Boris Johnson mistakenly thanked the “inspirational leadership of Vladimir Putin” before quickly correcting himself and saying Volodymyr Zelensky.

In his first major contribution as a backbench MP, the former prime minister said: “Thanks to the heroism of the Ukrainian armed forces, thanks in part to the weapons that we are proud to be offering, I congratulate my right honourable friend on his description of the work of the UK armed forces, the weapons that we’re sending, the huge list…

“Thanks also, of course, to the inspirational leadership of Vladimir Putin…”

Johnson immediately realised his mistake and added: “The inspirational leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, forgive me, the Russian forces have, in recent days been expelled from large parts of the northeast of the country around Kharkiv.

Boris Johnson made the gaffe while speaking in the Commons
(Image: Parliament TV)

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“And they are under increasing pressure in Kherson in the south, and I have no doubt whatever that the Ukrainians will win.”

Meanwhile, a former defence minister said Ukraine and its allies should seek to offer Vladimir Putin something that will “enable him to save face”.

Andrew Murrison told the Commons: “Unless we’re going to defeat Russia in classical terms – which is unlikely and desirable – there has to be an off-ramp to allow Putin to construct a narrative that will go down well amongst his population and through the media, which he controls.

“It’s just not acceptable to say that we cannot offer Putin something out of this that will enable him to save face and therefore get whatever it is through with his population.”

Defence minister James Heappey replied: “I’m not sure I agree with (Murrison) entirely. If Putin was looking for an off ramp he’s had plenty of opportunities to deescalate and claim victory at some points along the route.”

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A trove of long-hidden FBI files shed light on how slain Gambino boss Frank “Franky Boy” Cali ascended from a family soldier in the 1990s to head of the powerful crime syndicate until his shocking killing in 2019.

The heavily redacted files, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information Act request, offer to date perhaps the most revealing look into Cali’s rise to power — as the mafia kingpin was known as a “ghost” who kept an extremely low profile to avoid federal prosecution.

Cali — who was gunned down outside his Staten Island mansion at 53 — was arrested just once in a 2008 extortion conspiracy, despite years of being eyed by the FBI and surveilled by agents in Brooklyn, a testament to his ability to stay off the radar.

After he was shot dead by an apparent QAnon devotee in the Todt Hill neighborhood, one law enforcement official told the New York Times that Cali was the polar opposite of flashy Gambino boss, John “Dapper Don” Gotti. 

“He’s basically a ghost,” the official said. 

But according to the FBI files, Cali fell on the bureau’s radar in the spring of 1996, when he was about 30 years old, for helping to skipper a phone card fraud scheme for the Gambinos from a Park Avenue office building. 

The redacted files give a revealing insight into Frank Cali’s rise to power as the mafia kingpin known as a “ghost.”

By November of that year, FBI agents in New York believed several Gambinos were involved in the “production and distribution of telephone travel cards” — and that they committed a number of federal crimes as part of the scheme, including money laundering, income tax violation, mail fraud and wire fraud. 

“It goes without saying that the telephone card industry is one of the most important sources of illegal income for the Gambino LCN Family,” one FBI official wrote. 

At the time, Cali was listed in the FBI file as a “proposed soldier” for the Gambino family — and the feds believed he had not yet been “made,” or taken a blood oath of loyalty to the syndicate he would later lead. 

In October 1997, FBI special agents in New York contacted the bureau’s Atlanta field office to appraise them of an apparent $94 million phone card “bust-out scheme” led by the Gambinos that targeted Georgia-based Worldcom. 

“The method was to sell as many phone cards as possible on the street by charging the best price per country and offering the best discount to the distributors,” one of the FBI reports states. “[Redacted] paid Worldcom only a small percentage of his outstanding balance throughout the ten-month scheme.” 

It adds: “Gambino members such as [redacted] Frank Cali and others lined their pockets with millions in cash from the aforementioned scheme.”

Cali, along with Gambino members John D’Amico and Joseph Watts, allegedly created a company called CNC to distribute the phone cards, flooding the market with the cards that would later be billed by Worldcom.

“Due to the flood of cards, the debt owed to Worldcom grew exponentially. In the beginning, CNC paid their debt and was considered trustworthy by Worldcom. However, CNC did not continue to pay their debt,” a March 7, 1997, FBI document states.

The mobster was one of 53 men accused by the federal government of organized crime involvement in the Gambino mafia family.
William Farrington

Around that time, the feds appeared to take an increased interest in Cali, according to the documents.

They began tailing him in Brooklyn, photographing him with associates on 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst, and interviewing confidential sources about the Gambino soldier. 

