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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whose experience and stability were widely seen as a balance to an unpredictable president, resigned on Thursday in protest of President Trump’s decision to withdraw 2,000 American troops from Syria.

Mr. Trump announced Mr. Mattis’s resignation in two tweets Thursday evening, and said the retired four-star Marine general turned Pentagon chief will leave at the end of February.

Officials said Mr. Mattis went to the White House on Thursday afternoon in a last attempt to convince Mr. Trump to keep American troops in Syria, where they have been fighting the Islamic State. He was rebuffed, and told the president that he was resigning as a result.

Hours later, the Pentagon released Mr. Mattis’s resignation letter, in which he implicitly criticized his commander in chief. Mr. Mattis said in the letter that he believes that the president deserves a defense secretary who is more in tune with his worldview.

Read More Here: https://nyti.ms/2QLHXkv

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan saw it coming.

The veteran jurist presiding over Michael Flynn’s sentencing had seen the filing by President Trump’s former national security adviser alleging that he was essentially tricked into lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. No doubt, he had seen Trump’s false claim that the FBI concluded that Flynn “didn’t lie,” yet “tremendous pressure” was being put on him.

And Sullivan likely had seen all the chatter in the Fox News echo chamber about the alleged “perjury trap” special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had set for Flynn — an attempt to discredit the entire investigation. If the judge accepted the recommendation from prosecutors not to sentence Flynn to prison time because of his cooperation, Flynn would be free to leave the courthouse and hold a news conference claiming he had been set up.

Read More Here: https://wapo.st/2QCu3RA

A group of MSNBC political analysts feared President Donald Trump has become a “cornered badger” on political issues looming on the horizon.

During a Sunday discussion about the “wall,” the panel recalled the president’s “pride” in shutting down the U.S. government to score his $5 billion.

“So, what we’ve been hearing is rumors that maybe the president is going to accept to kick the can down the road and deal with the border wall funding in January,” claimed Victoria DeFrancesco, University of Texas professor. “The idea of a wall really isn’t necessary, in terms of quote/unquote fixing immigration. What’s needed is to rethink our asylum policy, how we can make it more efficient, how we did get more judges down there to hear the asylum cases, but the border wall is a waste of money. Trump knows it, but he also said he would do it. He’s going to have to find a way to wiggle out of it. If I were a betting woman, I would think he’ll kick it to January and keep kicking it down the road.”

MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton noted that undocumented immigrants crossing the border is actually down, but “you wouldn’t know it from the hysteria” doled out by the president on Twitter. Democratic strategist Emily Tisch Sussman was in emphatic agreement.

Read More Here: https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/hes-thrashing-going-msnbc-analysts-blast-trump-tantrum-wall-funding/

The guilty plea Thursday of a woman accused of infiltrating the National Rifle Association on behalf of the Russian government has thrust the powerful conservative group into an uncomfortable spotlight as the organization appears to be facing declining donations and signs its fearsome political influence may be waning.

Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of Russia, admitting that she worked for more than two years to forge relationships with conservative activists and leading Republicans in the United States.

One of Butina’s main targets was the NRA — a group she identified in a 2015 memo as an organization that “had influence over” the Republican Party, according to court filings. Her relationships with the group, she wrote, could be used as the groundwork for an unofficial channel of communication to the next presidential administration.

Read More Here: https://wapo.st/2LfFZmf

Cathleen London, MD received her medical degree from Yale University and did her residency in Family Medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University. She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and completed her pre-medical requirements at Stanford University. Prior to moving to Maine, she was an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell School of Medicine in New York City for 5 years and before that had her own practice in Brookline, MA and was a Clinical Instructor for both Boston University and Tufts University schools of medicine. She has worked with Doctors for America serving as State Director. She is a member of PNHP.

She currently owns and operates a medical practice in Milbridge, Maine where she treats over 1,000 patients.

She has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, HLN, NBC, local Fox, ABC as a medical contributor on numerous occasions and is currently the Women’s Delegate from Maine to the American Academy of Family Physicians. She is also on the Legislative Commission and Public Health Commission of the Maine Medical Association and serves on the Maine Democratic State Committee.

Dr. London has two sons and four rescue dogs. She runs, bikes and swims in her free time. 

Read More Here: https://www.doctorcatlondonforme.com/

When federal prosecutors recommended a substantial prison term for President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, they linked Mr. Trump to the crimes Mr. Cohen had committed in connection with the 2016 presidential campaign.

What the prosecutors did not say in Mr. Cohen’s sentencing memorandum filed on Friday, however, is that they have continued to scrutinize what other executives in the president’s family business may have known about those crimes, which involved hush-money payments to two women who had said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.

After Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws and other crimes — he will be sentenced on Wednesday — the federal prosecutors in Manhattan shifted their attention to what role, if any, Trump Organization executives played in the campaign finance violations, according to people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s self-described fixer, has provided assistance in that inquiry, which is separate from the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Read More: https://nyti.ms/2L6QF6S