Dear Commons Community,

CNN, The Washington Post and other media are reporting that the Senate Intelligence Committee is set to release two reports this week detailing the breadth of a Russian social media campaign to sow discord in the United States.

The reports, both commissioned by the committee, are based on troves of data Facebook, Twitter, and Google handed over to the committee about the Russian campaign to influence the 2016 US presidential election. Much of the data has not previously been disclosed publicly.

The committee hired an online intelligence firm to review data on Russian social media accounts that posed as American accounts.

New Knowledge, one of the firms hired by the committee, tracks online disinformation. In its report to lawmakers, the firm said that the social media companies could have provided more valuable data to the committee and also could have presented it in a more accessible format.

The firm advised lawmakers that there are likely more Russian accounts that the social media companies failed to identify, according to person familiar with the report.

The firm analyzed more than 10 million tweets, 116,000 Instagram posts, and 61,500 Facebook posts sent by the Russian government-linked troll group the Internet Research Agency (IRA), according to the source familiar with the report. The IRA was indicted in February by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Part of the study focuses on the troll group’s “media impersonation and diminishment strategy,” according to the person familiar with the report.

The researchers found there were 44 Twitter accounts posing as US-related news organizations that had amassed more than 600,000 followers. The report notes that many of the phony news organizations posed as local outlets and may have been based on studies that show Americans trust local media over national outlets.

As CNN and other outlets have previously reported, the group also set up a bunch of phony sites targeting specific groups, such as “Black Matters US” that posed as a black activist group and actually conducted real interviews with Americans.

The researchers also found the Russians consistently “attempted to erode trust in mainstream media” and regularly portrayed WikiLeaks in a positive light, according to the source.

A spokesperson for Google said the company did not have a comment on the report but pointed to some of the steps the company has taken to combat disinformation since 2016.

A Twitter spokesperson told CNN the company has made “significant strides” against the manipulation of its service.

“Our singular focus is to improve the health of the public conversation on our platform, and protecting the integrity of elections is an important aspect of that mission,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve made significant strides since 2016 to counter manipulation of our service, which includes our release of additional data in October related to previously disclosed activities to enable further independent academic research and investigation.”

A spokesperson for Facebook said they didn’t have a comment on the report.

While the tech giants were criticized for their cooperation with the Senate Intelligence committee about 2016 meddling, the Justice Department praised the “exceptional cooperation” from Facebook and Twitter in October when it indicted a woman it alleged was involved in an effort to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections.

New Knowledge’s report is due to be made public by the committee this week along with a separate report, also commissioned by the committee, that found the IRA was active on every social media platform and sought to help Trump win. The Washington Post reported the details of the separate report, by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm, on Sunday.

The separate report shows that Russians working at IRA divided Americans into key interest groups in order to target messaging, the Post reported.

The Russians focused on turning out conservatives to vote with messaging about gun rights and immigration, according to the Post, and spread misinformation to left-leaning African-American voters about how to vote to and tried to undermine their faith in elections. Many other groups, including Latinos, Muslims, Christians, gay men and women, liberals, Southerners and veterans, were also targeted by thousands of social media accounts controlled by Russians, the Post reported.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the draft of the report obtained by the Post reads. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign.”

“The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting,” the report continues, according to the Post.

The Senate Intelligence Committee hasn’t announced if it supports the report’s findings, but it plans to publicly release the report along with another separate report later this week, the Post reported.

Perhaps of most concern is that it is likely that the Russians are still attempting to control social media messaging even now.

Tony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpxfbLERYcw

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday Fox News’ Chris Wallace interviewed Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s legal counsel in the Robert Mueller investigation.  Mr. Giuliani’s answers to the most basic questions were ridiculous attempts at obfuscation.  It got to the point where Wallace pleaded with him to simply tell the truth during the wide-ranging interview.  Here is one example.

Dear Commons Community,

For nearly a century, McKinsey & Company has advised corporations, non-profit entities, and governments on a host of issues.  Its studies are cited frequently in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly publications.  According to an investigation that included interviews with 40 current and former McKinsey employees, the New York Times has an article this morning highly critical of McKinsey for work that supports autocratic governments.  Here is an excerpt:

“At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, the McKinsey has helped raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests.

Its clients have included Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy, Turkey under the autocratic leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and corruption-plagued governments in countries like South Africa.

