Tag: President Criminal

  • Everyone was in the loop

    Apparently Sondland’s testimony is being very damning.

    He read an opening statement saying he would be confirming the quid pro quo.

    He said he and Volker didn’t want to work with Giuliani but they followed the president’s orders.

    They tried to talk him out of it, but no.

    In response to our persistent efforts to change his views, President Trump directed us to “talk with Rudy.” We understood that “talk with Rudy” meant talk with Mr. Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer.

    Let me say again: We weren’t happy with the President’s directive to talk with Rudy. We did not want to involve Mr. Giuliani. I believed then, as I do now, that the men and women of the State Department, not the President’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for Ukraine matters.

    Nonetheless, based on the President’s direction, we were faced with a choice: We could abandon the efforts to schedule the White House phone call and White House visit between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, which was unquestionably in our foreign policy interest — or we could do as President Trump had directed and “talk with Rudy.” We chose the latter course, not because we liked it, but because it was the only constructive path open to us.

    Not exactly. He could have blown the whistle, or he and Volker together could have. But that’s not the issue, the issue is what Trump was doing, and the way Sondland is nailing it to the wall.

    Sondland’s testimony continues to break in wave after wave of stunning statements contradicting previous testimony by Morrison and others that he was somehow acting alone:

    We kept the leadership of the State Department and the NSC informed of our activities. That included communications with Secretary of State Pompeo, his Counselor Ulrich Brechbuehl, and Executive Secretary Lisa Kenna within the State Department; and communications with Ambassador John Bolton, Dr. Fiona Hill, Mr. Timothy Morrison, and their staff at the NSC. They knew what we were doing and why.

    Everyone was in the loop.

    Now Sondland quotes from an email that the state department has refused to release.

    Significant are the names CC’d – the secretary of state, secretary of energy, the acting chief of staff… all of whom have refused congressional subpoenas to testify or provide documents:

    Within my State Department emails, there is a July 19 email that I sent to Secretary Pompeo, Secretary Perry, Brian McCormack (Perry’s Chief of Staff), Ms. Kenna, Acting Chief of Staff and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney (White House), and Mr. Mulvaney’s Senior Advisor Robert Blair. A lot of senior officials.

    Here is my exact quote from that email: “I Talked to Zelensky just now… He is prepared to receive Potus’ call. Will assure him that he intends to run a fully transparent investigation and will ‘turn over every stone’. He would greatly appreciate a call prior to Sunday so that he can put out some media about a ‘friendly and productive call’ (no details) prior to Ukraine election on Sunday.” Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney responded: “I asked NSC to set it up for tomorrow.”

    Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret. Everyone was informed via email on July 19, days before the Presidential call. As I communicated to the team, I told President Zelensky in advance that assurances to “run a fully transparent investigation” and “turn over every stone” were necessary in his call with President Trump.

    All of which meant not clean up corruption in Ukraine but find or manufacture dirt on Biden.

    TBC

  • What could be better than Florida in June?

    Oh is that a fact.

    White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney announced during a White House press briefing that the 2020 G7 summit will be held at Trump National in Doral, Florida, from June 10-12.

    That’s corrupt af, it breaks a bunch of laws, plus it’s appallingly bad manners. Florida in June??! Florida in June to put more money in the disgusting “host”‘s pocket?!!

    “We used the same set of criteria that previous administrations have used,” Mulvaney said.
    He said Doral was “far and away the best physical facility for this meeting.”

    What shameless bullshit. If it were the best physical facility for meetings of that kind it would be famous as such. It isn’t.

    House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has previously said the committee would be requesting White House documents scheduling September meetings to investigate the legality of a G7 at Doral.

    “Hosting the G7 Summit at Doral implicates both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, because it would entail both foreign and U.S. government spending to benefit the President, the latter potentially including both federal and state expenditures. More importantly, the Doral decision reflects perhaps the first publicly known instance in which foreign governments would be required to pay President Trump’s private businesses in order to conduct business with the United States,” Nadler said.

    It just never ends.

  • Word of the day: brazen

    The FBI is annoyed.

    Three years ago, the FBI launched an unprecedented investigation focused on one question: Did President Donald Trump’s campaign help a foreign power interfere in the 2016 election?

