Woman named in Stormy Daniels' document accused Trump of unwanted advances

By Scott Glover, Curt Devine and MJ Lee, CNN
Updated 9:07 PM ET,   Thu March 8, 2018
Jessica Drake (left) and Stormy Daniels pose at the Wicked Pictures booth at an adult entertainment expo in Las Vegas in 2015.

(CNN)When adult film star Jessica Drake accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct a month before the presidential election, Trump said through a spokesperson that he didn't know the woman and had "no interest in ever knowing her."

Less than a week later, a woman named Angel Ryan was listed in a secret settlement agreement negotiated by Trump's personal attorney as having "confidential information" about the then-Republican nominee.
The two occurrences may appear unrelated. But there is a connection: Drake, the woman who accused Trump, and Ryan, the woman named in the non-disparagement agreement, are the same person, according to interviews and documents reviewed by CNN.
Anxiety over Stormy Daniels pervasive inside the White House

The connection raises new questions about the circumstances surrounding the controversial agreement in which Trump attorney Michael Cohen sought to protect his longtime client and friend.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news that Cohen paid adult film ssought to protect his longtime client and friend.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news that Cohen paid adult film star Stephanie Clifford $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.

Earlier this week, Clifford, who performs under the name Stormy Daniels, sued the President in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking to void the agreement, which she attached to her complaint.
In a section dealing with "prior disclosures" of "confidential information," the agreement cites four people with whom Clifford had already shared such information.
One of them was Angel Ryan.
Online records reviewed by CNN show that Ryan obtained a trademark registration for the name Jessica Drake.
Gloria Allred, Ryan's attorney, confirmed the link for CNN.
"Jessica Drake is still my client. She is Angel Ryan and the one whose name is in the settlement agreement," Allred told CNN. She said her client was never contacted about Clifford's settlement agreement.
Why it's 'likely' Stormy Daniels will get to tell her Donald Trump story
Allred would not comment on Ryan's relationship with Clifford, or the timing of her 2016 disclosure being so close to the drafting of Clifford's agreement.
Both Clifford and Ryan worked for Wicked Entertainment and both said they attended a 2006 golf outing in Lake Tahoe, also attended by Trump.
Clifford said in this week's court filing that she began "an intimate relationship" with Trump that summer, which continued into 2007.
At the press conference in October 2016, Ryan, joined by Allred, said she was subjected to unwanted sexual advances by Trump at the golf tournament. She said he kissed her without asking and offered to pay her for sex.
Trump campaign officials denied the allegations and said the candidate did not know his accuser.
Six days later, Drake's real name appeared in the agreement related to Clifford.
Cohen has publicly acknowledged using his own money to facilitate the payment to Clifford in the weeks before the presidential election. He said Trump had no knowledge that he was planning do so or had done so. He said Trump "vehemently denies" Clifford's allegations.
The agreement specified three other people with whom Clifford had shared "confidential information." They are an ex-husband, a business manager, and a photographer.
All three either declined comment or could not be reached.
CNN's Drew Griffin and Sara Sidner contributed to this report.

Those Were the Good Old Days

 



Amelia Earhart mystery solved? Scientist '99 percent' sure bones found belong to aviator

A scientific study claims to shed new light on the decades-long mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart.
Richard Jantz, an emeritus anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee, argues that bones discovered on the Pacific Island of Nikumaroro in 1940 were likely Earhart’s remains. The research contradicts a forensic analysis of the remains in 1941 that described the bones as belonging to a male. The bones, which were subsequently lost, continue to be a source of debate.
Earhart, who was attempting to fly around the world, disappeared with navigator Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937, during a flight from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island in the Pacific.
The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Earhart was one of the most famous people in the world at the time of her disappearance. Thus, a number of theories have emerged about her fate.
One well-publicized theory is that Earhart died a castaway after landing her plane on the remote island of Nikumaroro, a coral atoll  1,200 miles from the Marshall Islands. Some 13 human bones were found on Nikumaroro, also known as Gardner Island, three years after Earhart’s disappearance.
In 1941, the bones were analyzed by Dr. David Hoodless, principal of the Central Medical School, Fiji. However, Jantz says that modern analysis techniques may have delivered a different result, particularly with regard to gender.
“When Hoodless conducted his analysis, forensic osteology was not yet a well-developed discipline,” he explains in a paper published in the journal Forensic Anthropology. “Evaluating his methods with reference to modern data and methods suggests that they were inadequate to his task; this is particularly the case with his sexing method. Therefore his sex assessment of the Nikumaroro bones cannot be assumed to be correct.”
Hoodless used 19th-century forensic science and described the bones as possibly belonging to a “short, stocky muscular European,” according to Jantz. The 1941 analysis described the remains belonged to a male around 5'5.5".