In Ukraine, McKinsey and Paul Manafort — President Trump’s campaign chairman, later convicted of financial fraud — were paid by the same oligarch to help burnish the image of a disgraced presidential candidate, Viktor F. Yanukovych, recasting him as a reformer. Once in office, Mr. Yanukovych rebuffed the West, sided with Russia and fled the country, accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. The events set off years of chaos in Ukraine and an international standoff with the Kremlin.

Inside Russia itself, McKinsey has worked with Kremlin-linked companies that have been placed under sanctions by Western governments — companies that the firm helped build up over the years and, in some cases, continues to advise.

It has consulted in many sectors of the Russian economy, including mining, manufacturing, oil and gas, banking, transportation and agriculture. A McKinsey official sat on the Russian government’s energy board. Former McKinsey consultants have gone to work in the Russian companies they once advised.

In August, VEB Bank — which is wholly owned by the Russian state, intertwined with Russian intelligence and under United States sanctions — hired McKinsey to develop its business strategy.

There is no indication that McKinsey has violated American sanctions, which prohibit only certain transactions with targeted companies and individuals. But the larger question is whether the company, in pursuing legitimate business opportunities abroad, is helping to shore up President Vladimir V. Putin’s autocratic leadership.

Other consulting companies serve similar clients, but none have the stature to confer credibility quite like McKinsey, a confidant for 92 years to many of the world’s most admired companies.

In China, it has advised at least 22 of the 100 biggest state-owned companies — the ones carrying out some of the government’s most strategic and divisive initiatives, according to a review of Chinese-language material by The Times.

While it is not unusual for American corporations to work with China’s state-owned companies, McKinsey’s role has sometimes put it in the middle of deeply troubled deals. In Malaysia, the company laid out the case for one of Asia’s most corrupt leaders to pursue billions of dollars from China at a time when he was suspected of funneling vast sums of public money into his own pocket, drawing tens of thousands into the streets to protest against him.

McKinsey defends its work around the world, saying that it will not accept jobs at odds with the company’s values. It also gives the same reason that other companies cite for working in corrupt or authoritarian nations — that change is best achieved from the inside.

“Since 1926, McKinsey has sought to make a positive difference to the businesses and communities in which our people live and work,” the company said in a statement.

“Tens of thousands of jobs have been created, lives improved and education provided thanks to the work we have done with our clients,” it added.

“Like many other major corporations including our competitors, we seek to navigate a changing geopolitical environment,” the company said, “but we do not support or engage in political activities.”

Still, some analysts, veteran diplomats and experts on global governance see McKinsey’s role in a different light.

While the United States pulls back from international cooperation and adopts a more nationalist stance, major companies like McKinsey are pursuing business in countries with little regard for human rights — sometimes advancing, rather than curbing, the contentious tactics of America’s biggest rivals.

“It is more likely they enable these regimes and likely become complicit,” said David J. Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state. “They don’t want to alienate regimes, or they would lose business.”

The article goes on to paint a troubling picture of this major American institution.  Worth a read.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mick Mulvaney, the new acting White House chief of staff, once described Mr. Trump in 2016 as a “terrible human being” who had said “disgusting and indefensible” things about women.   According to Maggie Haberman in a New York Times article this morning:

“Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican congressman, made the comments in a debate with his Democratic challenger in South Carolina, and offered similar remarks in a post on his campaign Facebook page. The post was deleted shortly before he was chosen by Mr. Trump as the director of the Office of Management and Budget at the beginning of his term.

On Friday, Mr. Trump abruptly named Mr. Mulvaney as acting chief of staff a few hours after Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, dropped out of the running. An administration official told reporters that Mr. Trump and Mr. Mulvaney, who have become golfing partners, get along. But the surfacing of a video from the 2016 campaign debate, first reported by The Daily Beast, may present a complication.

“Do I like Donald Trump? No,” Mr. Mulvaney said in the video. He added that Mr. Trump was not a role model for his children, but that he was better than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“We have perhaps two of the most flawed human beings running for president in the history of the country,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “So I have to step back and look and say, ‘O.K., what do you all, the majority of the folks who vote for me, want me to do?’ In order to accomplish that, I have to support Donald Trump, and he has to win.”