    Now, just months after that investigation was formally closed, FBI officials are stunned the president is openly calling for another country to intervene in another presidential election.

    Well when you put it that way…

    It does seem a tad brazen, doesn’t it. “NO COLLUSION!! Now, get me Ukraine on the phone.”

    One special agent, who spoke with Insider on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, said officials were “rattled” not just by the nature of Trump’s actions but also by his brazenness.

    “You walk down the halls and there was this sense of dread, and everyone’s kind of thinking, did the president really do this?” the agent said.

    Brazen. The very word.

    The agent was one of four current and former officials Insider spoke with about the matter. In addition to feeling undermined by the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into the Russia probe’s origins, sources also said FBI officials were frustrated with how the Justice Department handled a criminal referral related to a whistleblower’s allegations against Trump, saying it added to a sense that the bureau was being “neutered.”

    Only if you think Trump is a criminal and a very bad man. If you adjust your thinking so that he becomes a hero and savior, then the bureau is simply helping him save us all.

    What happened, to review, is that Michael Atkinson, intelligence-community inspector general, and Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence, sent the whistleblower’s complaint to the Justice Department, and the DoJ “reviewed” the report and decided there was nothing to see here. Of course, the DoJ is part of the Executive Branch…

    The Justice Department’s actions were a departure from the norm because typically, in such cases, the FBI investigates if there was criminal wrongdoing and makes a recommendation to the Justice Department on whether or not to press charges.

    But this time they just passed it around among themselves, didn’t talk to witnesses or do anything else to investigate, and called it a day.

    Here, the US official said, “the DOJ made the decision right off the bat, and that was viewed by many as a slap in the face and usurping the FBI’s independence and judgment.”

    Not to mention the whole letting Trump do crazy shit problem.

    Complicating matters is the fact that all this occurred against the backdrop of Attorney General William Barr spearheading a separate investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.

    When he’s not too busy raging at “secularists.”

    “There’s a lot of anger and frustration that this is still going on,” Frank Montoya Jr., a former FBI agent who retired in 2016, told Insider, referring to the continued focus on the bureau’s handling of the investigation. “There’s a lot of concern among officials that they’re going to get thrown into the blender, that they do all the work and then are ridiculed for it, and accused of facilitating a coup or doing the bidding of the deep state.”

    Montoya added that one official told him they believe “this thing’s going to be open until Trump is no longer president because they want to find something even if there’s nothing there.”

    …

    That said, intelligence veterans warn that the president’s apparent lack of awareness of the quicksand he’s in could be his undoing — it was Trump who ordered the release of the Ukraine phone-call memo that confirmed he’d pressured Zelensky to open an investigation.

    Right now, House Democrats are in the middle of a brewing impeachment inquiry examining Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden and his son. The White House has responded by stonewalling Congress at every step by refusing to turn over documents and blocking witnesses from testifying.

    But by obstructing the inquiry, legal experts told Insider last week, the president is giving Congress more reasons to impeach him.

    Montoya agreed.

    “He’s fanning the flames of his own political demise,” he said. “The rope is tightening around his neck, and he doesn’t realize it because he’s too busy enjoying the high.”

    Here’s hoping.

  • Hey, it’s indirect, ok?

    Oof this is one of those days when you don’t dare close all the news sources and walk away because sheeeee-it.

    For instance, the fact that Barr was involved means he had a giant conflict of interest when he ruled on the whistleblower report.

    Sean Patrick Maloney: We didn’t know before today that Attorney General Bill Barr was involved in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden. He’s the same AG who told Trump not to hand over the whistleblower complaint to Congress. “That’s a conflict. That’s a screaming red light.”

    The whistleblower complaint must include Barr, so…yeah.

    The Guardian half an hour ago (such old news now) said one of the main stories is the astonishment that the White House thought the memorandum would be good for Trump. It sure as hell astonishes me.

    Republican strategist Rick Wilson:

    How the fuck did Trump think this transcript was going to help him???

    Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa:

    Here’s what’s clear: Trump does not observe or recognize important legal distinctions. Not between official business and his campaign. Between private attorney and gov attorneys. Between taxpayer money and his money. Everything is an extension [o]f himself, to be used for his ends.

