It has been more than a year since Donald Trump held his one and only full-fledged news conference as president.
.. President Trump took two questions, both from friendly news outlets, neither of which asked about the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, even though Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman was entering a guilty plea at that very time.
.. Please outline what role you played in drafting your son Donald Trump Jr.’s statement about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting? Did you say that the statement should describe the meeting as being “primarily” about adoption? What was your basis for saying that? When did you become aware of the meeting?
.. Are your taxes still being audited?
FISA-Gate Is Scarier Than Watergate
The press used to uncover government wrongdoing. Today’s press is defending it.
The Watergate scandal of 1972–74 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon administration’s attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though illegal, political break-in.
In the Iran-Contra affair of 1985–87, the media and liberal activists uncovered wrongdoing by some rogue members of the Reagan government. They warned of government overreach and of using the “Deep State” to subvert the law for political purposes.
.. The new FBI director, Christopher Wray, has also reassigned the FBI’s top lawyer, James Baker, who purportedly leaked the Steele dossier to a sympathetic journalist.
.. Once again, an administration is being accused of politicizing government agencies to further agendas, this time apparently to gain an advantage for Hillary Clinton in the run-up to an election.
.. There is a similar pattern of slandering congressional investigators and whistleblowers as disloyal and even treasonous.
.. This time around, the press is not after a hated Nixon administration. Civil libertarians are not demanding accountability from a conservative Reagan team. Instead, the roles are reversed.
.. Barack Obama was a progressive constitutional lawyer who expressed distrust of the secretive “Deep State.” Yet his administration weaponized the IRS and surveilled Associated Press communications and a Fox News journalist for reporting unfavorable news based on supposed leaks.
.. Progressives are not supposed to destroy requested emails, “acid wash” hard drives, spread unverified and paid-for opposition research among government agencies, or use the DOJ and FBI to obtain warrants to snoop on the communications of American citizens... Liberal and progressive voices are excusing, not airing, the excesses of the DOJ and FBI.
Apparently, weaponizing government agencies to stop a detested Donald Trump by any means necessary is not really considered a crime.
Exclusive: Massive Pentagon agency lost track of hundreds of millions of dollars
A damning outside review finds that the Defense Logistics Agency has lost track of where it spent the money.
Ernst & Young found that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment. Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it’s responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.
.. The department has never undergone a full audit despite a congressional mandate — and to some lawmakers, the messy state of the Defense Logistics Agency’s books indicates one may never even be possible.
.. The $40 billion-a-year logistics agency is a test case in how unachievable that task may be.
.. The DLA serves as the Walmart of the military, with 25,000 employees who process roughly 100,000 orders a day on behalf of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and a host of other federal agencies — for everything from poultry to pharmaceuticals, precious metals and aircraft parts.
.. In one part of the audit, completed in mid-December, Ernst & Young found that misstatements in the agency’s books totaled at least $465 million for construction projects it financed for the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. For construction projects designated as still “in progress,” meanwhile, it didn’t have sufficient documentation — or any documentation at all — for another $384 million worth of spending.
.. It also warned that the agency cannot reconcile balances from its general ledger with the Treasury Department.
.. the agency also maintained it was not surprised by the conclusions.
.. the Trump administration insists it can accomplish what previous ones could not.
.. That Pentagon-wide effort, which will require an army of about 1,200 auditors across the department, will also be expensive — to the tune of nearly $1 billion.
.. an additional $551 million to go back and fix broken accounting systems that are crucial to better financial management.
.. The accounting firm itself went further, asserting that the gaping holes uncovered in bookkeeping procedures and oversight strongly suggest there are more.
.. has repeatedly charged that “keeping track of the people’s money may not be in the Pentagon’s DNA.”
.. “I think the odds of a successful DoD audit down the road are zero,” Grassley said in an interview. “The feeder systems can’t provide data. They are doomed to failure before they ever get started.”
Pentagon Audit Shows Logistical Arm Of Military Can’t Explain Where $800 Million Went
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Politico’s Bryan Bender about a story he broke earlier this week on troubling results from an internal audit at the Pentagon. The audit finds that the Defense Logistics Agency has no paper trail for more than $800 million in construction projects.