In one October 1997 report, an FBI agent recorded doing a “spot check” on a location on 18th Avenue between 72nd and 75th Streets in Bensonhurst, according to the files. The agent recorded an unidentified mark walking with Cali before entering the “Point After Sports Bar and Grill.”

In July of that year, an agent drew up a report titled, “Surveillance of Frank Cali on 18th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY,” which included photographs of Cali and several other people as they visited Tony’s Luncheonette in the neighborhood.

The FBI also listed him as a “recently made member in the Gambino Family” in a March 1997 communication. 

A federal grand jury related to Cali was convened in 1998 in the Eastern District of New York, but charges against him were never brought, the documents show.

Federal charges for a phone card scam were later filed against John Gotti Jr., the reputed leader of the Gambino family at the time, but later dropped by prosecutors. 

“I was a victim. I lost a lot of money on that deal,” Junior told The Post at the time. 

After his one arrest in 2008, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn highlighted Cali’s involvement in the phone card scheme in arguing he be locked up pending trial. 

At a detention hearing, prosecutor Joey Lipton told the judge Cali — who had risen to the rank of captain at the time — had been a successful criminal because of his ability to hide from the spotlight. 

“Cali, like other members of the family, has sworn a blood oath to the organization to commit criminal activity,” Lipton said. “Cali has been successful in fulfilling that oath, in large part because he’s been careful.”

Lipton also alleged Cali had significant ties to mafia members in Italy, telling the judge that a number of people in his crew at the time had been born in the old country.

Lipton said investigators recorded two Italian mafiosos speaking about Cali in Palermo.

“He’s everything over there,” one of the Italian made men said to the other, Lipton said at the hearing.

In the 2008 case, Cali pleaded guilty to extortion conspiracy and was sentenced to 16 months in prison. 

After his release, he continued his meteoric rise in the family, reportedly rising to the boss in 2015 after the acting don Domenico Cefalu stepped down. 

Cali’s hidden image exploded into international headlines when he was shot and killed outside of his home in March 2019. 

The alleged gunman, Anthony Comello, an apparent QAnon conspiracy theorist, lured Cali outside of his home in Todt Hill on March 13, 2019 by crashing into the mobster’s parked car, police said at the time.

After a brief conversation between the two, Comello allegedly shot Cali multiple times in the chest, fatally wounding him.

After a number of bizarre court appearances – including one where he scrawled the letter “Q” on his hand – Comello was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial in 2020.

A spokesperson for the Staten Island District Attorney’s office said in an email Wednesday that they could not provide any information about the case.

United Nations Headquarters
New York, New York

1:31 P.M. EDT

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Well, Madam Prime Minister, on behalf of the American people, I want to again express our condolences for the loss of Queen Elizabeth II.  It was an honor for my wife and I to be able to pay our respects at her lying-in-state and attend the state funeral in London.

I was amazed and overwhelmed by the affection of the British people and the world, quite frankly.  Even — I mean, the thousands and thousands of people who stayed all night just to pay their respects was enormous.

And I want to extend my congratulations to you, Madam Prime Minister, for becoming Prime Minister and working — and I look forward to working closely with you.  You’re our closest ally in the world, and there’s a lot we can do — continue to do together.

And there’s no issue that I can think of, of global consequence, where the United States and the United Kingdom are not working in cooperation.  And I expect we’ll be — continue to be able to do that.

And we have a full agenda today, from supporting Ukraine and — as it defends itself against Russia and Putin’s challenges, as well as China and it’s — posed by; preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons as well.  There’s a lot on the agenda.  

We also want to talk about energy, which understandably is of significant consequence to all of Europe and Great Britain and England — the United Kingdom, in particular.

Publié le

septembre 20, 2022

Russia’s military is divided over how best to counter Ukraine’s unexpected battlefield advances this month, according to multiple sources familiar with US intelligence, as Moscow has found itself on the defensive in both the east and the south.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself giving directions directly to generals in the field, two sources familiar with US and western intelligence said– a highly unusual management tactic in a modern military that these sources said hints at the dysfunctional command structure that has plagued Russia’s war from the beginning.

Intelligence intercepts have captured Russian officers arguing among themselves and complaining to friends and relatives back home about decision-making from Moscow, one of these sources told CNN.

And there are significant disagreements on strategy with military leaders struggling to agree on where to focus their efforts to shore up defensive lines, multiple sources familiar with US intelligence said.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that it is redeploying forces toward Kharkiv in the northeast – where Ukraine has made the most dramatic gains – but US and western sources say the bulk of Russian troops still remain in the south, where Ukraine has also mounted offensive operations around Kherson.

