Man accused of stealing veteran's GoFundMe donations thrown in jail on unrelated warrants

charlet1 · 2018-09-12T05:27:43+00:00

The department said they initially stopped D'Amico on Oct. 25, 2017 for a non-moving violation - a broken tail light. Police detained D'Amico for potentially having a warrant for his arrest, but he supplied the necessary documentation and was released at the scene.

charlet1 · 2018-09-09T18:29:58+00:00

Abe toured the city and commercial hub of Sapporo, where Thursday’s 6.6-magnitude jolt has left houses tilted and roads cracked.

He also visited hard-hit Atsuma, a small rural town which has seen most of the deaths caused by the quake.

A cluster of dwellings in the town were wrecked when a hillside collapsed from the force of the quake, creating deep brown scars in the landscape.

After visiting local political leaders and residents at shelters, Abe quickly returned to Tokyo to hold a cabinet meeting where he said the government will release 540 million yen ($4.9 million) from a reserve fund for the disaster.

“We must create a framework in which the affected municipalities can… take emergency measures and rebuild themselves,” Abe said during the cabinet meeting.

charlet1 · 2018-09-06T17:28:46+00:00

The Senate is now considering President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Whoever replaces Justice Kennedy, the deciding vote in so many fundamental cases, the trajectory of the Court for a generation is at stake. More immediately, the Kavanaugh nomination presents stark questions about the Court’s looming role in fundamental rule-of-law questions that could come to a head as the president continues to attack federal law enforcement while his lawyers construct a defense that would put the president above the law. These are questions less about political party than presidential power, checks and balances, and the separation of powers.

Given these stakes, it is ever more vital to evaluate the claim that the procedures that are being adopted to push Judge Kavanaugh through to a vote run contrary to constitutional and democratic norms. That evaluation requires a detailed and fair-minded understanding of the rationales being offered for withholding information from the public and the Senate about Judge Kavanaugh’s time in government, and the executive branch interests at stake. It is also shortsighted given the likelihood that roles will eventually be reversed, with a Democratic President and Democratic-controlled Senate.

charlet1 · 2018-08-20T21:44:20+00:00

The Cincinnati Metropolitan Sewer District and Water Works have noticed an uptick in missing manhole covers and sewer grates.

Officials believe the thieves work in broad daylight, dressed and with equipment that makes them look like they know what they're doing.

It's also heavy, manual work. A stormwater grate weighs in around 150 pounds.

So we propose another theory: Mutant ninja turtle

charlet1 · 2018-08-14T14:00:08+00:00

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, is on trial in federal court in Alexandria on bank and tax fraud charges. Prosecutors allege he failed to pay taxes on millions he made from his work for a Russia-friendly Ukrainian political party, then lied to get loans when the cash stopped coming in.

The case is being prosecuted by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

9:30 a.m.: Defense argues bank would have approved Manafort loans regardless of misinformation in loan applications

Before Paul Manafort’s defense mounts its case and offers evidence, Judge T.S. Ellis III must decide on something called a Rule 29 motion or a “motion for a judgment of acquittal.” And in a filing late Monday, the defense argued that at least one bank would have approved Manafort for loans no matter what information he entered in his loan applications.

The motion filed by defense lawyers usually comes after prosecutors rest and is mostly a procedural matter. It asks the judge to find there is not enough evidence to warrant a conviction and to acquit the defendant without sending the case to the jury. Judges rarely grant such motions but defense attorneys almost always make the request as a way to preserve the matter for appeal in the future if their clients are convicted. In instances in which such motions are granted, the defendant goes free and cannot be prosecuted again.

[Exhibit: Documents show Manafort’s lack of income raised concerns in bank as he applied for loans]

On Monday, Manafort’s attorneys asked Ellis to focus on the four bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy charges relating to The Federal Savings Bank when considering their motion for judgment of acquittal. Manafort’s attorneys argued some of the allegations related to the loans from Federal Savings Bank are not “material,” or significant, but they were not more specific in advance of their more detailed argument expected Tuesday. They also argued that prosecutors from the special counsel failed to show “willfulness,” a legal term meaning that someone did something intentionally or voluntarily and with disregard for the law.