    Former Obama adviser:

    The fact that the White House apparently thought this transcript would be a letdown is absolutely chilling. Have they been surrounded by state-sanctioned lawlessness, self-dealing, and corruption for so long that it no longer registers?

    Matthew Miller:

    I can’t tell whether they actually thought that or are trying to bluff their way through it. This is going to be the ultimate test of the reality distortion field Trump has established over the Republican Party.

    Adam Schiff calls it a classic Mafia-like shakedown.

    Trump is defending himself with “It wasn’t a direct shakedown.”

    “You don’t see a direct quid pro quo in this.” @BretBaier

    Wow. That’s it? That’s what he’s going with? He thinks an indirect quid pro quo is ok???

    He’s hanging himself. Right now, right in front of us.

  • If not now when

    Eric Swalwell yesterday:

    Here’s the deal: don’t fall for the “if there was quid pro quo” trap. If @realDonaldTrump
    told a foreign government to investigate his opponent that’s it. Game. Set. Match. He has committed a crime. If he’s innocent, he’ll release the tapes. #ReleaseTheTapes

    But is it though? Is it Game. Set. Match? How? When, by what process, how? What new mechanism will come into play now that hasn’t before? Republicans will vote to impeach? Of course not. So, what then?

    It should be, of course, but then so should a long list of other outrages (which is not to say this isn’t the worst outrage). Should be but never was, because oh what do you know, it turns out we don’t have any effective mechanisms at all for getting rid of a wholly evil and uncontrollable president if the president’s party also controls the Senate.

    Oops.

    Tom Nichols

    The president of the United States reportedly sought the help of a foreign government against an American citizen who might challenge him for his office. This is the single most important revelation in a scoop by The Wall Street Journal, and if it is true, then President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office immediately.

    Until now, there was room for reasonable disagreement over impeachment as both a matter of politics and a matter of tactics. The Mueller report revealed despicably unpatriotic behavior by Trump and his minions, but it did not trigger a political judgment with a majority of Americans that it warranted impeachment. The Democrats, for their part, remained unwilling to risk their new majority in Congress on a move destined to fail in a Republican-controlled Senate.

    But what difference would it have made if it had triggered a political judgment with a majority of Americans that it warranted impeachment? The Senate would still be free to ignore it.

    Now, however, we face an entirely new situation. In a call to the new president of Ukraine, Trump reportedly attempted to pressure the leader of a sovereign state into conducting an investigation—a witch hunt, one might call it—of a U.S. citizen, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden.

    Yes, it’s gruesome, but the Republicans will just wrap themselves in Fox robes and say it’s all the Democrats’ fault and Trump will carry on regardless, doing even worse things.

    If this in itself is not impeachable, then the concept has no meaning. Trump’s grubby commandeering of the presidency’s fearsome and nearly uncheckable powers in foreign policy for his own ends is a gross abuse of power and an affront both to our constitutional order and to the integrity of our elections.

    Yes indeed, but we’ve been learning that the concept does in fact have no meaning if the president’s party is in control.

    The story may even be worse than we know. If Trump tried to use military aid to Ukraine as leverage, as reporters are now investigating, then he held Ukrainian and American security hostage to his political vendettas.

    No, it’s worse than that. It’s not about vendettas. (Nichols quoted a Ukrainian official saying Trump did it in revenge for his friend Manafort, which I think is ludicrous – Trump doesn’t care about Manafort, he doesn’t care about anyone but Trump.) It’s about breaking the knees of the guy he perceives to be his biggest threat in the next election. It’s about Trump holding Ukrainian and American security hostage to his determination to stay president whatever it takes.

    Let us try, as we always find ourselves doing in the age of Trump, to think about how Americans might react if this happened in any other administration. Imagine, for example, if Bill Clinton had called his friend, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in 1996, and asked him to investigate Bob Dole. Or if George W. Bush had called, say, President Vicente Fox of Mexico in 2004 and asked him—indeed, asked him eight times, according to TheWall Street Journal—to open a case against John Kerry. Clinton, of course, was eventually impeached for far less than that. Is there any doubt that either man would have been put on trial in the Senate, and likely chased from office?

