https://qz.com/1252448/donald-trump-lawyer-michael-cohens-emails-have-been-under-scrutiny-by-the-us-government/

NLawyers for Michael Cohen, personal lawyer to Donald Trump, argued in a hearing today that a recent FBI raid on his offices swept up sensitive documents that should be protected by client-attorney privilege. The Southern District of New York (SDNY) has an interesting counterargument: Cohen is barely a practicing lawyer, anyway—which they claim to know because they’ve been reading his emails.

A 22-page opposition document filed by the US attorney to counter Cohen’s request for a temporary restraining order on seized files (pdf) reveals that the Southern District has been privy to Cohen’s email for a while now, having obtained a previously undisclosed search warrant. According to the documents, “Cohen has exceedingly few clients and a low volume of potentially privileged communications” (p.1) and “performs little to no legal work” (p.4).

The US attorney also questioned the Cohen team’s grasp of the law in his own defense, noting that: “Not only is Cohen’s reliance on the [United States’ Attorney Manual] USAM misplaced, but he invokes the wrong section,” which “applies to ‘attorneys who are not suspects’ of a criminal investigation” (p.13).

The government’s argument emphasizes that information seized from Cohen’s work or home were taken as part of an investigation seeking “evidence of crimes, many of which have nothing to do with his work as attorney, but rather relate to Cohen’s own business dealings” (p.4).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earths_Trade_Dispute

The Rare Earths Trade Dispute was a trade dispute between China on one side and several countries led by the US on the other. The dispute was over China's export restrictions on rare earth elements, plus Tungsten and Molybdenum, which are used to make many electronics such as smartphones. China controls 97% of the production of these elements. The US, EU and Japan argued that the restrictions were a violation of the WTO trade regulations. In 2012, the Obama administration filed a case with the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO. In 2014, the WTO ruled against China, which led China to drop the export quotas in 2015.

The rare earth industry in China is a large industry that is important to Chinese internal economics. The rare earth metals are used to manufacture everything from electric or hybrid vehicles, wind turbines, consumer electronics and other clean energy technologies.[1] Rare earth minerals are a group of minerals containing relatively large amounts of the 17 rare earth elements[2]. They are dispersed in low concentrations and are costly to extract from ore.[3]

China's rare earth industry makes up 97 percent of rare earth trade worldwide.[4][5] It is estimated the world has 99 million tonnes of rare earth reserve deposits.[6] China's reserves are estimated to be 36 million tonnes or roughly 30 percent of the world's total reserves.[6]

https://www.thebalance.com/rare-earth-metals-2340169

Rare Earth Metals and Their Applications

In order of increasing atomic mass, the rare earth metals and some of their common applications are given below.
•Scandium: Atomic weight 21. Used to strengthen aluminum alloys.
•Yttrium: Atomic weight 39. Used in superconductors and exotic light sources.
•Lanthanum: Atomic weight 57. Used in specialty glasses and optics, electrodes and for hydrogen storage.
•Cerium: Atomic weight 58. Makes an excellent oxidizer, used in oil cracking during petroleum refining and is used for yellow color in ceramics and glass.
•Praseodymium: Atomic weight 59. Used in magnets, lasers and as green color in ceramics and glass.
•Neodymium: Atomic weight 60. Used in magnets, lasers and as purple color in ceramics and glass.
•Promethium: Atomic weight 61. Used in nuclear batteries.
•Samarium: Atomic weight 62. Used in magnets, lasers and for neutron capture.
•Europium: Atomic weight 63. Makes colored phosphors, lasers, and mercury-vapor lamps.
•Gadolinium: Atomic weight 64. Used in magnets, specialty optics, and computer memory.
•Terbium: Atomic weight 65. Used as green in ceramics and paints, and in lasers and fluorescent lamps.
•Dysprosium: Atomic weight 66. Used in magnets and lasers.
•Holmium: Atomic weight 67. Used in lasers.
•Erbium: Atomic weight 68. Used in steel alloyed with vanadium, as well as in lasers.
•Thulium: Atomic weight 69. Used in portable x-ray equipment.
•Ytterbium: Atomic weight 70. Used in infrared lasers. Also, works as a great chemical reducer.
•Lutetium: Atomic weight 71. Used in specialty glass and radiology equipment.

In the United States, Romney grew up in humble circumstances.[19] The family subsisted with other Mormon refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas,[20] benefiting from a $100,000 fund for refugees that the U.S. Congress had set up.[21] After a few months they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter.[17][20] In kindergarten, other children mocked Romney's national origin by calling him "Mex".[22][23]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/trump-is-going-for-a-clean-reset

“TRUMP IS GOING FOR A CLEAN RESET”: FUMING IN THE WEST WING, TRUMP PREPARES TO DEFENESTRATE CUCK ALLIES AND GO FULL MAGA
The president will meet with potential chief-of-staff candidates at Mar-a-Lago next weekend. McMaster is likely next to go. Then Jivanka.

