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Trump Administration Sends Strong Signal to Russia by Indicting Hackers

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Of all the security threats facing the U.S. today, cyber threats are among the most pernicious. Thankfully, the administration is taking some concrete steps to confront them.

Last week, the Justice Department indicted four individuals on charges relating back to the 2016 hack into Yahoo’s network that compromised at least 500 million user accounts. Of those indicted, two are officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, an agency very similar in function to the United States’ FBI.

According to remarks made by acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord, the Russian officers “protected, directed, facilitated, and paid criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States.”

The hackers that worked with the Russian officers have also been indicted on numerous charges. One hacker has been apprehended in Canada, while the other hacker and the two Russian officers are in Russia, where they are safe because the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia.

Though these three individuals in Russia cannot be prosecuted in the United States, the indictment charges against them are not useless. The decision by the administration to bring these charges sends a strong message to other nation-states about committing cyberattacks on private companies in the United States.

Private companies such as Yahoo already face a daunting challenge in defending themselves from cyber criminals and hacktivists. But when these cyberattacks come from nation-states, the defenses of a private company are outmatched.

The U.S. government has a responsibility to protect U.S. companies and other domestic computer networks from nation-state hackers, and it has a myriad of tools at its disposal to punish and deter such cyber aggressors.

These tools include the legal charges we saw last week, as well as charges the U.S. brought against five members of the Chinese Liberation Army in 2013 following their cyber espionage against businesses in the United States.

By using legal charges to combat cyber aggression, the United States shows that it is serious about protecting its interests and its companies, and has the evidence to prove other nations are acting maliciously.

Other options to respond to cyber aggression include leveling sanctions against offending nation-states.

A recent example of this came last fall following the hacks on the Democratic National Convention. In response to these hacks, the Obama administration enacted sanctions against five Russian intelligence agencies and three Russian companies, which froze assets and halted transactions and travel between those Russian companies and the United States.

Visa, commercial, and financial restrictions, diplomatic condemnations, actions in international organizations such as the World Trade Organization, and other strategic responses to hacking should all be on the table.

The Trump administration has set a strong precedent by indicting the two Russian Federal Security Service officers and the two hackers that worked with them. But this is just a first step.

Further steps will need to be taken to improve the U.S. deterrence posture against nations who would engage in cyber aggression against the United States. (For more from the author of “Trump Administration Sends Strong Signal to Russia by Indicting Hackers” please click HERE)

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Dems Shop Around, Find Two Federal Judges to Strike Down Trump’s Revised Travel Ban

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After President Trump’s first executive order ban on refugees from violent Islamic countries was struck down by two activist federal judges, Trump worked with some of the top legal minds to revise the language. The judges claimed that it unconstitutionally discriminated against the religion of Islam.

The new version removed Iraq from the list of countries banned for 90 days, leaving Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. It exempted people with green cards and visas and removed a provision that appeared to prioritize acceptance of those whose religion was a minority in their home country. Those with new visas were banned from entering the U.S. for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days. It was to go into effect yesterday.

Despite the changes, the revised version has just been struck down by two more federal district court judges. As with the original ban, left-wing activists went judge shopping in order to find liberal judges who would rule against Trump.

Peculiar Judicial Decisions

U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson, an Obama appointee who presides in Honolulu, issued a 43-page ruling on Wednesday. It came out less than two hours after listening to arguments, a sign he had already made up his mind and started writing the opinion well in advance. Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland, also an Obama appointee, issued an opinion this morning. Chuang’s opinion only struck down the travel ban portion of the executive order.

A career government lawyer, Chuang was once accused by a Republican senator “of having a role in frustrating Congressional efforts to investigate the death of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, Libya, while he was serving on a special assignment at the State Department.” U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who blocked the initial travel ban last month, will also be issuing an opinion.

Judge Watson said the state had established “a strong likelihood of success” on the claim of religious discrimination. He also based his opinion on an assertion that the ban would hurt tourism. This is strange, since Hawaii has yet to accept any refugees. Perhaps he was referring to the foreign relatives of people currently in the state. However, the California man who is part of the lawsuits said his overseas mother hadn’t visited him in over 12 years. A 90-day ban probably wouldn’t change much there.

