Category: News

• The bank for Russia-born lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin flagged as suspicious hundreds of thousands of dollars into his account in 2016 and 2017.
• Akhmetshin worked closely with Fusion GPS in 2016 and was also one of the attendees of the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
• Akhmetshin worked for Fusion GPS to investigate the lobbyist behind the Magnitsky Act, which was discussed at the Trump Tower meeting.

Wells Fargo in 2017 flagged half a million dollars in wire transfers and bank deposits to the account of Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russia-born lobbyist who has worked closely with opposition research firm Fusion GPS and also attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting.

According to BuzzFeed News, Wells Fargo flagged the transactions for the Treasury Department upon the request of federal investigators looking into the Trump Tower meeting, which was held on June 9, 2016.

Wells Fargo deemed the deposits suspicious because of “overseas origin” and because of “a suspicion that they showed Akhmetshin had violated federal lobbying law,” according to BuzzFeed.

Akhmetshin has been interviewed by several congressional committees and testified to the grand jury being used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

BuzzFeed’s report focuses on Akhmetshin’s involvement in the Trump Tower meeting, while largely ignoring his connection to Fusion GPS, which commissioned the infamous Steele dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.

BuzzFeed, which was the first news outlet to publish the dossier, mentions Fusion GPS only once in its report, on the 24th paragraph.

The BuzzFeed report does not accuse Akhmetshin of wrongdoing, though the implication of the piece is that the payments to Akhmetshin are somehow linked to his visit to Trump Tower. The report does show that Akhmetshin received much more in wire payments and deposits from his lobbying client, the Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, than he reported on lobbying disclosure reports filed with Congress.

Akhmetshin’s lawyer responded to the story, telling NBC News that “it is appalling that BuzzFeed published this misleading article.”

“Mr. Akhmetshin categorically denies that he engaged in any form of unlawful activity, and BuzzFeed’s unsupported suggestions to the contrary are completely untrue.”

Akhmetshin gained national prominence when it was reported in July 2017 that he was part of the Russian delegation at the Trump Tower meeting, which was hosted by Donald Trump Jr. and attended by Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.

Akhmetshin accompanied Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and several other associates to the meeting.

The meeting has drawn scrutiny because Trump Jr. accepted it after an associate said that a Russian lawyer — later identified as Veselnitskaya — sought to provide the campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“If it is what you say, I love it,” Trump Jr. wrote in an email accepting the offer.

Most of the Trump Tower attendees, including Akhmetshin and Trump Jr., have testified that the meeting was a dud. They’ve all claimed that Veselnitskaya did not provide information on Clinton. Instead, she focused on the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that imposed sanctions on Russian human rights abusers.

Akhmetshin, Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS all worked as part of a multi-faceted campaign aimed at undermining the Magnitsky Act. Fusion’s main task was investigating Bill Browder, the London-based financier whose lobbying efforts let to the law’s passage.

Browder claims that his former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was killed in a Russian jail in 2009 while investigating a $230 million money laundering scheme involving a Russian organized crime syndicate.

The ultimate client for Fusion, Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya was Katsyv, whose firm, Prevezon Holdings, was sued by the Justice Department for allegedly laundering money stolen during the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Magnitsky.

Some of Prevezon’s payments to Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS were routed through its U.S. law firm, BakerHostetler. That arrangement in an arrangement that mirrored its work for the Clinton campaign and DNC. On that project, Perkins Coie, the law firm for the Democrats, paid Fusion GPS $1 million to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. BakerHostetler paid Fusion $523,651 in 2016.

Fusion GPS’s work on a seemingly anti-Kremlin project (the dossier) and a project backed by Russians is one of the stranger twists of Russiagate.

Despite the overlap in Fusion’s work, the firm’s founder, Glenn Simpson, has denied knowing about the Trump Tower meeting until it was reported in the press. That claim has drawn some skepticism because Simpson was with Veselnitskaya hours before the meeting for a court hearing in the Prevezon case.

According to BuzzFeed, documents show that in the months before and after the Trump Tower meeting, Akhmetshin made $40,000 in cash deposits and received a wire transfer of $100,000 from Katsyv. BakerHostetler paid Akhmetshin another $97,400 over five months, according to BuzzFeed.