Earhart’s pilot’s license, however, recorded her height as 5'8" and her driver’s license as 5'7". Photos also show Earhart’s slender frame. Noonan was 6'¼."
Jantz says that the methods used by Hoodless underestimated height compared to modern techniques.
Hoodless used three criteria in his research – the ratio of the femur’s circumference to length, the angle of the femur and pelvis, and the subpubic angle, which is formed between two pelvis bones. The subpubic angle is wider in women than in men.
Jantz says that the subpubic angle is the most reliable of Hoodless’ criteria, but even that is “subject to considerable variation, much of which was little understood in 1941.”

The scientist also compared Hoodless’ measurements to data from 2,776 other people, as well as studying photos of Earhart and her clothing measurements. “This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample,” said Jantz. “This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart.”
Despite Jantz’s skepticism about the 1941 analysis of the bones, some modern scientists have backed up the Hoodless results.
While some people are convinced that Nikumaroro is Earhart’s final resting place, another theory suggests that she met her end on Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Last year, controversy swirled around a photo that was touted as providing a vital clue as to Earhart’s fate.

 

 



Sunken World War II Aircraft Carrier Found by Deep-Sea Expedition

  The USS Lexington at anchor in 1938

More than 70 years at the bottom of the sea 

Gun is still aimed at Japanese bombers in the sky

 

Found two miles deep in the Coral Sea

 

 

Known for deep-sea exploration efforts uncovering military ships in the past, Paul Allen's personal search team has helped to discover a lost aircraft carrier.

The U.S.S. Lexington has finally been found, decades later and thousands of feet underwater.

The crew of Research Vessel Petrel (R/V Petrel), the exploration ship of billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, discovered the wreckage of the World War II-era aircraft carrier Monday. It was found about two miles below the surface of the Coral Sea and more than 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia.

The Lexington is one of the first aircraft carriers built by the U.S. It went down in 1942 with 216 crewmembers and 35 aircraft on board, and it's finally been found.
 

Allen, the son of a WWII veteran, and the R/V Petrel team had been planning to locate the Lexington for about six months after they were given coordinates for where the sunken ship might be. They retrofitted their 250-foot vessel, originally deployed to the Philippine Sea in 2017, with subsea equipment that can reach depths up to three and a half miles.

 

"We're dealing with an environment out here that is very harsh," Robert Kraft, Allen's director of subsea operations, told media. "It's thousands of meters deep and it's very unpredictable. We're putting, you know, a lot of electronics and high voltage down in very deep waters and sea waters where it shouldn't belong, and so that always presents challenges."                        

First commissioned as a battlecruiser, the Lexington was launched as an aircraft carrier in 1925. On May 4, 1942, the ship fought with the U.S.S. Yorktown against three Japanese carriers in the first carrier-on-carrier battle in history. The Lexington sustained multiple hits from bombs and torpedoes until succumbing on May 8. A secondary explosion had set uncontrollable fires raging through the vessel, triggering the call to abandon ship. The U.S.S. Phelps delivered the final torpedoes that finally sank the ship.

With U.S. ships nearby, 2,770 crewmen and officers were rescued from the doomed vessel. Among them was the captain and his dog Wags, the ship's ever-present mascot.

