| President Trump has long claimed that he had nothing to fear from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation—but according to an anecdote in the report, he was terrified when he found out Mueller was appointed. When former Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Trump that Mueller had been appointed on May 17, 2017, Trump reportedly responded, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked,” before ripping into Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation. Sessions allegedly recalled that Trump said something in the vein of “you were supposed to protect me,” before adding that “Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.” View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet. |
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| Robert Mueller’s team found evidence of other crimes outside the scope of the special counsel’s probe and made 14 criminal referrals—12 of which remain secret. According to the special counsel’s redacted report, released Thursday, “During the course of the investigation, the Office periodically identified evidence of potential criminal activity that was outside the scope of the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction established by the Acting Attorney General. After consultation with the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office referred that evidence to appropriate law enforcement authorities, principally other components of the Department of Justice and the FBI.” The report lists all 14 of those criminal referrals, but 12 of them are fully redacted, citing “Harm to ongoing matter.” The two that have been made public are ones Mueller’s team referred to attorneys with the Southern District of New York: the prosecution of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen for tax evasion and campaign-finance violations; and the prosecution of Gregory B. Craig, a former Obama lawyer with ties to Paul Manafort’s Ukraine report. |
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| Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that Mueller identified 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice in his report—but that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “disagreed with some of the special counsel’s legal theories.” “The report recounts ten episodes involving the president and discusses potential legal theories for connecting those activities to the elements of an obstruction offense,” Barr said. The attorney general said he concluded that “the evidence developed by the Special Counsel is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” “Although the Deputy Attorney General and I disagreed with some of the Special Counsel’s legal theories and felt that some of the episodes examined did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law, we did not rely solely on that in making our decision,” he added. “Instead, we accepted the Special Counsel’s legal framework for purposes of our analysis and evaluated the evidence as presented by the Special Counsel in reaching our conclusion.” Barr’s comments came during a press conference about the contents of the long-awaited report, the culmination of Special Counsel Mueller’s nearly 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. |
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| Attorney General William Barr walked offstage Thursday morning, abruptly ending his press conference on the Mueller report, immediately after a reporter asked why he decided to hold a press conference before releasing the report to Congress or the public. The walk-off came after a series of tough questions about Barr’s rollout of the Mueller report. A CBS reporter asked if Barr felt his spin about Trump’s potentially obstructive behavior was “generous,” and another reporter asked why the special counsel was not present for a public briefing on his own report. And when a HuffPost reporter asked whether it is improper for Barr to be “spinning the report before the public has a chance to read it,” the attorney general curtly muttered “no” before his handler ended the briefing and he walked off-stage. View this cheat in a browser to see this video. |
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| Despite the technical nature of VPNs, they can actually be quite easy to set up and use. The real value in using a VPN lies in the myriad protections they afford you (including identity, privacy, and security) and the streaming and browsing possibilities they open up to you. PureVPN’s service, for example, allows you to connect up to five devices simultaneously so your laptop, phone, and tablet can all get the same treatment without skipping a beat, protecting them especially after you sign onto public WiFi networks in places like coffee shops, conferences, or airports. It also supports desktop and mobile apps that protect Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android devices so compatibility is breezy. Right now, PureVPN is offering a 70% discount, cutting its subscription fee to $3.33 per month (or less than $40 for the year) — and also tacking on a second subscription you can gift to someone (think mom, dad, or friend whose online life could use a bit of a security pillow). The service’s cadre of more than 2,000 international servers across 140 countries means that as you travel, you’ll stay protected and seamlessly able to stream or just browse through your domestic accounts. 24/7 support means that PureVPN has your back if you have questions along the way. As online privacy and security concerns continue to mount and as using public WiFi networks is increasingly common, it’s probably a good idea to invest in protecting yourself and your information — and to ensure you can travel worry-free, knowing virtually no border can keep you from watching and streaming your favorite shows. Scouted is internet shopping with a pulse. Follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter for even more recommendations and exclusive content. Please note that if you buy something featured in one of our posts, The Daily Beast may collect a share of sales. |
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| The National Enquirer and two of its sister publications will be sold to James Cohen, the CEO of Hudson News, for $100 million, The Washington Post reports Thursday. The decision reportedly comes after Anthony Melchiorre, the hedge fund manager whose firm controls American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company, grew dissatisfied with some of the tabloid’s reporting tactics. The sale will help reduce AMI’s $300 million-plus debt, the Post notes, and help the company avoid the legal risk brought on by the Enquirer’s alleged catch-and-kill activities during Trump’s presidential run. In August, a source told the Post, AMI’s board began considering the sale because “they didn’t want to deal with hassles like this anymore.” |
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| The fire that ravaged Paris’ centuries-old Notre Dame cathedral on Monday was “likely caused” by an electrical short-circuit, an anonymous French judicial police official told the Associated Press on Thursday. But although that’s reportedly investigators’ current theory, they haven’t yet been able to enter the cathedral’s ruins for safety reasons. The remaining parts of the cathedral are currently being fitted with wooden planks to help stabilize the structure. |
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| The Mueller report alleges that the GRU, Russia’s intelligence agency, first reached out to WikiLeaks to suggest collectively dumping dirt on Hillary Clinton via Twitter DM. “You announced your organization was preparing to publish more [of] Hillary’s emails,” the agency reportedly wrote in its initial offer. “We are ready to support you. We have some sensitive information too, in particular, her financial documents. Let’s do it together. What do you think about publishing our info at the same moment? Thank you.” |
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| George Zimmerman—the man who gained international notoriety for shooting and killing unarmed teen Trayvon Martin in 2012—was kicked off Tinder for pretending to be a self-employed consultant named Carter, the New York Post reports Thursday. “Carter” billed himself as a graduate of the conservative Liberty University, and wrote that he was looking for “casual fun.” “I love the outdoors, fishing, camping and hiking,” he reportedly wrote. “I love adventure [but] not into huge crowds. I’m also down for a quiet night with Longhorn [Steakhouse] take out.” This isn’t the first time Zimmerman, who was acquitted in 2013, has struggled to find love: A few months ago, he was kicked off Bumble. In his Bumble profile, Zimmerman reportedly wrote that his third grade teacher called him a “class clown” and that he was her “favorite student!” |
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| Just a month after Facebook admitted that it had stored hundreds of millions of users’ passwords in plain text in its internal data storage systems, the company said Thursday that “millions” of Instagram users had their passwords exposed, too. In an italicized addition to the initial post, the company said that “we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format.” The platform wrote that it would notify impacted users, and stressed that “Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed.” |
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