Akhmetshin also received $52,000 from the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, a foundation financed by Katsyv that Akhmetshin used as his lobbying vehicle on Capitol Hill.

BuzzFeed lists a series of other deposits that Wells Fargo found suspicious and reported to Treasury.

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The Obama administration has stated that they will send weapons to the rebels in Syria at this point, regardless of what the citizens in the U.S. or Syria think. And there isn’t a great deal of support for this action, in fact, it appears that even the recipients of the assistance are not wanting it. According to CNN:

If the outside world was excited about a U.S. retaliatory plan for the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons against rebels, the families in the capital’s old Mezzah neighborhood struck a tone in utter contrast.

“America is inventing stories about chemical weapons,” one man told CNN’s Fred Pleitgen. “The Syrian government never used chemical weapons. The rebels have used them, not the government. So they are inventing stories because our army is winning.”

Another man, also shopping for household staples, said the U.S. action won’t make a difference. The government will prevail in the civil war, he asserted.

The intervention is in the wake of reports that the Assad regime is using chemical weapons against its own citizens. But, there remain reports that this simply isn’t the case on the ground. As Al Jazeera reports:

“The White House has issued a statement full of lies about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, based on fabricated information,” a statement issued on Friday by the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

“The United States is using cheap tactics to justify President Barack Obama’s decision to arm the Syrian opposition,” it said.

Russia, a staunch ally of the Syrian government, also disputed the US charge on Friday.

President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters that the information provided by US officials to Russia “didn’t look convincing”.

Russian officials are also not supporting U.S. plans for a no-fly zone over Syria.

“There have been leaks from Western media regarding the serious consideration to create a no-fly zone over Syria through the deployment of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles and F-16 jets in Jordan,” said Mr [Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei] Lavrov, speaking at a joint news conference in Moscow with his Italian counterpart.

“You don’t have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law,” he said.

Mr Lavrov also said evidence presented by the US of chemical weapons use in Syria apparently did not meet reliability criteria set out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The three-year-long conflict in Syria has been increasingly involving neighboring nations, and Hezbollah leaders have stated that they do not intend to back down in the conflict. This does not bode well for any plans that the U.S. could have for assisting the Syrian rebels – without taking into account arguments from within the U.S. that getting involved at this point would only be giving weapons to existing enemies of the U.S. There is no secret that Al Qaeda has been making in-roads in the Syrian resistance. Add to that it appears that even Israel does not foresee a stable nation in Syria with or without Assad, there seem to be very few, if any, redeeming factors to the U.S. stepping in any more than it has already.

Defense Department officials announced the details of DOD’s fiscal year 2020 budget request.

Highlights of the $718.3 billion budget include:

Great Power Competition

The budget request reflects focus on the great power competition with Russia and China, as called for in the 2018 National Defense Strategy. The past two budgets did begin to focus on the NDS, but the greater focus was on replenishing depleted munitions stocks and addressing readiness concerns that were the result of sequestration.

Focus on Space and Cyber

Space and cyber are the two newest warfighting domains. They got a big boost in defense dollars: $14.1 billion for space, a 10 percent increase over last year’s budget, and $9.6 billion for cyber, a 15 percent increase over last year.

In space, funds will go toward standing up the new Space Force, space communications, space-based warning systems and space launch capacity, and position, navigation and timing. Cyber funding will go to improved offensive and defensive capabilities, protecting the network and moving to a multi-cloud environment.

Multidomain Operations

Multidomain operations is a relatively new concept of the joint force. Future battles will be fought on land, at sea, in the air and in space and cyberspace, with allied troops operating together across all five domains in support of defeating the enemy.

The budget request asks for funding for multidomain weapons and equipment upgrades. DOD has requested $2.6 billion for disruptive technologies such as hypersonics, $3.7 billion for unmanned and autonomous systems, $235 million for directed energy weapons, and $927 million for artificial intelligence and machine learning systems.

