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llen Adams is medium height, trim with good dress sense and secretary of state to the President she distrusts. A reckoning with the Trump era will be worn heavily in the next 40 pages: After the past four years of watching the country flail itself almost to death, she was now in a position to help.

The duo of Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny follow Bill Clintons foray into a masculine thriller genre with his co-author James Patterson in The Presidents Daughter. That sold over two million copies - and Hillary, fairly enough, now spins out her own barely-fiction thriller franchise with Penny, a well-established Canadian writer behind the long-running Canadian Three Pines mystery franchise.

Clintons inside knowledge is clearly the draw here in a book that rests on the instability of geo-politics and America s less certain place as the global policeman. The State Department is the Harry S. Truman building, still called Foggy Bottom by longtime denizens, maybe even with affection. I cant begin to figure out why that sentence got past the books editors - and my guess is that no one dared tell the Secretary of State that not ever insider observation is golden.

As a wave of terror attacks haunt London (Piccadilly features heavily in US thrillers about London), Paris and Frankfurt, Ellen considers the unthinkable which has been pretty thinkable frankly since page one - namely that the president is somehow colluding or turning a blind eye for raison detat.

This demands international co-operation with international figures like Britains Prime Minister Bellington, his hair askew as ever, immensely popular with the right-wing of his party and the Conservative voting public. His raddled charm is replaced by entitlement in random Latin phrases I have literally no idea who the authors might be thinking of.

President Ivanov of Russia is a snake-like dictator with a tight, mirthless smile: Maxim Ivanov stood in the middle of the room, not moving. Forcing Ellen to go to him, which she did. Theres some decent verbal sparring, inspired by Clintons testy relations with Putin.

Soon, a sequence of bombs leads Ellen and her sidekick, ex-teacher friend Betsy Jameson, into adventures, sustained by staunch female friendship, Spanx underwear and liberal references to Chardonnay and yoga.

All in all, this yarn could not be more Democrat in its tastes, aversions and self-belief if it wore a blue rosette and was represented by a donkey motif. Ellen might be insufferable were she not also a novice at the job - a press mogul in the manner of the late Washington Post proprietress Kay Graham, who has just turned over the business to her daughter Katherine but cant escape her tangled family web (not least because they all have important jobs - but hey, thats a dynasty for you.)

Her boss, the noncommittal President Williams doesnt much seem to like or rate her (echoes of Obama-Clinton froideur for the watchful). The State Department and secret state apparatus are at odds and everyone is suspicious of each other in the wake of the dreadful misrule of Eric-the -Dim aka Eric Dunn, the defeated Republican Shrek who is sulking in Florida while his denizens plot to undo the succession in the vast rightwing conspiracy that a younger Hillary Clinton once predicted.

The plot is breathlessly pacey and topical: a Pakistani scientist is on the run and a state department official with a mysterious background in the Middle East receives oddly encoded messages. The race against the global clock heats up as the state of terror creeps close to home and domestic machinations criss-crossing the action in DC.

Its a competent and zippy read, if not first-tier thriller plotting. It does however see the mess the world is in with uncomfortable premonition. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ellen tells the President, will be a disaster, bringing yet more opportunities for terror and women and girls left to the Talibans untender mercy. I guess well need a strong, internationally respected Secretary of State to let the Taliban know their rights must be respected, comes the reply. Good luck with that one, Mr President.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor at The Economist

State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny (Pan Macmillan, 20)

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State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny review: a topical, zippy read - Evening Standard

The headline on a widely-viewed Facebook video is sensational, but unfounded: "Clintons, Powell & Hunter Biden have already undergone military tribunals," the post says.

The video itself is nearly 9 minutes long but doesnt even address the claims in the videos title.

Its a common format found on Facebook lately: a clickbait headline with content that doesnt match.

This post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Military tribunals come up in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which maintains without evidence that powerful cabal of politicians and celebrities run a global child sex trafficking ring. In the video in this post, the woman speaking refers to the cabal and makes other comments that sound rooted in QAnon.

But theres nothing to corroborate the claim that former President Bill Clinton, former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, and Hunter Biden, son of the president, have been subject to military tribunals.

We rate this post Pants on Fire!

Read the original:
No, the Clintons, Colin Powell and Hunter Biden didn't have military tribunals - PolitiFact

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"We werent stepping all over each other" writing their new political thriller, Penny says.

Author of the article:

Its tough enough to put together a novel on ones own. It has to be tougher still to write one in tandem, particularly when the two writers are separated by hundreds of miles with the pandemic preventing them from having face-to-face encounters. Further exacerbating the situation is the fact that while one writer has extensive novel-writing experience, the other, although with seven books to her credit, has never penned a novel.