Judge Watson reasoned that since the six countries listed in the travel ban are over 90 percent Muslim, it amounts to a ban on that religion. He ignored the fact that up to 10 percent of the population in those countries are not Muslim yet still subject to the ban.

Strangely, instead of analyzing the federal law providing authorization for the travel ban, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), the judges referenced Trump’s remarks about radical Islam that he made during the presidential campaign, not as president. Judge Watson called them “highly relevant.” Watson cited one of Trump’s campaign press releases: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” However, that is not what Trump ending up doing with his travel ban as president; instead, he banned entire countries.

Interestingly, Judge Chuang disagreed in part. Chuang said the plaintiffs didn’t sufficiently develop their argument that a temporary ban on refugees discriminates on the basis of religion.

Since immigration is a federal issue, the decisions by the federal court judges to continue the injunction apply across the country. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld the injunction against the ban last month, which prompted the Trump administration to rewrite the executive order.

Trump’s Response

Trump strongly denounced both rulings. During a rally in Nashville today, he criticized the judges for failing to discuss the immigration law authorizing the travel ban, 212(F). “Even if you’re a bad student,” he said, “this is a real easy one. … Here is the real statute, which they don’t even want to quote when they overrule it. And it was put here for the security of our country.”

Trump went on to emphasize the national security interest against Islamic terrorism: “We’re talking about the safety of our nation, the safety and security of our people.”

This ruling makes us look weak — which by the way, we no longer are, believe me. … This is a watered down version of the first one. I was elected to change our broken down and dangerous system and thinking in government that has weakened and endangered our country, and left our people defenseless. And I will not stop fighting for the safety of you and your families, believe me. Not today, not ever. We’re gonna win it.

Although the two decisions will now be appealed to circuit courts which lean to the left, it is very likely the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately make the final decision. Trump is confident of success at the high court, saying during today’s rally, “Even liberal democratic lawyer Alan Dershowitz — good lawyer — just said that we would win this case before the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Many of the news accounts of these two court decisions revealed their bias: They left out any discussion that the ban could be upheld by the Supreme Court, as well as any analysis of 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), which clearly gives the president the authority to issue immigration bans. If this continues, random liberal judges could be dictating US immigration and foreign policy, in direct contradiction to the US Constitution. (For more from the author of “Dems Shop Around, Find Two Federal Judges to Strike Down Trump’s Revised Travel Ban” please click HERE)

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Why Trump’s Budget Proposal for the State Department Makes Sense

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President Donald Trump has made some promising proposals to trim government spending in his recently released budget blueprint.

Trump’s significant 2018 budget cut of 28 percent for the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other U.S. government foreign affairs agencies makes a lot of sense. The cut seems dramatic, but comes on the back of more than a decade of expansion during which the foreign operations budget nearly doubled.

The Trump budget does many good things. For example, it eliminates the cronyist Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a move that Heritage Foundation senior trade policy analyst Bryan Riley and other Heritage scholars have long recommended.

Also on the chopping block: USAID’s Global Climate Change Initiative and all payments to the United Nations’ climate change programs.

In calling for the elimination of this funding last year, former Heritage scholar, David Kreutzer, wrote that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change had devolved into little more than a mechanism to redistribute wealth and to dramatically rework and centralize the world economy with little or no impact on climate. Cutting this funding is a good first step toward U.S. withdrawal from the convention.

Given a second chance: the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which had strayed from its hard emphasis on anti-corruption during the Obama years but which was spared from outright elimination in the Trump budget.

Although Trump did not heed the call by Heritage senior research fellow Lisa Curtis to continue funding the United States Institute of Peace, the overall direction of Trump’s foreign operations budget is in line with Heritage foreign policy expert Jim Carafano’s advice: Cut the U.S. foreign aid budget in favor of increased defense spending to make the world safer.

The president’s dramatic budget cut will leave no choice but for the State Department and USAID “to pursue greater efficiencies through reorganization and consolidation in order to enable effective diplomacy and development.”