Where are we? Italy? Tuscany? The Riviera? NO! We’re in the MUNCHIES Test Kitchen! And Matty’s showing us how to make a flawless steak sandwich. And because everyone loves healthy right now, Matty adds a crunchy chopped kale chimichurri and a beautiful little tomato salad.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is hoping to pull National Guard troops away from the U.S.-Mexico border to help protect his state’s struggling marijuana industry.

Faced with competition from a robust black market, the legal cannabis industry in California has not experienced the growth that supporters had expected. Newsom — who enjoyed hundreds of thousands in campaign donations from the marijuana lobby — wants to aid the industry by redeploying at least 150 California National Guard troops from the U.S.-Mexico border and instead use them to combat illegal grows in Northern California.

“There are legitimate concerns in Northern California particularly as it relates to illegal cannabis grows. They are getting worse, not better,” Newsom stated, according to the Los Angels Times. “I want to see more enforcement.”

California citizens voted to legalize recreational marijuana in November 2016, and the law officially changed in January 2018. Proponents initially anticipated a thriving cannabis industry within the country’s most populous state. California officials, for example, estimated there would be up to 6,000 licensed cannabis shops within the first few years and that the industry would bring up to $1 billion a year in revenue.

Instead, the state only issued 547 temporary and annual licenses by December 2018, and California is only expected to rake in $471 million in revenue this fiscal year. New Frontier Data, a firm that analyzes marijuana sales, estimated the black market accounts for as much as 80 percent of the marijuana sold in the state. California’s illegal pot market is estimated to be four times that of the legal market.

Beyond a thriving black market, experts blame California’s lackluster marijuana sales on complex and burdensome regulations by the state government.

Newsom’s plan to target drug cartels and illegal grows comes after he blasted the Trump administration’s security prioritization at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Democratic governor announced on Feb. 11 that he would be pulling most of the state’s 400 National Guard troops from the southern border, rebuking an agreement his predecessor made with President Donald Trump in 2018 to beef up border security.

“We are not interested in participating in this political theatre. I think it is political theatre,” Newsom said in Sacramento as he announced his decision. He went on to claim that border crossings are at record lows and argued that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. “The whole thing is ludicrous,” he said of Trump’s border security efforts.

The Democratic governor — who is serving his first year in office — offered further criticism of the president’s border agenda in his State of the State address.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he had a “very good call” with Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding progress on a comprehensive trade deal.

A deal could bring an end to what has been a back-and-forth trade war that has lasted for months.

After campaigning on a platform to end China’s “unfair” trade practices with the U.S., Trump has gone on to tax billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. The U.S. slapped the communist country with a 25 percent punitive tariff on $50 billion worth of their imports in June. The president upped the ante in September, imposing a 10 percent levy on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Trump threatened to go even further, announcing his administration was ready to hike the tariff rate to 25 percent.

However, during a G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina in early December, Trump and Xi reached an agreement, with the Chinese president submitting to a number of concessions in return for Trump agreeing to postpone the tariff hike.

Xi agreed to purchase more agricultural products from U.S. farmers, along with a pledge to buy more industrial and energy products. The Chinese leader also agreed to label the opioid fentanyl as a controlled substance — making any person who sells fentanyl to the U.S. subject to stricter penalties under Chinese law — and pledged to adhere to a number of cybersecurity and property theft concessions.

In return, Trump is postponing the tariff hike for 90 days, giving U.S. and Chinese negotiators time to reach a permanent deal.

Luxury home prices rose 3.2 percent year over year to an average of $1.7 million in the third quarter of 2018, according to Redfin, the next-generation real estate brokerage. This is the lowest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2016, when prices were up 1.1 percent from a year earlier. The Redfin analysis tracks home sales in more than 1,000 cities across the country and defines a home as luxury if it is among the top 5 percent most expensive homes sold in the quarter. The average price for the bottom 95 percent of homes was $343,000, up 3.6 percent in the third quarter compared to a year earlier, but down from the second quarter’s 5.1 percent growth rate.

“A great deal of the slowing price growth among luxury homes can be explained by the stock market, a strong indicator of luxury homebuyers’ wealth, or at least their perceived wealth,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “The stock-market fluctuations that began last quarter likely caused some uncertainty among wealthy individuals, which has made luxury buyers more sensitive to price. The swings many people have been watching in their stock portfolios have only grown more frequent in recent weeks, so we expect this trend of slowing luxury home price growth to continue at least into the end of the year.”

