08/05/24
Good morning! It’s Monday, August 5th
Work Like a Dog Day, which is supposed to celebrate service dogs, but all I can picture is a bunch of dogs in suits, filing taxes, and drinking out of water bowls that say things like “I hate Mondays” on them.
And now, the news.
Trump’s Egyptian Probe
-via Washington Post
Starting with a pretty stunning bit of journalism the Washington Post dropped on Friday and for some reason isn’t getting enough coverage.
In January 2017, five days before Trump was sworn in, an organization related to the Egyptian Intelligence Service sent a letter to a bank in Cairo, asking them to withdraw $10 million in cash.
And so four men showed up at the bank and left with two bags full of cash, adding up to $10 million.
The withdrawal was not reported, but federal investigators learned about it in 2019, bolstering an ongoing and secret investigation into whether a criminal investigation into whether the Egyptian President tried to give $10 million to Trump to help support his 2016 campaign.
It is noteworthy that, towards the end of his campaign, Trump put up $10 million of his own money into his campaign.
Now, as the Washington Post notes, we’ll never really know if he felt like he could use his own $10 million because he knew that $10 million was coming from Egypt.
However, the Department of Justice blocked the FBI and prosecutors from obtaining what they believed would be key evidence, such as bank records. For timing, know that this was all happening while Trump’s relation to Russia’s election interference was going on. Finally, in June of 2020, Bill Bar, Trump’s then-Attorney General, appointed a prosecutor to close the investigation.
This wouldn’t be the only time Egypt has attempted to gain the influence of US government officials – Senator Bob Menendez is leaving office this month because he took his own bribe.
In 2018, Trump’s State Department released $195 million in military aid that we’d been withholding because of human rights abuses. Even Trump’s first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, opposed this move. A move that, by the way, preceded the release of $1.2 billion more in such assistance.
Not bad for a $10 million investment.
And again, we’ll never truly know if that $10 million made it to Trump but the problem is – yeah it probably did. And it’s a problem that we don’t know because Trump manipulated the system and made it possible to hide these kinds of things.
He did it before, he will do it again.
Countries want to influence him and he will accept it because he wants to be seen as powerful and will never put the needs of this country, and all of us in it, above that.
We can’t let him back into the office ever again.
Venezuela’s Election
-via Washington Post
A week after the vote, and a week into continuing protests, a Washington Post review of more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets shows that Venezuela’s opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, has beaten President Maduro with more than twice the amount of votes.
The sample represents about 80% of the country’s votes.
Even though he said he would, Maduro has not yet released precinct-level results, claiming he can’t because of a cyber-attack. A cyber-attack he has not provided proof of.
Maduro and his government have not yet commented on this review.
11 people have been killed in protests around the country.
America PAC
-via NBC News
Just like with that first story, here is another thing people are not talking enough about and I am truly flames on the sides of my face about it
I talked about Elon Musk contributing to that America PAC last week and I kind of… not blew it off but you know. It’s a lazy name and kind of uninteresting.
But now – now it’s still a lazy name but it’s got a whole lot of my interest.
Because they have built a website where people think they’re registering to vote, but based on what state they’re in, they will be prompted to send in information including their address, birthday, age, and cell phone number… and after entering all of that, it doesn’t register them to vote. It just takes them back to the home screen.
It’s tricking people.
It’s tricking voters.
Because they can’t win otherwise.
And we’re not going to let them with, even when they do this. Especially because they’re doing this.
Go to raisingvoters.org and find out how we’re going to make sure people who want to register to vote can actually do it.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
Those are big stories. Be talking about them.
Medal update!
We lead in total medals with 71! 71 medals! China had 45 and France has 44. We lead in silver and bronze, AND we are tied with China with our 19 gold medals. France and Australia have 12.
One of those gold medals is from Noah Lyles, who ran the 100-meter race in 9.79 seconds, which is less time than it took me to say this sentence.
I’m proud of Noah Lyles – he’s so cocky but he’s so fast that he’s earned it.
I’m also proud of service dogs. And dogs that do taxes.
But more than that, because you also work hard… I’m proud of you.