US recognizes opposition candidate González as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election
 
The U.S. government on Thursday recognized Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González as the winner of the South American country’s presidential election, discrediting the results announced by electoral authorities who declared President Nicolás Maduro the victor.
 
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
 
The National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of Sunday’s highly anticipated election, but the president’s main challenger, González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have said they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed.
 
They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.
 
The announcement from the U.S. government came amid diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro to release vote tallies from the election and increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and México.
 
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Venezuela’s Top Lawmaker Calls for Arrest of Opposition Leaders Machado, Gonzalez
 
Venezuela hardened its crackdown on any resistance to President Nicolás Maduro’s self-declared election win by calling for the arrests of opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González.
 
Speaking on state television on Tuesday, head of congress Jorge Rodríguez said González was leading a “fascist conspiracy,” and that his campaign with Machado aimed to spark a civil war.  
 
(...)
 
Earlier Tuesday, the government announced 749 arrests and detained prominent opposition figure Freddy Superlano.
 
Intimidating and arresting opposition leaders have long been part of Maduro’s tactics. More than 100 of the opposition’s aides and allies have been arrested in recent months, according to legal nonprofit Foro Penal. Juan Guaidó, who in 2019 was recognized internationally as interim president, was threatened with arrest and now lives in exile in Miami.
 
(...)

US recognizes opposition candidate González as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election
 
The U.S. government on Thursday recognized Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González as the winner of the South American country’s presidential election, discrediting the results announced by electoral authorities who declared President Nicolás Maduro the victor.
 
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
 
The National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of Sunday’s highly anticipated election, but the president’s main challenger, González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have said they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed.
 
They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.
 
The announcement from the U.S. government came amid diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro to release vote tallies from the election and increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and México.
 
(...)

Venezuela’s Top Lawmaker Calls for Arrest of Opposition Leaders Machado, Gonzalez
 
Venezuela hardened its crackdown on any resistance to President Nicolás Maduro’s self-declared election win by calling for the arrests of opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González.
 
Speaking on state television on Tuesday, head of congress Jorge Rodríguez said González was leading a “fascist conspiracy,” and that his campaign with Machado aimed to spark a civil war.  
 
(...)
 
Earlier Tuesday, the government announced 749 arrests and detained prominent opposition figure Freddy Superlano.
 
Intimidating and arresting opposition leaders have long been part of Maduro’s tactics. More than 100 of the opposition’s aides and allies have been arrested in recent months, according to legal nonprofit Foro Penal. Juan Guaidó, who in 2019 was recognized internationally as interim president, was threatened with arrest and now lives in exile in Miami.
 
(...)

How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in 2024 election

The Egyptian government may have given $10 million to Donald Trump for his 2016 campaign, violating U.S. law—but the investigation into the payment was squashed by Attorney General William Barr.

In early 2017, Justice Department officials were briefed on initial reports from the Central Intelligence Agency that Sisi had sought to send money to Trump.
 
The intelligence had come partly from a confidential informant who had previously provided useful information, according to people familiar with the matter. Intelligence the CIA gathered in other operations corroborated parts of the individual’s account, The Post learned.
 
Justice officials sent the case to Mueller, who had been appointed in May to investigate alleged links between Trump’s campaign and Russia, based on the theory that the Egypt allegations dovetailed with possible foreign election interference. Federal election law bans foreign nationals and governments from making contributions or donations or providing any other direct or indirect financial support to candidates for political office in the United States.
 
Mueller organized his investigators into teams with intentionally bland code names, like Team R for Russia. The team investigating Egypt was dubbed Team 10, as in $10 million, people familiar with the investigation said.
 
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They noticed that on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, then-candidate Trump had met with Sisi on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The campaign’s account of the closed-door meeting gave no indication that Trump had held the Egyptian leader at arm’s length, as U.S. officials typically had done since Sisi seized power in a military coup three years earlier and swept aside the country’s first democratically elected president. After the meeting, the campaign said Trump had told Sisi the United States would be a “loyal friend” to Egypt if he was elected president, and on Fox News, Trump praised him as a “fantastic guy.”
 
(...)
 
 
As the Mueller team got going, investigators focused on how at the time candidate Trump met with Sisi in 2016, Trump’s campaign had been running low on funds. They learned through interviews with the candidate’s closest advisers that they had pleaded with Trump to write a check to his campaign for a final blitz of television ads. Trump repeatedly declined — until Oct. 28, roughly five weeks after the meeting with Sisi, when he announced the $10 million infusion. In the context of the Egypt intelligence, investigators considered the amount a point of interest, people familiar with the probe said.
 
(...)
 
In July 2018, Mueller’s team subpoenaed the National Bank of Egypt. (...) By early February 2019, the bank relented and delivered almost 1,000 pages, including versions of bank documents in Arabic and English.
 
Those bank records contained one especially tantalizing item: A short handwritten letter dated Jan. 15, 2017, in which an organization called the Research and Studies Center asked that the bank “kindly withdraw a sum of US $9,998,000” from its Heliopolis branch, located about seven miles from Cairo International Airport. According to the bank records, employees assembled the money that same day, entirely in U.S. $100 bills, put it in two large bags and kept it in the bank manager’s office until two men associated with the account and two others came and took away the cash.
 
Mueller’s team gathered prosecutors and agents to brief them on the newly obtained documents. To people in the room, the withdrawal seemed to bolster the classified intelligence and validate the decision to have had Mueller’s team investigate, according to people familiar with the discussions. (...)

Proud to be back with so many leaders from across our region supporting @KamalaHarris for President and @JoshShapiroPA for VP! We are One CITY, One REGION, and ONE Commonwealth United! @PADems @PhillyDems @Joanna4PA @PADemsChair @IBEW98 @RepHarris @PALaborers

Proud to be back with so many leaders from across our region supporting @KamalaHarris for President and @JoshShapiroPA for VP! We are One CITY, One REGION, and ONE Commonwealth United! @PADems @PhillyDems @Joanna4PA @PADemsChair @IBEW98 @RepHarris @PALaborers

Proud to be back with so many leaders from across our region supporting @KamalaHarris for President and @JoshShapiroPA for VP! We are One CITY, One REGION, and ONE Commonwealth United! @PADems @PhillyDems @Joanna4PA @PADemsChair @IBEW98 @RepHarris @PALaborers