In other news, nearly 1,500 economists have signed a letter address to Trump and congressional Republicans urging them to forget mass deportation and pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Meanwhile, Trump's travel expenses are on track to reach nearly a billion dollars if he remains in office for two terms. Trump is going to Mar-a-Lago again this coming weekend, by the way.
Finally, Republicans in North Carolina have introduced an unconstitutional bill to ban gay marriage. At this point you have to wonder if these assholes are interested in any legislation that isn't unconstitutional.
We now know more about the Russian hacker who was arrested in Spain on an international warrant issued by the Justice Department. Peter Yuryevich Levashov allegedly operated one of the botnets that was used to spread fake news during the 2016 election, among other things he did with the malware network.
The New York Times has much more:
Several years ago, federal agents traveled to Moscow to enlist the help of their Russian counterparts in arresting one of the world’s most pernicious email spammers. They were rebuffed, a former American law enforcement official who was there said. The spammer, who used the pseudonym Peter Severa, was protected, probably by the Russian government, and could not be touched.
The agents went home and waited for their target to make a mistake.
Last week he did, traveling for vacation to Barcelona, Spain, where the agents who had been following him for years were ready. [...]
Officials said Mr. Levashov’s arrest and the takedown of his network ended a vast criminal enterprise. For more than a decade, Mr. Levashov used his online empire to enrich himself and help others drain bank accounts and commit stock fraud, officials said. He has flooded computers with millions of spam email messages advertising counterfeit pharmaceuticals and remedies for erectile dysfunction, using subject lines like “No amorous failure risk.”
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