Auburnfan91

Just like they did to Carter Page by ignoring his previous history of being a witness to help the FBI convict a Russian spy in 2013, the Mueller report and the Senate report tried to misrepresent Paul Manafort's associate Konstantin Kilimnik's background as well. They want people to believe Kilimnik was working for the Russian govt when there was no evidence of it. Kilimnik had a history of working with high ranking U.S. govt officials and helping arrange meetings between U.S. Department of State officials and top Ukrainian politicians. Kilimnik's lobbying work with Manafort in Ukraine was an economic agreement to move Ukraine closer to the EU and away from Russia. If you believe the Mueller and Senate reports, ask yourself why would a supposed Russian agent be helping relations between the U.S. and Ukraine by setting up meetings between officials for both countries, and also help do lobbying work to move Ukraine closer to the EU? The Russiagate conspiracy theory relies heavily on speculation and absence of facts in order to sell the " close ties" between the Trump campaign and the Russia govt.

Hawaii power company may have compromised evidence in probe of deadly Maui fire: report By Melissa Koenig August 24, 2023 6:40pm Updated The Hawaii electric company whose equipment is believed to have sparked the deadly Maui wildfire removed damaged infrastructure from where the blaze likely started — a move that may have jeopardized the federal investigation into the disaster. Records obtained by the Washington Post show that the utility company hauled away fallen poles, power lines, transformers, conductors and other equipment from the area surrounding the Lahaina substation starting on Aug. 12 — days before Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents arrived on sight. In doing so, the power company may have violated national guidelines on how utilities should handle and preserve evidence after a wildfire and compromised the probe into the cause of the inferno that killed at least 115 people. “If a lot of equipment is already moved or gone by the time the investigators show up, that’s problematic because you want to observe where the equipment was relative to the ignition site,” Michael Wara, who directs the Climate and Energy Policy program at Stanford University, told the Post. But in a statement, Hawaiian Electric spokesman Darren Pai said the company has been “in regular communication with ATF and local authorities and are operating with them as well as attorneys representing people affected by the wildfires, with inventories and access to the removed equipment, which we have carefully photographed, documented and stored.” The Post has also reached out for comment from the utility and the law firm representing it, California-based Munger, Tolles and Olsen. Locals have told the Post how the fire started early in the morning of Aug. 8 when a transformer blew and sparked dry grass on Maui County-owned land, just about a mile away from Lahaina’s historic waterfront. Hawaiian Electric had apparently failed to shut off the electricity in advance of high winds sweeping through the area, and within an hour the blaze roared down the hillside toward the ocean, destroying nearly everything in its path. The utility is now facing at least eight lawsuits from local residents who are desperately trying to rebuild, claiming the company failed to preserve necessary evidence. In one of those suits, a law firm representing more than two dozen Lahaina families asked Hawaiian Electric to preserve the evidence twice beginning on Aug. 10, according to correspondence obtained by the Post. The next day, the Washington Post reported, one of the utility’s attorneys replied that Hawaiian Electric’s main focus was the safety of first responders who were still fighting the blaze, displaced residents and restoring power. The company reportedly said it was “taking steps to preserve its own property,” but because so many local, state and federal agencies were still on the ground trying to fight the fires and clear debris, it was “therefore possible, even likely, that the actions of these third parties, whose actions Hawaiian Electric does not control, may result in the loss of property or other items that relate to the cause of the fire.” “Hawaiian Electric will take reasonable steps to preserve evidence, but cannot make any guarantees due to the rapidly evolving situation on the ground, which is also not within our control,” the letter read, according to the Washington Post. In response, attorneys for the residents submitted a temporary restraining order to stop Hawaiian Electric from greatly altering the scene where the fire started. By Aug.18, a judge signed an interim discovery order detailing how the utility should have handled evidence around the “suspected area of origin.” Under the National Fire Protection Association guidelines, “the integrity of the fire scene needs to be preserved” and “evidence should not be handled or removed without documentation.” Hawaiian Electric argued in court documents that it removed the evidence because the company does not “own or control the land or public streets beneath its facilities.” The utility has also hired a California-based “cause and origin” expert to “preserve potential evidence related to the fire,” according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the death toll from the fire has now reached 115 people, and the number of missing has increased to 1,100. https://nypost.com/2023/08/24/hawaiian-electric-removed-evidence-from-scene-of-blaze-report/ This shouldn't end well for Hawaiian Electric.

