Al Franken | Presidential Medal of Freedom?

09 February 20

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08 February 20

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Al Franken | Presidential Medal of Freedom?

Al Franken, Al Franken's Website
Franken writes: "There were a number of genuinely moving moments during President Trump's State of the Union Speech Tuesday evening. Rush Limbaugh pretending to be surprised when President Trump announced that he was about to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom was not one of them."
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The White House at night. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)

Trump's Purge of 2 Top Officials Who Testified Against Him Is Straight Out of the Watergate Scandal
Alexandra Ma, Business Insider
Ma writes: "President Donald Trump abruptly fired two top US officials who testified against him in his impeachment trial, leading politicians and veteran journalists to compare it to an episode out of the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced then-President Richard Nixon to resign."
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'The vision is to build an ocean-to-ocean technological barrier made up of a patchwork of tools like drones and sensors to help surveil and identify unauthorized individuals crossing the border.' (photo: Javier Zarracina/Vox)

The "Smarter" Wall: How Drones, Sensors, and AI Are Patrolling the Border
Shirin Ghaffary, Vox
Ghaffary writes: "In an era of increasingly polarized politics, there are few issues as divisive as President Trump's proposal to build a physical wall across part of the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border."
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Pete Buttigieg. (photo: WP)

Pete Buttigieg Campaign Funded by Russian-Linked Oligarch Who Supports Trump and McConnell
Colin Kalmbacher, Law & Crime
Kalmbacher writes: "Democratic presidential candidate and former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg is facing questions after recent revelations that his 2020 effort has taken campaign contributions from an infamous Republican Party billionaire with direct links to the Russian oligarchy. That's according Federal Election Commission (FEC) data reviewed by Law&Crime."

Previously described in the press as “The Giver,” Leonard “Len” Blavatnik is a well-known GOP donor with a New York address who previously took it upon himself to fund President Donald Trump‘s lavish — and allegedly criminal — inauguration festivities in 2017 to the tune of some $1 million.

Now, Blavatnik and his wife are apparently shifting allegiances. As of this writing, they have donated thousands of dollars to Pete for America, Inc., Buttigieg’s official campaign organization.

A summer 2017 commentary for the Dallas Morning News by Ruth May catalogues a bit more of Blavatnik’s political spending habits:

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin‘s favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

Citing public data available via the FEC and from campaign finance data clearinghouse OpenSecrets, May notes that most of Blavatnik’s largesse was distributed among Republicans during the 2015-2016 election campaign–accounting for $6.35 million of the oligarch’s spending up to that point.

“Mitch McConnell was the top [individual] recipient of Blavatnik’s donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik’s holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings,” she wrote.

A January 2019 Quartz article describes another notable expenditure:

Trump’s campaign didn’t receive any Blavatnik cash during the 2016 campaign but he has donated large sums to the Republican National Committee’s legal fund, which has helped finance Trump’s legal defense for the Russia probe, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Aside from the large sums of campaign cash doled out to leading Republicans, Blavatnik has largely been considered problematic by the media and Beltway establishment because of his documented ties to Vladimir Putin and the Russian leader’s inner circle.

“Blavatnik’s relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik’s money during the 2016 presidential campaign,” May wrote in 2017.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow long and loudly beat the anti-Blavatnik drum–and played up his oligarchical connections–while he was mainly known for donating to Republicans and ramped up criticism amidst a controversy that saw Deripaska’s network delisted from the United States’ sanctions regime against the Russian Federation.

Liberal outlet Mother Jones reported on those connections in 2019:

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) sent a separate letter probing whether [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin has a personal conflict of interest in the delisting deal. In her letter, first reported by Buzzfeed, Speier noted that prior to taking office Mnuchin owned a movie production company that he sold, in part, to Access Industries, a company owned by Len Blavatnik, a Russian-born billionaire who has ties to Deripaska. Blavatnik sits on the board of a company called SUAL, a major shareholder in Rusal. According to the New York Times, SUAL’s stake in Rusal will increase as part of Deripaska’s deal with the Treasury Department. In short, a man who is believed to have paid Mnuchin as much as $25 million for his movie company may well benefit from the deal to remove Rusal from the sanctions list.

Buttigieg’s support from the Blavatnik family, so far, runs in excess of $5,000, according to the FEC–close to the maximum allowed by law.