    Yes. The doubt all hinges on which party was in the majority in the Senate.

    I am speaking only for myself as an American citizen. I believe in our Constitution, and therefore I must accept that Donald Trump is the president and the commander in chief until the Congress or the people of the United States say otherwise. But if this kind of dangerous, unhinged hijacking of the powers of the presidency is not enough for either the citizens or their elected leaders to demand Trump’s removal, then we no longer have an accountable executive branch, and we might as well just admit that we have chosen to elect a monarch and be done with the illusion of constitutional order in the United States.

    I admitted that long ago – with rage, without a trace of resignation, but the fact of it, yes.

  • Trump is systematically closing off that mechanism

    The trap.

    The Justice Department (part of the Executive Branch) claims Trump cannot be indicted because he is The PreSiDent. Congress can’t impeach him or inquire effectively into his crimes because he blocks them at every turn.

    The end.

    Greg Sargent of the Washington Post:

    Trump just cheered Corey Lewandowski’s stonewalling on his behalf.

    It’s important to understand what we’re seeing now as a display of *Trump’s* profound corruption, one that builds the case for impeachment:

    https://beta.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/get-ready-spectacular-display-trumps-corruption/

    Image

  • A lack of candor

    More filth: Trump commits crime after crime right in front of us, and his DoJ decides it can indict Andrew McCabe if it wants to.

    Federal prosecutors have recommended bringing criminal charges against Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and a frequent target of criticism by President Donald Trump, a person familiar with the decision said Thursday.

    McCabe was fired from the FBI just before his retirement in March 2018 after the Justice Department’s internal watchdog concluded that he had improperly authorized a leak about a federal investigation into the Clinton Foundation in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. Investigators also concluded that he displayed a lack of candor when asked about the leak.

    McCabe’s lawyers had asked the Justice Department’s principal deputy attorney general to overrule the recommendation that he be indicted, according to the person, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the communications. The department rejected that request, clearing the way for a criminal charge.

    Trump is too busy scheduling more Air Force stopovers at his golf course to answer questions.

  • The fix is in

    Paul Waldman at the Post on Trump’s move to have his tame AG expose classified intelligence looking for some pretext to say the investigation was dirty:

    Barr’s “investigation” is nothing but a propaganda exercise, an effort to provide ballast to the lunatic idea that there should never have been any investigation at all into Russia’s attempts to help Trump get elected president. But we have to be clear about just how shocking this order from Trump is.

    The executive order not only gives Barr permission to “declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence” to whatever degree he likes, but also orders the leaders of every intelligence agency to give him whatever he wants. If he wants to declassify something and they object, tough luck for them. The New York Times reports that this is “likely to irk the intelligence community”:

    One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, said previously that Mr. Barr wanted to know more about what foreign assets the C.I.A. had in Russia in 2016 and what those informants were telling the agency about how President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election.

    Needless to say, the identity of foreign assets is one of the most sensitive categories of information intelligence agencies hold.

    If Barr were a normal AG, Waldman goes on, we could figure he would be careful with that intel, but since Barr is what he is, we can’t.

    [W]ith virtually every action Barr has taken and statement he has made, he has shown himself to be someone who is only too happy to deceive the public, mislead Congress, go on Fox News to spin on the president’s behalf, and generally act as though the only purpose of his office is to cover up for Trump. The idea that this political hack would conduct any investigation related to this president with any other goal in mind is, at this point, not even worth discussing.

    And none of it is anything to do with real investigation, it’s purely a propaganda exercise. They want to find something they can distort into dirt.

    We can be pretty sure of what’s going to happen. Barr will scour every record he can to learn as much as possible about the Russia investigation. Whenever he comes across something that can be spun to make the FBI or anyone Trump has decided is his enemy look bad, he’ll put it in the “Declassify” pile. Then he’ll release it all to the public and hold a news conference where he suggests that there was a conspiracy to take down Trump. The president will then take to Twitter to proclaim that he was indeed the victim of a vile witch hunt that has at last been exposed. The news media, in possession of only the materials Barr has chosen to give them, will struggle to avoid amplifying and reinforcing Barr’s claims.