Putin announced a partial mobilization on Wednesday that is expected to include the call-up of up to 300,000 reservists. He has for months resisted taking that step and Biden administration officials said Wednesday that the fact he has moved to do so now highlights the severity of Russia’s manpower shortages and signals a growing desperation.

It’s not clear that the mobilization will make any operational difference on the battlefield, or merely prolong the length of the war without changing the outcome, according to Russian military analysts.

And while Russia flails on the battlefield, officials in Moscow have scrambled to assign blame for Russia’s abrupt turn in fortunes, a senior NATO official said.

“Kremlin officials and state media pundits have been feverishly discussing the reasons for the failure in Kharkiv and in typical fashion, the Kremlin seems to be attempting to deflect the blame away from Putin and onto the Russian military,” this person said.

Already, there has been a reshuffling of military leadership in response to the battlefield failures – leaving Russia’s command structure even more jumbled than it was before, sources say. The commander who oversaw the majority of the units around the Kharkiv region had been in the post only 15 days and has now been relieved of duty, the NATO official said.

Russia has sent “a small number” of troops into eastern Ukraine – some of whom had fled amid Ukraine’s battlefield advances last week, according to two US defense officials – an effort to shore up its weakened defensive lines.

Zelensky calls for Russia to be stripped of UN veto power

But even if Russia is able to coalesce around a plan, US and western officials believe Russia is limited in its ability to mount a strategically significant response to Ukraine’s counteroffensive operations that in recent days, sources say, has swung the momentum in Kyiv’s favor. Even after the announcement of the partial mobilization, officials are skeptical that Russia is capable of quickly deploying large numbers of troops into Ukraine given its ongoing problems with supply lines, communications and morale.

The “small scale” of the Russian redeployment is a signal of its inability to mount any serious operations, the senior defense official told CNN.

So far, Russia has responded to Ukraine’s advances by launching attacks against critical infrastructure like dams and power plants – attacks that the US sees as largely “revenge” attacks rather than operationally significant salvos, this person said.

Absent more manpower that, right now, it simply doesn’t have, sources said Russia has few other options to penalize or push back Ukrainian forces. Putin is “struggling,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said in an appearance on CNN on Wednesday. Russia’s military has “poor unit cohesion, desertions in the ranks, soldiers not wanting to fight,” Kirby said.

“He has terrible morale, unit cohesion on the battlefield, command and control has still not been solved. He’s got desertion problems and he’s forcing the wounded back into the fight. So clearly, manpower is a problem for him,” Kirby said. “He feels like he’s on his back foot, particularly in that northeast area of the Donbass.”

Putin’s mobilization order is significant because it is a direct acknowledgment that Moscow’s “special military operation” wasn’t working and needed to be adjusted, military analysts said.

But for now, there are more questions than answers about its precise operational impact. It’s the first such order handed down in Russia since World War II, offering military analysts limited modern data on which to base their predictions.

Even if Moscow can grow its number of soldiers – both by preventing existing contract service members from leaving service and by mobilizing reservists – it will struggle to train, equip and integrate these troops into existing units, said Michael Kofman, the director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses. And even if that solves some near-term manpower problems, these will likely not be high-quality recruits, Kofman and others noted.

Even in the best-case scenario, it will also take Moscow some time to field fresh troops.

“I think it’s reasonable to say that partial mobilization probably will not reflect itself on the battlefield for several months at the earliest, and could expand Russia’s ability to sustain this war, but not alter its outcome,” Kofman said.

Russia’s longstanding failures in planning, communications and logistics have been compounded by punishing losses in its retreat from around Kharkiv, sources said. Russia left behind “a lot” of equipment in its retreat, according to the NATO official. And at least one storied unit, from the First Guards Tank Army, has been “decimated,” this person said.

“With its northern axis all but collapsed, this will make it harder for Russian forces to slow the Ukrainian advance, as well as to provide cover for the retreating Russian troops,” the official said. “We think it will also severely impair Russia’s plans to occupy the entirety of the Donbas.”

The wild card remains, as always, the Russian President. Putin on Wednesday once again threatened the use of nuclear weapons, a threat the US officials have said they are taking “seriously” but have seen no immediate indication he is planning on following through on.

Pro-Russian authorities in some eastern occupied regions of Ukraine have also announced their intention to hold political referendums on joining Russia, a maneuver some analysts say Russia could use as a pretext for military action.

But, the senior NATO official said, “Overall, Russia now finds itself on the defensive. Ukraine has the initiative, forcing Russia to take stopgap measures simply to avoid further losses.”

“If Ukraine succeeds in undertaking sustained defensive operations, this could even further undermine the sustainability of Russian defenses,” this person said.