And, since making the donations to Buttigieg’s campaign, the Blavatniks have attempted to “purchase” “influence” (as progressives maintain) with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) as well, giving the Democratic Party’s leading congressional incumbent protection organization well over $400,000 — all the while hedging their bets and keeping up similarly-sized donations to the GOP as well, according to publicly-available data collected by the FEC.  Giving to both sides is a tactic also employed by some American businesses and business leaders.

The former mayor’s support from the so-called “Russian-linked oligarch” was first noted by Men4Choice co-founder Justin Horowitz.

“Wow. One of the billionaires powering Pete Buttigieg’s campaign is a Russian-linked oligarch who contributed millions to Trump and GOP PACs for Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell and Scott Walker,” Horowitz noted. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

“[Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, and] #resistance twitter made multiple media cycles about this donor, saying Russia was taking over America,” Horowitz continued — responding to left-wing criticism that his language was playing leaning too heavily on the largely discredited Russiagate narrative. “Only reason I said ‘russian-linked’ is to point out obvious hypocrisy they engage in on the daily. Billionaire right winger is all that really matters.”

Law&Crime reached out to the Buttigieg campaign for comment and clarification on this report, but no response was forthcoming at the time of publication.

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An anti-racism protester in Washington, D.C. (photo: Andrew Stefan/RSN)

New Study Shows Racism May Shorten Black Americans' Lifespans
Liam Knox, NBC News
Knox writes: "African Americans who reported more experiences with racial discrimination are likely to age faster, adding to evidence that racism is not only a 'social and moral dilemma' but also a 'public health issue,' according to an Auburn University study published last month."
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Israeli soldiers search Palestinians in the West Bank. (photo: Reuters)

Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Teen as More Troops Deployed
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Israeli forces have shot dead a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry has said, part of a spike in violence after the United States announced a controversial Middle East plan."
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Arch Canyon, a 12-mile-long box canyon in Bears Ears National Monument, includes many pre-Columbian cliff dwellings. (photo: Scott T. Smith/Sierra Club)

The US Set to Decimate National Monuments Despite Public Opposition
Alex Lauer, InsideHook
Lauer writes: "In 2017, President Trump announced he would downsize both the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, which would be 'the largest reversal of national monument protections in U.S. history,' writes NPR."

Litigation is ongoing, 99% of people oppose, but they’re moving ahead

n 2017, President Trump announced he would downsize both the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, which would be “the largest reversal of national monument protections in U.S. history,” writes NPR. But when a public comment period was opened by the administration, as Outside reports, 99 percent of Americans who responded opposed the decision.

This week, despite both overwhelming public dissent and ongoing litigation against the proposal, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it had approved plans to slash the size of the national monuments and open about a million acres to mining and drilling, reversing designations from both President Obama and President Clinton. 

Why is the U.S. government bulldozing dissenting voices? As Casey Hammond, the Interior’s acting assistant secretary of land and minerals management, said in a press release, “These cooperatively developed and locally driven plans restore a prosperous future to communities too often dismissed and punished by unilateral decisions of those that would not listen to the voices of Utahns.”

That specific choice of words — pointing out communities that are “too often dismissed and punished” — is misguided at best and malicious at worst, as Indigenous groups are one of the most vocal opponents to the monument downsize. 

“The Trump Administration’s final management plan for Bears Ears National Monument is an example of how the federal government continues to ignore Indigenous voices, and the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni, who among many Indigenous governments and peoples, are in a lawsuit challenging the dismantling of Bears Ears National Monument,” said Davis Filfred, board chairman of the nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah, in a collective press release from the National Parks Conservation Association.

The lawsuit Filfred mentions is one of many legal challenges still standing in the administration’s way, but the Interior is planning to move ahead anyway. According to that department, the fears Americans have are unfounded.

“Any suggestion these lands and resources will be adversely impacted by being excluded from monument status is certainly not true,” said Hammond, without providing any proof of that statement. 

Meanwhile, Carly Ferro, interim director of Utah Sierra Club, responded in a statement: “The Trump administration’s management plan for Bears Ears is nothing more than a wholesale handout to extractive industry.” Unlike Hammond’s declaration, Ferro’s claim has merit, because under the current administration the Department of the Interior is now led by a “former lawyer and lobbyist for oil and gas companies including Halliburton” and has removed barriers to the fossil-fuel industry.

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