Background Briefing: August 12, 2019

 

Trump’s Consigliere Barr Has Custody of Epstein’s Blackmail

We begin with the FBI raid today on Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and assess what is happening to the mounting volumes of incriminating evidence this apparent blackmailer was compiling that is now in the hands on the AG, William Barr, who is clearly acting as Trump’s private attorney and unlike James Comey and Jeff Sessions, must have pledged his loyalty to the boss like the consiglieri does to the Godfather. David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter and bestselling author whose latest book is “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America”, joins us to discuss whether there will be a selective leak of blackmail from Epstein’s safe aimed at damaging Democrats while protecting Republicans as appears to be the case with the latest data dump naming Democrats George Mitchell and Bill Richardson. And since William Barr is in charge of the Bureau of Prisons, are we likely to find out what happened to Epstein in the MCC who was sharing a cell with a muscle-bound, mobbed-up ex-cop charged with four murders at the time of his first alleged suicide attempt? With conspiracy theories flying about, the fact remains that a key witness with sordid evidence on Donald Trump who appears to have been laundering money for Jared Kushner’s friend MBS, and was in business with Ehud Barak now running to be Israel’s next leader, has been silenced while in the custody of Trump’s consiglieri Barr, who now has control over piles of incriminating evidence against powerful people close to Trump.

 

 Mexico Is Left Holding the Bag for Trump’s Border Crackdown

Then we go to Mexico City to discuss the growing pressure on Mexico to shoulder the burden of preventing immigrants from Central America from heading to the U.S. and the crisis just south of the border where refugees from Africa, Asia, Venezuela, Cuba and Central America are stuck in limbo waiting on asylum claims. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a Professor in the Schar School of Public Policy and Government at George Mason University and the President of the Association for Borderlands Studies, joins us to discuss how Mexico has been left holding the bag for Trump’s immigration crackdown.

 

Trump’s Move to Deny Green Cards to Poor, Brown Immigrants

Then finally we speak with Mayra Joachin, staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center which has filed a lawsuit today against the Trump Administration to challenge a new regulation that would deny permanent residence Green Cards to immigrants who used government services like food stamps. We discuss legal strategies to expose the racist nature of Trump and Stephen Miller’s policy of deliberate cruelty towards immigrants from the south as opposed to immigrants from Europe.