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Mark Sandy, a senior career official at the Office of Management and Budget, outside the Capitol before his close-door deposition earlier this month. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images hide caption

Mark Sandy, a senior career official at the Office of Management and Budget, outside the Capitol before his close-door deposition earlier this month.

Updated at 7:57 p.m. ET

White House officials questioned whether President Trump might be breaking the law when he ordered military assistance for Ukraine frozen in July, according to transcripts released on Tuesday by House Democrats.

A career official with the Office of Management and Budget told impeachment investigators that he wasn't given details about why millions of dollars for Ukraine should not be paid but he observed to superiors that the move would raise big legal questions.

Mark Sandy, deputy associate director for national security within the Office of Management and Budget, talked with impeachment investigators behind closed doors on Nov. 16.

The transcript of his deposition was released on Tuesday along with that of Philip Reeker, a top State Department official.

An OMB attorney was said to have resigned at least in part over concerns about the need to follow the law, Sandy told investigators. A second OMB employee also resigned in September, Sandy said, after expressing "frustrations about not understanding the reason for the hold."

In Sandy's case, he described receiving an email on July 12 from a supervisor that announced Trump wanted to hold up military-support funding for Ukraine.

No other country was mentioned and no explanation was included, according to the transcript. The message Sandy took away in so many words was: Stop the assistance now, and then you may learn why later.

" 'Let the hold take place' and I'm paraphrasing here 'and then revisit this issue with the president,' " was how Sandy described a conversation between two other White House officials.

No explanation was offered about freezing the assistance until September, Sandy said, when he remembered seeing an email about Trump's concern that other allies weren't contributing enough to Ukraine's defense.

Allegations about abuse of power

Sandy's testimony is important to Democrats' argument that Trump used his power capriciously the president did not say in real time, according to this account, that he was worried about corruption in Ukraine and wanted to freeze assistance until he was satisfied with reforms there.

That has been among explanations that the White House and others have since given about why Trump acted as he did. What Sandy's testimony illustrated was that no explanation was given in real time.

Moreover, critics argue, the law obligates Trump to dispose of funds in whatever way Congress designates. Sandy told investigators that when he learned of the hold, he warned about its implications under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

The funds Trump wanted to freeze had to be used by Sept. 30, Sandy said. If they weren't, "they basically expire and they return to the Treasury."

A new summary released by the House Budget Committee earlier on Tuesday describes how the first official act to stop $250 million in security assistance took place on July 25 in a letter signed by an OMB official.

Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees warned the Trump administration in an Aug. 3 letter that any such hold could constitute an "illegal impoundment" of funds, the new document says.

That echoed the concerns that Sandy said he and some colleagues voiced inside the administration.

Ultimately, the White House released the Ukraine assistance in early September. Trump and aides had wrought a policy over the year aimed on extracting concessions from Ukraine's leader.

In exchange for a meeting and the military assistance, witnesses have said, Trump wanted Ukraine's president to announce investigations that Trump thought might help him in the 2020 election.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy never made such a commitment.

Nonetheless, Democrats call the actions in the Ukraine affair an abuse of power that could merit impeachment. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday that he plans to convene the next hearing in the process on Dec. 4.

Defenders: All's well that ended well

Republican defenders argue that the totality of Trump's actions on Ukraine over this year show there was no improper exchange. Trump's allies reject Democrats' claims of "attempted bribery" or "attempted extortion."

Trump maintains that his July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy was "perfect."

Read the original:
White House Officials Worried Freezing Ukraine Aid Could Break The Law - NPR

The Washington PostGetty Images

And, right before the holiday season officially begins, the last piece of the puzzle locks into place, and the last alibi falls apart like an overcooked turkey. From The New York Times:

Now we have the whole thing. The president* used military aid money already appropriated by Congress to shakedown the government of Ukraine, an ally, in order to get Ukraine to help him ratfck one of his prospective opponents in the 2020 presidential election. As last weeks testimony confirmed, everyone in this massive loop knew this at the time. Then someone, and we still dont know who, took a complaint to the intelligence communitys inspector general. This was at the end of July. And, by August, they had briefed the president*, who, having been caught borscht-handed, released the aid in early September. Every episode in that chronicle is an impeachable offense, and the entire timeline is one very big one.