CNN’s Barbara Starr and Tim Lister contributed to this report.

A day of double legal blows undermined ex-President Donald Trump’s battle to avoid criminal action for hoarding classified documents and left him exposed to potential civil penalties targeting the business wealth on which his political mystique is built.

Trump’s lifelong capacity to thwart accountability is now facing its sternest test as investigations and evidence mount against him. Trump has not been charged with any crimes, but the legal and court processes he is a master at delaying and twisting in procedural knots are now making serious headway.

Two huge developments on Wednesday crashed into Trump’s legal teams, which were already fighting off serious investigations on multiple fronts.

Both developments appear to have widened Trump’s potential legal exposure, which now appears stark in at least three separate dramas that include a probe in Georgia into his alleged attempt to steal the 2020 election in the critical swing state. The ex-President has denied wrongdoing on all accounts.

But the deepening crisis for Trump also came on a day when the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection formally announced its first fall hearing for next week. The panel has yet to decide whether to make a recommendation for criminal action against the former President. The Justice Department already has its own separate grand jury probe into events surrounding his false election fraud claims and those leading up to the attack on the US Capital by his mob of supporters.

The darkening legal storm for Trump also bolsters the extraordinary possibility of a former President facing potential criminal action and serious civil penalties that could significantly threaten his fortune. Much of Trump’s initial political appeal is based on the idea that he is a wildly successful tycoon who built a hugely profitable business and amassed personal wealth. If it is proven that it is all a scam and that his career is a house of cards built on illegal acts, his narrative will absorb a serious hit – although it’s unlikely that would ever be enough to shake his appeal to his core voters.

The latest legal rebukes of Trump come as he considers a likely 2024 presidential campaign, which he has already signaled would be constructed on his claim that he is being politically persecuted by Democrats, and has already implicitly warned of violence if he is formally indicted.

The civil suit filed by New York state against Trump represents the broadest catalogue yet of the former President’s business practices and also targets three of his adult children – Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, who are deeply involved in the Trump Organization.

It alleges a staggering pattern of overvaluing of properties and assets across Trump’s real estate portfolio, his hotel and golf club empires. The purported aim of the multiple schemes was to deceive lenders, insurance brokers and tax authorities to give him better loan conditions and to lower his tax liability. James alleged that each certification was personally signed off by Trump and that he played a direct role in falsifying valuations. In one case in her claim, James said that Trump inflated the size of his Trump Tower apartment from less than 11,000 square feet to more than 30,000 square feet to arrive at a value of $327 million. In another case, she claimed that Trump repeatedly inflated the value of an office building the organization owns at 40 Wall Street.

“It is an enormous complaint, it is a robust complaint, it is filled with facts and it is very serious. And so Donald Trump and others named in the complaint are going to have their day in court to respond to this and try and seek to challenge it,” Geoffrey Berman, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“It is formidable.”

James said that any regular citizen who had allegedly committed such acts would have the book thrown at them. She argued that not pursuing the case would mean there would be two justice systems, one for working people and one for the rich and the powerful.

“There cannot be different rules for different people in this country or this state,” James said.

Her remarks took direct aim at the conceit behind Trump’s entire political narrative – that he’s an outsider fighting for everyday Americans against a system that favors elites.

The penalties that James is seeking against Trump in what is likely to be a protracted case have the potential to at the very least severely limit the capacity of the business to operate, especially in the US financial capital.

“She is seeking what corporate lawyers call the corporate death penalty, which would be decertification of the Trump Organization so they couldn’t even do business in New York anymore,” CNN legal analyst Paul Callan told Anderson Cooper.

“It’s a very, very serious penalty if the AG wins the suit.”

In a sign that Trump’s defense could be an uphill task, James said that he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In a civil case, as opposed to a criminal one, prosecutors have the right to ascribe an adverse inference to such a step.

James, a Democrat, went out of her way to insist that there was no political motivation behind her case and that other corporations had faced similar censure.

But James has created some openings for Trump to accuse her of political bias. She had publicly said before taking office that she believed that the then-President could be indicted. And the almost taunting use of Trump’s slogan in her presentation unveiling the lawsuit did appear somewhat triumphalist. “Claiming money that you do not have does not amount to the ‘art of the deal,’” she said. “It’s the art of the steal.”

Trump quickly responded to the lawsuit by calling it a witchhunt – his well-worn tactic of dismissing any attempt to force him to face accountability. Trump may try to argue that his business was adopting the same business practices as others in New York and that he is being unfairly singled out as a former President and potential future candidate.