 

 The planes were still in place on the deck

 

 

UPDATE : Trump economic adviser Cohn quits after dispute over tariffs

Thomson Reuters         MAKINI BRICE AND PAUL SIMAO      Mar 6th 2018 
WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a Wall Street banker who opposes hefty steel and aluminum tariffs planned by U.S. President Donald Trump, said on Tuesday that he was resigning.

"It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform. I am grateful to the President for giving me this opportunity and wish him and the Administration great success in the future," Cohnsaid in a statement issued by the White House.

His departure as director of the National Economic Council came after a little more than a year on the job.

Notable people who have been fired or resigned from Trump's administration
Following the news of Cohn's departure, the U.S. dollar weakened, while an exchange-traded fund tracking the broad market S&P 500 dipped 1 percent.

Trump's announcement last week of his plans to impose the tariffs sent U.S. stock prices tumbling and came after an intense debate within the White House between Cohn and other advocates of free trade, on one side, and protectionist advisers such as Peter Navarro on the other, White House sources said.

Cohn, a former president and chief operating officer of investment bank Goldman Sachs, was seen as a bulwark within the White House against protectionist policies. Business lobbyists frequently cited Cohn as their strongest ally in the White House.

"Gary Cohn is one of the true Wall Street all stars behind the Trump tax plan. He will be missed. We thought he might switch mid-term and become the Treasury Secretary. He is that good," said Andrew Brenner, the head of international fixed income at NatAlliance Securities LLC.

Gary Cohn resigning, or is he ?? I'm thinking fired. After all, he's just another Democrat

 

US President Donald Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn is resigning, the White House has said.

It is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from President Trump's team.
There has been speculation that Mr Cohn, a supporter of free trade, was angered by Mr Trump's plans to impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports.In a statement released by the White House, Mr Cohn said it had been "an honor to serve my country".
The 57-year-old former president of the Goldman Sachs bank helped Mr Trump push through his sweeping tax reforms late last year. However, the two were not close, as observed by many in the West Wing.

In August 2017, Mr Cohn criticized Mr Trump over his reaction to a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying the administration "can and must do better". He was reported to have drafted a resignation letter after the event.

"It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform," Mr Cohn said in his statement.
"I am grateful to the president for giving me this opportunity and wish him and the administration great success in the future."
Gary Cohn was a bit of a stranger in a strange land. He was a Democrat in a Republican White House; an economic globalist working for a president who campaigned on economic nationalism. Now, it seems, Donald Trump's protectionist bent has pushed the top administration economic adviser to the exit, with an extra little shove.
This was not an unexpected development. By many accounts, there had been a contentious White House fight over whether to impose sweeping sanctions on US steel and aluminium imports - a tug-of-war that was settled, precipitously, by the president himself last week.
There were the rumors that Mr Cohn was only sticking around to see last year's tax bill over the finish line, after his extreme discomfort following the president's warm words about some of the white nationalist marchers involved in violent clashes in Charlottesville last August.
Mr Cohn was reportedly viewed by many Trump loyalists in the White House as an unwelcome interloper.... along with son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka. While on the outside, particularly in the financial world, he was welcomed as a moderating influence.
Now who will help moderate Mr Trump's more radical legislation ideas ??

The White House said Mr Cohn's exact departure date had yet to be determined.
"For several weeks Gary had been discussing with the president that it was nearing time for him to transition out," an official said.
In a statement, Mr Trump described his outgoing economics adviser as "a rare talent".
"Gary... did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again," he said .
"He is a rare talent and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people."
Mr Trump later tweeted that he would pick Mr Cohn's replacement "soon".
"Many people wanting the job - will choose wisely!" he added.
Possible candidates mooted by US media include White House adviser Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow, a conservative commentator and 2016 campaign adviser.
Earlier on Tuesday, President Trump tweeted that there was no chaos at the White House but there were "still... some people that I want to change".

 

The White House has seen a string of senior figures leave since Mr Trump took office.
Last week, one of his closest aides, Hope Hicks, resigned. She was the fourth person to have served as the president's communications chief.
It came a day after she had testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee investigating possible Trump campaign ties to Russia, but White House sources said this was not the reason.
Of course not.  And it was certainly not  because she admitted she told white lies for the president.