Remember what Rep. Adam Schiff said last week, when the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee tried to argue that nothing untoward had happened because the president* eventually released the aid?

Now, even that most threadbare irrelevancy is denied to all but the most fervent members of the cult. The president* released the aid because his lawyers told him hed been caught. On this matter, at least, the case is airtight, and there is no daylight to be found. The president*, among others, is stone busted. That may matter. It may not. But anyone arguing for the defense on the Ukraine matter is bound to look like even more of an idiot than they already do, and those people look like the succulent, ripe fruit of the Stupid Tree already. Thats something, anyway.

Getty Images

As this news was breaking, the president* was having another one of his traveling wankfests, this one in Sunrise, Florida. His trolley left the track early and never returned. From NBC News:

He looked awful and sounded worse. Theres something hinky about one of his arms. His voice was raspy. Im beginning to think it was a bad idea to let the story of his Midnight Ride to Walter Reed fade as quickly as it did. Before the rally, the president* did an interview with Bill OReilly in which he began the process of selling out Rudy Giuliani. From The Daily Beast:

Thats his story and hes sticking to it. For now, anyway.

See more here:
Trump Has Begun the Process of Selling Out Rudy Giuliani - Esquire

Naveen Tewari, co-founder of InMobi, shared about the ups and downs of building a multi-million dollar company

November27, 20194 min read

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

InMobi took birth when the word start-up was gradually becoming a part of everyones daily conversations. Before the start-up culture boomed, InMobi had already scaled heights. It was founded in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena and Abhay Singhal as mKhoj, an SMS-based search and monetization business in Mumbai, and its name got changed to InMobi in 2009.

It became one of Indias most successful mobile marketing and advertising platform provider having a global presence and touching the lives of over a billion people. Top brass of the investment ecosystem including SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Buyers, Sherpalo and University of California in partnership with Ratan Tata made investments in the company.

Tewari talked about the ups and downs of building a multi-million dollar company at the recently held Ascent Conclave 2019.

Dream Big

He shared that in the early days of his life, entrepreneurship was not taken seriously. He even refused the job of a branch manager to become an entrepreneur.

Tewari shared that in the initial years of building the business, the co-founders did not have enough money to buy a Wi-Fi plan. Therefore, they would take turns at the lobby of a prestigious hotel in Delhi, buy coffee and use the free Wi-Fi to work.

The only thing that we had was a dream. The zeal to make the dream a reality was so strong that it helped Tewari and the other co-founders overcome all the hurdles that came in their path.

Related Article:Changing The World of Mobile Advertising

Making Decisions on Gut

For Tewari, the idea to launch InMobi rose from the inner depths of his being. He wanted to spearhead the global Internet space which was bursting into the ecosystem in the early part of the 21st century. He would often ask himself, What can we do to make content free? There were several challenges including the lack of mobile Internet in India besides the country not having a mobile advertising Internet market that they had to deal with in order give their ideas a concrete shape.

Dealing with low is what is very important. This is one strategy that he swears by even today.

Related Articles:Microsoft is Using this Indian Unicorn to Defeat Amazon and Google

Never Give Up

The anxiety of getting investors onboard is the worry of every entrepreneur. Tewari was no exception.

He shared that several investors closed their doors on their idea. However, they did not give up. We kept on talking and talking to several investors, and then one day an investor came and said, Well, we like what you are doing.

Faith

Tewari said a lot of people had advised him to setup the company in other parts of the world where it is much easier to setup business. But it was faith and an ardent wish to make a difference in the Indian subcontinent that gave him the will to launch operations in India.

He also said that having faith in ones employees is also important. He said, We have to give our engineers a chance to create products that can reach the global stage.