Luxury homes went under contract after an average of 65 days on market, eight fewer days than in the third quarter of last year, and tied with the second quarter for the fastest pace on record since Redfin began tracking this metric in the first quarter of 2009. The market for non-luxury homes also sped up in the third quarter, with homes spending an average of 49 days on market, nine fewer days than last year.

“We have seen homes go under contract faster every year since 2015. Buyers are able to look at more homes more quickly in part thanks to real estate technology,” said Fairweather. “For example, a potential home buyer can use Redfin’s website to go on virtual tours, or immediately book a home tour using Redfin’s book-it-now feature.”

Luxury homes sold fastest in San Jose, California, where they found buyers in an average of 19 days, followed by Ashburn, Virginia (23); Oakland, California (28); Seattle (29); and San Francisco (44).

 

Q3 Market Summary	Luxury Market (Top 5%)	Rest of Market (Bottom 95%)
Average Sale Price	$1.70 million	$343,000
Average Sale Price YoY	+3.2%	+3.6%
Average Days on Market	65	49
Days on Market YoY	8 days faster	9 days faster
Percent of Homes that Sold Above List Price	1.5%	23.1%

 

Cities with the Biggest Luxury Price Gains and Declines

Cities in Florida and Nevada saw some of the nation’s largest increases in luxury home prices in the third quarter. In West Palm Beach, Florida, the average sale price for a luxury home shot up 54.5 percent over last year to $1.7 million. Luxury home prices were up 29.6 percent in Reno, Nevada, 26.0 percent in Boca Raton, Florida, and 22.5 percent in Miami.

“There are a lot of people selling average/modest multi-million dollar homes in the Bay Area and buying true luxury homes in Reno,” said Redfin agent Jaime Moore. “Buyers coming from the Bay Areafind themselves with strong purchasing power and are able to easily afford luxury homes in Reno.”

The average price for a luxury home fell the most in Vero Beach, Florida, down 46.1 percent year over year last quarter. Prices for high-end properties also fell in St. Petersburg, Florida, (-16.8%); Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (-16.4%); Sarasota, Florida, (-8.4%); and Delray Beach, Florida (-8.3%).

Sales of Luxury Home Were Up 3.2 Percent, Smallest Growth Since Early 2016

For luxury sales and supply trends, Redfin analysed a group of homes priced at or above $2 million, rather than the top 5 percent of homes in each city. Sales of homes priced at or above $2 million were up 3.2 percent in the third quarter, the ninth consecutive quarter of sales growth, but the smallest rate of growth since early 2016.

The number of homes for sale priced at or above $2 million fell 6.0 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2018 compared to a year earlier. Interestingly, inventory of homes priced under $2 million is slightly increasing as of the third quarter, but the luxury market is still seeing a decrease in the number of homes for sale compared to a year earlier.

 

by Gabrielle Okun

Meghan Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry was Saturday, so here is a look at seven other brides who definitely dressed to impress at their royal weddings.

Here are seven of the most fairytale-inspired royal wedding dresses:

1) Princess Diana of Wales

The 20-year-old Princess Diana of Wales chose David and Elizabeth Emanuel, a husband and wife designing duo, to create her wedding dress. The gown had a 25-foot-long train, which broke the record for the longest train ever for a wedding dress. However, marrying Prince Charles was apparently so stressful that Diana ended up losing five inches off her waist, causing the designers to have to keep changing their design to fit her tiny frame, according to Vanity Fair.

2) Princess Grace

Grace Kelly’s marriage to Prince Rainier III of Monaco, which Vogue dubbed the “Marriage of the Century,” surely did not disappoint. Kelly’s dress was made by Academy Award–winning costume designer Helen Rose who had 30 seamstresses help her craft the stunning design. The final result included 300 yards of lace and 150 yards of taffeta, tulle and silk. Luckily, everyone could view her dress since Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) allowed the movie star to break her contract if they could film the wedding, according to Vogue.