He said he was supporting Mr. Trump “as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being. But the choice on the other side is just as bad.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Mulvaney at the Office of Management and Budget said the remarks were “old news” and had been made before he had met Mr. Trump.

Mr. Mulvaney supported “then-candidate Trump throughout the election, and his support for President Trump has never wavered while serving within the administration,” the spokeswoman, Meghan Burris, said in a statement. “He both likes and respects the president, and he likes working for him. More importantly, Director Mulvaney believes in the president — because he is working every day to lift up millions of Americans and stands up for our great country.”

…In a Facebook post from Oct. 11, 2016, Mr. Mulvaney said he had been canvassing his district in the days after The Washington Post first reported the “Access Hollywood” recording, in which Mr. Trump bragged about sexual assault.

“I think one thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump during this campaign is that he is not a very good person,” Mr. Mulvaney wrote. “What he said in the audiotape is disgusting and indefensible. My guess is that he has probably said even worse — and that the Clinton campaign has a lot more material to dump before this election is over.”

He went on: “I’ve decided that I don’t particularly like Donald Trump as a person. But I am still voting for him. And I am still asking other people to do the same. And there is one simple reason for that: Hillary Clinton.”

In criticizing Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Mulvaney said that she was “just as ‘deplorable’ as she makes Trump out to be.”

“She has peddled influence to make herself rich,” he said, explaining his thinking. “That sort of behavior alone used to disqualify people from office — much more so than vulgar language and vile attitudes toward women. But she has gone beyond that: She’s lied to Congress and to the American public. She has broken the law.”

Well at least we now have a White House Chief of Staff who knows Trump well.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After  months of hearings and deliberations , a federal judge in Texas invalidated the Affordable Care Act.  But not to panic.  The ruling, issued yesterday and one day before the end of the law’s annual open enrollment period, is not a model of constitutional or statutory analysis. “It’s instead a predictable exercise in motivated reasoning — drafted by a jurist with a history of ruling against policies and laws advanced by President Barack Obama.”  Here is an analysis by New York Times editorial board member, Christian Farias.

“After sitting on a ruling for months, a federal judge in Texas has given the Trump administration and a group of Republican-led states exactly what they asked for, and then some: the invalidation of the entire Affordable Care Act…

…The reason the judge, Reed O’Connor, gets these cases isn’t a mystery: Texas and its allied states know the game and shop these lawsuits right into Judge O’Connor’s courtroom.

Another thing that isn’t a mystery? The genesis of this latest attack on Obamacare. Disenchanted that a Republican-controlled federal government wouldn’t repeal every word of the law, Texas and a coalition of states tried a sleight of hand: They leaned on President Trump’s 2017 tax bill, known officially as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — which zeroed out the tax penalty of the health care law’s individual mandate — and argued that the mandate itself was unconstitutional.

That argument has a certain flair to it, but the states didn’t stop there. Their lawyers suggested that, because the individual mandate is a linchpin of the A.C.A. as a whole — in fact, the one thing that holds the law together — the law cannot stand without it. If the mandate falls, the logic went, the entire statute falls with it.

Shocking even conservative legal experts, the Trump administration fell for this spurious argument and lent its support to the Texas lawsuit — which, if successful, would render all of the marquee provisions of Obamacare, like protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, null.

This all-out assault on health care is one reason Democrats did so well in the midterm elections, as voters rejected anti-Obamacare candidates at the polls. They included several lawmakers who had gleefully voted for Mr. Trump’s tax bill less than a year earlier.

Except the tax bill did not invalidate the Affordable Care Act — it did away only with the penalty for not being insured. Congress left the rest of the law intact.

Instead of respecting that legislative choice, Judge O’Connor proceeded to find all the operative provisions of the A.C.A. “inseverable” from the hollowed-out individual mandate. The whole law must fall. He gave the Texas-led challengers precisely what they wanted.”

This partisan, activist ruling cannot stand. If it’s not reversed by the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, then it’s off to the Supreme Court, where all five justices who, in 2012, already determined that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional will still be there.

One of them is Chief Justice John Roberts, who made a splash last month when he appeared to rebuke Mr. Trump’s criticism of judges who don’t rule as the president likes. The president this time around is rejoicing over Obamacare’s apparent demise — and is heaping praise on the “highly respected judge” who was itching to do Republicans’ bidding. (The White House, in a modicum of decency, has said the law will stay put as the appeal moves through the courts.)