There wasn't a shred of evidence produced by the Mueller report of "close ties" between the Trump campaign and the Russian govt. This a thorough article that addresses the Mueller report and the Senate report that produced no evidence of ties between Paul Manafort and the Russian govt: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/09/21/analysis_that_senate_collusion_report_has_no_smoking_gun__but_it_does_have_a_fog_machine_125229.html

By REBECCA BOONE, HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, CLAUDIA LAUER and CHRISTOPHER L. KELLER Updated 12:12 AM CDT, August 23, 2023 As flames tore through a West Maui neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the only paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety. And car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30. One family swerved around the barricade and was safe in a nearby town 48 minutes later, another drove their 4-wheel-drive car down a dirt road to escape. One man took an dirt road uphill, climbing above the fire and watching as Lahaina burned. He later picked his way through the flames, smoke and rubble to pull survivors to safety. But dozens of others found themselves caught in a hellscape, their cars jammed together on a narrow road, surrounded by flames on three sides and the rocky ocean waves on the fourth. Some died in their cars, while others tried to run for safety. “I could see from the bypass that people were stuck on the balconies, so I went down and checked it out,” said Kekoa Lansford, who made several trips into town to look for survivors. What he found was horrible, Lansford said, with dead bodies and flames like a hellish movie scene. “And I could see that people were on fire, that the fire was just being stoked by the wind, and being pushed toward the homes.” The road closures — some because of the fire, some because of downed power lines — contributed to making historic Lahaina the site of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. But there were many problems that day, and in some ways the disaster began long before the fires started. A flash drought in the region provided plenty of kindling, and Hurricane Dora brought strong winds to Maui as it passed roughly 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of the Hawaii island chain. Those winds downed at least 30 power poles in West Maui, and Hawaiian Electric had no procedure in place for turning off the grid — a common practice in other fire-prone states. Video shot by a Lahaina resident shows a downed powerline setting dry grasses alight, possibly revealing the start of the larger fire. And later, as the fire began to swallow homes in its ravenous path, Maui County emergency officials declined to use an extensive network of emergency sirens to alert Lahaina’s residents to flee. During a news conference Tuesday, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said police officers drove up and down streets, knocking on doors and using loudspeakers to tell people to leave, but he didn’t say exactly where and what time those efforts occurred. The Associated Press has filed public records requests for location reports and other documentation including video and internal communications to clarify the details of the police and fire response, but Maui County has not yet released that information. A team of Associated Press journalists documented the first hours of the deadly wildfire by interviewing dozens of survivors and public officials, examining public documents and analyzing citizen videos, satellite images and publicly available data. The timeline reveals the chaos that overtook the town. Shane Treu wakes early on Aug. 8, and is in his backyard when he hears a utility pole snap next to Lahainaluna Road. He sees the downed powerline ignite the grass, and calls 911 at 6:37 a.m. to report the fire. Small brush fires aren’t unusual for Lahaina, and the fire department declares this one 100% contained by 9:55 a.m. The assurance puts many residents at ease; the high winds have prompted the closure of some public schools for the day, and others have not yet started. That means many of Lahaina’s 3,000 public school students are home alone while their parents work. Contained is not controlled, however, and the town is being battered by high winds. While many of Maui County’s fire crews work to extinguish the Upcountry fire on the eastern half of the island, the wind is toppling power poles and scattering embers like seeds in Lahaina. Treu’s neighbor Robert Arconado said the fire reignites around 2 p.m. He records video of it spreading at 3:06 p.m., as large plumes of smoke rise near Lahainaluna Road and are carried downtown by the wind. Around 3:20 p.m., Lahaina resident Kevin Eliason is watching the black smoke from a vantage point closer to downtown when passersby tell him a power pole has been knocked onto the tar roof of a gas station two blocks away, creating fireballs that are being blown in the wind, he said. Eliason said the fire knocked the power out in the area soon after. Ten minutes later, Hawaiian Electric sends a news release asking Maui residents to prepare for extended outages. The utility says more than 30 power poles are down in West Maui, including along the Honoapiilani Highway at the south end of Lahaina. At the same time, the fire department closes the Lahaina Bypass road because of the fire. The closures block the only route out of Lahaina to the south. Two weeks later, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier says during a news conference that officers never stopped people from leaving Lahaina that day but did try to prevent them from driving over live power lines. Back in the subdivision near Lahainaluna Road, the first sign of trouble for Nate Baird and Courtney Stapleton comes at 3:40 p.m., when their 9- and 10-year-old sons