    And then Trump will tell Barr to do the same thing to the Democratic candidate for president.

  • But executives at Deutsche Bank looked the other way

    Bang: now there’s a lede:

    Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

    Oh really. Then what happened?

    The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

    But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

    We’ve heard before that DB covered for Trump, but this is quite specific.

    Real estate developers like Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner sometimes do large, all-cash deals, including with people outside the United States, any of which can prompt anti-money laundering reviews. The red flags raised by employees do not necessarily mean the transactions were improper. Banks sometimes opt not to file suspicious activity reports if they conclude their employees’ concerns are unwarranted.

    But former Deutsche Bank employees said the decision not to report the Trump and Kushner transactions reflected the bank’s generally lax approach to money laundering laws. The employees — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their ability to work in the industry — said it was part of a pattern of the bank’s executives rejecting valid reports to protect relationships with lucrative clients.

    Well…”lucrative”…but Trump defaulted on DB loans repeatedly. They loaned him billions and he didn’t pay it all back. It’s hard to see quite what’s so “lucrative”…

    Trump’s people and Kushner’s people say it’s all lies, New York Times, fake news, squirrel, ice cream.

    Read on. It’s all incredibly sleazy.

  • Reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn

    The reason for Trump’s sudden new panic about Flynn, and his deranged threats to imprison Obama and Sally Yates and anyone else who warned him about Flynn while he didn’t listen, is even more startling than the panic and threats. It’s because a federal judge ruled yesterday that that part of the Mueller report must be made public.

    A federal judge on Thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser Michael Flynn tried hard to hide with a lie: his conversation with a Russian ambassador in late 2016.

    U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a November 2017 voice mail involving Flynn. In that sensitive call, President Trump’s attorney left a message for Flynn’s attorney reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn at a time when Flynn was considering cooperating with federal investigators. . . . Sullivan also ordered that still-redacted portions of the Mueller report that relate to Flynn be given to the court and made public.

    Uh oh. “Reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn” – that’s witness tampering.

    Jennifer Rubin explains:

    The voice mail was from John Dowd, President Trump’s former personal lawyer who, according to The Post, “tried to learn whether Flynn had any problematic information about the president after Flynn’s attorney signaled his client might begin cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.”

    The kicker: “In one of the previously redacted filings released Thursday, prosecutors said Flynn described multiple episodes in which ‘he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation.’ ”

    This may be the most significant revelation since we learned of the president’s efforts to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Even Attorney General William P. Barr conceded in his infamous memo to the Justice Department, “Obviously, the President and any other official can commit obstruction in this classic sense of sabotaging a proceeding’s truth-finding function. Thus, for example, if a President knowingly destroys or alters evidence, suborns perjury, or induces a witness to change testimony, or commits any act deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence, then he, like anyone else, commits the crime of obstruction.” Barr also told Senate Judiciary Committee members during his confirmation hearing that it would be illegal for a president to coach a witness or persuade a witness to change testimony.

    The disclosure, of course, raises serious questions as to why Barr redacted this material in the report, and why evidence that Trump did precisely what Barr said was illegal did not convince him that the president had obstructed justice.

    Good god. These people.

    Even if we are not talking about criminal liability, the episode points to Trump’s unfitness for office. Former prosecutor Joyce White Vance tells me, “Knowing that the President’s lawyers sought to discourage Flynn from cooperating with prosecutors underscores how fundamentally flawed this presidency is. Mob bosses try to keep their associates from helping law enforcement uncover crimes, not presidents.”

    But if you make a guy who has always operated like a mob boss president, then you get a mob boss president. And here we are.

  • Sarah Sanders says House Judiciary Chairman should be embarrassed

    Meanwhile the House Judiciary committee is working on holding Barr in contempt while Trump is countering with a declaration of “executive privilege”…over an investigation of his own scummy maneuverings. To put it another way we’re busy displaying to the world what a disastrously flawed system we have, in which The One Top Guy (yes always guy, it has to be guy) gets to do whatever he feels like doing and wrap himself in a fiction called Executive Privilege to nullify any attempts to stop him.