That’s precisely what Heritage senior research fellow Brett Schaefer recommended last year: to bring USAID directly under the control of the State Department to better coordinate its activities with U.S. policy priorities

In the words of the budget announcement, a complete overhaul of U.S. foreign aid will refocus “economic and development assistance to countries of greatest strategic importance to the U.S.” and ensure “the effectiveness of U.S. taxpayer investments by rightsizing funding across countries and sectors.”

Overall, the budget cuts will force the reorganization of the State Department that Schaefer recommended last year, to make it a more effective and capable agency ready to resume its role as the primary implementer of the nation’s foreign policy. (For more from the author of “Why Trump’s Budget Proposal for the State Department Makes Sense” please click HERE)

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Trump Not First President to Call HUD’s Block Grants Wasteful

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The president’s budget called for slashing funding for a block grant program primarily because it was difficult to determine whether it was getting the desired results.

That was President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2012. It justified the $3.7 billion cut in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program by asserting:

While flexibility may be one strong characteristic of the CDBG program, the use of funds and how states and communities distribute their funds lead to resources spread across many activities, diverse constituencies, and geographies without clear or focused impact. This makes the demonstration of outcomes difficult to measure and evaluate.

The Trump administration budget blueprint, issued Wednesday, calls for eliminating funding for HUD’s $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program.

“It isn’t just us who wanted this on the chopping block. Obama didn’t say get rid of it, but he did say it’s difficult to measure the outcomes,” Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.

“Eligibility is so broad, [a block grant] has gone to Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the richest cities in America,” Schatz said.

Democrats and media commentators almost immediately criticized the Trump move, however. A Washington Post analysis framed it as:

The program provides cities with money to address a range of community development needs such as affordable housing, rehabilitating homes in neighborhoods hardest hit by foreclosures, and preventing or eliminating slums and community blight. It also provides funding for Meals on Wheels, a national nonprofit that delivers food to homebound seniors.

Liberal advocacy groups and entertainers also raised alarm about Meals on Wheels.

However, Forbes reported that only 3.3 percent of funding for Meals on Wheels comes from the federal government.

Meanwhile, Reason, a libertarian magazine, reported that cities are routinely spending the block grants on recreational centers, auditoriums, and gardens rather than alleviating poverty.

As a private program, states could kick in funding for the meals program for seniors, said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow specializing in poverty at The Heritage Foundation, who called the Community Development Block Grant program a “slush fund for urban mayors.”

Rector said the program is “barely a rounding error” in $1.1 trillion spent annually in 80 federal programs for the poor. Local governments are also less likely to look at results if the money is coming from the federal government, he said.

“To pretend that this program or that program is just one step between the poor and destitution is ridiculous,” Rector told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

The Trump budget proposal states that eliminating funding for the CDBG program would save $3 billion, and used language similar to Obama’s.

“The federal government has spent over $150 billion on this block grant since its inception in 1974, but the program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results,” the Trump proposal says. “The budget devolves community and economic development activities to the state and local level, and redirects federal resources to other activities.”

The Government Accountability Office determined in a 2012 report that some funding isn’t targeted to the cities in most need:

The distribution of grant funding per person in poverty in cities was not consistently aligned with overall poverty rates. Most cities, with the exception of those cities with the highest poverty rates, received roughly the same amount of economic development funding per person living in poverty. Further, when we examined how grant funds are distributed to cities based on their unemployment rates, we also found that some cities with higher unemployment rates received less funding per unemployed person than other cities with lower unemployment rates. However, we did find that a small number of cities (17 out of a total of 465 cities) with the highest unemployment rates received funding that was roughly 40 percent higher than the average for unemployed populations in all cities.

(For more from the author of “Trump Not First President to Call HUD’s Block Grants Wasteful” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Disastrous Pick for National Intelligence Director

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It looks like Indiana Sen. Dan Coats will be confirmed by the Senate for the national intelligence director slot. On Wednesday, the Senate voted 88-11 to confirm Coats.