say they can smell s’mores. By the time the family piles into the car with their dog and Baird’s mother and joins a caravan of evacuating residents, parts of the subdivision are beginning to burn. A telephone pole falls behind their car, causing an accident and blocking a side street. Meanwhile, police officers knock down a fence to help others escape, the police chief says later. Firefighters in the area nearly become trapped themselves, losing a truck to the flames, Pelletier says. When Baird and his family turn south to drive out of town, the way is blocked by cones and a crew working on downed electric poles. The workers were motioning for everyone to turn back toward Lahaina. They decide they don’t care what the crew wants, swerving around the cones and heading south. They make it to a neighboring town by 4:18 p.m. and begin texting people to see who else has made it out. “Nobody realized how little time we really had,” Baird said. “Like even us being from the heart of the fire, we did not comprehend. Like we literally had minutes and one wrong turn. We would all be dead right now.” Jonelle Santos said her daughter, Ronelle Santos-Adrian, managed to escape her Lahaina affordable housing apartment with her 3-year-old daughter and partner by turning their four-wheel-drive vehicle away from the standstill traffic and onto a dirt road, eventually finding their way to a friend’s house in Napili. Some of the other people who lived in the apartment complex didn’t have cars, Santos said, and her daughter thinks some of them didn’t make it out. Kim Cuevas-Reyes narrowly escapes with her 12- and 15-year-old by ignoring instructions to turn right on Front Street toward Lahaina’s Civic Center, which earlier in the day had been turned into a shelter for refugees. Instead, she takes a left, driving in the wrong lane to pass a stack of cars heading in the other direction. “The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came,” said Cuevas-Reyes, 38. “I would have had to tell my children to jump into the ocean as well and be boiled alive by the flames or we would have just died from smoke inhalation and roasted in the car.” At 5:20 p.m., Maui County shares another update on Facebook. The road leading south out of Lahaina has been cleared and is open for traffic, the county says. But by then, some on Front Street have already died, according to survivor accounts. Others have jumped over the seawall and are treading water, dodging flaming debris and breathing overheated black smoke. At some point, police begin directing people away from Front Street, Pelletier says, “because it had already gotten too late.” He does not say exactly when that that point is reached. A private ambulance company calls the U.S. Coast Guard at about 5:45 p.m., asking for help transporting 10 injured people from Lahaina to Maalaea because a fire is blocking road access to Lahaina. It is the Coast Guard’s first notification of the fire. People in the water and on boat moorings use flashlights and phones to guide the boats through the thick smoke. The Coast Guard rescues nearly 40 people from the shore, and pulls 17 people from the water while civilians help pull more from the ocean. The rescue efforts stretch into the early morning hours. Kekoa Lansford is among the rescuers. Earlier, he had climbed a hill behind the town and watched as the city burned, trying to gauge when it would be safe to return. Lansford said he knew people would need help “because the roads are small, and it’s pretty tight down there.” Over the next several hours, Lansford makes repeated trips into the still-burning downtown, often using back roads to travel safely. “I seen one girl and her legs was all burned up, and then I helped her,” Lansford said. “And then something just clicked in my head, like, everybody’s going to be burned up. So I just kept going back down.” Lansford focuses his effort on Front Street, getting as many people as he can out of the fire. “Pulling them off behind the seawall, you know, and walking them back to my truck,” he said. He takes each person to a place that seems safe from fire where they can be picked up by others. And then he goes back to find more. “Just getting them out of the fire, make sure they don’t die of smoke inhalation. Some of them will die after anyway,” he recounted. The houses and buildings are too hot to enter, he said, and a popular spot for watching the sunset has become a death zone. When the sun rises on Wednesday, the town that was once home to about 13,000 people has become an ashen wasteland frozen in its final moments of panic. More than 100 deaths have been confirmed, and roughly 1,000 people remain unaccounted for. Many of the survivors are angry, and haunted by the thought that a just few minutes of notice could have saved many lives. Baird’s neighborhood near Lahainaluna Road was filled with kids who were home alone when the flames hit, he said. “We needed like 10 more minutes, and we could have saved a lot of kids,” he said, choking back tears. “If we’d just had like a 10- or 15-minute warning.” The family ventured out to a Kahului mall recently, looking for a moment of normalcy in the aftermath of the tragedy. They ran into a playmate of their son. “The kids just don’t have a filter. So their son ran up and was just telling our son, you know, ‘This kid is dead. This kid is dead.’ And it’s like, all my son’s friends that they come to our house every day,” he said. “And their parents were at work, and they were home alone. And nobody had a warning. Nobody, nobody, nobody knew.” https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-fires-timeline-maui-lahaina-road-block-c8522222f6de587bd14b2da0020c40e9 Those who chose to disobey orders to turn back around or to turn on certain streets and instead went around barricades all survived. Absolutely awful.

