AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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REUTERS

"White House frustrated as Washington mayor seeks troops to help handle migrants"


By Ted Hesson

3 AUGUST 2022

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of migrants bused to Washington in recent months by Republican governors of states on the U.S.-Mexico border have caused tensions between the White House and the Democratic mayor of the U.S. capital city, four U.S. officials told Reuters.

Last week, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser called on President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, to mobilize the National Guard to provide aid and shelter for migrants arriving after long trips from Texas and Arizona.

White House officials and Washington-area volunteers helping migrants are voicing frustration, saying the aid is unnecessary and the request, which became public last week, plays into the hands of Biden's Republican critics.


"What people actually need is housing, transportation to their next cities, legal services and direct social services, which the military isn't really trained to do," said Ashley Tjhung, a 24-year-old volunteer.

The vast majority of migrants arriving in Washington spend only hours or days there before heading to other U.S. destinations, according to an ad-hoc network of volunteers.

Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona have sent around 7,000 migrants in recent months, the states said.

Just after sunrise on Friday, about 30 migrants disembarked from a charter bus near Washington's Union Station after a 36-hour ride from Del Rio, Texas, carrying their scant belongings in clear plastic bags.

The group included adults and families with young children traveling from Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua and Cuba.

They walked to a nearby church, taking photos of the U.S. Capitol building and Supreme Court along the way.

In the church basement, volunteers offered them breakfast, toothbrushes and clean clothes as they asked about medical needs and assisted with onward travel to New York, North Carolina and Florida.

"We have had constructive conversations with Mayor Bowser and her team," a White House spokesperson told Reuters.

"As we have said repeatedly, Republican governors using desperate migrants as political tools is shameful."

Bowser's office did not respond to requests for comment regarding the tensions.

In a July 22 letter to White House officials, Bowser said the issue "must be dealt with at a federal level."

BAD OPTICS

Other U.S. cities absorb thousands of migrants without the assistance of military troops.

Since Biden took office there have been a record-breaking 3 million migrant arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border; many are repeat crossers who are quickly expelled.

During the same period, hundreds of thousands of migrants have been allowed into the country and then often start the process of claiming U.S. asylum.

White House officials disagree with Bowser's portrayal of the migrant arrivals as a "crisis," which echoes Abbott's language about the border, three officials and another source familiar with the matter said.

"The message and the optics aren't what the White House wants to hear or see from a Democratic mayor," said one U.S. officials who, along with others, requested anonymity to discuss the internal consensus.


Senior Biden adviser Julie Chavez Rodriguez had been working with Bowser, the person familiar with the matter said, which made the request for troops even more irksome.

Washington is not a U.S. state or part of one, so the authority to summon National Guard troops rests with the U.S. military.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is taking Bowser's troop request "very seriously," according to a spokesperson.


In recent weeks, New York City Mayor Eric Adams also said migrants from the border were overwhelming city homeless shelters and asked for federal assistance.

On Friday, volunteers in Washington bought same-day bus tickets to New York City for several arriving migrants, including one Venezuelan family that had the address of a Bronx shelter intake center scrawled on a piece of paper.

A small number of the arriving migrants did say they planned to stay in Washington.

Among them was Colombian couple Juan Camilo Mendoza and Noralis Zuniga, who were traveling with their one-year-old daughter Evangeline.

They arrived in Texas after a grueling three-month journey that took them through the Darien Gap, a lawless stretch of mountainous jungle between Colombia and Panama where migrant traffic has jumped in recent months.

The couple do not have family or friends in the United States and came without a set destination, a growing phenomenon among those arriving in Washington, according to one volunteer.

"We only said, 'We're going to the United States.'"

"We didn't have a city," said Mendoza, a 24-year-old construction worker.

"If we can find work, we'll stay here."

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg and David Gregorio)

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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POLITICO

"Dems move to put a cork in the Biden-should-exit-stage-right talk"


By David Siders and Christopher Cadelago

4 AUGUST 2022

With Democrats increasingly airing their doubts about Joe Biden’s presidency, one allied Democratic National Committee member decided it was time to try and plug the chatter.

William Owen of Tennessee recently drafted a resolution to put his fellow committee members on record as being supportive of the sitting president.

The DNC has approved similar measures for past presidents.

But the motivation this time was different.

Owen said he wanted to blunt the pessimism surrounding Biden that was emanating from within the party’s own ranks.

“I keep reading all of these articles about Democrats saying they don’t want him to run,” Owen said, adding that the resolution he’s proposing to take up next month will “put all the DNC folks on record saying they are supporting him.”

That a DNC member felt the need to get his colleagues on record about their party’s leader speaks to the political predicament Biden finds himself in.

Less than 100 days before the midterm elections, the president’s job approval rating has fallen below 40 percent, and polls suggest majorities of Democrats would prefer a different nominee in 2024.


Even now, coming off his best week in recent memory — with the recalcitrant Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) agreeing to a major climate, tax and health care bill and Biden announcing the killing of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a drone strike — the president can’t seem to escape the intraparty skepticism.

Over the weekend and in subsequent interviews this week, Manchin declined to endorse Biden’s reelection.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), said publicly that he doesn’t want Biden to run again, and on Tuesday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said she doesn’t “believe” he will.

“Any [midterm election candidate] who’s polling is getting a poll back right now showing the president is more of a drag than Obama was in the midterms,” said Danielle Cendejas, a Democratic strategist whose firm did campaign mail for both of Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.

“That, I think, leads to a pile on of Democrats who are frustrated about their prospects.”


For Biden, who is still testing positive for Covid-19, she said, “In this environment, he’s just in such a tough spot."

"The poor guy can’t even get sympathy for being sick.”

Inside the White House, aides fear comments like those from Phillips and Maloney could embolden other elected leaders to join suit.

Already, they have watched as Democratic leaders spent weeks dodging questions about whether they want Biden to run.

To push back on the emerging narrative, they’ve deliberately sought out supportive voices — and highlighted the remarks of others, including Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, who have lent their encouragement to a Biden 2024 bid.

White House spokesperson Chris Meagher said Biden “is focused on delivering results for working families, building the economy from the bottom up and middle out – getting Americans back to work, making our communities safer, and cutting costs for families.”

Aides note the string of recent accomplishments they’ve scored and the testimony from other Democrats that this first term could shape up to be historically productive.

In the statement, Meagher added that “MAGA Congressional Republicans are advancing an extreme agenda: putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, proposing a national ban on abortion, and oppose common sense proposals to raise the age to purchase an assault weapon.”

But privately, Biden aides and advisers also are increasingly resigned to the fact that his standing won’t meaningfully rebound before November, even with the slate of recent good news and the possibility of a major prescription drug and climate bill being passed before the election.

“The numbers are the numbers,” said one Biden confidant, who went on to immediately argue that the president’s standing going into the midterms would improve ahead of 2024.

Part of what has fed despair in the party is the inability of the White House to turn around its numbers.

Even as the price of gas has fallen dramatically and the Manchin agreement was announced, Biden’s job approval rating barely changed, ticking up two points from the previous week to 39 percent in Wednesday’s POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

One adviser to major Democratic donors conceded that outside of Washington, “nobody gives a shit” about the Manchin legislative breakthrough.

“[The Biden administration] doesn’t understand that the only thing people care about is inflation, gas prices and the economy writ large.”

“Of course there’s no messaging, and of course they don’t have any idea what the message is,” the adviser added.

“They’re living in La La Land.”


Another senior Democratic strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect client relationships, said they had conducted extensive interviews with swing-state voters ahead of the midterms.

The conclusion from those surveyed was that Biden’s persistently weak standing had to do with voters’ fatigue, on everything from the lingering pandemic to the spate of mass shootings, which injected a higher degree of fear into peoples’ lives.

“Americans are looking for someone that will make them feel something — anything — again,” the strategist said.

But to other Democrats, Biden is a victim of a national media ecosystem trying to prove its toughness covering a Democratic presidency after four years of Donald Trump — and the White House’s inability to adapt to that reality.

“I don't think that [Biden’s] handled that as well as you would like,” said Matt Angle, a longtime Democratic consultant from Texas.

“If four things good happen in one day and one bad thing happens, the story is gonna be about the one bad thing and that may just be a product of the times that we're in."

"The negative polls create stories about negative polls, and then it all kind of builds on itself.”

A president’s public approval rating is historically closely tied to his party’s performance in the midterms, and there is almost no reason to think Biden’s numbers will improve before November.

Presidents at this point in the midterm election calendar have traditionally not mustered a late bounce.

Still, the generic congressional ballot — perhaps a better indicator of midterm performance — has been looking better for Democrats in recent weeks.

And the party on Tuesday celebrated a rare victory in Kansas, where voters in a heavily Republican state overwhelmingly rejected an anti-abortion state constitutional amendment.

The result suggested the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade could improve the party’s prospects in some swing states and suburban House districts.

There’s also an emergent, albeit minority, view among Democrats that candidates in the 2022 cycle can successfully decouple from Biden and his diminished standing with voters — and that they could do it, primarily, by running against Trump and Trumpism.

“It was always difficult for Republicans to win when they embraced MAGA."

"Once that decision was made, this election became not a typical midterm,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who is loudly challenging the conventional wisdom that the GOP will score big in the midterms.

“People continue to argue that this is a typical election and they are wrong."

"They were wrong all along.”

But even if Democrats stave off the most disastrous outcome in November — losing the Senate — it won’t be because of Biden.

Like some other Democrats, Owen suggested that if the Manchin climate and prescription drug deal passes, the unemployment rate remains low and gas drops below $4 a gallon — all credible possibilities — Democrats may escape the midterms suffering less damage than has widely been expected.

His proposed resolution, which could be amended before the DNC takes it up, does not mention 2024, but asks DNC members to express “our full and complete support” for Biden and his administration.

Democrats, he said, could even hold onto their majority in the House.

But Democrats have found reasons for optimism before and been disappointed.

Last year, it was an infrastructure package and a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill many in the party believed could turn things around, only for those wins to be eclipsed by other matters, including the pandemic and inflation.

“Everyone is looking at this reconciliation bill, and it’s something,” said Aaron Chappell, political director of the Sen. Bernie Sanders-aligned group, Our Revolution.

“But it’s late, and it’s little …"

"Should it pass?"

"Yes."

"Is it enough to deal with widespread frustrations with the president, especially with the progressive base?"

"We’ll have to see.”

The president’s unpopularity does complicate the degree to which he’s personally involved in the midterms beyond raising money.

And while a midterm drumming for Democrats would damage Biden’s standing further, previous presidents have recovered from such scenarios.

Biden — if he runs again — would almost certainly be re-nominated.

“If Joe Biden is compared with the unspoken or unidentified ideal, then sure it's easy to rag on him and find somebody else better,” Angle said.

“But the truth of the matter is that if Joe Biden runs for re-election, he's going to be seen straight up against Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis or somebody who's very polarizing."

"They’ll have a lot of negatives, and Biden will start to look really good against them.”

Even Biden’s internal party skeptics concede as much.

One Democratic strategist critical of Biden noted that the last time a sitting Democratic president was seriously challenged was when Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) took on Jimmy Carter, “and Carter still came out on top.”

He added: “The other half of the equation is, ‘Who’s our Ted Kennedy?’"

"I don’t see a Ted Kennedy standing around.”

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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BLOOMBERG

"Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip Left a Fuming White House Scrambling for a Plan"


Jenny Leonard and Billy House

3 AUGUST 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Before Nancy Pelosi landed in Taipei for a controversial meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen, the White House was careful not to weigh in on the trip, stressing that the speaker of the House makes her own decisions.

But behind the scenes, officials in President Joe Biden’s administration were fuming at her insistence on using the trip as a capstone for her career at a moment of highly delicate relations with Beijing.


In an effort to quietly persuade Pelosi to delay the visit, the White House dispatched senior members of the National Security Council, as well as State Department officials, to brief the speaker and her team on the geopolitical risks, people familiar with the conversations said.

When it became clear that Pelosi could not be swayed, the administration instead planned for contingencies, setting up a scramble to ensure communication channels with Beijing were functioning and any fallout could be minimized.

That included meetings between US officials and their counterparts at the Chinese embassy in Washington, people familiar with the matter said.

They were granted anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.

But even as they tried to convince Pelosi’s team that now was not the right time to go, administration officials knew they had to plan for the possibility that she would do so and gird for any Chinese response.

The inability to persuade Pelosi to postpone adds another complication for an administration that is still figuring out its approach to China.

And it left Biden officials in the uncomfortable position of being upstaged by one of the most powerful House speakers in modern times, who has never shied away from poking China and isn’t afraid of upsetting anyone that gets in her way.


When Chinese officials in Beijing summoned the US ambassador to lodge a formal protest, Nicholas Burns reiterated the Biden administration wanted to avoid any escalation and was intent on keeping all lines of communication open, according to a State Department spokesperson.

Pelosi’s trip came as she’s expected to soon wind down her historic career as the first woman House speaker.

While she is likely to be re-elected to her San Francisco House seat, Republicans appear poised to capture the chamber’s majority and Pelosi cut a deal in 2018 with younger House members agreeing to leadership term limits.

Pelosi, 82, valued the discretion of her members about the trip and was especially displeased with leaks her team believed to come out of the Biden administration in an effort to make her cancel the visit, people familiar with the matter said.

An NSC spokeswoman said allegations that the administration purposefully leaked it are false.

NSC spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday called them “unfortunate,” noting that the speaker should be able to travel on her own terms.

Information about the visit was tightly held, kept even from lawmakers accompanying Pelosi.

They didn’t receive the complete itinerary for the trip -- including confirmation of the Taiwan stop -- until the day they left and only after the delegation had boarded the plane.

The trip initially was to occur in April, but was postponed when Pelosi tested positive for Covid-19.

Pelosi’s office continued to make clear to members who were to be on that trip that it was merely on hold.

Communications between the speaker’s team and the White House were fraught, with tension added when Biden in late July told reporters that the US military was opposed to Pelosi’s then unconfirmed travel plans.

The more the administration tried to weigh in behind the scenes, the more Pelosi dug in.

At one point, her team suggested she might consider delaying the trip if the president publicly asked her to.

Biden advisers didn’t believe that was a good idea, not least because they were unsure that she would comply, people familiar with the exchange said.

After days of treating the travel plans as a hypothetical, on Monday, White House officials changed their tone.

Before Pelosi landed in the region, Kirby warned Beijing not to overreact to a potential Taiwan stop or use it as a pretext to increase tensions.

On Tuesday, when she landed and China issued threats of military drills around the island, Kirby repeated his warnings and said the US was prepared to manage whatever Beijing chooses to do in response.

The White House declined to say whether the president personally supported the speaker’s trip and whether he believes it benefits US foreign policy objectives.

Biden this year said he would support military intervention if China invaded Taiwan -- a comment that was quickly walked back and clarified by his advisers.

People familiar with the internal deliberations, however, said the president was probably speaking his mind then, while stressing that it would have no impact on the longstanding One China Policy.

Steely Resolve

US officials have spent the past 19 months carefully trying to recalibrate the relationship with China away from the unpredictability of the Trump administration.

They’ve emphasized the need for clear communications to avoid unintended consequences or a misunderstanding that could lead to conflict.

In her less than 24 hours on the ground, Pelosi also met with human rights and business leaders.

Her message, she said, was unwavering support for Taiwan in the face of Beijing’s threats.

The trip was consistent with her political brand, which she has built on her steely resolve to stand up to bullies.

Throughout her career, she’s taken a tougher stance on China than virtually any of the US presidents she’s dealt with.

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"Wray says he finds allegations FBI mishandled Hunter Biden info 'deeply troubling'"


Jerry Dunleavy

4 AUGUST 2022

FBI director Christopher Wray testified he found it “deeply troubling” when he read recent whistleblower allegations that bureau agents had falsely labeled accurate information about Hunter Biden as disinformation during the FBI’s investigation in 2020.

Whistleblower allegations emerged last month that FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened an assessment in Aug. 2020, which was used by FBI headquarters to wrongly label accurate information about President Joe Biden’s son as false, according to disclosures made public by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), while a whistleblower said FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, Timothy Thibault, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in Oct. 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time.


“I want to be very careful not to interfere with ongoing personnel matters,” Wray said when asked about this by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday.

“I should say that when I read the letter that describes the kinds of things that you’re talking about, I found it deeply troubling.”

Auten “opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation,” according to Grassley, and that “in at least one instance, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”

A whistleblower also said Thibault “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting," according to Grassley, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.”

Thibault, who investigated public corruption in the nation’s capital, may have violated the Hatch Act over his social media posts criticizing then-President Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Barr in 2020, according to DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz last month.


“The investigation that you’re referring to… is being run out of our Baltimore office working with the Delaware U.S. attorney,” Wray said when asked if Thibault was or is working on the Hunter Biden investigation.

Wray added: “I will tell you that what you’re describing is not representative of the FBI that I see up close every day in this country, where I see patriots working their tails off with tremendous integrity and objectivity.”

Auten was involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, interviewing Igor Danchenko, the alleged main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, in 2017.

Auten had been referred by Wray for potential disciplinary action following the release of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's 2019 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse report, though Wray said those proceedings were slowed down to cooperate with special counsel John Durham’s criminal investigation.


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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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CNN

"Cheney says DOJ not prosecuting Trump if there's evidence could call into question the US as 'nation of laws'"


Eric Bradner

4 AUGUST 2022

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said if the Justice Department does not prosecute former President Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection at the US Capitol and “the facts and the evidence are there,” the decision could call into question whether the United States can “call ourselves a nation of laws.”

In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, Cheney – the GOP vice chair of the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, insurrection – said Trump is “guilty of the most serious dereliction of duty of any president in our nation’s history” and pointed to a judge who’s said he likely committed crimes.


She said the House committee is “going to continue to follow the facts."

"I think Department of Justice will do that."

"But they have to make decisions about prosecution.”

“Understanding what it means if the facts and the evidence are there, and they decide not to prosecute – how do we then call ourselves a nation of laws?"

"I think that’s a very serious, serious balancing,” Cheney said.

“The question for us is, are we a nation of laws?"

"Are we a country where no one is above the law? "

"And what do the facts and the evidence show?” Cheney said.


She sidestepped questions about whether Trump being prosecuted by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department would only add to his strength with the Republican Party’s base ahead of the 2024 presidential bid that Trump has repeatedly teased.

“I don’t think that it’s appropriate to think about it that way,” said Cheney, who’s facing a Trump-backed challenger in a primary later this month.

She alluded to Judge David Carter, a federal judge in California who ordered right-wing attorney John Eastman to turn over 101 emails from around January 6, 2021, writing in March that he “finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”

“I think he’s guilty of the most serious dereliction of duty of any president in our nation’s history,” Cheney said of Trump.

“You’ve had a federal judge in California say that it’s more likely than not that he and John Eastman committed two crimes.”

Cheney’s comments come as the House panel prepares for a busy August.

A committee spokesperson also said last week that the committee intended to share 20 transcripts with the Justice Department, a move that comes as the department’s criminal investigation into January 6 is heating up.

The House committee is preparing to release its final report ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Cheney faces a series of Trump-aligned challengers in her August 16 primary, including the Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman, a former Wyoming national Republican committeewoman who has advanced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Cheney is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Her reelection campaign unveiled an ad on Thursday in which the former vice president lays into Trump over his lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

“He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” the former vice president says in the spot.

“He is a coward."

"A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters."

"He lost his election and he lost big."

"I know it, he knows it and, deep down, I think most Republicans know it,” Dick Cheney adds.

Liz Cheney wouldn’t say whether her father has urged her to run for president in 2024.

“Look, Dick Cheney is a big Liz Cheney supporter,” she said.

She said the former vice president shares “this real sadness, frankly, about what’s happening to our party, and a real despair about how it could be that so many Republicans would refuse to stand up and tell the truth.”

“And it is a scary moment for the nation,” she added.

Cheney says more to come from the committee this fall

Liz Cheney, who has courted Democratic voters in Wyoming’s primary, said she doesn’t see the House committee’s work through the lens of political outcomes.

Cheney said the House panel will continue to lay out evidence in the coming months and that she expects the committee to “have an opinion” about making criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

“There’s much more that we have not yet shared in hearings and that we anticipate we will share in the fall,” she said.

“And we will also make decisions about criminal referrals."

"And ultimately, the decision about prosecution’s up to the Justice Department."

"But I would anticipate that the committee will have an opinion on it.”


Cheney said that during the committee’s probe, she has learned that Trump’s effort to block the 2020 election results were “a more sophisticated and broader-reaching effort than I understood coming into it.”

“I think all of us on the committee have had that same reaction, which is that there’s so much, there was so much more that was happening in multiple different areas, whether it was the pressure on state officials or the pressure on the Justice Department” or efforts to push former Vice President Mike Pence to reject some states’ electoral votes.

“The volume of information has been more than I expected,” she said.

Cheney praised Pence for rejecting the pressure from Trump.

She said Pence, who, as vice president oversaw the session of Congress in which electoral votes were officially counted, “was a hero on January 6.”

“It’s very clear that there was tremendous pressure from a number of different places on him."

"And he did his duty and he didn’t succumb to that pressure and if he had succumbed to that pressure, things would have been very different,” she said.

“And so I think that that we owe him gratitude for how he conducted himself and for his refusal to do what Donald Trump wanted him to do, which would have been illegal.”

Cheney faces voters on August 16

Cheney said she expects to win her primary in less than two weeks, despite her opponents attacking her role on the committee.

“I don’t expect to lose."

"I’m working hard to earn every single vote and, ultimately, I really believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand how important fidelity to the Constitution is; understand how important it is that we fight for those fundamental principles on which everything else is based,” she said.

However, the congresswoman also made clear that she is not tempering her criticism of Trump at all – even if it costs her the House seat that her father held and that she has held since 2017.

“We’re in a situation where former President Trump has betrayed the patriotism of millions and millions of people across our country, and many people here in Wyoming, and he’s lied to them,” she said.

“And what I know to do is to tell the truth, and to make sure that people understand the truth about what happened and why it matters so much.”

Asked why she thinks voters believe Trump, Cheney added: “It’s just consistent lying about what happened about the election, playing on people’s patriotism."

"And he’s so dangerous that, you know, my view is that at the end of the day, if defending the Constitution against the threat that he poses means losing a House seat, then that’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to make."


"I don’t intend to lose."

"But some things are more important than any individual office or political campaign.”

Cheney would not discuss her political plans after this month’s primary.

But she said she will do “whatever is necessary” to keep Trump from becoming the GOP presidential nominee for a third consecutive election in 2024.

She said she intends to be “a big part of making sure that we protect the nation” from Trump, whether she wins reelection or not.


Cheney also urged members of both parties to band against GOP candidates who have advanced Trump’s lies about election fraud and are seeking to take over the election machinery of key states this fall.

Republicans in recent months have nominated candidates who have embraced Trump’s lies about election fraud for offices that control the election machinery in a series of states, including some of the nation’s most competitive presidential battlegrounds: Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The party has also endorsed an election denier for the top elections post in Michigan.

“I don’t think anybody should vote for any election denier,” Cheney said.

She cast defeating those candidates as critical to stopping Trump from circumventing the will of American voters if he is nominated for president in 2024.

“I think we have to make sure that we come together and form alliances across party lines, to make sure that the people that we are electing are not going to unravel the republic,” she said.

Cheney lambasted Democrats for meddling in GOP primaries to boost election deniers that they think will be less viable general election candidates, as was the case in the primary defeat this week of Republican Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan, one of the 10 Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Trump following the insurrection.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pumped more than $300,000 into television ads to boost Trump-endorsed John Gibbs against him.

Cheney said Democrats’ involvement in the race was “terrible.”

“All of us, again, across party lines, have got to make sure that we are supporting people who believe fundamentally in our democratic system,” she said.

“And so I think that it’s inexplicable and wrong for the Democrats to be funding election deniers, particularly against one of the 10 Republicans who so bravely stood up and did the right thing.”

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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FOX NEWS

"South Korean president skips in-person meeting with Pelosi, causing controversy"


Mitch Shin

4 AUGUST 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrapped up her two-day visit to Seoul on Thursday, but her non-in-person meeting with the president has led to controversy among South Koreans.

Pelosi is the first sitting speaker to visit South Korea since Dennis Hastert visited Seoul in 2002.

She met her counterpart, Kim Jin-pyo, the speaker of the National Assembly, and agreed to support both governments’ efforts to achieve denuclearization and peace on the peninsula under strong deterrence against North Korea.

However, public criticism has soared over South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol — who skipped an in-person meeting with Pelosi due to his being on his summer vacation in his nation's capital, Seoul.

Despite her official visit to Seoul, the South Korean presidential office gave several responses over the meeting with Pelosi.

Initially the president's office told reporters that the meeting between Yoon and Pelosi was not arranged because of Yoon’s scheduled summer vacation.

Then it suddenly said that it was coordinating with Pelosi’s office to arrange a meeting, but then reversed its announcement again, saying there was no coordination between the two offices.

Although Yoon has been staying at his home in Seoul, his office finally confirmed on Thursday that the two would have a phone call and not a face-to-face meeting.

The call between the two lasted 40 minutes.

Earlier on the trip, she met with the leaders of Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan before she arrived in Seoul.

She is also expected to have a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday.

Choi Young-bum, the senior presidential secretary for public relations, said the decision not to have a meeting with Pelosi was made based on "the national interest."

However, the official refused to answer further questions from reporters on what "the national interest" referred to in this situation.

Adding to the controversy was when Pelosi's delegation arrived at Osan Air Base on Wednesday where a photo showed the absence of Seoul officials welcoming her and the delegation on-site.

Choi said that Pelosi’s counterpart, the National Assembly speaker, was the one who should have been responsible for holding a welcoming ceremony.

He also claimed that Pelosi’s office turned down a ceremony given her delegation’s late-night arrival on Wednesday.

Pelosi’s office has not yet made a statement over the controversies arising from the criticism aimed at the South Korean president by many in the public there.

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR AUGUST 5, 2022 AT 4:32 PM

Paul Plante says:

And talk about the plotting of COUPS and INSURRECTIONS, people, and outright SEDITION a la the Catiline Conspiracy to take over Rome coupled with Brutus and Cassius and Dolabella conspiring with members of the Roman Senate to butcher Julius Caesar all joined together in a farcical, absurdist drama scripted by Mel Brooks as a sequel to “Blazing Saddles,” there we have it above here, not in my words, but as it was openly discussed in the MAIN-STREAM and LEGACY MEDIA, and thus, was never a secret, as Andy McCabe, the former acting FBI director, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein openly and brazenly plotted with the leaders of the so-called “Gang of 8 Conspiracy” in Washington, D.C., to subvert OUR government by having Trump’s cabinet ministers and Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office so Mike Pence could take over as president, instead, and this goes back to 2016 and thus is not anything new today, nor was it anything new on 6 January 2021, and in fact, it is my belief that it was the open plotting of this coup in the media by Andy McCabe, who told NBC’s “Today” show that he briefed congressional leaders and the “Gang of 8” bipartisan group of leaders on the Hill, who did not object to the COUP on legal grounds and nor on constitutional grounds, the LEADERS of the GANG OF EIGHT CONSPIRATORS involved in the COUP PLOTTING with Andy McCabe including Nancy Pelosi, of course, and Charley “Chuck” Schumer, and Addison “Mitch” McConnell, and Paul Ryan, and they brought into the COUP PLOTTING Pence, of course, who was to be the beneficiary of the COUP, along with Joe Biden, Lizzie Warren, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), who called Trump “unfit” and “unwell” in remarks on Twitter, and who is now a PELOSI WITCH HUNTER, and Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Pa.), and Rep. Mike Doyle (D., Pa.), and Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), that caused the outpouring of anger towards the capitol that resulted in the riots on 6 January 2021, just as the assassination of Caesar by the plotters resulted in riots in Rome.

For at least two years before the 2020 election, including Hillary Clinton denouncing American citizens as a “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES” if they did not cleave to her standard, and Joe Biden calling American citizens “DREGS OF SOCIETY” if they didn’t cleave to his standard, these COUP PLOTTERS were making it patently clear to the AMERICAN PEOPLE that they were doing everything in their power to remove Trump from office, including and starting with HEAPING DIRT on him to influence the 2020 election against him, which purpose they clearly accomplished.

And now, to help finish the task we are being presented with this SCRIPTED FALSE NARRATIVE which is rewriting history as it happened, which is to say, making Trump the coup plotter, instead, which is VERY SLICK POLITICS when you think about it.

And given the Cape Charles Mirror, unlike the MAIN-STREAM and LEGACY MEDIA, is aware of history, and further aware that nothing happens in a vacuum, especially in Washington, D.C. today, which so resembles Rome just before its civil war caused by the death of Caesar, we should take a moment to study that event for similarities as to what is going on today in America as these WITCH HUNTERS seek to INCITE A LYNCH MOB to go after Trump the way the Roman senators went after Caesar to butcher him with their daggers back then, where today, the daggers are the MAIN-STREAM and LEGACY MEDIA.

Going back to Rome just before its civil war, the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar began with a meeting between Cassius Longinus and his brother-in-law Marcus Brutus in the evening of 22 February 44 BC, when after some discussion the two agreed that something had to be done to prevent Caesar from becoming king of the Romans, regarding Mark Antony offering a Caesar a crown on the Feast of the Lupercale.

The two men then began to recruit others, just as McCabe and the GANG OF EIGHT CONSPIRATORS recruited others, and in the case of Caesar, while it took only one man to murder another, Brutus believed that for the assassination of Caesar to be considered a legitimate removal of a tyrant, done for the sake of their country, it must include a large number of Rome’s leading men, and that is the same rationale being employed here today with the on-going WITCH HUNTER HEARINGS on PRIMETIME TV.

As is the case today with the GANG OF EIGHT CONSPIRATORS, the conspirators to kill Caesar attempted to strike a balance, aiming to recruit enough men to surround Caesar and fight his supporters, but not so many that they would risk being discovered, although these conspirators today didn’t have to worry about being discovered, because they were always out in the open with the MAIN-STREAM and LEGACY MEDIA cheering them on and supporting them, except for the Cape Charles Mirror alone which saw through this cheap political horse**** from DAY ONE, it has been so obvious.

Like the GANG OF EIGHT CONSPIRATORS today, the conspirators to kill Caesar preferred friends to acquaintances and recruited neither reckless youths nor feeble elders, in the end, recruiting senators near the age of forty, as were they, and ancient sources report that in the end, around sixty to eighty conspirators joined the plot, with notable conspirators including Pacuvius Labeo, who answered affirmatively on 2 March when Brutus asked him whether it was wise for a man to put himself into danger if it meant overcoming evil or foolish men; Decimus Brutus, who joined on 7 March after being approached by Labeo and Cassius; Gaius Trebonius, Tillius Cimber, Minucius Basilus, and the brothers Casca (Publius and another whose name is unknown), all men from Caesar’s own ranks; and Pontius Aquila, who had been personally humiliated by Caesar, and according to Nicolaus of Damascus, the conspirators included Caesar’s soldiers, officers, and civilian associates, and while some joined the conspiracy due to concerns over Caesar’s authoritarianism, many had self-interested motives such as jealousy: feeling that Caesar had not rewarded them enough or that he had given too much money towards Pompey’s former supporters.

So, how is this CONSPIRACY in Washington today to kill off Trump, at least politically, if not literally as was the case with McKinley, which conspiracy was openly reported on in the MAIN-STREAM and LEGACY MEDIA beginning back in 2018, any different from the conspiracy to kill Caesar?

Answer: IT’S NOT!

But don’t go away and change that dial, because there is more of this PURE POLITICAL HORSE**** intended to inflame passions and emotions in order to influence the up-coming mid-terms in favor of the Democrats, so stay tuned.

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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REUTERS

"Exclusive: U.S. readies new $1 billion Ukraine weapons package"


By Idrees Ali and Mike Stone

August 5, 2022

WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The Biden administration's next security assistance package for Ukraine is expected to be $1 billion, one of the largest so far, and include munitions for long-range weapons and armored medical transport vehicles, three sources briefed on the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The package is expected to be announced as early as Monday and would add to about $8.8 billion in aid the United States has given Ukraine since Russia's invasion on Feb. 24.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that President Joe Biden had not yet signed the next weapons package.

They cautioned that weapons packages can change in value and content before they are signed.

However, if signed in its current form, it would be valued at $1 billion and include munitions for HIMARS, NASAMS surface-to-air missile system ammunition and as many as 50 M113 armored medical transports.

The new package follows a recent Pentagon decision to allow Ukrainians to receive medical treatment at a U.S. military hospital in Germany near Ramstein air base.

Last Monday, the Pentagon announced a separate security assistance package for Ukraine valued at up to $550 million, including additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

The White House declined to comment on the package.

The new package would be funded under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), in which the president can authorize the transfer of articles and services from U.S. stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

HIMARS play a key role in the artillery duel between Ukraine and Russia has been described as "grinding" with very little movement of the front line in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

Since Russian troops poured over the border in February in what Putin termed a "special military operation", the conflict has settled into a war of attrition fought primarily in the east and south of Ukraine.

Moscow is trying to gain control of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, comprised of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea to the south in 2014.

So far the United States has sent 16 HIMARS to Ukraine and on July 1 pledged to send two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS).

It was unclear if the NASAMS launchers, made jointly by Raytheon Technologies Corp and Norway's Kongsberg, are already in Ukraine if the munitions were for launchers donated by another country, or if they were being prepositioned.

The United States previously committed 200 M113 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.

The armored personnel carriers outfitted with medical equipment could make the fight with Russia more survivable for Ukrainian troops who could then be sent to Germany for further medical treatment.

The Kyiv government said in June that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops were being killed per day.

Reporting by Idrees Ali and Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken and Josie Kao

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ex ... 022-08-05/
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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"FBI director will face grilling about Hunter Biden whistleblower claims"


Jerry Dunleavy

4 AUGUST 2022

FBI Director Christopher Wray will face a Thursday grilling from Senate Republicans about whistleblower claims that the bureau improperly labeled evidence about Hunter Biden as disinformation in 2020.

Wray, who has led the FBI since 2017, is appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he will face criticism about the handling of the investigation into President Joe Biden’s son, likely along with a host of questions about how the FBI is handling the Capitol riot investigation, rising crime, national security threats, and more.

“I expect him to answer on how he’s going to stop political bias at the FBI,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tweeted this week, adding in a video that “I would expect Wray to come up with some concrete program where he’s going to be able to tell the 22 members of this committee what he’s going to do to take political bias out of the investigations that the FBI is doing.”

The senator sent a letter to Wray last week asking for more details about an Aug. 2020 briefing on alleged Russian influence efforts that he says were pushed on him and then leaked to the press to hurt his investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.

Whistleblowers revealed to him recently that FBI officials were undercutting or burying facts about President Joe Biden’s son around the same time.

FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment in Aug. 2020 that “was used by a FBI Headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” according to whistleblower disclosures.

“The concurrent opening of Auten’s assessment, the efforts by the FBI HQ team, and the efforts by the FBI to provide an unnecessary briefing to me and Senator Johnson that provided our Democratic colleagues fodder to falsely accuse us of advancing foreign disinformation draws serious concern,” Grassley told Wray last month.


One of the whistleblowers claimed the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Thibault, had “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” in October 2020.

Grassley gave a Monday speech on the Senate floor where he called the whistleblowers “patriots” and said Wray “has personally told me that they won’t be subject to retaliation.”

He argued that Wray has: “an obligation to the country to immediately investigate these allegations and clean house.”

Senators also likely plan to question Wray about the FBI's botched handling of its investigation former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, and the Justice Department's decision not to charge FBI agents with lying to watchdog investigators.

Wray will also almost certainly also be asked about the FBI’s role in investigating the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021.

The Justice Department shed light on the reasons behind the doubling of domestic terrorism cases since early 2020, with a top DOJ official saying prosecutions related to the Capitol riot make up “at least a significant portion of that jump.”

DOJ said this week that more than 850 defendants have been arrested in relation to the Capitol riot, including over 260 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

The bureau chief will also likely be asked about the rise of China.

Wray gave an early July speech alongside the head of the United Kingdom’s MI5 where he warned of the challenge.

“We consistently see that it’s the Chinese government that poses the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security — and by ‘our’ I mean both of our nations, along with our allies in Europe and elsewhere,” Wray said.

Last month, Wray warned about the governments of China, Russia, and Iran potentially trying to meddle in or influence the midterm elections.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are purchasing and using Chinese-made drones from a “Chinese Military Industrial Complex” company — DJI — with close links to the Chinese government, according to testimony from Biden administration officials last month.

Wray may be asked if the bureau will continue to use those drones.

Also, since the May leak of a draft of the Supreme Court’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, there have been heightened threats against Supreme Court justices and anti-abortion advocates, including attacks and vandalism targeting activist groups, pregnancy centers, and churches across the country.

Republicans have called on DOJ to do more, and Wray is sure to be asked about it.

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Re: AMERICA'S FIGHTING BULLDOG JOE BIDEN

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THE GUARDIAN

"Time is running out. The Department of Justice must indict and convict Trump"


Opinion by Laurence H Tribe and Dennis Aftergut

4 AUGUST 2022

On Tuesday CNN reported that key January 6 texts have been erased by officials of Donald Trump’s defense department in addition to homeland security and the Secret Service.

Not even a clueless Hamlet could avoid smelling “something rotten in the state of Denmark”.

With the growing list of deletions, there is a whole new criminal conspiracy to investigate: one to destroy evidence of the grave federal crimes already under investigation.

Nothing so focuses the prosecutorial mind or underscores the need to accelerate a criminal investigation as evidence that the investigation’s target may have plotted to erase the proof of his wrongdoing that is needed to hold him accountable.


The attorney general, Merrick Garland, knows that the fish always rots from the head.

On 26 July, the Washington Post broke news that the justice department’s investigation is focused on Donald Trump himself.

Time is of the essence in bringing his case to indictment.

Indeed, a moving target who gives every indication that he plans to strike again must trigger a different cost-benefit calculus in the inevitable debates both within and outside the justice department about when enough proof has been gathered to indict responsibly – and when it would be a dereliction of duty to delay further.


The former president’s insistence that he has nothing to be remorseful about (other than not marching to the Capitol) makes that debate seem academic.

And the steps being taken at his behest even now in battleground states to replace 2020’s failure with 2024’s success redouble the urgency.

Shakespeare’s Brutus had it right when he said, in Julius Caesar: “We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

In these circumstances, prudence counsels running the clock backwards to set clear benchmarks for moving forward.

Any calculation of how to proceed must start with two pessimistic premises.

First, that Trump will run in 2024 and could win.

Second, that if any of the likely Republican nominees wins, the next administration will be one that is eager to scrap any prosecution of the last.

Hence, the goal must be to secure a conviction before November 2024, and in any event, no later than 20 January 2025, when the next presidential term begins.


It is already too late for all appeals from any such conviction to be exhausted by that date, but the key to holding the chief conspirator accountable is a jury verdict of guilt.

Consider this: the trial of insurrectionist Guy Reffitt occurred 13 months after his original indictment.

That trial, and its delaying pre-trial motions, were incalculably less complex than Trump’s would be.

One can easily anticipate motions that, if denied, might go far up the appellate chain.

It is not hard to imagine a majority of supreme court justices in no great hurry to resolve motions upon which the start of trial could depend.

One can easily conceive a 20-month or longer period with the former president indicted but not yet tried.

If Trump is not formally charged until January 2023, that would imply a multi-month trial starting in September or October.

Should he run for president and win in November, we would have a president-elect in the middle of a criminal trial.

Part of why a lengthy post-indictment/pre-verdict period is foreseeable is that federal district courts are bound to protect an accused’s rights to full airing of pre-trial claims and the time needed to file and argue them.

Trump will have many pre-trial claims, setting out his serial and inexhaustible list of grievances, the imagined violation of his rights, his purported immunity from prosecution as a former president and the overriding unfairness of it all.

Some district court judges more than others will balance protections for the accused with accountability’s pragmatic need for speed.


Importantly, even the four Trump-appointed district court judges in DC have often shown little sympathy for those charged with perpetrating the events of January 6 or resisting their investigation.

On 1 August, Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Reffitt to more than seven years in prison, the longest sentence to date.

Judge Tim Kelly refused to dismiss indictments against Proud Boy leaders who were part of the January 6 siege.

Judge Carl Nichols brooked no nonsense in Steve Bannon’s July trial, deliberately preventing it from becoming the “political circus” Bannon sought to make it.

On the other hand, among eight judges who have considered defendants’ motions to dismiss federal charges of obstructing an official government proceeding – Congress’s January 6 election certification session – Nichols was the lone outlier who dismissed the count.

That is one of the main charges that observers believe federal prosecutors could bring against Trump.

The point is that if Trump were to be indicted, the Department of Justice cannot count on a favorable judge putting it on a jet stream to an actual trial.

So what does that mean for precisely when Trump must be formally indicted?

Thankfully, it doesn’t imply the impossible.

The Department of Justice could pull an experienced prosecutor or two from every US attorney’s office and put them together on the case.

With all stops pulled, prosecutors still have time to do what is needed before year end.

The tasks include talking to key witnesses that the January 6 House committee interviewed and deposed, which is well under way.

Cassidy Hutchinson, principal aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadow, and Vice-President Mike Pence’s top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacobs, are now working with the Department of Justice or appearing before its grand jury.


Cooperation is already reported to have begun among the lawyer-enablers of Trump’s coup plotting.

With the investigation’s accelerating aim at Trump, every potential target’s defense counsel has surely discussed with the target the advantages of an early offer to plead guilty and cooperate.

Early birds get better worms.

On 2 August, the federal grand jury investigating the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection subpoenaed the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

Department of Justice prosecutors are reported to be preparing to go to court to secure his testimony about his conversations with Trump if Cipollone again declines to disclose them on grounds of executive privilege.

The task ahead is massive, but if attacked with supreme urgency, it can get done.

The building blocks for a trial of Donald Trump must be put into place with alacrity.

In no case more than this one, the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good.

The clock is ticking.

Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy

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