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So it may come as a surprise to some that Louise Penny and her friend Hillary Rodham Clinton have joined forces in creating State of Terror, one dynamite, page-turning thriller. And not just a political potboiler, but a frightening cautionary tale as well.

On the downside, we couldnt get together for extended lengths of time to toss ideas around. But the funny thing is I dont think this could have been written without the pandemic, says Penny in New York City, where she has been promoting the book with Clinton before they set off for the United Kingdom. Our normal lives are so hectic. We would be all over the place, travelling and working. We really wouldnt have had the focus necessary to do this. We just had nothing else to do and we had few distractions.

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Simple as that? Perhaps not.

Regardless, it shouldnt really come as much of a shock that they pulled if off. With 17 Sret du Qubec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache crime thrillers to her credit that have invariably landed her to the top of the New York Times bestseller list Penny, Knowltons gift to the literary world, can construct webs of intrigue with the best of them. And given Clintons stint as the 67th U.S. Secretary of State, she has been privy to all manner of covert operations and scenarios, some of the doomsday variety. That coupled with an over-active imagination as well as perhaps a score or two to settle with that forever-taunting, orange-haired, thin-skinned reality-show shill who defeated her in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has helped elevate this work to the highest order of fictional mysteries. And lets just hope it is only fictional.

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What was great is that it was very clear what each of our roles were, says Penny, whose latest Gamache oeuvre, The Madness of Crowds, came out in August. I was there, because Im a writer. She was there, because shes got the geopolitical knowledge. It was the perfect partnership where we werent stepping all over each other. We talked, we planned, we wrote the 19-page synopsis together, where we put out the plot line and the broad strokes of the characters and their development.

Then I would write and send the pages to her. She would go through them, make notes long-hand God help us and then we would discuss and move forward. So it was a really perfect marriage. We didnt really fight over very much. If she felt something really strongly, I would relent. And if I felt something strongly, she would relent. We have such different disciplines. We werent jealous of each other or peeing over each other.

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One doesnt need to be a Sherlock to figure out that the books protagonist, Secretary of State Ellen Adams, is a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton sans hubby Bill who has joined the team of new U.S. President Douglas Williams. He has just been elected, replacing the dangerously unhinged Eric Dunn. And one doesnt have to be a Sherlock to figure out who he resembles. But the novels focus goes far beyond the White House into, yes, a state of terror affecting the planet, and Adams has an increasingly difficult time trying to differentiate friend from foe in the highest places.

A lot of the focus is on the external threats and all those who have been radicalized throughout the world, but we sometimes forget to turn around and realize that an equally dangerous internal threat is already in the room with us. That really needed to be owned and explored. We also didnt want all the bad guys to be ridiculous, mustache-twirling caricatures.

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As was the case when Bill Clinton hooked up with bestselling novelist James Patterson on The President Is Missing in 2018, there was, not unexpectedly, much skepticism about the collaboration between Penny and Hillary Clinton.

A lot of people when they first heard about this book were probably thinking this was a money grab or a vanity case, says Penny, while pointing out the obvious that neither of them are really in need of more money. We did it not only because it shouted out fun but also because it was a real challenge. I think both of us are in that stage of our lives where we want to stretch ourselves and to try heading to some new territories. Frankly, this isnt a marriage of convenience, because it isnt not all that convenient. Its really kind of difficult. And we had no idea whether we would be able to do it. So it was a huge relief when we wrote the synopsis. Not only did we have a plot we both liked, but that we saw we could work together and not eat each other alive.

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Reviews have been largely glowing.

We were girding our loins for all sorts of ugliness and nitpicking, Penny says. One of the sub-texts running through is how women, particularly of a certain age, are under-estimated, under-valued and dismissed Not only were our characters under-estimated, but so were Hillary and I. Nobody expected us to be able to produce a book that would be legitimately compelling, thoughtful and thrilling with all the different layers. But I would never attach my name to anything I wouldnt consider my best work.

It is thanks to Pennys trusty Gamache that she and Clinton first hooked up together and became fast friends. After learning through a mutual friend that Clinton was a big fan of her book series, Penny invited Bill and Hillary, their daughter Chelsea and her kids for a week-long stay at Manoir Hovey in North Hatley four years ago. When cross-border travel became permissible, Penny and the Clintons were reunited once again in the Townships.

There will certainly be more meetings in the future. A sequel, even a series, is not beyond the realm of possibilities. Nor is a movie.

