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      in US Politics

      Ex-FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens arrested again

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      The former FBI informant who is charged with lying about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family was again taken into custody in Las Vegas, two days after a judge released him, his attorneys said.Alexander Smirnov was arrested during a meeting on Thursday morning at his lawyers’ offices in downtown Las Vegas. The arrest came after prosecutors appealed the judge’s ruling allowing 43-year-old Smirnov, who holds dual US-Israeli citizenship, to be released with a GPS monitor ahead of trial. He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.Attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a statement that they have requested an immediate hearing on his detention and will again push for his release. They said Smirnov, who claims to have links to Russian intelligence, was taken into custody on a warrant issued in California for the same charges.Smirnov was first arrested last week in Las Vegas, where he now lives, while returning from overseas. A spokesman for justice department special counsel David Weiss, who is prosecuting Smirnov, confirmed that Smirnov had been arrested again, but did not have additional comment.Prosecutors say Smirnov falsely told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5m each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry of President Biden in Congress.Smirnov has not entered a plea to the charges, but his lawyers have said their client is presumed innocent and they look forward to defending him at trial.As part of their push to keep him in custody, prosecutors said Smirnov told investigators after his arrest last week that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s self-reported contact with Russian officials was recent and extensive, and said he had planned to meet with foreign intelligence contacts during an upcoming trip abroad.US magistrate judge Daniel Albregts said on Tuesday that he was concerned about Smirnov’s access to money that prosecutors estimated to be around $6m, but noted that federal guidelines required him to fashion “the least restrictive conditions” ahead of trial. Smirnov was also ordered to stay in the area and surrender his passports.“Do not make a mockery out of me,” Albregts said to Smirnov, warning that he’d be placed back into the federal government’s custody if he violated any of his conditions. His lawyers say he had been “fully compliant” with his release conditions.Prosecutors quickly appealed to US district judge Otis D Wright in California.“The circumstances of the offenses charged – that Smirnov lied to his FBI handler after a 10-year relationship where the two spoke nearly every day – means that Smirnov cannot be trusted to provide truthful information to pretrial services,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.“The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day. Now the personal stakes for Smirnov are even higher. His freedom is on the line.”Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Republicans pursuing investigations of the Bidens demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.Democrats called for an end to the investigation after the Smirnov indictment came down last week, while Republicans distanced the inquiry from his claims and said they would continue to “follow the facts.”Smirnov’s lawyers say he has been living in Las Vegas for two years with his longtime girlfriend and requires treatment and daily medications for “significant medical issues related to his eyes”. He lived in California for 16 years prior to moving to Nevada. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump attacks ‘no personality’ DeSantis and repeats election lies in Nevada

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      Donald Trump attacked Ron DeSantis at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, saying his closest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination had “no personality” – but claiming responsibility for the Florida governor’s career on the national stage.Trump also repeated his lie about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, to a receptive audience, before high-fiving fans at a mixed martial event.Reporting a retelling of “a story Trump has told many times”, the Nevada Independent said the multiply indicted former president described being asked for an endorsement when DeSantis, a hard-right congressman, ran for governor in 2018.“I said, listen Ron, you’re so dead that if Abraham Lincoln and George Washington came back from the dead, and if they put their hands and hearts together and prayed … nothing is going to change. Ron, you are gone.”DeSantis beat the Democrat Andrew Gillum for governor, pursued a hard-right agenda in office then beat Charlie Crist, a former governor and former Republican, in a re-election landslide last year.But DeSantis has struggled to make an impact on the presidential campaign, a clear second to Trump but unable to dent a near-30 point lead for the former president in most poll averages.“I’m not a big fan of his and he’s highly overrated,” Trump said in Las Vegas.Hitting DeSantis for having supported cuts to social security, Trump said: “The one thing you have to remember, when a politician comes out with an initial plan and then they go into a corner because they’re getting killed. Because he’s getting killed. Well, he also has no personality. That helps, right?”According to FactCheck.org, DeSantis “has, in the past, supported proposals that would reduce social security and Medicare spending, including raising the age for full eligibility”. DeSantis now says he will not “mess with” social security but Trump has seized on a profitable line of attack.DeSantis is widely seen to lack campaigning skills, struggling to connect with voters and engaging in barbed conversations with reporters. This week, he told Fox News the “corporate media” was to blame for his struggles.“Well, I think if you look at the people like the corporate media, who are they going after?” he said. “Who do they not want to be the nominee? They’re going after me.”DeSantis also said he would participate in the first Republican debate in August, an event Trump has suggested he will skip.Trump dominates the primary with more than 50% support despite facing an unprecedented 71 criminal indictments and the prospect of more.Trials are scheduled over hush money payments to a porn star and Trump’s retention of classified records. The former president pleaded not guilty to all charges. He also denied wrongdoing in a civil case in which he was held liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, and ordered to pay about $5m.Further indictments are thought imminent from state and federal prosecutors regarding election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.In Las Vegas, Trump repeated his lie about his conclusive defeat by Biden.The Nevada Independent said “more than 10 attendees ” it interviewed “echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, dismissed … indictments against him as an abuse of government power and said Trump was the only Republican presidential candidate who has always stayed true to his word”.Attendees, the paper added, “described Trump as the only candidate who could save the country from ruin”.On Sunday, a fringe candidate in the Republican primary, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, said he would not do business with Trump outside politics.“I just think that it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep,” Burgum, who made his fortune in computing before entering politics, told NBC’s Meet the Press.However, Burgum also said he would support Trump if he is the Republican nominee.“I voted for him twice and if he’s running against Biden I will absolutely vote for him again,” Burgum said.The decision was a “no-brainer”, he said. More