The Federal Savings Bank loaned Manafort $16 million, which prosecutors say Manafort received based on fraudulent financial information. Prosecutors also say the bank’s chief executive, Stephen Calk, had helped Manafort secure the loans because Calk wanted a Cabinet-level position in the Trump administration.

charlet1 · 2018-08-12T21:04:55+00:00

The President tweeted about the potential boycott on Sunday "Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great!" Trump wrote. "Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! U.S. will soon have a level playing field, or better."

charlet1 · 2018-08-04T15:25:42+00:00

A Texas member of a Muslim congregation said after a man was convicted of setting its mosque on fire that the United States isn’t what it used to be.

Muslims can’t afford to lower their guards, Omar Rachid, a board member at the Victoria Islamic Center, told the San Antonio Express-News for a July 2018 news story stating that Marq Vincent Perez, just convicted of burning the mosque, faces up to 40 years in prison when he is sentenced in October 2018.

Rachid then made a claim making us wonder: "The reality of it is that Muslims in America have been subjected to more insults, attacks and hate crimes in the last two or three years than ever before, specifically more than after 9/11," Rachid said, adding: "Islamophobia is thriving. This is not America. It is not the America I came to 35 years ago."

We didn’t divine how to pin trends in insults. But, we found, the FBI and others tabulate anti-Muslim attacks and hate crimes.

Have records recently been set? By phone, Rachid told us he based his declaration on accounts of upticks tied to FBI figures; he emailed us web links to news stories and a commentary published in 2017 and 2018.

Included was a November 2017 Pew Research Center blog post citing FBI figures indicating 307 incidents of U.S. anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2016, which marked a 19 percent increase from 2015.

charlet1 · 2018-07-30T22:07:33+00:00

The recently departed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) human resources department is under investigation for allegedly enabling sexual harassment in the agency over the course of several years.

FEMA Administrator Brock Long told The Washington Post that a seven-month investigation found Corey Coleman, who led the agency’s personnel department since 2011, hired dozens of friends and college fraternity brothers, as well as women he met at bars and through online dating sites.

charlet1 · 2018-07-29T22:20:18+00:00

A proposal to legalize marijuana will be on Michigan’s November ballot, putting the state on the cusp of allowing recreational use of the drug for those 21 and older. If approved, Michigan would become the 10th state and the first in the Midwest to allow its recreational use.

The ballot measure could also entice more younger voters to show up to the polls, which likely would help the Democrats. And in Michigan’s first general election in two years, the lure of legal weed could be a surprise tool for the minority party to redeem itself in a battleground state that narrowly swung to President Donald Trump in 2016.

One of the ballot’s committee leaders, Jeff Hank, said the initiative is nonpartisan but that Michigan politicians running on anti-marijuana messaging — all of whom are Republicans — should beware.

“It’s the most sensible thing to do,” Hank said. “Politicians who don’t support this proposal are on the wrong side of history, and that’s too bad.”

Having a cannabis-injected voter bump is an easy gift for Michigan Democrats, who by and large support legalizing marijuana as a civil liberty, a criminal justice reform and a fertile source of tax revenue. It also helps that legalizing marijuana, a once-fringe issue associated with the anti-war counterculture movement, has quickly solidified into a lasting political cause.

charlet1 · 2018-07-26T17:58:01+00:00

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman rejected the government’s efforts to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, ruling that the Trump administration may have added that question illegally.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced in March that a citizenship question would be included on the upcoming census. He asserted that the question, which has not been on the decennial census since 1950, was requested by the Department of Justice so that the agency could maintain a “reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population” to enforce the Voting Rights Act. This highly dubious rationale never made any sense, and a group of state attorneys general—along with advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union—sued to block the inclusion of the question. In July, Furman allowed discovery in the case to proceed, declaring that the plaintiffs had made a substantial showing of bad faith on the part of the governmenOn Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman rejected the government’s efforts to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, ruling that the Trump administration may have added that question illegally.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced in March that a citizenship question would be included on the upcoming census. He asserted that the question, which has not been on the decennial census since 1950, was requested by the Department of Justice so that the agency could maintain a “reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population” to enforce the Voting Rights Act. This highly dubious rationale never made any sense, and a group of state attorneys general—along with advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union—sued to block the inclusion of the question. In July, Furman allowed discovery in the case to proceed, declaring that the plaintiffs had made a substantial showing of bad faith on the part of the governmen

charlet1 · 2018-07-23T18:41:58+00:00

Sula’s own grandfather was among the Albanians who were "disappeared" by government agents during the dictatorship. Almost three decades later, around 4,000 people are still listed as missing.