Coats advocates violating the Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment. He supported reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 702 is used by the NSA to justify mass collection of phone calls and emails by collecting a huge amount of data directly from the physical infrastructure of communications providers without a warrant.

As a senator, Coats voted against the USA Freedom Act. The legislation would have outlawed the bulk collection of data. He also believes law enforcement should be able to bypass encryption.

Despite this hardline, some members of Congress doubt he is tough enough.

“I absolutely understand that this role demands someone who can stand up to the pressures that will be placed upon him,” Coats said during his confirmation hearing. “Given the situation that we are facing worldwide in terms of these threats, we don’t have time just to be the nice guy.”

Or defend and protect the Constitution, apparently.

Coats also supports the continuation of the Guantanamo Bay torture center. He characterized a 2014 Senate report condemning the US torture program as “unconstructive.”

“I support that detention, which I think is done in a lawful way,” he said.

He disagrees with Trump on Russia. “Russia’s assertiveness in global affairs is something I look upon with great concern, which we need to address with eyes wide open and a healthy degree of skepticism,” he said during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He also disagrees with Trump on the absurd contention Russia somehow influenced the election. “It’s publicly known and acknowledged and accepted that Russia definitely did try to influence the campaign,” he said.

It should be obvious by now to even the most inattentive American that Donald Trump represents more of the same—more war, more out of control federal spending, and a continuation and expansion of the surveillance state. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Disastrous Pick for National Intelligence Director” please click HERE)

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2 Federal Judges Block New Trump Travel Ban

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Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked President Trump’s “travel ban” executive order from taking effect as scheduled on Thursday, saying that the order discriminates against Muslims.

The rulings in Hawaii late Wednesday and in Maryland early Thursday excited civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants and refugees, who complained that a temporary ban on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries violated the First Amendment. The Trump administration argued that the ban was intended to protect the United States from terrorism, as the countries temporarily banned have the largest population of jihadists.

In Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang — who was appointed by then-president Barack Obama — called Trump’s statements about barring Muslims from entering the United States “highly relevant.” The second executive order removed a preference for religious minorities from the affected countries, among other changes that the Justice Department argued would address the legal concerns surrounding the first ban, which was also blocked in court. (Read more from “2 Federal Judges Block New Trump Travel Ban” HERE)

Trump Says He Will Submit Evidence of Wiretapping to House Committee ‘Very Soon’

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President Trump discussed his tweeted accusation that President Obama ordered “wires” at Trump Tower tapped during last year’s presidential campaign in an exclusive interview with Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday.

Trump told host Tucker Carlson that the administration “will be submitting things” to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence “very soon.” The president added that he “will be, perhaps speaking about this next week” and predicted that “you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next 2 weeks.”

When asked by Carlson why he tweeted about the alleged phone tap before producing evidence, Trump said his definition of wiretapping “covers a lot of different things.”

“That really covers surveillance and many other things. Nobody ever talks about the fact that [the words ‘wires tapped’] was in quotes [in the tweet], but that’s a very important thing.”

Trump defended his ongoing use of social media while in office, saying that “maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter, because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press. (Read more from “Trump Says He Will Submit Evidence of Wiretapping to House Committee ‘Very Soon'” HERE)

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Hawaii Sues Trump Admin for Discrimination … but Have They Checked the Mirror?

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Nate Madden of Conservative Review has outlined the problems with the latest lawsuit filed by Hawaii against President Donald Trump’s revised immigration order temporarily suspending entry from six terrorist safe havens. (Arguments are being held today in federal court.) But watching the attorney general of Hawaii, Doug Chin, condemn President Donald Trump’s revised immigration order as “blatantly discriminatory” was quite ironic, given that Hawaii is the home of a state government that constantly engages in blatant racial and ethnic discrimination.

Contrary to Chin’s outrageous claim, Trump’s new order does not discriminate against anyone, whether based on race or religion. Although Chin accused the administration of issuing an order designed to divide people into “a superior race,” it is Hawaii that blatantly discriminates to divide Hawaiian residents and create a “superior race” of Hawaiians entitled to special loans, low cost housing, and other privileges.