3) Princess Sofia of Sweden

Princess Sofia of Sweden, the Duchess of Värmland, was once a reality star prior to marrying Prince Carl Philip. However, her white lacy number was fit for a princess during her 2015 nuptials in Stockholm. The princess wore a custom-made dress by Swedish designer Ida Sjöstedt and topped it off with a tiara for a truly fairytale wedding, The Knot reported.

4) Princess Claire Of Luxembourg

Princess Claire Of Luxembourg married Prince Felix Of Luxembourg in 2013 in a stunning Ellie Saab creation. The Chantilly lace creation was truly no match for her veil, which was covered in white lace perched below a tiara, Hello! magazine reported.

5) Princess Letizia Ortiz

Princess Letizia Ortiz from Spain wore a unique collared wedding dress to her 2004 wedding to Prince Felipe VI. The couple now reign as king and queen. The gown was designed by Manuel Pertegaz and had a 14-foot train, according to InStyle.

6) Princess Caroline of Monaco

Princess Caroline of Monaco’s wedding gown definitely incorporated 1970s style trends. The bride’s veil was truly innovative and featured flowers circling her hair, InStyle reported.

7) Princess Salwa Aga Khan

Princess Salwa Aga Khan, born Kendra Spears, was an American fashion model dubbed the next Cindy Crawford. However, this changed upon marrying Prince Rahim, whose father is the spiritual leader of Shia Ismaili Muslims, resulting in the former supermodel converting to Islam. The wedding was a traditional Muslim ceremony. The bride wore a gold and ivory sari, a simple chignon and nude heels for their 2013 nuptials in Geneva, Vogue reported.

Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said Saturday that the Pentagon is inspired by the coalition’s ability to eliminate the ISIS Caliphate.

“We are inspired by the battlefield success of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF),” Shanahan said in a statement. “Today’s SDF announcement that the liberation of the territory once held by ISIS in Iraq and Syria is 100 percent complete confirms that more than 20,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria have been cleared of ISIS since January 2017 and the terror group no longer controls populated areas.”

Shanahan recognized the SDF who led the fight against ISIS in Syria, the Iraqi Security Forces who led the fight in Iraq, and the Coalition and U.S. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines for their bravery and strength in support of coalition partners.

“While this is a critical milestone in the fight against ISIS, we understand our work is far from complete,” he said. “As the D-ISIS campaign in northeast Syria transitions from liberating territory to enabling local security and preventing resurgent ISIS networks, we will continue to work by, with, and through our partners and allies to enable stabilization efforts.”

Shanahan said that the Department of Defense is committed to denying ISIS “safe haven anywhere in the world” and the defeat of ISIS>

“We remain committed to ISIS’s enduring defeat and we are confident that we will prevail,” he added.

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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took to Twitter Monday to take a jab at Iran’s presence in Syria after it carried out a strike against Iranian targets in the region, which Israel claims was in response to an Iranian rocket fired at the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

The IDF’s official Twitter account posted a picture of a map of the Middle East decked out with pink arrows pointing to where Iran is, and where it “belongs” with the caption: “Iran, you seem to be lost.”

The apparent troll on Iran came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed a series of Israeli strikes against Iranian targets in and around Damascus, including munition storage sites and training camps as well as a few Syrian aerial defense batteries, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The attacks killed 11 people, and at least two of them were Syrian nationals, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

“Whoever tries to hurt us – we hurt them,” Netanyahu tweeted Monday. “Whoever threatens to destroy us will bear the full responsibility.”

We are acting against Iran and against the Syrian forces that abet the Iranian aggression.

Netanyahu said their strike came “after Iran launched a missile from there at our territory,” referring to a medium range surface-to-surface missile that was fired toward the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Sunday afternoon.

The IDF claims the missile was launched by Iranian forces in Syria as part of a “premeditated attack.”

“We will not ignore such acts of aggression as Iran attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria and given explicit statements by Iran that it intends to destroy Israel, as the commander of the Iranian air force has just said,” Netanyahu continued.

The Israeli strikes in Syria were “the most intense and violent [attacks] against the regime forces and their allies in terms of casualties since May 2018,” according to the SOHR.