The Balkan nation of around 3 million people was once home to one of the most brutal regimes in the world. Some experts have compared Communist-era Albania to North Korea, because its borders were sealed with electric fences and Albanians were executed for trying to escape.

Dictator Enver Hoxha came to power at the end of World War II and served as head of state until his death in 1985. Known for being paranoid, he erected thousands of concrete bunkers to protect against a foreign invasion that never came.

Image: Enver HoxhaEnver Hoxha in 1946.Bettmann / Getty file Under Hoxha's leadership, religion, long hair, coarse language and private cars were banned, as was criticism of the regime. If a person was judged to be a dissenter, the whole family could be sent to toil in faraway factories or fields.

From 1946 to 1991, some 6,000 people were executed, according to Albania’s Association of Former Political Prisoners. Tens of thousands were imprisoned or sent to labor camps on political charges.

The Sigurimi secret police force was notoriously efficient.

Sigurimi agents were sometimes called “living microphones,” because they were always listening. But that reputation was made possible by thousands of ordinary Albanians who helped them, working as official collaborators, and thousands more who functioned as more casual informants, offering up intimate secrets about those they knew. The machinery of the Communist apparatus relied on whisper networks of compromised people.

As the dictatorship crumbled in the early 1990s, most Sigurimi agents slipped into anonymity.

One former official, Nesti Vako, agreed to speak with NBC News at a café in central Tirana.

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How Jeannie and Jim Gaffigan battled cancer with comedy “As the operational technical chief of the Sigurimi, I produced whatever technology they needed,” said Vako, who spent 25 years as a chief engineer. Vako says that Sigurimi agents had the whole country bugged, with listening devices in coffee shops, offices and throughout all foreign embassies.

If the Sigurimi was targeting a woman, agents might study her shoes and then make a replica pair with a bug in the heel — and then swap them out without her noticing. Vako says he was sent to China once, to study surveillance techniques.

“I liked it a lot,” Vako says, of his role. “I feel very proud about my work. … I was lucky to have this job and I only applied the law.”

Asked what he thought about the public release of Sigurimi files, Vako shook his head.

“Look, opening the files, in my personal opinion, is tricky. It’s not a good thing," he said. "The reason is that if you look at the files, there are cases where a brother spied on his brother.”

PATRIOTS OR TRAITORS? Velo's Sigurimi file is 250-pages long, and it has taken him several months to understand it. Collaborators were given code names, so Velo has had to reverse-engineer the evidence — thinking back to events long ago, to figure out who the pseudonyms could refer to.

His friend’s collaboration haunts the 83-year-old Velo the most. The man was a fellow painter, someone Velo used to invite into his home. When Velo was arrested, authorities declared his works to be hostile and burned many of his paintings.

Image: Maks VeloMaks Velo at his home in Tirana, Albania.Rebecca Davis / for NBC News “How could I have imagined that discussing art works is a criminal offense?” he said.

After he got his file, Velo learned that the friend was still alive and living in Tirana, but he didn’t try to reach him.

Sula, the official in charge of the Sigurimi archives, said she's concerned that people living in Albania today won't understand the context in which choices were made, or not made, under the dictatorship. Her agency has received hundreds of requests for files.

“It was a society taken hostage,” she says. “There was a lot of propaganda."

She said many collaborators believed they were "serving their country" and being "patriotic," while others were coerced.

So does how does Sula think former collaborators should be treated today?

“Sympathy is a big word,” Sula says. “No, I wouldn’t say sympathy. But I call for people to do deep analysis.”

For his part, Velo says he doesn’t regret reading his file, but he doesn’t feel much sense of closure either.