None of what the whistleblowers have stated has been disproven. POLITICO obtained emails and documents from Hunter Biden's lawyers revealing that if not for the whistleblowers coming forward, Weiss wouldn't have sought a guilty plea on any charges as part of the deal. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/19/hunter-biden-plea-deal-collapse-00111974 Also the OIG, Michael Horowitz, won't be able to investigate the whistleblowers claims unless he gets approval. https://nypost.com/2023/08/22/doj-ig-cites-potential-limitation-in-review-of-hunter-biden-coverup-claims/

So you think it's appropriate for Weiss to continue being over the investigation despite everything that's been learned about the handling of the case? 1) Allowed SOL to expire on felony charges 2) Signed off on a plea deal that came to impasse because of how sloppily it was drafted 3) Whistleblowers came forward to accuse Weiss's office of hindering the investigation One of the whistleblowers is a Democrat.

This is misleading. He served under the Obama administration as the US Attorney for Delaware. He was recommended by both Delaware senators who are Democrats. Weiss has a conflict of interest because he previously worked with Hunter's late brother Beau Biden in Delaware. Weiss needs to recuse from the investigation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/20/hunter-biden-david-weiss-special-prosecutor-delaware/

Earlier tonight Trump indicated that he won't be at next weeks FOX News debate or any of the GOP debates.

FOX News released a new poll showing Trump doing better vs Biden than all other Republicans

Where are you getting this? Trump is doing better head to head against Biden than DeSantis. Trump vs Biden = Tie It's worth noting that in 2020, Trump only led Biden in 2 polls during the whole year. Trump is polling much better in 2023 than he did in 2020. Quinnipiac was Biden +11 in October 2020, it's Biden +1 in the latest poll 8/10-8/14, 2023. DeSantis vs Biden = Biden +2 Trump's policies are different than other conservatives. Trump's not an ideologue. There's a reason why Trump is the only Republican in the last 30 years to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump supports tariffs which has a lot of support in the 'rust belt' area. That's why the typical Republicans like McCain, Romney, and now DeSantis types aren't able to compete in those states. A lot of people don't want to admit that Trump appeals to more than just hardcore conservatives that are lifelong Republicans. They'd rather pretend that all Trump voters have never voted for Democrats. Trump was able to swing Obama voters in 2016, that's why he won.

https://www.aufamily.com/topic/187963-the-stuff-hunter-biden-didnt-get-indicted-for/ Weiss has a lot to explain. He allowed the 2014 and 2015 statute of limitations to expire. There was a DOJ Tax Division prosecution memo presented to the US Attorney's office in D.C. in March 2022 that supported charges which included 2014 and 2015. Weiss's June 30 letter to Jim Jordan denied that he couldn't bring charges, so why didn't he? Trying to give the benefit of the doubt to Weiss, if he allowed 2014 and 2015 SOL to expire, why would he now ask to be special counsel and even attempt to change venue on any tax charges when he could have done so last year when the DOJ Tax Division presented the memo in D.C. for all the tax charges? The House Judiciary committee should subpoena to obtain the March 2022 DOJ Tax Division memo on Hunter Biden that was turned down.

