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Rachel Maddow MSNBC @maddow
, 6 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
A very interesting new development today courtesy of this American Oversight FOIA request.

Brian Benczkowski led the "landing team" for the Trump transition at the Dept of Justice.

Then, right after the transition, he was hired by Alfa Bank specifically on the controversy...
over those mysterious computer communications during the campaign between Russia-based servers for Alfa Bank, and servers for the Trump Org.

That was a red flag for some Senators when Benczkowski was then nominated by Trump to head the Criminal Division at DOJ.
Benczkowski said at his hearings that he would recuse himself at DOJ from anything involving Alfa Bank, but he would *not* commit to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation more broadly.

He was confirmed as Assistant Attorney General.

But now today...
American Oversight's FOIA has turned up this:
In the end, Benczkowski **is** recused... er, "screened off" from everything having to do with Mueller.

Three questions.

(1) Why the change since his confirmation hearings?

(2) Is this related to Alfa? Or is he "screened off" for a different reason?
and

(3)...
Why is DOJ able to communicate this info about Benczkowski (again, he's Assistant Attorney General & head of the Criminal Division at DOJ) but they are not able/willing to do the same about Acting AG Matt Whitaker?

American Oversight FOIA Materials here:

americanoversight.org/assistant-atto…
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Blunt, angry @MiamiHerald editorial calling for resignation of Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta after the shattering expose from @jkbjournalist on Acosta's role in the Jeffrey Epstein child rape case...
"These abused women, who had turned to the judicial system for recourse, are owed an explanation from Acosta. He cut Epstein a huge and unmerited break...
"Maybe Acosta can include his reasoning in his resignation letter as U.S. Labor Secretary, which he should submit immediately to President Trump."

miamiherald.com/opinion/editor…
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Did you see that A-Block we did a few months ago about a long-forgotten book called "Night at Camp David"?

It was right after the anonymous NYT Op-Ed that claimed Trump was nuts enough that White House staff were constructively (?) sabotaging him for the good of the country...
Here's a link to that A-block:

msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/…
The basic idea was that an obscure 1965 political thriller (written by Fletcher Knebel, the author of Seven Days in May) had an eerily similar premise.

This was subhead on the cover of the book: "What Would Happen if the President of the U.S.A. Went Stark Raving Mad?"
Read 10 tweets
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Hey thanks to everybody who has listened to the first couple episodes of Bag Man so far! #Bagman

Few little things:

(1) There's only 7 episodes altogether -- so 1-2 are out already; there will be 5 more.

(2) New ones come out every Tuesday. So...
...Episodes 1-2 are available now, and Episode 3 will be out Tues 11/6 (election day!)

(3) Because we're dorks, we are posting source/reference material for each episode here: msnbc.com/bagman

(4) That's the same site...
...where you can go to download each episode, read the transcript, or click on links to subscribe.

Thanks again to everyone who's checked it out, subscribed, etc. If you liked how it started, you're going to **love** how it ends.

msnbc.com/bagman
Read 3 tweets

Related threads

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#Trump said his Russian business efforts, including during the campaign were "Very legal" and "VERY COOL."

HAHAHAH....yep, I sure do agree with that. Very cool, indeed.

Of course, most of the media have no clue, though some of them do, b/c some have reported the truth.
Well, sommanab*tch! The link I saved from one of the media outlets that knew ...now seems to be gone. Of course I couldn't archive it because it was WaPo. They wouldn't let me archive it.
Well, here's another one, by Buzzfeed, no less. They KNEW that Trump worked WITH the FBI, yet they participated in the conspiracy against him to frame him as the guilty one.

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NEW: Just arrived from the US Army in response to my #FOIA request.

It took me six years to get this.

Inside the Wire Threats - Afghanistan Green on Blue 1/
All the pages to this report I waited six years for pretty much look like this.
NEW: Here's the complete heavily redacted handbook that took the Army six years to turn over to me in response to my #FOIA

Inside the Wire Threats - Afghanistan Green on Blue Feb 2012

documentcloud.org/documents/5021…
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NEW / THREAD:

I heard back from the George W. Bush Library about my #FOIA request for Brett Kavanaugh's White House records.

They've finished processing the documents regarding his nomination & appointment to the DC Court of Appeals.
.
2/ They tell me that all of those documents have been posted here:

georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/en/Research/Di…

They also posted *lists* of the records, down to the folder, from his time as Staff Secretary and Associate WH Counsel.
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3/ The accompanying email also noted: "For information concerning future openings, see the letters of notification of intent to release Presidential records at archives.gov/foia/pra-notif…."
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Read 8 tweets
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**NEW** Q Drop 05/04/18 15:02 Q says that Patriots Fight!!! We pray for all Patriots who willingly place themselves in harms way and fight this evil!! #QAnon @PatriotsFight #WWG1WGA #GreatAwakening @realDonaldTrump
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NEW: DOJ says it's reviewing the Carter Page FISA application to see what parts can be made public. Before now, the gov't has "never, in any litigation civil or criminal, processed FISA applications for release to the public."
In a new court filing, the FBI says its Carter Page FISA application and order "continue to be very sensitive materials that are part of the on-going Russian interference investigation" by Mueller.
FBI: It is "wholly unprecedented for the Government to disclose FISA applications at all, whether under the FOIA or otherwise." It's being forced to do so because of the competing memos released by Reps. Nunes and Schiff.
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Trump Hotels' website still lists Trump SoHo New York among its properties in the Our Hotels menu. Select its name though to access its page and there's a message about it being renamed

bit.ly/2EPCSy1
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bit.ly/2CpL7z2
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