Day 999
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Giuliani was paid $500,000 for work he did on behalf of a company co-founded by the two Ukrainian-American businessmen who were arrested and charged with campaign finance violations last week. Giuliani has a close relationship with Lev Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman. Parnas’ company, Fraud Guarantee, approached Giuliani’s management and consulting firm around August 2018 and paid Giulinai $500,000 to consult for Fraud Guarantee. Giuliani said the money came in two payments made within weeks of each other, but said he couldn’t remember the dates. He also said most of the work he did for Fraud Guarantee was completed in 2018 but that he has been doing follow-up work for more than a year. Federal investigators are currently looking into Giuliani’s business dealings with Parnas and Fruman. (Reuters / Wall Street Journal)
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Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan resigned on Friday. McAleenan became the fourth person to lead the agency after former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned in April. Trump said McAleenan resigned so he can “spend more time with his family and go to the private sector.” McAleenan complained last week about the “tone, the message, the public face and approach” of Trump’s immigration policy. Trump said he plans to name a new acting DHS secretary this week. (New York Times / Business Insider / Bloomberg / NBC News / PBS)
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Ronan Farrow claims in his forthcoming book that American Media, Inc. and the National Enquirer shredded sensitive Trump-related documents held in a top-secret safe right before Trump was elected in 2016. The book claims then-Editor-in-Chief of the National Enquirer Dylan Howard ordered a staff member to “get everything out of the safe” and said “we need to get a shredder down there.” The order came the same day a reporter from the Wall Street Journal asked for a comment for a story about how AMI paid $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep her story about having an affair with Trump quiet before the election. (Politico)
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Manufacturing output in the U.S. shrank over two consecutive quarters, slipping into a recession. Numbers from the Federal Reserve match up with a separate index drawn from purchasing managers, which shows September’s contraction in manufacturing was the steepest since June 2009, with production, inventories, and new orders all falling. Manufacturing employment has also stalled after adding nearly half a million jobs during the previous two years. Layoff announcements have also surged this year, especially in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, and Friday’s jobs report showed a slight drop in total factory jobs. (Los Angeles Times)