Today, he said his products touch 1.5 to 2 billion people.

Related Articles:India's Early Unicorn Company Talks About Maintaining Startup Culture During Tough Times

Speed

Tewari has built a global company. He has offices across Europe and the US. InMobi has also done several acquisitions including that of Sprout, a platform for building HTML5-based ads. He attributes speed as an important factor that has helped it succeed. Speed of movement was very critical at that point in time. Tewari also said they were making a lot of mistakes as well but they possessed speed and aggression, they were able to scale inexplicably.

Link:
5 Traits That Helped This Entrepreneur Succeed and Go Global - Entrepreneur

Read: There is too much stuff

According to Clarence Lee, a marketing professor at Cornell University, gift guides have become particularly effective because nearly everything people consume online, from streaming services to crowdsourced travel reviews, conditions us to seek out internet recommendations as a way to feel confident in our choices. One of the key drivers in the Western world thats creating this reliance on user reviews is the rise of Amazon, Lee says. The retail behemoths near-endless options can hardly be digested without help from an algorithm or knowledgable human. Sometimes that help comes from reviews on Amazon, but one of the most popular services that The Strategist offers its readers, according to Swerdloff, is its writers ability to pull the best products from the depths of the online-shopping giant; she refers to her staff as Amazonologists.

Like most problems in life, though, what to get the most finicky person you know cant always be solved by scrolling Amazon for hours, even if that scrolling is done by the pros. The Strategist makes recommendations all year, so it has a trove of information about the things real people buy and like, based on months of interviews for other guides. It might be something I learned from a What I Cant Live Without with, like, Victoria Beckham or something, Swerdloff says. We do guides to things that might sell out and we talk to trend forecasters. Doctors, Deadheads, movie stars, Radio City RockettesThe Strategist has asked them all what theyd like to receive, at one point or another, and used their answers to direct the public at large. I became a fan of the site after one of its writers recommended a particularly waterproof $11 mascara, allowing me to break my years-long addiction to a Chanel version almost three times as expensive.

Read: The joy of no-gift Christmas

That dedication to telling people about good stuff, whether its done by YouTube celebrities who personally test makeup for hours every day or reporters who ask hundreds of people about the things they actually like each year, is what keeps the gift-guide economy humming along. Fundamentally, the internets gift curators are profitable because theyre doing something that readers want: Breaking down the webs vast, bloated retail apparatus into a form that humans with a life and a family and a job can confidently navigate when they sit down at their laptop after the kids go to bed, ready to tick Christmas shopping off their to-do lists.

For most of the people who make gift guides, its not exactly easy money. Nord and Swerdloff both mentioned how time-consuming it is to make decent recommendationsthe research and reporting involved arent always obvious to those merely scrolling through. Gift-guide season was certainly the bane of my own existence when I was charged with creating them. Thats because the expansion of online shopping hasnt just made gift guides something readers seek out; its also made many people sophisticated enough to spot a bad one. We do imagine our readers being smart and savvy and being able to smell garbage from a mile away, Swerdloff says. Ours are not just a bunch of random crap.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Read more here:
What Happens When You Buy From Gift Guides - The Atlantic

If youre looking for the best SaaS Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for 2019, youve come to the right place.

For businesses and marketers, the biggest sales events of the year, now worldwide - Black Friday and Cyber Monday - present a great opportunity to build powerful tool stacks for the upcoming year. Discover the top five deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2019 you need to grab before they're gone for all kinds of business and marketing software.

If youre not tracking your mentions, you're bound to lose out on opportunities to respond to customer complaints, find leads, and acquire customers.

See an example from Best Buy below after responding to a mention:

Social listeningis one of the most valuable tools you can get as a business or marketer; not only does it allow you to track your mentions, but you can also use it for audience and content research, identifying influencers and monitoring your competitors.

Awariois a tool that monitors 13 billion pages daily from these a multitude of online sources, including social media, website, news sites and blogs, Reddit and more.

