FBI Scans Emails, Stretching the Tax Law
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Vol. 5, No. 306
E Minus 7: The FBI has begun to examine a newly-discovered trove of Hillary Clinton emails to determine whether they contain classified information. The emails came from a computer belonging to disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who’s under investigated for sexting a 15-year-old girl. He’s the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who denies knowing how the emails got on her husband’s computer.
The FBI is using a computer program to scan the documents, and it may take only a day or so to determine which of the messages have already been examined in the Clinton State Department email investigation. Clinton says go ahead, they won’t find anything.
Trouble follows both candidates. The NY Times reports that Donald Trump in the early 1990s dodged possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes by stretching tax law to the limits of its interpretation.
The paper reports that as Trump’s empire collapsed in the early 1990s, he convinced his creditors to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. To avoid having to then report that money as income — and pay tax on it — Trump reported it as a loss, and a deduction, the paper reports. In other words, he got out of paying taxes for losing other people’s money.
Nation: An explosion rocked the Colonial Pipeline in rural Alabama not far from where the pipe broke last month, spilling thousands of gallons of gasoline. One person was killed and five injured when a piece of construction equipment ruptured the pipe. If service is interrupted, it could cause another spike in gas prices in the Southeast.
Fake News: CNN media reporter Brian Stelter warns about the proliferation of fake news websites spreading partisan and phony election stories. “Unreliable sources about this election have become too numerous to count,” he says.
Many of the sites are on Facebook, including Freedom Daily and Eagle Rising on the right, and Occupy Democrats on the left.
Buzzfeed reports that, “Our analysis of three hyperpartisan right-wing Facebook pages found that 38% of all posts were either a mixture of true and false or mostly false, compared to 19% of posts from three hyperpartisan left-wing pages that were either a mixture of true and false or mostly false. The right-wing pages are among the forces — perhaps as potent as the cable news shows that have gotten far more attention — that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump.”
Rigged News: CNN has fired political analyst Donna Brazile after emails published by WikiLeaks showed that she shared questions with Clinton campaign staffers ahead of primary season debates and town halls. Basically, Brazile was giving Clinton the test questions. Brazile has been on leave from CNN since she was named interim chair of the Democratic National Committee.
The Obit Page: Tammy Grimes, the sandy-voiced actress who won a Tony Award at just 26 in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” on Broadway, has died at age 82. Grimes played the outspoken rich American who survived the sinking of the Titanic. Grimes had a long career on the stage, despite a somewhat unusual look for an actress. She had a distinctive ski-jump nose that made her looked a bit like Bob Hope.
Outer Limits: Three astronauts returned to Earth over the weekend after spending 114 days on the International Space Station. Among the three was American astronaut Kate Rubins. She looked pretty happy.
Speaking of space, NASA is developing a planet-protecting security system called “Scout” to warn about incoming asteroids that might hit Earth. The system could give a couple of days’ notice before impact. Of course, there’s nothing in the system to prevent the impact.
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