monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

She's got you pegged, joint.

The US Senate is expected to receive an FBI report on allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, in the next few hours.

Its conclusions will not be made public, but Senators will be able to review the report on Thursday.

The suspicious substance that triggered a quarantine after arriving in the post at the US Defense Department was castor seeds, a Pentagon official has said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White made the announcement one day after letters were also sent to the White House and a Republican senator's office in Texas.

Earlier it had been reported that the substance in the letters had tested positive for the deadly poison ricin.

Utah police have detained a man in connection to the case.

Ricin is made from castor seeds and is a by-product of castor oil production.

"According to our preliminary analysis, the substance was castor seeds, from which ricin is derived," Mrs White said in a statement.

She added that the FBI investigation continued.

The New York State Tax Department has confirmed it is investigating claims by the New York Times that President Trump helped his parents dodge millions of dollars in taxes.

The paper has alleged that the president was involved in "dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud".

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders called the story a "misleading attack".

She said the transactions were signed off by tax authorities "decades ago".

The president's lawyer Charles Harder said in a statement: "There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate."

Mr Trump has repeatedly styled himself as a self-made billionaire who got little help from his wealthy father's property empire.

But in a special investigation based on more than 100,000 pages of documents, the New York Times alleges that the president actually received the equivalent of $413m (£318m).

"By age 3, Mr Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today's dollars from his father's empire," it states. "He was a millionaire by age 8."

The report claims Mr Trump was getting the equivalent of $1m a year from his father shortly after he graduated from college.

That figure had risen to more than $5m by the time he was in his 40s and 50s, it states.

The Times reports: "Much of this money came to Mr Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents."

The paper also alleges that the president "helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more". It says he helped cut his parents' tax bill through a strategy that undervalued their property assets by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Addressing the tax evasion claims, the president's lawyer said: "President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters." He said the affairs "were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves", and who had relied on tax professionals.

The biggest claims in the report include:

That the president's deceased parents Fred and Mary Trump transferred more than $1bn to their children. Tax records show they paid $52.2m of tax on this - around 5% - rather than the $550m it could have produced, the paper states. The president's brother, Robert Trump, said in a family statement that "All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid."

That Mr Trump's claim that he launched himself in business with "a small loan of $1m" that he had to pay back with interest is inaccurate. The paper says it found that Fred Trump loaned his son the equivalent to $140m in today's money - much of which was not repaid.

The Times said its sources include public documents such as financial disclosure reports, as well as confidential records like bank statements.

It said "more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts" were among them.

The Times has not seen Donald Trump's personal tax returns, which he has so far refused to release - unlike past US presidents.

Its cache of papers gives little insight into his most recent business affairs.

However, the paper says the records it has seen - including trust tax returns - build up a picture of how the family's dealings enriched him over decades.

The New York State Tax Department of Taxation and Finance told the BBC it is "reviewing the allegations in the New York Times article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation".

The New York Times reported that the president is unlikely to face criminal investigation as the alleged events happened too long ago. However, it said there is no time limit on fines for tax fraud.

A prominent Saudi journalist known as a fierce critic of his country's government has vanished after visiting a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to the Washington Post, entered the building in Istanbul on Tuesday afternoon.

Khashoggi went to complete "routine paperwork", the Post said, and has not been heard from since.

Saudi state media said the consulate was working "to uncover the circumstances" of the disappearance.

The US State Department said it was following the matter closely.

Khashoggi was accompanied to the consulate by his fiancée, who was not allowed to go inside with him. He was also required to surrender his mobile phone - which is standard practice in some embassies and consulates.

Confusion reigned over his whereabouts on Wednesday, as a Saudi official in Washington said reports of Khashoggi's disappearance were false, and that he had left the consulate shortly after arriving.

His fiancée, outside the building, rubbished that claim, pointing out that no-one had seen him - while a spokesman for Turkey's president said Khashoggi remained inside the building and that Turkish officials were in contact with their Saudi counterparts over the situation.

"We don't know if he is being detained, questioned, or when he will be released," the Washington Post said.

Khashoggi was in the consulate to get the necessary paperwork for a marriage licence, reports said.

His fiancée said she had waited outside the building until it closed, by which time Khashoggi had not returned.

"I don't know what's happening. I don't know if he's inside or if they took him somewhere else," she told Reuters.

Another friend, Turan Kislakci, told the Washington Post that police had been alerted.

"I think 100% that he is inside," he said.

In the absence of any reliable information about his disappearance, a notification on Khashoggi's website now declares: "Jamal has been arrested!"

Ties between Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been strained in the past year by a dispute over Qatar.

Turkey shipped food and basic goods to Qatar after Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states severed economic and diplomatic links with the emirate, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

Khashoggi has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States, and is an established critic of the Saudi government - particularly the reform plans championed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

"With every supposed reform comes a wave of fresh arrests, prison sentences and increasingly repressive behaviour," the Washington Post's Jason Rezaian said.

"At each turning point, though, Jamal has offered readers of the Post insightful commentary and sharp criticism about the seemingly impenetrable country."

Formerly an editor of the Al-Watan newspaper and of a short-lived Saudi TV news channel, Khashoggi has also been a contributor to BBC programmes about Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

At times, he served as an adviser to the Saudi royal family, and was for many years seen as an insider - until he left more than a year ago amid a reported clampdown on press freedom.