    Moments after the White House announced President Trump would assert executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders slammed House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, whom she said is seeking to “break the law” with his requests for the unredacted report.

    “They’re asking for information they know they can’t have. The attorney general is actually upholding the law,” Sanders said, adding, “Chairman Nadler is asking the attorney general of the United States to break the law and commit a crime by releasing information that he knows he has no legal authority to have. It’s truly outrageous and absurd what the chairman is doing and he should be embarrassed that he’s behaving this way.”

    She attacked Nadler’s understanding of the law, saying that she feels she “(understands) it better than he does.”

    Thanks to all the time she has put in telling lies for Donald Trump.

  • Trump’s lawlessness is intensifying

    Jennifer Rubin says Trump has taken an impeachment-level lunge into abuse of power territory.

    The abusing asylum-seekers as retaliation against sanctuary cities and Democrats in general was bad enough, but he didn’t stop there.

    Making matters worse, we learned he allegedly told Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to close the border despite concerns about the legality of doing so. He allegedly told McAleenan, who is now also acting secretary of homeland security, that he — Trump — would pardon him later if need be.

    What?!? That’s the only sensible reaction for someone minimally conversant in the Constitution and the rule of law. This is the conduct of a movie mob boss, not a president. Trump is so brazen he’d rather lie to make himself appear more politically vengeful than tell the truth that his suggestion apparently was rebuffed. Tough guy. Gotta make da Dems quake in their boots, right?

    Republicans, as they always do when Trump is shredding democracy, remained silent on Friday. Speaking more generally of Trump’s Twitter habits in an interview, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared the president to be a “freak.” Actually, if the allegations are true, he’s much worse than that.

    You know why? Because you can’t offer pardons in advance as inducement to commit crimes. That’s a no-no even for presidents.

    Former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah acknowledged that, if the allegation about a pardon was true and Trump was serious, Trump then “offered a pardon as a bribe to get a public official to commit an unlawful act.” Referring to Attorney General William P. Barr’s exaggerated conception of executive authority, she queried, “Would Barr dare say that’s within his executive power?”

    Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe tells me, “If carried out, this offer to pardon high immigration officials if they will break the law on his behalf is the most obviously impeachable action President Trump has taken to date: It would mean this president has seized the power to put not just himself but all who do his bidding beyond the reach of law.” He continues, “That doing so is a high crime and misdemeanor is beyond dispute. Any president guilty of such conduct cannot be permitted to remain in office.”

    …

    We’ve now come to the point where Trump is bragging about a plot to abuse power, using federal resources to enact political revenge. We have reason to believe he tried to induce wrongdoing with a pardon offer. “One thing everyone who knows the relevant law has agreed about the otherwise sweeping pardon power is that it cannot be used in advance, to license crimes before they have been committed,” Tribe says.

    Trump’s lawlessness is intensifying. Even those such as Tribe who have opposed impeachment, given “the Senate’s fidelity to Trump rather than to the Constitution,” wonder if Trump can be left in office for another year-and-a-half. “I hesitate to say the red line has finally been crossed, but I see no way around that conclusion at this point,” he says.

    Image result for trump prison

    I can dream.

  • He put the frighteners on him

    That’s a good look.

    Michael D. Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for President Trump, has indefinitely postponed his congressional testimony, his lawyer said in a statement on Wednesday, citing Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on Mr. Cohen’s family in the days since he scheduled his appearance on Capitol Hill.

    Mr. Cohen was to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 at the invitation of Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the chairman of the committee, but backed out because of ongoing threats against his family, his lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement.

    President’s former lawyer puts hold on testimony to Congress because of president’s threats. Are we gangstered up enough yet?

    Mr. Trump denied that he was outright threatening his former lawyer, telling reporters in the White House that Mr. Cohen has “only been threatened by the truth.”

    He wasn’t outright threatening, he was implicitly threatening. World of difference. Aren’t we all proud to be Americans today.

    Mr. Cummings said that Mr. Cohen had “legitimate concerns” for his family’s safety. “Efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are textbook mob tactics that we condemn in the strongest terms,” he said in a joint statement with Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.”

    And along with that, it’s kind of frowned on. It’s seen as not altogether respectable to make efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress, especially when the person making the efforts is the president. It doesn’t look good.