But as Chief Justice Roberts said when he cast the decisive vote that upheld Obamacare, “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” Here the American people, through their elected representatives, made their choice, both in 2010 and 2017: Obamacare is the law of the land. It will remain that way.”

Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Apple announced yesterday that it would build a new $1 billion campus in Austin, Tex., where it could eventually employ 15,000 people.  This amid a broader expansion that will create thousands of jobs in several American cities.  The company, which has 90,000 workers in the United States, also plans to open 1,000-worker operations in San Diego, Seattle and Culver City, Calif., and add hundreds of employees in offices in New York, Pittsburgh and Boulder, Colo., in the next three years.  As reported by the New York Times:

“Apple is proud to bring new investment, jobs and opportunity to cities across the United States and to significantly deepen our quarter-century partnership with the city and people of Austin,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The move coincides with those by other technology giants to expand beyond their West Coast roots. Amazon said last month that it would divide a planned second headquarters between sites in New York and Virginia after a yearlong beauty contest, and Google is said to be considering more than doubling its 7,000-employee work force in New York.

Apple has been criticized for years for not doing enough for the American economy because it has made most of its products in China and stashed most of its profits abroad to avoid tax payments in the United States.

In January, after the company emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of changes in the tax code signed into law by President Trump, it said it would invest more than $30 billion in the United States over the next five years and create 20,000 jobs by expanding existing operations and adding a new campus.

A provision in the code allowed for a one-time repatriation of corporate cash held abroad at a lower tax rate than what would have been paid under the previous tax plan. Apple used it to bring back $252 billion that it had stashed abroad.

Mr. Trump, who had chided Apple over various issues in the past, reacted to the January announcement by praising the company while crediting his own policies for getting it to make the investments.

In September, though, Mr. Trump took aim at Apple again over jobs after the company told trade officials in a letter that the administration’s tariffs would affect a wide range of products.

“Make your products in the United States instead of China,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Start building new plants now.”

None of the new positions announced by Apple on Thursday appeared to involve manufacturing.

Unlike Amazon, whose competition for a new headquarters was highly publicized, Apple has been relatively quiet about its expansion plans. The company opened its own new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., last year.

The tech industry’s expansion beyond its West Coast base shows the companies’ increasing importance to the American economy. As Apple, Google and Amazon add jobs and new offices around the country, companies like General Motors are shrinking and cutting thousands of positions.

The new 133-acre campus in Austin will initially employ 5,000 workers in engineering, research and development, operations, finance, sales and customer support. It will ultimately have the capacity for up to 15,000 workers. Apple said it expected that its expanded presence in Austin, where it already employs 6,000 people, would make it the area’s largest private employer.

Apple said it had applied for a $25 million grant from Texas, payable over 15 years, as well as property-tax rebates from Williamson County. Those rebates would be in the tens of millions of dollars over 15 years, said a person familiar with the application, who declined to be named because the negotiations are private.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas hailed Apple’s decision on Thursday as “a testament to the high-quality work force and unmatched economic environment that Texas offers.”

Cities and states are competing to lure high-paying tech jobs that can improve their economies and generate tax revenue.

But tech companies, which rank among the world’s largest by market value, carry downsides like gentrification and higher living costs that can push out longtime residents. Austin, like Seattle and the Bay Area, has experienced those effects in recent years as Apple and other technology companies expand.

Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said the concentration of tech jobs in a few metropolitan areas was widening a gap between big cities and the rest of the country. He said the dynamic was contributing to the nation’s political divide.

“The digitalization of the economy is exaggerating the urban-rural divide,” said Mr. Sundararajan, who studies the technology industry’s role in the economy. “The part of the digital revolution that I have been waiting for, that I haven’t seen kick in in the United States, is the large platforms enabling opportunities for individuals who may not have high-tech skills.”

Apple’s announcement is a sign of the company’s strength after a financially mixed year. In August, it became the first publicly traded American company worth more than $1 trillion after a series of remarkably profitable quarters. But its stock took a hit in November after the company said it would stop reporting how many iPhones, iPads and Mac computers it sold each quarter, figures central to understanding Apple’s performance.”

Congratulations Apple and Austin!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The US Department of Education announced yesterday that it would be canceling $150 million in federal loan debt to students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Some 15,000 student-loan borrowers whose colleges either shut down or defrauded them are getting good news this holiday season, courtesy of the Obama administration.

