, many did not, leading to a surge in infections in many southern and western states, Fauci explained.“There are some states that did it very well, there are some states that did not,” he said, adding that many were doing better now thanks to improved testing.As Trump faces November’s presidential election, he has been sinking badly in the polls against his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. Much of that loss of support can probably be traced to Trump’s lackluster response to the pandemic, which has now cost more than 150,000 American lives and seen the US contract more than 4.5 million cases – by far the largest figures in the world.The spat between Trump and his own health official sparked some withering condemnation on Twitter.“Let’s be very clear: this is not normal & we should not treat it as normal for a president to be publicly attacking his own top government adviser on infectious diseases,” said the commentator and broadcaster Mehdi Hasan.As numbers have surged again in the US in recent weeks, the crisis seems to be getting worse and the Trump administration still appears to be struggling to come up with a coherent response.Trump’s latest criticism of Fauci comes as plans to reopen schools and universities are being thrown into disarray by the virtually unchecked spread of Covid-19 across parts of the US before the academic year.Doubts about the US school system’s ability to cope with the pandemic grew last week after a high school student at Greenfield Central in Indiana – one of the first states to reopen – tested positive on the first day of class. Anyone who came within 6ft of the student for more than 15 minutes was told to isolate for two weeks.“We knew it was a when, not if,” the superintendent, Harold Olin, told the New York Times, but they were “very shocked it was on day one”.Of the 25 largest school districts in the US, all but six have announced they will start remotely. Some states, including the coronavirus hotspots Florida and Texas, anticipate in-person classes despite strong misgivings or objections from teachers’ unions, who have threatened to support strikes if their members feel their health is being put at risk.In California, schools in two-thirds of the state have been barred from reopening in person. Against the backdrop of chaos and widely differing responses, Trump has continued to promote a return to in-person tuition despite the school attended by his youngest son, Barron, receiving a prohibition order until at least 1 October.Barron Trump attends St Andrew’s Episcopal, a private school in Potomac, Maryland, that falls under the jurisdiction of Montgomery county. “At this point the data does not suggest that in-person instruction is safe for students or teachers,” the region’s health officer, Travis Gayles, said in a statement last week.The virus is even making its way through the halls of Congress.Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democratic congressman, said on Saturday that he had tested positive for Covid-19 after attending a Washington DC hearing with the Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, who also tested positive and had been a vocal critic of wearing masks – just like Trump.The development prompted Grijalva to launch an attack on his fellow members from across the aisle.“While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously. Numerous Republican members routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff, and their families,” he said.

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The FDA authorizes the first COVID-19 tests that analyze the amount of antibodies in the blood. Latest COVID-19 news Saturday.

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A federal appeals court Friday threw out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case did not adequately screen jurors for potential biases. A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new penalty-phase trial on whether the 27-year-old Tsarnaev should be executed for the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. “But make no mistake: Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in the ruling, more than six months after arguments were heard in the case.

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Senator Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq war veteran and the first Thai-American woman elected to Congress.

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Uncruise Adventures, Lindblad Expeditions and others offer charter ship adventures while big-ship cruise travel is on hold.

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Under the new rule, the U.S. will start charging for asylum applications for the first time in its history.

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Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken's SpaceX capsule will make the first crewed US water landing in 45 years.

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The Cuban government is allowing its citizens to use the currency of its ideological enemy.

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Open-air schools provide a welcome respite from Covid-19 restrictions in Indian-administered Kashmir.

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President Trump sends federal agents to some US cities to tackle crime, but is there really a spike?

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First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

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All 50 states have issued warnings about the packages some of which contain morning glory, hibiscus, roses, cabbage, mustard, mint, sage and rosemary.

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An appeals court orders a partial retrial over the deadly bombing during the 2013 Boston Marathon.

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U.S. President Donald Trump's top immigration enforcement official on Friday announced he will retire from the agency, a staffing shakeup in a key policy area for Trump as he faces re-election in November. Matthew Albence, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a statement that his plan to retire had been prolonged by the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has created challenges for ICE operations both in the field and in immigration detention centers, where nearly 4,000 immigrants have tested positive for the disease.

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Democrats rejected a short-term extension of a $600 weekly unemployment benefit proposed by the White House on Thursday.

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In the papers, a key accuser also alleges the pair were equally involved in sex trafficking.