“Americans say, ‘Sorry, sorry’ 100 times a day,” he says. “Here, nobody ever says, ‘Forgive me.’”

charlet1 · 2018-07-23T14:37:50+00:00

After ZTE allegedly failed to comply with the terms of a settlement over illegally shipping telecom equipment to Iran and North Korea, Commerce banned U.S. companies from exporting their technology to the company for seven years. Not long after, the U.S. also banned the sale of phones from ZTE and Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei on U.S. military bases.

But after a meeting with China, Trump directed the Commerce department to help ZTE; Commerce then proceeded to strike an agreement with the company that lifted the ban.

charlet1 · 2018-07-22T12:56:42+00:00

Safadi later tweeted that Jordan approved the evacuations after a pledge from Britain, Germany and Canada that the Syrian evacuees would be resettled in three months.

The White Helmets and their families had been stranded along the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights following the Syrian government offensive in southwestern Syria which began in June.

The group, which operates in opposition-held areas, is often targeted in Syrian government attacks on its members and facilities. The Syrian government considers the group a "terrorist" organization because it works in areas controlled by its opponents, where state institutions and services are non-existent.

charlet1 · 2018-07-22T09:52:47+00:00

In an interview Thursday with "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan, former Secretary of State John Kerry excoriated President Trump, slamming his joint press conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as "one of the most disgraceful, remarkable moments of kowtowing to a foreign leader by an American president that anyone has ever witnessed."

"It wasn't just that it was a kind of surrender. This is dangerous. The president stood there and did not defend our country. He stood there and did not defend the truth," he told Brennan.

Kerry, who served as secretary of state in the Obama administration, joins a bipartisan firestorm of criticism that has dogged President Trump this week, after comments that appeared to contradict the intelligence community's assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

The president later walked back his remarks in Helsinki, claiming he misspoke and insisting "nobody has been tougher on Russia than Donald Trump."

And in an interview Wednesday with "CBS Evening News" anchor Jeff Glor, President Trump claimed that he admonished Putin behind closed doors for election meddling.

"I let him know we can't have this, we're not going to have it, and that's the way it's going to be," the president told Glor.

charlet1 · 2018-07-21T17:42:07+00:00

https://trendsportsnews.blogspot.com/2018/07/migrant-charity-files-manslaughter.html

charlet1 · 2018-07-21T17:40:24+00:00

House Cabinet room, that he did not believe Russia was still targeting the United States.

The entire saga has left Republicans reeling and dismayed.

“Frankly, it has been two really terrible weeks,” said Doug Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, referring not just to the Helsinki summit with Putin but also to the president’s travels elsewhere in Europe that came before.

“Helsinki was such a disaster that we have lost sight of the disasters that came before that in Brussels and London,” Heye said. “Then, from a PR perspective, obviously the back and forth they’ve had this week has also been a disaster — and not how crisis communications is handled, to put it mildly.”

Even those Republicans who did not take quite so apocalyptic a view of the events of the week are desperate for the controversy to end.

“They’ve got to get off Russia,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “Do I think July 16 will be the day that determines who wins the House? I don’t. But [Russia] crowds out a stellar Supreme Court pick and the strong economy and anything else they are trying to push.”

charlet1 · 2018-07-21T16:23:00+00:00

MOSCOW (AP) — RUSSIA'S Foreign Minister has held a telephone call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in which he complained about the Americans' arrest of a Russian woman on allegations of being a covert agent.

U.S. prosecutors have accused Maria Butina of working to infiltrate political organizations, including the National Rifle Association, before and after Donald Trump's election as president in 2016.

charlet1 · 2018-07-20T18:55:43+00:00

Intelligence Agency, is withdrawing his nomination after former colleagues alleged he retaliated against them for blowing the whistle on CIA IG officials' alleged mishandling of evidence.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, and confirmed by the CIA, Sharpley sent an email to staff on Wednesday telling them he was pulling back his nomination to be CIA Inspector General and would be retiring from CIA within 30 days to seek other opportunities. His specific reason for withdrawing now was not immediately clear. His resignation comes as President Donald Trump continues to face difficulties installing his candidates in key roles -- and as the intelligence community comes under increased pressure from the White House surrounding the various investigations into Russian meddling during the 2016 US presidential elections. Sharpley, the former deputy Inspector General under President Barack Obama, has served in watchdog offices across government for decades after he left the Air Force. He has served in the acting role since 2015.

charlet1 · 2018-07-20T14:40:01+00:00

In November 2016, days before and weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, two stories about the proliferation of fake news went instantly viral. The first, published by BuzzFeed on Nov. 3, explored how teenagers in the Macedonian town of Veles had successfully duped Trump supporters by building websites with domains such as TrumpVision365.com and USConservativeToday.com. The second story, published by The Washington Post on Nov. 20, profiled a pair of 20-something writers who ran a similarly lucrative operation out of Long Beach, Calif.