The Trump administration’s Education Department announced on Thursday that it would begin notifying the borrowers today that it is canceling about $150 million in federal loan debt, with about $80 million of that sum owed by students who attended the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges Inc. The action sets in motion the Obama administration’s “borrower defense” rule, released in 2016 to provide debt relief to students victimized by predatory colleges.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had frozen the rule while she wrote new regulations that would make it harder for students who had been defrauded to discharge their loans. She argued that taxpayers would unfairly foot the bill. But a federal judge decided that the Education Department’s delays were illegal, and in October the same judge denied a request by for-profit colleges to postpone the rule. 

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, issued a statement on Thursday calling the Education Department’s action “a good first step” but one that nonetheless falls short of what is needed to help defrauded students.

“It’s disappointing that it took a court order to get Secretary DeVos to begin providing debt relief to students left in the lurch by predatory for-profit colleges,” Murray said, “but I am pleased the Department has finally started implementing this rule and that some of the borrowers who attended schools like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech are finally getting their loans cancelled.”

Murray called on DeVos to “abandon her attempts to rewrite the borrower defense rule to let for-profit colleges off the hook and instead fully implement the current rule and provide relief to more than 100,000 borrowers who were cheated out of their education and savings.”

Better late than never!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump’s legal problems must really be getting bad  when Fox News’ chief legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano, goes on the air to say that Trump is in deep trouble because of the payments of hush money to women who claimed they had sexual affairs with the President. Napolitano was on the air in the morning and again in the evening on Fox News commenting  that Donald Trump’s legal woes are likely just beginning and that the sentencing of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen on Wednesday is sure to cause trouble for the president. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for multiple violations, including breaking campaign finance law. Prosecutors said Trump directed Cohen to make the hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election.

“A very, very telling statement came out of the judge’s mouth yesterday … and that was about the president,” Napolitano, a former judge, said on “Fox & Friends.” “The judge finding that the president ordered and paid for Michael Cohen to commit a crime. That is very telling.” 

Trump denied telling Cohen to break the law, as “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy noted. Cohen made a “damage control payment” and not an illegal campaign payment, Doocy said, paraphrasing Trump.

“I understand the president’s argument,” Napolitano said. “Unfortunately, the court and the prosecutors who work for the president disagree with him.”

Napolitano argued that if payments made on behalf of Trump to cover up alleged affairs were misreported or filed incorrectly, they could have been corrected. But that’s not what happened.

“If you do this as part of a scheme, to try to hide it, then it’s not a civil wrong, then it’s a crime. That’s what the judge found yesterday,” Napolitano said.

Earlier Thursday, Napolitano published an op-ed piece on Fox News’ website asserting that Trump is “directly in the legal crosshairs of federal prosecutors” based on sentencing memorandums for Cohen and Paul Manafort, who is Trump’s former campaign chairman.

Napolitano argued that based on those memorandums, the scope of Trump’s legal trouble goes beyond these hush-money payments.

“The president may want the public to think that none of this troubles him,” he wrote. “Yet the evidence of the falsity of his publicly denied proximity to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin during the campaign and the possession of evidence by the Department of Justice of his pre-presidential criminal behavior are gravely serious, and he cannot reasonably pretend that they are not.”

Napolitano was on Bret Bair’s evening news report again on Thursday night repeating his comments in the op-ed.

Napolitano’s airtime may indicate a crack developing in the Trump/Fox News relationship even though the President had a softball interview with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner earlier in the day during which he desperately defended himself in light of his legal liabilities.

Tony

David Pecker – Chairman of AMI

Dear Commons Community,

The flipping in the federal investigations of Donald Trump is getting fast and furious.  Yesterday as Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen was being sentenced to three years in prison for a host of charges, American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, admitted that it paid former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal $150,000 ahead of the 2016 election to “suppress” her story about an alleged affair with Donald Trump for the explicit purpose of improving the then-candidate’s chances of victory.  The decision, the company said, was made in direct “cooperation, consultation and concert with one or more” members of the Trump campaign.  As reported by various media:

“As part of the deal, AMI offered “substantial and important assistance” in federal prosecutors’ investigation into payments made to McDougal,  prosecutors said.