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Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI -- but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies -- was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos?My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks -- the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously available.You don’t like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent. And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in business if, come November, Obama’s vice-president is elected president -- notwithstanding that he’s yet to be asked serious questions about it.How to Conceal a Politicized Investigation It seems mind-boggling that, for so long, the FBI and Justice Department were able to keep a lid on the documents now being released. President Trump could have directed their disclosure at any time over the last four years. But when you think about it, concealing the paper trail was the easy part. The real challenge was: How to continue the probe even after Trump had taken office and was, at least nominally, in a position to shut it down?The Obama officials, including holdovers who transitioned into the Trump administration, pulled that off by intimidation: not-so-subtle suggestions that they could disclose damaging allegations at any time (e.g., the notorious “pee tape”), and that White House efforts to inquire into the scope of the investigation would be portrayed as criminal obstruction.Prior to the 2016 election, the FBI intentionally concealed the existence of the Trump-Russia probe from the congressional “Gang of Eight” (the bipartisan leadership of both houses and their intelligence committees). Senior Republicans were thus kept in the dark regarding purported suspicions that the Republican presidential campaign was a Russian front, unable to pose tough questions about the probe’s gossamer predication.Crucially, the Trump-Russia fabulists managed to sideline two Trump loyalists who would have been positioned to thwart the effort: national-security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That left in place Obama holdovers and Trump-appointed placeholders. They were indifferent to Trump himself and cowed by the prospect of being framed as complicit in a Trump–Russia conspiracy, or a cover-up.The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only natural that the FBI and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators starting years ago -- particularly by the investigation led in the House by then–Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).Congress’s investigation was stonewalled. The more revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and, at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was critical to the FBI’s presentation of “facts” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and FBI failed to comply with House information demands back in 2017–18, when Republicans led the relevant committees.One wonders, though, why the GOP-controlled Senate had so little interest in finding out why this paper trail stayed hidden despite repeated inquiries. Ditto the House Republican leadership in the first two years of Trump’s term. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that the GOP establishment bought the “Russian interference in our democracy” hysteria.Moscow always meddles in U.S. elections. The 2016 interference was par for the course and, as always, utterly ineffective. This time, though, Democrats were perceived as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries. For once, they and their media megaphone demanded that the political class treat Russia as a serious threat. On cue, Washington Republicans genuflected, lest they be portrayed as covering up for Trump, or as soft on Putin. Meanwhile Democrats, the party of appeasement (very much including appeasement of Moscow through the Obama years), were transmogrified into Russia hawks. And Russia hawks they’ll remain . . . right up until the moment Joe Biden takes the oath of office.Exploiting Politics to Surveil the Opposition Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBI’s New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates -- the aforementioned General Flynn and then–New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won.In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that he’d blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia.The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign -- using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take -- though an irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 “briefing” of Trump, the FBI formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn.There was no case file called “Donald Trump” because Trump was “Crossfire Hurricane.” The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.Get Them Talking Besides obtaining FISA surveillance warrants against Page, the Bureau’s favored tactic -- a common one in criminal investigations -- was to create or exploit situations in which the suspects would be at ease. Either the settings would not seem investigative or, in Trump’s case, repeated assurances were provided that he was not under investigation. With no notice that the FBI was trying to catch them and even prompt them into making incriminating statements, Trump and his campaign advisers would be invited to talk about Russia. Agents parsed their statements and scrutinized their demeanor, searching for any indication of pro-Russia sentiment or uneasiness about the topic -- anything that could be portrayed as incriminating. If the Bureau’s contacts with Trump officials were not covertly recorded (as they were, for example, when informants interacted with Papadopoulos), agents would generate written reports about them, the kind of reports the FBI routinely writes when building a criminal case.This is exactly what Pientka did in connection with the August 17 “briefing,” under the supervision of Kevin Clinesmith, the rabidly anti-Trump FBI lawyer later found by the Justice Department’s inspector general to have tampered with a key email, and Peter Strzok, the rabidly anti-Trump counterintelligence agent who was later fired.Pientka’s significantly redacted seven-page memo is worth reading. The point of it is not the national-security information provided to the candidate; that is just context for the Bureau’s documenting of statements made by Trump in response. For example, when the topic is differences in methodology between Russian and Chinese espionage, Pientka carefully notes that Trump asked, “Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers [of FBI cases] are they worse than the Chinese?” After all, maybe we’ll find out he was reporting back to the Kremlin. When the topic turned to signals intelligence, Pientka notes that Trump interjected, “Yes I understand it’s a dark time. Nothing is safe on computers anymore,” and elaborated that his then-ten-year-old son had broken the code for access to a computer -- you know, just the kind of badinage you’d expect from a co-conspirator in a Russian hacking scheme.Pientka then recounts that when other intelligence-agency briefers took over to continue the briefing on other topics, Pientka did not leave; he stayed in the room “actively listen[ing] for topics or questions regarding the Russian Federation.” Here, in a classified report they figure no one will ever see, there is no pretense: FBI agents are monitoring Trump. Pientka notes that when one briefer said the U.S. was the world’s leader in counterterrorism, Trump interjected, “Russia too?” And when the discussion turned to cheating by Russia and China on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, “Trump asked, ‘Who’s worse?’” When the briefer replied, “They are both bad, but Russia is worse,” Pientka took pains to relate, “Trump and Christie turned toward each other and Christie commented, ‘Im shocked’” [sic].You’re thinking, “So what?” Yeah, well, that’s the point. They had nothing, but the agents were exploiting the U.S. political process to try to turn nothing into a federal case. And would any public official voluntarily attend a security briefing, ostensibly meant to help him perform his public-safety mission, if he thought the FBI might be spying on him and writing reports with an eye toward portraying him as a hostile power’s mole?Just as we’ve seen in the Flynn investigation, Pientka’s official FBI report is marked in bold capital letters: “DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL.” Why deliberate over a draft when the purpose is to document a suspect’s statements? After all, he said whatever he said; there shouldn’t be a need to edit it. Drafts and deliberations are necessary only if a report is being massaged to fit the perceived needs of the investigation. Observe that, although the briefing was August 17, the memo is dated August 30. Nearly two weeks later, and it’s still in the form of a deliberative draft, meaning they’re not done yet.This is not materially different from the Obama administration’s plan on January 6, 2017. That is when the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, “briefed” Trump in New York City. This briefing came just a day after Comey met with his Obama-administration superiors -- the president, Vice President Biden, national-security adviser Susan Rice, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. They discussed withholding information about the Russia investigation from President-elect Trump and his incoming team.Consistent with this White House strategy session, Comey did not actually brief Trump about the Russia investigation; he buzzed Trump with an allegation that the Putin regime might be in possession of blackmail material -- the pee tape -- that it could hold over Trump’s head in order to get him to do the Kremlin’s bidding.The point was not to give information. It was to get information: to provoke Trump into making incriminating or false statements, or statements evincing consciousness of guilt. Outside Trump Tower was an FBI car equipped with a laptop so Comey could immediately write an investigative report. The director and his team treated this as an investigative event, not a briefing. Comey memorialized Trump’s statements, as well as his physical and emotional reaction to the suggestion that Moscow might have video of the soon-to-be president cavorting with prostitutes. If a case had ever been made on Trump, Comey could then have been a witness, with his investigative report available to refresh his recollection about Trump’s comments and comportment.That is one of the main reasons such reports are done.The FBI did the same thing with Flynn: a sandbag interview, against Justice Department and White House protocols, conducted after extensive planning about how to put him at ease, how to make sure he doesn’t think he’s a suspect, how to refrain from advising him of his rights. Then, knock him back on his heels by portraying a legitimate conversation between the incoming national-security adviser and the Russian ambassador as if it were nefarious. Don’t play him the recording or show him the transcript; just grill him and hope he says something incriminating or redolent of guilty knowledge. And then, instead of following the FBI rules for promptly completing interview reports, generate another “deliberative draft” that can be kneaded for a few weeks . . . with the help of a former prosecutor (Lisa Page) who serves as counsel to the second-highest-ranking FBI official (then–deputy director Andrew McCabe).There is still plenty of paper trail to uncover. I haven’t even referred here to the Steele dossier, which investigators knew was bogus but relied on to seek -- and obtain -- court-authorized eavesdropping. I haven’t mentioned the unmasking of Trump officials indirectly targeted in foreign-intelligence collection. We haven’t considered the collaboration of American and foreign intelligence agencies in the scrutiny of Trump, or the collaboration of Obama officials and congressional Democrats, as well as the media, to promote the narrative that Trump was a Russian operative. There is much still to learn and to weigh.But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration’s investigative agencies to monitor his party’s opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trump’s name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.