Even before he decided to launch a trade war and roll the nuclear dice by agreeing in the course of a West Wing afternoon to a risky sit-down with Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump was telling friends he was tired of being reined in. “I’m doing great, but I’m getting all these bad headlines,” Trump told a friend recently. A Republican in frequent contact with the White House told me Trump is “frustrated by all these people telling him what to do.”

With the departures of Hope Hicks and Gary Cohn, the Trump presidency is entering a new phase—one in which Trump is feeling liberated to act on his impulses. “Trump is in command. He’s been in the job more than a year now. He knows how the levers of power work. He doesn’t give a fuck,” the Republican said. Trump’s decision to circumvent the policy process and impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum reflects his emboldened desire to follow his impulses and defy his advisers. “It was like a fuck-you to Kelly,” a Trump friend said. “Trump is red-hot about Kelly trying to control him.”

According to five Republicans close to the White House, Trump has diagnosed the problem as having the wrong team around him and is looking to replace his senior staff in the coming weeks. “Trump is going for a clean reset, but he needs to do it in a way that’s systemic so it doesn’t look like it’s chaos,” one Republican said.

Sources said that the first officials to go will be Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom Trump has clashed with for months. On Tuesday, Trump met with John Bolton in the Oval Office. When he plans to visit Mar-a-Lago next weekend, Trump is expected to interview more candidates for both positions, according to two sources. “He’s going for a clean slate,” one source said. Cohn had been lobbying to replace Kelly as chief, two sources said, and quit when he didn’t get the job. “Trump laughed at Gary when he brought it up,” one outside adviser to the White House said. (The White House declined to comment.) Next on the departure list are Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Trump remains fiercely loyal to his family, but various distractions have eroded their efficacy within the administration.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/07/republicans-pennsylvania-special-election-445221

Tuesday’s special election, which is being held in a district President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points, has emerged as the latest testing ground of whether Republicans are headed for a midterm bloodbath. A loss would be wholly embarrassing, many Republicans privately acknowledge, given that it would take place in a state that Trump made a cornerstone of his 2016 victory. And the themes that the GOP has highlighted in the special election — namely tax cuts and opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are the centerpieces of the party’s 2018 campaign plan.

But as election day grows closer, the national GOP is increasingly pinning the blame on Saccone. In interviews with nearly two dozen administration officials, senior House Republicans and top party strategists, Saccone was nearly universally panned as a deeply underwhelming candidate who leaned excessively on the national party to execute a massive, multimillion-dollar rescue effort. It was complete with visits from the president, vice president and several Cabinet members.

They describe a candidate who largely ignored pleas to raise the money he needed, who blindsided the White House and the national party with his choice of a political strategist, and whose amateur-style social media feed included low-quality videos of him at a local bar and yukking it up with Santa. To make matters worse, Saccone is up against a Democratic rival the party could hardly have engineered had it tried: Conor Lamb, an Ivy League-educated 33-year-old Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor.

. . .

Particularly concerning, they say, is the fact that the millions of dollars Republicans have spent — much of it highlighting the GOP tax cuts and attempting to tie Lamb to Pelosi — has failed to move the needle.

Very detailed report at Buzzfeed including screen shots texts from Mifsud

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/the-mysterious-professor-at-the-center-of-the-russia-trump?utm_term=.bfal3WDP5#.phrRXQ4Vv


Amid the opportunists, weirdos, trolls, and pawns who make up the cast of the Russian plot to interfere in American politics, Joseph Mifsud stands out.

The Maltese professor, who allegedly delivered word of Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails to Donald Trump's campaign, is an authentically mysterious figure, his true role and ties to Russian intelligence unclear.
. . .

Neither can Anna, his 31-year-old Ukrainian fiancé, who says he is the father of her newborn child. And her story, snatched from the pages of a John le Carré novel, offers a glimpse at the human collateral damage of an intelligence operation in which the mysterious Mifsud was allegedly a central figure.

Anna, whom BuzzFeed News has agreed to identify only by her first name because she doesn’t want the attention, says she was seven months pregnant and engaged to Mifsud when he became the focus of world media attention as the professor who told Papadopoulos that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton. Shortly thereafter, he dropped from sight. He also cut off all contact with Anna, including phone calls and WhatsApp messages. That silence has held, even six weeks after the daughter Anna says he fathered was born. “He never helped me,” she said. “Only talk and promises.”
. . .

Now, however, feeling deceived, she’s changed her mind. The result is new information about Mifsud’s activities, including his claim of having dined with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. “He said, ‘I have dinner with Lavrov tonight. Lavrov is my friend. Lavrov this, Lavrov that,’” Anna said. “He even show me picture with Lavrov.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

co·nun·drum
kəˈnəndrəm

noun
a confusing and difficult problem or question.
"one of the most difficult conundrums for the experts"

a question asked for amusement, typically one with a pun in its answer; a riddle.
synonyms: riddle, puzzle, word game; informalbrainteaser