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial
      Carole King and Brandon Flowers set to perform
      Former Senate leader died in December at 82
      Obituary: Harry Reid, 1939-2021
      The life of the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid was celebrated by two presidents and other Democratic leaders in Las Vegas on Saturday.Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatmentRead morePresident Joe Biden, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, were scheduled to speak at a memorial for the longtime Senate leader, who died on 28 December at home in Henderson, Nevada, at 82 and of complications from pancreatic cancer.Barack Obama, who credits Reid for his rise to the White House, was scheduled to deliver the eulogy.“The president believes Harry Reid is one of the greatest leaders in Senate history,” Karine Jean-Pierre, a deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday. “So he is traveling to pay his respects to a man who had a profound impact on this nation.”Biden served for two decades with Reid in the Senate and worked with him for eight years as vice-president.Elder M Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was also to speak at the 2,000-seat concert hall about Reid’s 60 years in the Mormon faith. Vice-President Kamala Harris also attended.“These are not only some of the most consequential leaders of our time – they are also some of Harry’s best friends,” Reid’s wife of 62 years, Landra Reid, said in a statement announcing plans for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts event.“Harry loved every minute of his decades working with these leaders and the incredible things they accomplished together.”Reid’s daughter and four sons were scheduled to speak too.In a letter to Reid before his death, Obama recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town of Searchlight in the Mojave Desert to leadership in Congress.“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”Reid spent 34 years in Washington and led the Senate through a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections. He muscled Obama’s signature healthcare act through the Senate.Reid hitchhiked 40 miles to high school and was an amateur boxer before he was elected to the Nevada state Assembly at 28. He had graduated from Utah State University and worked nights as a US Capitol police officer while attending George Washington University Law School in Washington.In 1970, at 30, he was elected state lieutenant governor with a Democratic governor, Mike O’Callaghan. Reid was elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1986.Reid built a political machine in Nevada that for years helped Democrats win key elections. When he retired in 2016 after an exercise accident at home left him blind in one eye, he picked a former Nevada attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, to replace him.Cortez Masto was the first woman from Nevada and the first Latina ever elected to the US Senate.“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend,” Obama told Reid in his letter. “As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other – a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy.”Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects Read moreThe singer-songwriter and environmentalist Carole King and Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Las Vegas-based rock band the Killers, were scheduled to perform during the memorial.“The thought of having Carole King performing in Harry’s honor is a tribute truly beyond words,” Landra Reid said.Flowers, a longtime friend, shares the Reids’ faith and has been a headliner at events including a Lake Tahoe Summit that Reid founded in 1997 to draw attention to the ecology of the lake, and the National Clean Energy Summit that Reid helped launch in 2008 in Las Vegas. Among other songs, Flowers was scheduled to sing the Nevada state anthem, Home Means Nevada.Those flying to Las Vegas arrived at the newly renamed Harry Reid international airport. It was formerly named for Pat McCarran, a former Democratic US senator from Nevada who once owned the airfield and whose legacy is clouded by racism and antisemitism.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsDemocratsJoe BidenBarack ObamaNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Sheldon Adelson, casino magnate and major Trump donor, dies aged 87