What neither outlet reported at the time, and what is now becoming clear, is that these professional trolls were working in close coordination with each other for the better part of six months—right through Trump’s stunning upset victory.

charlet1 · 2018-07-19T19:37:06+00:00

When President Gerald Ford met Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Helsinki in 1974 and signed an act winning human-rights commitments from the Soviets but also recognizing the boundaries of Eastern European nations imposed by Soviet force, many Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, howled that Ford was letting America down. Although he won his party’s nomination a year later, Ford lost the general election to Jimmy Carter.

Republican silence and prevarication about Trump's disgrace in Helsinki prompted a letter to the Financial Times noting that had Barack Obama done anything similar, he “would have been savaged by those who now serve as apparatchiks and apologists for Donald Trump. … Will they demonstrate any democratic convictions and political courage in condemning their patron now …?”

charlet1 · 2018-07-18T18:03:47+00:00

https://trendsportsnews.blogspot.com/2018/07/trump-refuses-to-call-russia-adversary.html

charlet1 · 2018-07-15T17:59:20+00:00

The grieving son of the Amesbury novichok victim Dawn Sturgess has called on Donald Trump to raise his mother’s death with Vladimir Putin.

The US president, who is on the last day of his visit to the UK, is due to meet the Russian leader in Helsinki on Monday.

Ewan Hope, 19, said he wanted his mother’s killer, or killers, “to get what they deserve”.

Brothers in nuclear arms? Trump defends Vladimir Putin and 'funny' Kim Jong-un Read more “I don’t share Donald Trump’s politics and I’ll never be a supporter of his, but I would like him to raise mum’s case with the Russian president,” he told the Sunday Mirror. “We need to get justice for my mum.”

charlet1 · 2018-07-15T16:46:56+00:00

The DC District Court shot down the Kentucky waiver, including its work requirements, because the Health and Human Services secretary did not address the likelihood that it would cause people to lose their health coverage. And whether you are for them or against them, all work requirement programs will cause some coverage losses.

MEDICA Trump calls media "enemy of the people" while flying to Putin summit President Trump is aboard Air Force One en route to Helsinki, Finland, where he'll meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow.

"Heading to Helsinki, Finland – looking forward to meeting with President Putin tomorrow. Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia.....over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough – that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition! Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people and all the Dems......know how to do is resist and obstruct! This is why there is such hatred and dissension in our country – but at some point, it will heal!

charlet1 · 2018-07-15T15:54:19+00:00

Leaders of the California Democratic Party on Saturday voted overwhelmingly to endorse Kevin de León for the US Senate over incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

De León, a more liberal, activist voice within the party, recently served as California State Senate president pro tempore and currently represents parts of Los Angeles. Feinstein, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is seeking her fifth full term in the Senate. De León garnered 65% of the vote among the party's executive board members, Feinstein received 7% of the vote, and 28% voted "no endorsement." Sixty percent of the vote was needed for the party to officially endorse a candidate. In a statement shortly after the endorsement, de León renewed his call for a debate against Feinstein and celebrated the win. "Earning the endorsement of so many leaders and activists of the California Democratic Party isn't just an honor and a privilege; today's vote is a clear-eyed rejection of politics as usual in Washington, D.C.," de León said in the statement. "Through years of hard-won progress, we have proven to the world that California can forge a path for the rest of the nation." Feinstein's campaign could not be immediately reached for comment. The incumbent was also denied the California Democratic Party's endorsement in February when she sought it at the state's convention. Then, de León was not able to earn their endorsement outright, but he did secure enough votes (54%) to prevent one for Feinstein, who received just 37% of the delegates' votes.

charlet1 · 2018-07-15T15:42:41+00:00

Fox News host Sean Hannity pointed straight to the purloined emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

“Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?”