He is also known for his close association with the young Osama Bin Laden, with whom he travelled extensively in Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation - though he publicly rejected Bin Laden's later ideologies and had lost touch with him long before the 2001 attacks on the US.

The announcement of the vote came after some Republican senators expressed dismay over President Donald Trump’s mockery of two of the women who have come forward with claims against Kavanaugh.

As the test vote loomed, it emerged that the FBI has not interviewed Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford, one of his accusers, because it did not have clear authority from the White House to do so, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Ford’s attorneys said in a statement that they were “profoundly disappointed” in the probe.

“An FBI supplemental background investigation that did not include an interview of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford -- nor the witnesses who corroborate her testimony -- cannot be called an investigation,” they said, adding that “those directing the FBI investigation were not interested in seeking the truth.”

Yale roommate says Kavanaugh lied under oath about drinking and yearbook

James Roche, one of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's freshman year roommates at Yale, said Wednesday that Kavanaugh lied under oath about his drinking and about the meaning of his yearbook entries.

In an op-ed for Slate, Roche writes, "Brett Kavanaugh stood up under oath and lied about his drinking and about the meaning of words in his yearbook. He did so baldly, without hesitation or reservation."

"In his words and his behavior, Judge Kavanaugh has shown contempt for the truth, for the process, for the rule of law, and for accountability," Roche added. "His willingness to lie to avoid embarrassment throws doubt on his denials about the larger questions of sexual assault."

Kavanaugh testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he has never been blackout drunk. He was appearing before senators to answer an accusation from California professor Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh denies the allegation and says he has no memory of the party where Ford says the incident happened.

Roche says he believes his friend Deborah Ramirez, who has accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a college dorm party. "I cannot remember ever having a reason to distrust anything, large or small, that I have heard from Debbie," Roche writes.

Kavanaugh has denied Ramirez's allegation. CNN has reached out to the White House for reaction to Roche's comments.

Roche writes in the op-ed he is willing to speak to the FBI about his experiences with Kavanaugh and Ramirez. The FBI is conducting a supplemental background investigation into the nominee after Kavanaugh and Ford testified before the Judiciary Committee.

Roche writes he does not know if Kavanaugh attacked Ford in high school or exposed himself to Ramirez in college, "But I can say that he lied under oath."

Roche told CNN's Anderson Cooper on "Anderson Cooper 360" that he was shocked when he heard Kavanaugh say "boofing" meant flatulence and "Devil's Triangle" was a drinking game, "because those words were commonly used and they were references to sexual activities. ... I heard them talking about it regularly. I think that contributed to some of my feelings about the fact that these guys treated women in a way that I didn't like."

"We were in a room together -- our beds were 10 feet apart for a couple of months," Roche told Cooper. "And what struck me and made more interested in speaking out about it is not only did I know that he wasn't telling, you know, the truth, I knew that he knew that he wasn't telling the truth."

Roche told CNN his memory of Kavanaugh is that "he was on the far edge of this -- he was notably heavier in his drinking than other people"

In the Slate op-ed, Roche notes he was raised in a Republican family -- his mother was a Republican state representative in Connecticut and "my father owns a MAGA hat."

"This is not about drinking too much or even encouraging others to drink," Roche writes. "It is not about using coarse language or even about the gray area between testing sexual boundaries with a date and sexual abuse. This is about denial. This is about not facing consequences. This is about lying."

"I was not a choirboy, but—unlike Brett—I'm not going on national television and testifying under oath that I was," Roche continued.

Roche writes he did not initially want to come forward, and when The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow contacted him about Ramirez's account, "I told him that I didn't see the point. There is no way that Brett will face legal consequences after this much time." He eventually agreed to be quoted because, he writes, "Debbie needed someone to help her be heard."

As Kavanaugh's college roommate, Roche writes, he expected to be interviewed if a background check was looking into the nominee's college behavior. "I wasn't called," Roche said, echoing a tweet he sent Monday. "I assume college behavior was not a topic of interest. The FBI didn't find Debbie's story because they were not looking for it."

Roche writes he still has not been called by the FBI. "How will they learn what happened if once again they are not allowed to truly and thoroughly investigate?"

"In Brett's cases, if he is innocent, he should be cleared," Roche writes. "If he is not and he is being untruthful to the nation, that should disqualify him from sitting on the highest court in the land. This just seems fair."

As a law professor for half a century, I tested the consistency and strength of my students' arguments by constructing thought experiments in the form of challenging hypothetical cases — we called them hypos. So let’s construct one to test the arguments being offered in the Kavanaugh case.

A thought experiment: President Hillary Clinton nominates the first Muslim-American to the Supreme Court. Let’s call him Amir Hassan. He is highly qualified and his nomination is widely supported by most Democrats and some centrists.

Most Republicans oppose him and accuse him of being a judicial activist. Then several witnesses place him at a mosque at which terrorism was advocated. He claims he went there to hear all sides of the issue. One witness places him in a terrorism training camp but that account is not corroborated. One final witness identifies him as the man who planted the bomb that blew off his leg at a demonstration. He categorically denies any association with terrorism.

How would the Senate, the media, ACLU and the public deal with these accusations? .......



Read Newsmax: What If Kavanaugh Was a Liberal Muslim Accused of Terrorism? | Newsmax.com

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