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      Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate, perennial top single donor to Donald Trump and other Republican causes and an influential opponent of a two-state solution in the Middle East, has died. He was 87.Adelson’s influence on Trump has been seen as a major factor in the president’s assertive foreign policy on Israel, including his decision to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a deeply controversial move as parts of the city are also claimed by Palestinians.In a statement on Tuesday Adelson’s wife, Dr Miriam Adelson, said the Las Vegas Sands chairman and chief executive died “of complications from a long illness”. A Nevada newspaper Adelson owned reported the cause of death as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which Adelson was found to have in 2019.“It is with unbearable pain that I announce the death of my husband, Sheldon G Adelson,” Miriam Adelson said.Adelson was born in 1933 and grew up in a suburb of Boston, his father a cab driver of Ukrainian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry.As the owner of the giant Venetian and Palazzo casino-resorts in Las Vegas, the Venetian Macau in China and the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, he was among the richest men in the world, with a net worth pegged by Forbes at more than $33bn.In the 2020 election, the Adelsons set a new record for political gifts from individuals, flooding the Trump campaign, related accounts and many lesser Republican campaigns with a total of $172.7m, according to the campaign finance site Open Secrets.The Adelsons were the top donors in every major election cycle going back a decade except for 2016, and their lifetime political giving amounted to about half a billion dollars, Open Secrets said.In a statement on Tuesday, Trump said Adelson “lived the true American dream”. The president also recognised Adelson’s role in the embassy move and US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, another hugely controversial issue.The former president George W Bush said: “Laura and I mourn the passing of a friend.”An enemy of union organizing inside his casinos, Adelson was a veteran of bruising negotiations with, and criticism from, union political machines in Las Vegas and elsewhere, a conflict seen as fueling his support for anti-union Republican politicians.In 2015, as part of a wrongful dismissal suit brought by an employee, Adelson spent four days in court defending his gambling empire from accusations of bribery and ties to organised crime in China.Initially skeptical of Trump, whom he knew as a failed casino entrepreneur, Adelson was slow to enter the 2016 election. Since the early 2000s, he had prioritized giving to candidates who opposed Palestinian statehood, and it was not initially clear where Trump stood on Israel.But Adelson and Trump’s priorities connected in Trump family connections, through the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Adelson had long supported.Adelson was adored across much of the political spectrum in Israel for his wide-ranging support to many Jewish and also Zionist organisations.In particular, he was praised by hardline nationalists, in part due to his financial support for Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, which are considered illegal by most world powers. One medical school in a settlement in the occupied West Bank is named after the Adelsons.The billionaire’s death was mourned by several far-right Israeli politicians, including Naftali Bennett, a former defense minister, who said Adelson would be “forever be recorded in the annals in the State of Israel”.Local media reported Adelson’s funeral would be held in Israel.Israel’s current and longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu, has also been a key beneficiary of Adelson, who launched a free newspaper called Israel Hayom in 2007 that was clearly supportive of the Israeli leader. The paper has since become the country’s most widely circulated daily.Netanyahu said he felt “deep sorrow and heartbreak” on hearing of Adelson’s death. The news will be a blow to the prime minister, who is facing an election in late March, although Adelson’s wife has long been seen as a leading figure in family decisions on Israel.“Along with his wife Miri, Sheldon was one of the greatest contributors in history to the Jewish people, Zionism, settlements and the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said, using Miriam’s nickname.In 2018, Trump gave Miriam Adelson the highest US civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom – alongside Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.In her statement on Tuesday, she called her husband “an American patriot: a US army veteran who gave generously to wounded warriors and, wherever he could, looked to the advancement of these great United States”.“He was the proudest of Jews,” she said, adding that he “saw in the state of Israel not only the realization of an historical promise to a unique and deserving people, but also a gift from the Almighty to all of humanity.”While Adelson changed American politics with his money, equipping thousands of local Republican campaigns with the resources, messaging and structure to win, his sympathy for Trump ended with the president’s re-election defeat last November.In 2015, Adelson acquired the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a secret bid, after the newspaper published exposés about his empire. Last November, the paper rejected Trump’s effort to deny his loss to Joe Biden in Nevada, urging Trump to accept the result. More

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      Trump dismisses reports of Russian interference in 2020 election as ‘disinformation’ – video

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      Donald Trump has dismissed reports of Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election to his benefit as ‘disinformation’ at a rally in Las Vegas the day before the democrats are due to hold the Nevada caucuses Trump had previously cast doubt on the intelligence community’s conclusion that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election to […] More

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      in Elections

      ‘She was a warrior’: Warren supporters ebullient in Las Vegas after debate

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      Backers see new life in the senator’s campaign following struggles in early voting states: ‘Of course she’ll win’ As her supporters chanted, “Persist, persist, persist,” Elizabeth Warren did a little dance. “All I can say is we’re just getting started,” said the Massachusetts senator, whose strong debate performance has re-energized her campaign and fired up […] More