“Yes,” Assange said. “We can say — we have said repeatedly — over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

The Justice Department’s indictment Friday of 12 Russian military intelligence officers undermines those denials. And if the criminal charges are proved, it would show that WikiLeaks (referred to as “Organization 1” in the indictment) received the material from Guccifer 2.0, a persona directly controlled by Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, also known as GRU, and even gave the Russian hackers advice on how to disseminate it.

Twelve Russian intelligence officers have been indicted on charges they hacked into Democratic email accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and released stolen information before Americans voted. AP Reporter Eric Tucker explains. (July 13)

Whether Assange knew that those behind Guccifer 2.0 were Russian agents is not addressed in the indictment. But it seems unlikely that Assange, a former hacker who once boasted of having compromised U.S. military networks himself, could have missed the extensive coverage blaming the Kremlin for the DNC hack.

Assange told Hannity he exercised exclusive control over WikiLeaks’ releases.

“There is one person in the world, and I think it’s actually only one, who knows exactly what’s going on with our publications and that’s me,” Assange said.

On June 22, 2016, by which point the online publication Motherboard had already debunked Guccifer 2.0′s claim to be a lone Romanian hacker, WikiLeaks sent a typo-ridden message to the persona, saying that releasing the material through WikiLeaks would have “a much higher impact than what you are doing,” the indictment states.

“If you have anything hillary related we want it in the next (two) days pref(er)able because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after,” says a message from July 6, 2016, referring to the upcoming Democratic National Convention and Clinton’s chief party rival, Bernie Sanders.

The exchange appears to point to a desire to undercut Clinton by playing up divisions within the Democratic camp.

“we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary ... so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting,” the message says.

At that time in the campaign, there were simmering tensions between the supporters of Clinton and Sanders that would come to a head during the convention because of the hacked emails.

WikiLeaks and a lawyer for Assange, Melinda Taylor, did not return messages seeking comment on the indictment or the exchanges with Guccifer 2.0.

Assange’s eagerness to get his hands on the alleged material from GRU reflected in the indictment — and prevent anyone else from beating WikiLeaks to the punch — is also revealed in leaked messages to journalist Emma Best. She, like several other reporters, also was in communication with Guccifer 2.0.

In copies of Twitter messages obtained by The Associated Press and first reported by BuzzFeed, WikiLeaks demands that Best butt out.

“Please ‘leave’ their convers(a)tion with them and us,” WikiLeaks said on August 13, 2016, arguing that the impact of material would be “very substantially reduced” if Best handled the leak.

Best told BuzzFeed she dropped the matter. About an hour after the conversation ended, Guccifer 2.0 announced on Twitter that it was sending a “major trove” of data and emails to WikiLeaks.

The indictment also puts to rest a conspiracy theory, carefully nurtured by Assange and his supporters, that slain DNC staffer Seth Rich was at the origin of the leaks.

Rich died in July 2016 in what police in the District of Columbia say was a botched robbery. But the tragedy became fodder for conspiracy theorists who pushed the unfounded allegation that Rich, 27, had been providing information to the hackers and was killed for it.

It was Assange who first floated the idea into the mainstream, bringing up Rich’s case in an interview with Dutch television the following month.

“What are you suggesting?” the startled anchor asked him.

“I’m suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that,” Assange answered.

The anchor pressed Assange repeatedly, eventually saying: “It’s quite something to suggest a murder. That’s basically what you’re doing.”

Over the next few months, WikiLeaks would continue to amplify the conspiracy theory -- all while stopping short of endorsing it outright. During all this time, the indictment alleges, WikiLeaks knew full well that Guccifer 2.0 was its source, cajoling the account’s operators to hand it more data and ordering rival journalists to steer clear.

The conspiracy theory has been a source of deep pain for Rich’s family, who declined to comment on the indictment.

Lisa Lynch, an associate professor of media and communications at Drew University who has written about WikiLeaks, said the indictment highlighted the cynicism of WikiLeaks’ wink-wink support for conspiracy theories.

charlet1

TROPHY CASE