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Skepticism around Harris from Biden's inner circle of family and elder statesmen like Chris Dodd all goes back to her big debate moment.

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While COVID-19 viral loads have been shown to be similar in children and adults, a new study finds the youngest children - those under age five - carry particularly large amounts of the coronavirus in the nose and throat. Researchers in Chicago tested swab samples from 145 individuals ages one month to 65 years with mild to moderate COVID-19.

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Helicopters and boats ranging from inflatables to a Navy destroyer were headed into a Saturday search for eight people missing after their Marine landing craft went down in hundreds of feet of water off the Southern California coast. “Literally every asset we have available" was searching for seven Marines and a Navy corpsman, Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said Friday. Other assault vehicles quickly responded but couldn't stop the 26-ton, tank-like vehicle from quickly sinking, Osterman said.

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Democrats view the Senate GOP probe as an effort to smear Biden on false corruption allegations related to his diplomacy in Ukraine.

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Bitcoin payments and IP addresses led investigators to two of the alleged perpetrators in just over two weeks.

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9 सितंबर से 8 नवंबर तक होने वाले आईपीएल टूर्नामेंट के दौरान दर्शकों को मैदान में जाने की इजाजत देने का फैसला संयुक्त अरब अमीरात सरकार द्वारा लिया जाएगा.

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