Still, the evidence unveiled in the lawsuit could spiral in unexpected directions in other jurisdictions – even if it does not result in a criminal case against the Trump Organization – that could threaten the business’ financial viability.

The Justice Department’s victory in the 11th Circuit represents another legal blow to Trump because it targets the idea that he’s immune from rules pertaining to classified information.

The appeals court did not just partially stay a lower court’s ruling to halt the DOJ’s review of 100 classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, which officials say are government property and could expose US intelligence sources and methods and even put covert US assets at risk overseas. The ruling also obliterated the argument of the Trump legal team that the former President may have declassified the documents as president.

“The record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified. And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents,” the ruling said, referring to the third-party official appointed by a lower court to go through the documents taken in the search.

Nick Akerman, a former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on CNN Wednesday that the 11th Circuit gutted Trump’s case, expressing doubt that that the Supreme Court would take the case up if it got that far.

“Donald Trump had no proper interest in classified documents; there is no way he ever has the right to get this information or see it. That really is the underlying basis of this whole opinion,” he said.

As always, when Trump faces a legal threat, the question arises whether he will face a political price.

The former President has spent years seeking to discredit any institution, including the courts, that takes him on. He bashes them as biased, corrupt and a tool of liberal persecution. He has also specifically targeted James, accusing her of racism against him. Such demagoguery is now a critical tool of his political brand. At rallies, he tells supporters that he is willing to be persecuted to shield them.

There is little chance the former President’s base will turn on him. Still, yet more damaging allegations of Trump’s behavior are unlikely to help his already diminished standing with general election voters who voted him out of office in 2020. And the pressure of yet another serious legal threat cannot help but weigh on his mind as he contemplates another White House run.

However, the reality that sitting presidents enjoy protections against criminal action may appear even more attractive to Trump now. And if he doesn’t run in 2024, it would make it more difficult for the former President to claim he is being politically victimized.

Trump sued by NY attorney general for fraud – video

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FBI Suspends Whistleblower Who Claimed Bureau Is Mishandling Jan. 6 Investigations: GOP

House Republicans verbalized Tuesday that the FBI suspended a whistleblower who pushed back against the bureau’s handling of Jan. 6 Capitol breach investigations.

The FBI SUSPENDED a whistleblower for relucting to carry out the Bureau’s politicized investigations,

House Judiciary Republicans inscribed on Twitter. It did not provide more details, including the identity of the alleged whistleblower or why the person was suspended. The Twitter post withal included portions of a recent letter sent by Republicans to FBI Director Christopher Wray, which contained allegations from the whistleblower in question. That person claimed that the FBI altered its rules to engender the illusion that domestic truculent extremism (DVE) appears more often than it authentically does.

The FBI’s case categorization engenders the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in authenticity they all stem from the same cognate investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6,

a letter sent by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to FBI Director Christopher Wray read, which was additionally cited by House Judiciary Republicans in the Twitter post. Describing the FBI processes as an “artificial case categorization scheme,” Jordan indited that it sanctions FBI bellwethers to

misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on the GOP’s allegations when contacted by The Epoch Times on Wednesday. The Epoch Times asked the FBI to substantiate whether there is a whistleblower who incriminated the bureau of mishandling Jan. 6 investigations, if that person was suspended by the FBI, or the reasons for what purport.

What the Whistleblower Alleged

This scheme sanctions you to perpetuate to fortify on paper your assertion that ‘[t]he FBI is a field-predicated law enforcement organization, and the astronomical majority of our investigations should perpetuate to be worked by our field offices,’ while genuinely running the investigation from Washington,

the whistleblower was quoted as saying by the GOP letter. At one point, the person asserted that the FBI’s bellwethers took agents away from child sexual abuse cases and assigned them to Jan. 6-cognate cases.

In replication to the letter, a spokesperson for the FBI disputed those claims in a verbalization to The Epoch Times on “Tuesday.”

The FBI is charged with bulwarking the American people from a wide variety of threats, from terrorism, cyber threats, and belligerent malefaction to public corruption, hate malefactions, and malefactions against children,

the spokesperson verbally expressed, integrating the agency’s “commitment to one does not come at the expense of another.”

The FBI, meanwhile, only investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other malefactor activity that constitutes a federal malefaction or poses a threat to national security,

the statement said.

Jordan’s letter to Wray requested the FBI director hand over all documents and communications relating to the FBI Washington’s procedures for opening Jan. 6 investigations, the number of agents involved, and other details about the probe.

Source: You can read the original Epoch Times article here.

This News Article is focused on these topics: Executive Branch, Politics, Republicans, US, US News, FBI, Jim Jordan