Mediaboss Marketing

EXCLUSIVE: Former President Trump said Monday that former FBI Director James Comey and Democrats need to be held accountable for spending years investigating alleged collusion between Trump and Russia now that Special Counsel John Durham has released a report that says the Trump-Russia probe never should have been launched.

"I, and much more importantly, then American public have been victims of this long-running and treasonous charade started by the Democrats started by Comey," Trump told Fox News Digital. "There must be a heavy price to pay for putting our country through this."

Durham's report found that the Department of Justice and FBI "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said the activities surrounding the FBI's original Trump-Russia investigation were "a total disgrace," and said "public anger over this report is at a level that I have not seen before."

READ DURHAMS REPORT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE FBIS RUSSIAN COLLUSION PROBE

Former President Donald Trump said the Durham report is a "total disgrace" for the Justice Department. ((Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images))

"This report took a long time because John Durham is a very thorough investigator," Trump said. "But the result is unequivocal and an absolute disaster in terms of justice."

Trump added that "the national security implications of what they did are very grave."

"It turned out to be a giant and very dangerous hoax," he said, adding that he would have "further comment in the near future."

Durhams report was released Monday afternoon after his years-long investigation into the origins of the FBIs original investigation, known as "Crossfire Hurricane." That investigation looked into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, and his report spanned more than 300 pages.

DESPITE ACQUITTAL, DURHAM TRIAL OF SUSSMANN ADDED TO EVIDENCE CLINTON CAMPAIGN PLOTTED TO TIE TRUMP TO RUSSIA

Special Counsel John Durham released his final report on the Trump-Russia probe on Monday. (Photo by Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)

"Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report," the report said.

DURHAM PROBE: FBI OFFERED CHRISTOPHER STEELE $1 MILLION TO CORROBORATE TRUMP ALLEGATIONS IN DOSSIER

Durham added that his investigation also revealed that "senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically-affiliated persons and entities."

"This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Muellers investigation," the report states. "In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump's political opponents."

The leadership of James Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was questioned in Special Counsel John Durham's report on the Trump-Russia probe. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence," the report states.

Durham is referring to past FBI leadership in his report specifically former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Durham's report "does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

In a statement to Fox News Digital reacting to Durham's report, the FBI said:

"The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented," the FBI said. "This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect."

Read more from the original source:
Trump says there 'must be a heavy price to pay' for Comey, Democrats after release of Durham report - Fox News

The MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) and the closely affiliated nonprofit Corticotoday announced the launch of a broad-based effort that draws on expertise in face-to-face human dialogue, digital networks, and machine learning to develop safe and trusted spaces for meaningful, nonpolarizing human connection and civic impact. This effort has attracted commitments of $21 million from philanthropic individuals and organizations, including a foundational gift from the international nonprofit Project Liberty. Of the total commitments, $8.5 million is directed to research conducted by CCC in collaboration with MITs Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, and the remainder to Cortico.

The goal is to develop and deploy technologies and methods to accelerate more trusted and meaningful communications within and across communities. Initial projects will research and experiment with new forms of social networks grounded in small group dialogue and decentralized social network designs, including the open-sourceDecentralized Social Networking Protocol(DSNP) that was released by Project Liberty in 2021. Other planned projects include the development of AI-powered sensemaking tools for community listening, as well as hardware to integrate real-life conversations with digital networks. These combined efforts focus on providing healthier alternatives to the current social media platforms controlled by dominant tech companies.

With growing evidence that social media is weakening our social fabric and threatening our democracy, its critical that we find new ways forward, says CCC Director Deb Roy, MIT professor of media arts and sciences and co-founder and CEO of Cortico. While we acknowledge that whatever new platform we develop wont be able to compete with social media platforms for entertainment value, they can provide alternative, scalable spaces for trusted and civil public discourse that is so critical for rebuilding a healthy democracy.The work enabled by this gift will advance CCCs research in sensemaking, machine learning, and digital design through a close collaboration with Cortico, which will work with CCC to develop prototypes that can then be translated into scalable solutions. These efforts involve launching pilot programs with a wide network of community organizations to evaluate which tools offer the greatest potential to create more trusted, less divisive communication.Research is based at the Media Lab with growing collaborations with the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

This effort will draw on MITs strong cross-disciplinary research tradition to address the increasingly divisive nature of todays social media culture. I look forward to seeing how this collaborations in-depth research in AI, sensemaking, machine learning, and digital design will come together to help create more trusted social networks that will foster more meaningful and constructive dialogues, says Maria T. Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and vice president for research at MIT.

The effort will leverage a longstanding cooperative agreement between researchers at MIT and Cortico that enables collaboration on intellectual property, prototyping, and field pilots. In addition to Project Liberty, the effort is supported by Reid Hoffman, the Quadrivium Foundation, Yat Siu, the Knight Foundation, and Ray Chambers/MCJ Amelior Foundation.