We havent committed to a second, but we have fallen in love with some of our characters, Penny notes. This has been an extraordinary time, an experience like none other Ive had. It has been a bit of a vacation. But I can hardly wait to go back to Gamache. My heart is Gamache.

bbrownstein@postmedia.com

twitter.com/billbrownstein

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Brownstein: Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton were 'the perfect partnership' - Montreal Gazette

If last weeks debate was any indication, the moderators of the second and final official mayoral debate between Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa might have their hands full on Tuesday.

Mr. Sliwa, who has struggled to break through with voters before the Nov. 2 election, tried last week to rattle Mr. Adams, the front-runner, by constantly attacking him, speaking out of turn and talking over the moderators as they implored Mr. Sliwa to stop.

The moderators had threatened to cut off the microphone if the rules werent obeyed, but it often took at least two moderators to get Mr. Sliwa to stop speaking. And while Mr. Adams kept his composure, he complained more than once that the moderators were not enforcing the rules.

The task of keeping things in line tonight will fall to three respected veterans of New York City journalism: Bill Ritter, a WABC-TV anchor; Dave Evans, a WABC-TV political reporter; and Mariela Salgado, a news anchor from Univision 41.

Mr. Ritter, a native of Los Angeles who has worked as a journalist since 1972, will serve as the moderator. He started working at ABC in 1992 as a founding co-host of Good Morning America Sunday. Mr. Ritter was kicked out of San Diego State University for protesting against the Vietnam War, but returned to college 40 years later and received his degree at the New School in 2016. He has served as the moderator on mayoral debates airing on the station since 2001.

Mr. Evans, a panelist, arrived at WABC-TV in 1999 and has covered everything from the war in Iraq to the 2008 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. He has competed in many marathons and triathlons.

Ms. Salgado, also a panelist, is a native of Chile who has been a journalist for more than 20 years. She has reported on the disputed ballots in Florida during the 2000 election, the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the plight of undocumented Central Americans as they made the dangerous journey to the United States.

Read more:
Meet the Moderators of the N.Y.C. Mayoral Debate - The New York Times

A federal judge has dealt conservative figure James OKeefe a legal blow, ruling that his groups undercover operations against a Democratic consulting firm can fairly be described at an upcoming million-dollar trial as political spying.

Making matters worse for the right-wing star, the judge cited OKeefes own book as evidence against him.

In 2016, Allison Maass, an operative for OKeefes Project Veritas group, took an internship at Democratic firm Democracy Partners under a fake name. While staffers at the firm thought Maass was working to elect Democrats in the 2016 campaign, she was secretly recording them and relaying undercover video and notes on the group to Project Veritas. Project Veritas eventually released the video, prompting Democracy Partners founder Robert Creamer to step back from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Creamer and Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas in 2017 over the sting. Now, with the trial set for December, OKeefes lawyers wanted to preemptively prevent the plaintiffs lawyers from describing Project Veritass work in court as political spying.

In an Oct. 14 court opinion, though, U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that its reasonable to describe OKeefes groups actions in that way.

Political spying is a fair characterization of the undisputed facts of this case, Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote.

OKeefes lawyers had argued that Project Veritas operates as journalists, an argument that would likely make it easier at trial for Project Veritas to claim their activities were protected under the First Amendment. But much of the evidence that Project Veritass operation could be called spying came from OKeefes own 2018 book, American Pravda.

Describing the Democracy Partners sting in his book, OKeefe wrote that Maass worked under an assigned role and compared her to a spy working in the Soviet Unionliterally living out her character in Americas capital city much as Americans overseas did in Moscow during the Cold War.

As if to make the comparison between Maass and notorious political spying operations clearer, OKeefe wrote in his book that Maass devised a way to hide her recording device from metal detectors and even compared Maass to the Watergate burglars.

The last time operatives got caught stealthily entering the DNC headquarters, those headquarters were in the Watergate complex, OKeefe wrote. Remember that kerfuffle?

This lawsuit is further exposing the lows to which Creamer will stoop to attack the first amendment, this time by calling undercover reporting political spying, Project Veritas said in a statement. Creamers actions are antithetical to a free press and should be denounced by all reporters.

In another setback for OKeefe, Friedman also ruled that lawyers for Democracy Partners can introduce proof of ties between Project Veritas, and Donald Trump.

The evidence includes OKeefe meeting with Trump during the 2016 campaign and his appearance at Trumps election-night party and could be offered to prove that Project Veritas staffers operated as political operatives, instead of journalists. The plaintiffs also won the right to introduce video of anti-Muslim activist and then-Project Veritas employee Laura Loomer hitting a piata shaped like Hillary Clinton as evidence.

Editor's note: The headline on this story has been corrected to reflect the language in the judges order

See more here:
Judge Rules O'Keefe's Schemes Can Be Portrayed to Jury as 'Political Spying' - The Daily Beast