Using Awario, you can track different types of mentions according to your needs. These include:

Apart from finding people who mention your business directly, you can also find sales opportunities by monitoring people who mention important industry terms and competitors.

Furthermore, it's easy to search for influencers for future collaborations and find guest posting opportunities on websites in your niche.

To make the monitoring process easy, Awario allows you to set up alerts for important keywords and get notified by email. You can set the frequency and other parameters for the alerts.

Awario offers three plans with annual subscriptions:

However, for Black Friday and Cyber Monday on November 26 to December 3, Awario is offering an incredible 50% discounton the Pro and Enterprise plans.This applies whether you're on a monthly or annual subscription.

Capturing leads is the first major step to acquiring customers. With OptinMonster, you have a series of features that ensure you capture the highest number of leads possible from your pages.

You can capture leads using opt-in form types such as:

Added to this, OptinMonster has about 100 professional templates you can use to capture leads on your pages. And if you want to code your lead capture form in HTML and CSS, the tool allows this option as well.

After creating your lead capture form, another important consideration is targeting. Fortunately, OptinMonster allows you to set your form to show up after a period, on exit intent, after scrolling down a portion of the page, or during a specific time. Likewise, you have the option to specify visitors who can see your opt-in form.

When you run campaigns, you can track performance through metrics provided such as the number of visitors, conversions, and conversion rate. Furthermore, the split testing feature allows you to test 2 variations of your form and see the highest performer.

OptinMonster offers four plans with annual subscriptions:

For Black Friday, OptinMonster is offering a 35% discount on all plansand access to another digital marketing tool.

Only a small percentage of your visitors will buy during their first visit to your website. But with Visitor Queue, you get important information about your website visitors who have left without converting. Using this information, you can generate more leads for your business.

If you run a B2B company, for example, Visitor Queue will show you when employees of a particular company are visiting your site. You also get important details such as name, location, social media accounts, contact information, pages they visited, and their visit duration.

Visitor Queue integrates with Google Analytics which helps to import vital metrics into the tool. The tool also provides 30 days'worth of leads and allows unlimited users.

Furthermore, you can search for companies associated with your visitors and find decision-makers in those companies. Visitor Queue also allows you to add filters so that you only see leads who have met your conditions.

Visitor Queue sets up its plans based on the number of unique companies you want to see monthly. These plans include (paid annually):

For Black Friday,Visitor Queue is offering a 50% discounton all of its annual plans.

To ensure the success of your marketing campaigns, you need to create a robust plan. Whether you're running a social media campaign, content marketing campaign, or paid search campaign,MarketPlanprovides all the features to plan your campaign from beginning to end.

This tool makes your plan visual, so you can see all elements of your campaign on a single board.

Some elements you can add to your marketing plan include:

MarketPlan also provides templates for different types of promotions. You can add different users, including team members or clients, to your plan for better collaboration.

The tool also gives you the option to assign tasks to different team members and shows the progress level of the task. While running your campaigns, MarketPlan provides metrics to track conversions at each conversion point.

MarketPlan plans include:

However, for Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotion, MarketPlan is offering an amazing 90% discounton these plans.

Replyallows you to capture leads, engage in effective outreach, collaborate with team members, and convert those leads to customers.

After capturing leads, you can engage in outreach through calls, emails, social media, and other channels. Since there are many tasks during the marketing process, you can create daily workflows on your dashboard. Or integrate with a CRM tool.

In addition, you get to manage your contacts to ensure your outreach is organized. This tool also allows you to collaborate with team members on different tasks. Lastly, you can track your progress with detailed analysis provided by Reply.

Reply plans include:

For Black Friday, Reply is giving a 40% discounton the individual plan and 30% on the business plan.

Black Friday is an opportunity to get all the vital SaaS tools you need for marketing and business needs, at incredible discounts.What do you think of these offers? What other amazing SaaS Black Friday offers have you discovered?

Read more from the original source:
The 5 Best Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals on Marketing Tools - Social Media Today