Frank McCourt, founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, sees support for this new effort as a critical investment to strengthen democracy that will highlight the importance of comprehensive, collaborative action. If we do this right, says McCourt, the dominance of a few Goliathan social media platforms will give way to a thousand Davids that support healthier digital communities and serve society at large.

"We at Project Liberty are committed to developing and delivering cutting-edge technology designed for the public good and helping to build an internet that puts people over platforms and enables constructive civic discourse, says Martina Larkin, CEO of Project Liberty. The work under way at MITs CCC and at Cortico, in collaboration with Project Liberty, will be critical to advancing this effort.

Fostering collaborations across the MIT campus and beyond, the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, based at the MIT Media Lab, leverages data-driven analytics to better understand current social and mass media ecosystems and designs new tools and communication networks to foster constructive dialogue, listening, and bridging across divides. To achieve this, CCC brings together researchers in AI, computational social science, digital interactive design, and learning technologies with software engineers, journalists, political scientists, designers, and community organizers. An important aspect of the center is its commitment to designing new models for more trusted and less toxic social networks.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Cortico maintains a long-term cooperation agreement with MIT that enables close collaboration with the MIT Center of Constructive Communication on intellectual property, prototyping, and field pilots. It is through Cortico that CCC deploys scalable projects into the field and works closely with experienced, locally based organizations and trusted influencers in underserved, marginalized communities across the country to help facilitate face-to-face conversation and surface diverse voices and nuanced perspectives needed to advance a more constructive and trusted public dialogue. To date, Corticos growing network has involved more than 10,000 participants throughout 38 U.S. states, working with more than 70 local and global organizations.

Project Liberty is an international nonprofit that describes itself as "accelerating the world's transition to an open, inclusive data economy that empowers people over platforms by working to mobilize the foundation of a new internet for the common good. Project Liberty is building a global alliance for responsible technology and bringing together technologists, academics, policymakers, civil society and citizens to build a safer, healthier tech ecosystem."

Go here to see the original:
MIT's Center for Constructive Communication takes aim at the ... - MIT Media Lab

Signage at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

WASHINGTON More than 140 current and former Democratic lawmakers filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court on Monday to defend the country's leading consumer protection agency from challenges to its regulatory authority.

The brief led by Democrats Sen. Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, and Rep. Maxine Waters, of California relates to the case Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, which challenges the constitutionality of the agency and would undermine its funding and mandated authorities.

Brown chairs the Senate Banking Committee, while Waters is the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.

Upholding an appeals court decision that undermined the agency's funding mechanism "would place at risk a funding model that has been used since the early Republic, which now applies to the [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and a host of other crucial federal programs," the lawmakers wrote.

Democratic House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, along with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are among 144 current and former members of Congress who signed on to the brief.

Ten consumer advocacy organizations also filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court this month in support of the CFPB.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the case in February, four months after a federal appeals court panel unanimously ruled that the CFPB's funding method was unconstitutional.

Congress decided to fund the CFPB, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act after the 2008 financial crisis, from the Federal Reserve out of "needed independence from unpredictable annual funding cycles," according to the brief.

Though the CFPB bypasses the annual appropriations process, its director is required to justify its budget to the House biannually, the lawmakers wrote, and Congress set an annual cap on the agency's budget at a "modest" level using a portion of Federal Reserve earnings.

In the October ruling, Judge Cory Wilson, a member of the three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, called the funding mechanism a "scheme" that is "unique across the myriad independent executive agencies across the federal government."

The Biden administration appealed the 5th Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court, but a final decision could be delayed until June 2024 to hear other arguments in the case. In the brief, lawmakers concluded succinctly that "The judgment should be reversed."

See the original post here:
More than 140 Democrats defend CFPB in case before Supreme Court that threatens agency's existence - CNBC

The result, according to both environmental officials and carbon capture experts, is that many of the projects are likely to face either serious delays while waiting for safety assessments or worse be waved through with less than thorough scrutiny.

The EPA did not respond to questions about the safety of carbon storage and the size of the agencys program to monitor it.

Some climate activists whove long claimed that carbon capture is merely a way to perpetuate a fossil-fuel economy say the lack of regulatory apparatus is a sign of rushed decision-making. And they say it could put low-income residents and communities of color at risk, despite the Biden administrations pledges to address historical disparities in how environmental burdens are distributed.

For the most part leadership in both parties is aligned around trying to deploy as much [carbon capture] as possible, despite what the potential environmental justice impacts will be and despite considerable concerns about the technology and accountability, safety and security concerns, said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the progressive consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Even government officials trying to get these projects to fruition are a little unsure about how this will play out given the lack of bodies behind the relevant desks.

Its tricky because this happened in a way that we werent super prepared for in a federal policy perspective, said Shuchi Talati, who until last April was chief of staff in the Energy Departments Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, which is handling billions of dollars for carbon capture grants and subsidies. I hesitate to call it a bottleneck. Its just going to take some time.

Funding a technology thats unproven at scale may be a massive gamble, though its one that only the U.S. government has the wherewithal to make, said Samantha Gross, who was director for international climate and clean energy at the Energy Departments Office of International Affairs during the Obama administration.