AMI has previously denied that it “paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr. Trump,” claiming that it paid McDougal to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers, as well as for the story rights related to any relationship she had had with a married man. And on Monday, Trump seemed to dismiss any payment made on behalf of him before the election as a “simple private transaction,” rather than a “campaign contribution.” 

But as part of its agreement with federal prosecutors, AMI now admits it paid the money to McDougal in order to catch and kill the story of her alleged affair to aid then-candidate Trump’s campaign.

Neither McDougal nor Trump are mentioned in the Wednesday press release, which states that the payment was made “in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.”

“AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,” the release added.

David Pecker, the chief executive and chairman of AMI, long considered himself a “personal friend” of Trump. He for many years granted Trump favorable coverage, particularly in the Enquirer, where Trump’s team was given “copy approval and headline approval and photo approval,” a senior editor told HuffPost over the summer. 

That dedication to Trump extended through the election, when the Enquirer publicly endorsed Trump and vigorously attacked his opponents. Behind the scenes, Pecker agreed to go even further to help his friend become president, coordinating with Cohen in August 2015 to “deal with negative stories about” Trump’s “relationships with women,” a decision prosecutors say led to the McDougal deal. 

But as outlined in AMI’s agreement with the Justice Department, the company knew at the time that corporations are not legally allowed to make payments in hopes of influencing an election, and it did not tell the Federal Election Commission about the payment to McDougal. 

As prosecutors zeroed in on the idea that AMI’s payment could be considered as an illegal campaign contribution, Pecker ultimately decided to flip on his friend, agreeing to a deal with prosecutors this year that would grant him immunity in exchange for information related to payments made to McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels. As part of the deal, chief content officer Dylan Howard also received immunity.

We are getting closer to the point where President Trump might start seeking a plea deal.  As one ethics attorney said yesterday,  “If the lawyer gets three years, how much time should the client get?”  

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday Time Magazine announced that its Person of the Year for 2018 was “The Guardians of Truth,” a group of journalists who have been targeted for their work.  A series of four black-and-white covers (above) highlights what the magazine calls “the War on Truth.”

The journalists include Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post contributor who was killed at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in October. This is the first time that a Person of the Year is a deceased person.  Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists who were arrested one year ago in Myanmar while they were working on stories about the killings of Rohingya Muslims, a minority population in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The two men remain behind bars. Their wives were photographed for the cover. The Capital Gazette, the Annapolis, Maryland newspaper where five employees were murdered by a gunman last June. And the fourth cover shows Maria Ressa, chief executive of the Philippine news website Rappler who was indicted last month on tax evasion charges — a case that free speech and civil liberties advocates have warned is part of a wider crackdown on dissent by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.

“For taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for facts that are central to civil discourse, for speaking up and for speaking out, the Guardians” are the Person of the Year, Time editor Ed Felsenthal wrote.

“As we looked at the choices, it became clear that the manipulation and abuse of truth is really the common thread in so many of this year’s major stories.” he said.

President Trump, not coincidentally, was the runner-up for this year’s Person of the Year title. Special counsel Robert Mueller ranked No. 3.

Karl Vick, the author of the Time’s cover story about “The Guardians,” wrote that “this ought to be a time when democracy leaps forward, an informed citizenry being essential to self-government. Instead, it’s in retreat.”

And “the story of this assault on truth is, somewhat paradoxically, one of the hardest to tell,” he added.

Ressa, for example, said she is not allowed to comment on the case against her. (Rappler has said it is politically motivated.)

Speaking with CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout about the recognition, Ressa said “it’s bittersweet and it’s daunting. Look at the challenges we are facing.”

She said it’s a “tough time to be a journalist, but what strengthens all of us is that there’s probably no better time to be a journalist, because this is when we live our values and we live our mission.”

Fellow journalists cheered the selection of Ressa and the other reporters who are on the four covers.

On “Today,” Felsenthal discussed the killing of Khashoggi and the reasons for his inclusion.

“This is the first time we’ve chosen someone no longer alive as Person of the Year, but it’s also very rare that a person’s influence grows so immensely in death,” Felsenthal said. “His murder has prompted a global reassessment of the Saudi crown prince and a really long overdue look at the devastating war in Yemen.”

Excellent choice and may truth win out across the globe including here in the United States.

Tony