Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 5:44 AM and sunset 7:58 PM, for 14h 13m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 87.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and her Fire Department has a business meeting at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1978, Gary Thuerk sends the first spam email:
The earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined[15]) was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET in 1978.[11] Rather than send a separate message to each person, which was the standard practice at the time, he had an assistant, Carl Gartley, write a single mass email. Reaction from the net community was fiercely negative, but the spam did generate some sales.[16][17]
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman report Giuliani Says Trump Repaid Cohen for Stormy Daniels Hush Money:
WASHINGTON — President Trump reimbursed Michael D. Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, for a $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen has said he made to keep a pornographic film actress from going public before the 2016 election with her story about an affair with Mr. Trump, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers.
That statement, which Mr. Giuliani made Wednesday night on Fox News, contradicted the president, who has said he had no knowledge about any payment to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, to keep quiet before the election.
[Read what Mr. Giuliani said here.]
Asked specifically last month by reporters aboard Air Force Onewhether he knew about the payment, Mr. Trump said, “No,” and referred questions to Mr. Cohen. He was then asked, “Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?”
“No,” Mr. Trump responded. “I don’t know.”
In an interview with The New York Times shortly after his Fox News appearance, Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and longtime Trump confidant who recently joined the president’s legal team, said that he had documentation showing that Mr. Trump had personally made the payment. Mr. Giuliani indicated that the goal was to conclusively demonstrate that there was no campaign finance violation involved.
➤ In April, President Trump denied knowledge of a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels. It was the first time he commented publicly on the scandal:
➤ Jennifer Rubin writes Republican lawmakers must decide: Can Trump snub a subpoena?:
an equally pressing concern should be the president’s possible refusal to provide an interview to the special counsel or to respond to a subpoena to testify to the grand jury in the Russia investigation. The White House is clearly laying the predicate for such action with White House spokesman Raj Shah falsely suggesting that the special counsel’s mandate is limited to collusion. In fact, the grant of authority explicitly states: “The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including: (i) any links and/or coordination bet ween the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and (ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
The Supreme Court precedent is clear on whether Trump’s testimony can be compelled. Both in U.S. v. Nixon (telling Richard Nixon to turn over the tapes pursuant to a subpoena) and in the Paula Jones case (rejecting the argument that participation in a civil matter including a deposition “may impose an unacceptable burden on the President’s time and energy, and thereby impair the effective performance of his office”) the court held that the president is not beyond the reach of the normal discovery process in either criminal or civil matters. In Clinton v. Jones, the court found that “it is also settled that the President is subject to judicial process in appropriate circumstances. Although Thomas Jefferson apparently thought otherwise, Chief Justice Marshall, when presiding in the treason trial of Aaron Burr, ruled that a subpoena duces tecum could be directed to the President.”
➤ Jake Kanter reports Investigators warn Cambridge Analytica bosses that they can run, but they can’t hide:
Investigators have warned that they will continue to pursue Cambridge Analytica despite the controversial data firm shutting down on Wednesday.
Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it will keep investigating accusations that Cambridge Analytica scraped data from 87 million Facebook accounts and weaponised it during political campaigns, including the 2016 US election.
The ICO said it would press on even if it means going after the executives individually. In a statement, the organisation said:
“The ICO has been investigating the SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica as part of a wider investigation into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, social media companies and others.
“The ICO will continue its civil and criminal investigations and will seek to pursue individuals and directors as appropriate and necessary even where companies may no longer be operating.”
The ICO added that it will “closely monitor any successor companies,” countering the possibility of Cambridge Analytica could simply continue under a different name to avoid scrutiny. Business Insider has previously reported that executives behind the firm, including former CEO Alexander Nix, have already established a mysterious new data company named Emerdata.