The state government has a special “Office of Hawaiian Affairs” (OHA). As its own website says, the OHA awards scholarship money to “Native Hawaiians,” as well as loans to “start businesses, improve homes, consolidate debts, and continue their education.” It also gives out grants and leases out land at very special, low rates to “Native Hawaiians.” To qualify, you have to prove you are a “descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778” according to the Hawaiian Home Commission Act. As Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, says, this is no different than the “odious ‘one drop rule’ contained in the racial-segregation codes of the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

In a highly critical 2005 report on the proposed Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, the Civil Rights Commission said that Hawaii “is in a league by itself” when it comes to officially sanctioned discriminatory conduct. Hawaii has some nerve claiming that the revised executive order “differentiates between people based on their … national origin.” That is something the Hawaiian government does every day — differentiate between people based on their origin and whether they can trace their bloodlines back to 1778.

Attorney General Doug Chin should put his own house in order before he starts accusing President Trump of discrimination. He would be better off suing his own state government to stop its flagrant discrimination and its division of Hawaiian residents into two separate classes, one of which is given special privileges not available to anyone else. (For more from the author of “Hawaii Sues Trump Admin for Discrimination … but Have They Checked the Mirror?” please click HERE)

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6 Unsettling Ways Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Headed Toward Disaster

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As conservatives fight the efforts of their own party and president to promote Obamacare 2.0 here at home, there are some major problems with the direction in foreign policy of this Trump administration. We can dismiss all reports of liberal policies and leftist personnel emanating from this administration as “fake news” — or we can demand a course correction before this becomes the third term of Obama’s State Department. The choice is ours.

The final dramatic act of the Obama administration was to instigate a public feud between former Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over where Jews can live in their own homeland. As conservatives, we swore to ourselves that once Trump assumed power we’d be done with the illogical and immoral Oslo Accords, along with its maniacal idea of creating a new Arab terror state.

Trump himself also promised a new direction:

The reason this issue is important is not just because of our relationship with Israel ; it’s that the obsession with a Palestinian state and the recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorists has served as the fulcrum of our entire Middle East policy for 24 years, preventing us from acting in our own self-interests.

The failure to understand the danger of the PLO is not just bad for Israel. It’s also dangerous for America because it demonstrates that our political elites don’t understand the Islamic threat and will continue the past mistakes of both the Clinton/Obama leftists and the establishment neo-conservatives who support the nation building agenda in the Arab world.

Well, that nightmare is now upon us.

During Trump’s second week in office, I took a lot of flak for criticizing the White House’s statement on Israel’s construction in the so-called settlements. Some conservatives felt that Trump’s statement was a breath of fresh air because, while he did rebuke the construction, he implied that building within the “settlement blocks” is OK.

Obviously, as I noted at the time, this statement is nonsense. Why are we getting involved in any of this Kerry-style dictating of terms? Weren’t we supposed to break from the entire Oslo Accords? Why should we legitimize any notion of a Palestinian state and how does that put America’s interests first? Weren’t we done with nation building in terror states among existing nations, much less trying to create a new one? I warned that absent a course correction, this policy would grow legs and irrevocably suck the president into the globalist swamp of the PLO cause.

It has. Consider the following troubling observations:

This week, Trump dispatched Jason Greenblatt, his top lawyer and envoy to the Middle East, to pressure Netanyahu into halting construction, even for a city designed to house displaced Israelis who were uprooted by a very painful evacuation. As the Times of Israel is reporting, Greenblatt is now obsessing over every last neighborhood with the maniacal precision of John Kerry to prevent Israel from building even within existing “settlements.” The pressure is reportedly so strong that Netanyahu has now held off on his plans to fully annex Ma’ale Adumim, the largest suburb of Jerusalem, which has always been a “consensus” area (even to those who buy into the premise of a Palestinian state). Greenblatt later met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (whose term of office expired eight years ago!) and treated him like a peace partner.