Theres some risk associated with the investment, but I think its a risk thats totally worth taking, said Gross, who now directs the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution. You want to take some risk thats the point. Its a technology that we need.

The money Congress approved is staggering. The bipartisan infrastructure law funded $6.5 billion for technology to capture carbon, pull it from the air or store it underground, another $3.5 billion for carbon capture demonstration projects and $2.1 billion to build pipelines to transport CO2. All that would go into an industry that research firm Allied Market Research estimates as having only $2.1 billion in global market capitalization.

Those are just the direct subsidies. Just as importantly, the Democrat-passed Inflation Reduction Act strengthened a key tax credit that expanded carbon captures viability across many sectors, including cement and steel.

The technology is advertised as being able to scrub carbon dioxide and other pollutants from industrial processes before they can reach the atmosphere and trap the heat raising the Earths temperature.

Carbon capture may be the only real way to cut emissions at heavy industry sites, where switching to renewable energy is not yet an option. But while the underlying technology has been used for years, it has yet to take off at a huge scale. Only 13 commercial carbon capture sites are in operation in the U.S., said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, a group of oil and gas, tech, environmental and policy groups that back the technology.

Read more from the original source:
Democrats bet billions on carbon capture, but the government isn't ready - POLITICO

The search for clues about what motivated a man to open fire on shoppers at a North Texas shopping mall is now focused heavily on social media.

NBC 5 Investigates has learned Allen Police detectives have obtained warrants seeking access to a number of the suspects accounts with major social media platforms. In warrant affidavits, investigators said they believe the accounts may provide a clearer picture of how and when the shooter began planning the assault on a crowd at the Allen Premium Outlets.

In one of the warrants, investigators describe images from a YouTube video entitled "Psychovision Face Reveal," posted on the day of the shooting. Investigators said they believe the video shows the gunman wearing a Scream mask,then removing the mask to reveal his face.

A link to that video was also posted on Russian social networking site OK.ru, where NBC 5 Investigates viewed it along with dozens of other posts on what appears to be the suspect's own page.

That page also contains images that suggest the shooter scouted the Allen outlet mall just weeks before the attack to see when it is busiest. Some of the posts include photos of what appears to be the shooters Nazi tattoos, along with posts containing a litany of grievances and rants about women and various ethnic and religious groups.

NBC 5 has learned police are working to gain access to a number of the Allen mall shooter's social media accounts. Search warrants obtained detail how police believe accessing those accounts may provide a clearer picture of how and when the gunman began planning the deadly attack.

We do know that he had neo-Nazi ideation, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Hank Sibley said at a news conference Tuesday.

Tom Petrowski, a former FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor told NBC 5 investigates he suspects the shooter may have turned to a foreign social media site to publish some of the content because it would be less likely that people who knew him would see the posts and alert authorities.

Putting this stuff on an obscure Russian platform, he knows that that's just not going to go anywhere, Petrowski said.

In hindsight, Petrowski said it seems easy to connect the dots in the social media posts about what the attacker was planning. But, he said its much more difficult for investigators to find those posts and take action before an event without help from the public, especially given the litany of disturbing posts he says now populate social media sites worldwide.

We look at things he was posting online and they're very troubling. But, the sad truth is the social media platforms around the world are just saturated with material like this, Petrowski said.

After reviewing some of the posts, Petrowski said it seems the shooter hoped investigators would find his Russian social media page after the attack. In one post it even appears he left a coded message for police a little more than two weeks ago. A note above that message seems to taunt authorities challenging them to solve the puzzle.

To me, it looks like he targeted the location rather than a specific group of people. He was very random. And the people he killed, it didn't matter the age, race or sex. He just shot people.

Authorities said Tuesday that they are continuing to review digital evidence to gather more information about the shooters ideology and motivations, but said the gunman appeared to fire randomly on the crowd.

To me, it looks like he targeted the location rather than a specific group of people. He was very random. And the people he killed, it didn't matter the age, race or sex. He just shot people, Sibley said.

Meanwhile, the search warrants obtained by NBC 5 Investigates also reveal more details about the weapons involved in the attack.

The warrant affidavits said the gunman was equipped with a tactical vest, 10 rifle magazines, an AR-15-style rifle, a handgun and six pistol magazines.

Authorities confirmed Tuesday that the shooter once had a Texas security guard's license but said the license had lapsed in recent years.

They also said they are trying to learn more details about the mans sudden departure from the U.S. Army and questions surrounding his fitness for duty.

The Army has said the suspect was discharged in 2008 before even completing basic training.

Questions about the shooters military background, and the social media posts, leave Petrowski wondering if a tragedy could have been avoided if only someone had seen the posts and spoken up.

We keep repeating the, you know, 'see something, say something' mantra, but that's really what it comes down to, he said.

Read this article:
Allen Mall Shooter May Have Left Messages for Police in Social Media Posts - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth