TV News LIES

Thousands of documents detailing $2 trillion (£1.55tn) of potentially corrupt transactions that were washed through the US financial system have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists.

The leak focuses on more than 2,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

Banks and other financial institutions file SARs when they believe a client is using their services for potential criminal activity.

However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question.

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Lawyers representing the United States at Julian Assange’s extradition trial in Britain have accepted the claim that the WikiLeaks founder was offered a presidential pardon by a congressman on the condition that he would help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer, told the court that she had attended a meeting between Assange, then Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and pro-Trump troll Charles Johnson at Assange’s hide-out, the Ecuadorian embassy in London, on August 15, 2017.

Two senior public relations experts advising the Food and Drug Administration have been ousted from their positions after fumbled communications about a blood plasma treatment for Covid-19. President Trump and the head of the F.D.A. had erroneously boasted on the eve of the Republican National Convention that the treatment sharply lowered mortality from the disease.

On Friday, the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, removed Emily Miller, the agency’s chief spokeswoman. The White House had installed Ms. Miller, who had previously worked in communications for the re-election campaign of Senator Ted Cruz and as a journalist for One America News, the conservative cable network, in this post just 11 days ago.

Dr. Hahn notified senior leadership at the F.D.A. on Friday that Ms. Miller would no longer be the official spokeswoman for the agency, and that he would be appointing someone to replace her in an interim capacity. Ms. Miller could not be reached for comment.

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The Trump administration’s lead diplomat on Iran, Brian Hook, has announced his resignation days before the US attempts a high-stakes gambit against Tehran at the United Nations.

He will be replaced by Elliott Abrams, who will combine the Iran special representative job with his current role as special envoy for Venezuela. Abrams is a hawk on both countries – and has combined Iranian and Latin American issues before, when he was a significant figure in the Iran-Contra affair under the Reagan administration.

Hook, until now a rare survivor at the top levels of the state department in the maelstrom of the Trump era, did not give a reason for his resignation, claiming the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran had been “very successful”.

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