If he was set on testifying he wouldn't have requested special counsel authority because he knows if he's given special counsel authority that he's won't have to testify this fall. You know what changed between Weiss sending those dates and now? Hunter's plea deal, which Weiss's office approved of, was turned down because of judge Noreika questioning the immunity part of the diversion agreement. Why didn't Weiss ask for special counsel authority earlier, which according to the IRS whistleblowers he did request it last year but was denied, if he wanted to send the charges to a different venue? The IRS whistleblowers claims have merit.

Technically no, it's not against the law. It's the same framework that Barr made John Durham special counsel over the Russiagate origins investigation. But you are absolutely correct that this is meant to stifle the House GOP from getting Weiss to testify. Also, Weiss is now moving the two misdemeanor charges from Delaware to either D.C. or California, likely to be D.C. So not only are they blocking Weiss from testifying, they're also pretty much judge shopping by moving the venue of the charges. Delaware judge Noreika is the one who nixed Biden's plea deal by questioning the diversion agreement. Weiss is going to keep the "investigation" going until next year probably and then re-try the diversion agreement with a D.C. judge who is much more likely to rubber stamp the plea deal.

Start at 15:08 Montgomery police chief admits that there weren't signs up at the time this incident happened about no docking in that area.

https://www.al.com/news/2023/08/montgomery-riverfront-brawl-watch-live-as-police-provide-update.html Going to be interesting if they don't charge the black guy that used a chair to attack a white woman who did nothing to him.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/3-charged-assault-alabama-riverfront-melee-bias-charges/story?id=102098382

Even if there is a policy, it's not going to matter. The media narrative is set. If they tried to discipline the dock worker that would just create more noise. Circle K employees can't stop someone front coming across the counter and taking cigarettes but this dock worker can just go and untie a boat from the dock even though the city doesn't own all the boats.

You can see this coming from a mile away. They're not going to do anything to the dock worker. The media are trying to make this a race incident instead of looking at how things escalated because they don't see anything else but race about this.

The same one's defending the dock workers actions are the same one's in almost every other instance support the policy of employees not confronting people that are doing something wrong yet in this instance they think the dock worker handled things appropriately and didn't escalate things.

Just because the dock worker may not face legal consequences doesn't mean the dock worker didn't escalate things or handled the situation appropriately.

So why did the dock worker not wait until police got there so they could get the people to move the boat instead of taking it upon himself to move the boat and escalate things?

Can security guards(non-police) at a store go out and open unlocked car doors and search someone's car if they're parked in a wrong spot? You know the stores usually pay for the land the parking lots are on.

Riverboat dock worker escalated things by trying to move the boat. He didn't just ask them to move it, he umoored it from the dock and it actually moved and bumped another boat at the dock. That's what started things. He didn't deserve to be gang assaulted and the people that attacked him should be prosecuted but you also don't put your hands on someone else's property. He completely mishandled the situation. He's not completely innocent like Montgomery mayor Steven Reed tried to portray in his first statements that he was just "doing his job". Unless you're a police officer you're not legally authorized to move a vehicle or vessel that doesn't belong to you.

The laptop's emails call into question Biden's motives for having him removed. The Burisma CFO emailed Hunter asking to get the prosecutor removed and the cases/pursuits closed. The public narrative is that Shokin wasn't investigating Burisma and that's at least partly why Biden removed him. The FD-1023 which alleges bribery also wasn't known in the Senate investigation. You can't say "they've already investigated it" when not everything was known until later. New information presented can absolutely change people's opinion's on things.