The inimitable Caroline Glick gives a riveting account of the sharp turn of the White House on Israel — embracing the PLO, inviting Abbas to the White House, and taking an active (almost obsessive) role in promoting a Palestinian state. It’s almost as if Trump has made it his life’s mission (or, son-in-law Jared Kushner’s mission) to ram through the “peace process” even more than Obama.

My colleague, Jordan Schachtel has already reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appointed a Kerry acolyte as the Israel-Palestinian policy official in the State Department. Michael Ratney was Obama’s consul to Jerusalem who “oversaw grants to OneVoice, a leftist non-profit that President Obama allegedly used to try to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s 2015 election.” Ratney oversaw a program the Times of Israel said was “in effect setting up an armed Palestinian militia in the consulate.” Martin Indyk — Obama’s anti-Israel apologist — praised the appointment, tweeting that Ratney was a “valued member of Kerry’s peace team.”

Trump decided to keep Obama’s National Security Council Adviser, Yael Lempert, for Israel policy. She accompanied Greenblatt on his trip to Israel, where he graciously met with Abbas and pressured Netanyahu on settlements. Lempert was literally Obama’s point person in the White House orchestrating his war against Israel. This decision is Orwellian.

Talk about the fox guarding the hen house? Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for Obama’s National Security Council, has been given the portfolio over the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department. This individual was an essential figure in pushing through the Iran deal and has ties to Tehran.

Defense Secretary James Mattis wanted to appoint Anne Patterson to the No. 3 position in the Pentagon. Patterson was Obama’s ambassador to Egypt, who had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and embodied John Kerry’s foreign policy. Although conservatives successfully prevented that from happening, Mattis’ motivations, along with a number of troubling statements on policy, reveal that he fundamentally doesn’t share a conservative worldview.

Folks, this is not “deep state” sabotage of Pres. Trump’s agenda. This is Trump sabotaging himself by allowing Jared in the White House and top officials in State to promote the very worst elements of the Clinton/Bush/Obama foreign policy. And it’s not just about Israel. Anyone who believes in creating a new terror state and partnering with PLO terrorists clearly does not understand the broader Islamic threat. This could lead us into nation-building in Syria and other insufferable Arab countries, a notion Trump explicitly rejected with his popular denunciation of the Iraq war.

There is nothing to “negotiate” and nobody with which we can “cut deals.” This is not a matter of convincing Carrier to keep its plant in Indiana. Some things don’t work with negotiations; Islamo-fascists elements are one good example.

What is so disappointing is that foreign policy is the one area where the president has wide latitude to change course without the cumbersome legislative process. Almost 60 days into the new administration, there is no major accomplishment that has gotten past Congress, including the much-promised FULL repeal of Obamacare. Again, foreign policy is the one area where Donald Trump can unilaterally make his mark.

However, absent a dramatic change of course, the pink unicorn of the PLO “peace process” will ensnare President Trump into untenable diplomatic quicksand. As Caroline Glick warns, “The PLO is the Siren that drowns U.S. administrations.” Trump must understand that if he is “serious about embracing the PLO and intends to have his top advisers devote themselves to Abbas and his henchmen,” he is setting himself up “to fail and be humiliated.”

Make no mistake: The “two-state solution” is the Obamacare of foreign policy. Failure to repeal it will be as catastrophic for foreign policy as Obamacare is for domestic policy. Except this time, we won’t be able to blame a parliamentarian. (For more from the author of “6 Unsettling Ways Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Headed Toward Disaster” please click HERE)

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Meet the Reporter Who Received Donald Trump’s Tax Returns

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David Cay Johnston is the reporter who received what appears to be the first two pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns and shared them on “The Rachel Maddow” show Tuesday night.

The editor and founder of dcreport.org, which crashed Tuesday night during the 9 p.m. hour, said he received Donald Trump’s tax returns from 2005 in the mail a few days ago. The return revealed that Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes on a reported income of $150 million in 2005.

Johnston speculated that Trump might have been the person who mailed the figures to him.

“Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it’s in his interest,” Johnston said. “With Donald, you never know.” (Read more from “Meet the Reporter Who Received Donald Trump’s Tax Returns” HERE)

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