    Mr. Cohen’s willingness to tell prosecutors and the public what he knows about any possible involvement by Mr. Trump in the crimes he has already admitted to has emerged as one of the biggest threats to the Trump presidency. Mr. Cohen has spent more than 70 hours with investigators for the Southern District of New York who prosecuted the campaign finance violations and for the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference and possible ties to the Trump campaign.

    Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested on Twitter that Mr. Cohen’s family members be investigated. In a recent interview with Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host and one of Mr. Trump’s preferred interviewers, he called for Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law to be investigated without citing details.

    When Ms. Pirro pressed for the name of the father-in-law, Mr. Trump demurred but said, “You’ll look into it because nobody knows what’s going on over there.”

    Abuse of power much?

    That interview prompted a rare statement from House Democrats cautioning that any effort to discourage or influence witness testimony before Congress could be construed as a crime.

    “The integrity of our process to serve as an independent check on the executive branch must be respected by everyone, including the president,” the Democrats said in the statement. “Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.“

    It should have been a statement from the entire Congress. We get more filthy every day.

  • Multiple sources

    Okay so this is interesting – BuzzFeed reports that (Mueller has found that) Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress.

    Oops.

    Chris Cillizza at CNN:

    For much of the past 20 months, President Donald Trump and his administration have insisted that, for all of the smoke surrounding his 2016 campaign, there was no fire. A lot of people in Trump’s orbit engaging in conversations and relationships with Russian officials, but no evidence of collusion and certainly nothing that linked Donald Trump to any wrongdoing.

    That very well might have changed Thursday night, with this report from BuzzFeed:

    “President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.”

    Oops.

    The BuzzFeed story also claims that Cohen confirmed this information to special counsel Robert Mueller after “the special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.”

    It’s hard to overstate what a big deal that is. No other major outlets have confirmed the BuzzFeed report. But if the BuzzFeed report is right, then the President of the United States directed an underling to lie under oath — which is, in and of itself, a crime.

    And there are multiple sources – it’s not all Cohen, it’s also witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Giuliani can tell Fox News that Cohen is a liar until he’s purple in the face but it won’t matter because Cohen is not the only source.

    “If true — and proof must be examined — Congress must begin impeachment proceedings and Barr must refer, at a minimum, the relevant portions of material discovered by Mueller,” tweeted former Attorney General Eric Holder. “This is a potential inflection point.”

    Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse agreed, tweeting, “If this is true, this is plain, slam-dunk, criminal obstruction of justice (18 U.S.C. 1505, 1512), subornation of perjury (18 U.S.C. 1622), conspiracy (18 U.S.C. 371) and likely aiding and abetting perjury (18 U.S.C. 2).”

    The “if true” part is, of course, the key. BuzzFeed has put the credibility of its entire organization on the line here. To make an allegation that the President of the United States purposely obstructed justice in an investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere in a presidential election is a massive deal — and the sort of thing that, if wrong, can do irreparable damage to a company’s reputation.

    But if the BuzzFeed article is right — and one of the reporters who bylined the story insisted on CNN Friday morning that the information in the piece is “rock solid” and that the sourcing “goes beyond” the two sources cited — then this is the smoking gun (or at least a smoking gun).

    Oops.

  • A high likelihood of rampant criminality

    Paul Waldman at the Post says Mueller is closing in on Trump.

    When he spoke to reporters about this Thursday, Trump stressed over and over that it would have been perfectly fine for him to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, as he had long sought to do. Legally speaking, that’s true. But given the controversy around Trump’s solicitousness toward Vladimir Putin and the growing realization that Russia was intervening in the campaign on his behalf, through 2016 it was important for him to distance himself publicly from Russia, which he did many times by stressing that he had no investments there.

    But also there’s a thing Neal Katyal said:

    It wasn’t just normal market negotiating, it was negotiating with officials of the Russian government.

    And then there’s the whole Trump Organization problem.

    Just about everyone who has followed this story closely understands that whatever might or might not have happened with Trump and Russia during the campaign, the real threat to the president lies in the Trump Organization. As Adam Davidson of the New Yorker put it, “I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality.”

    Cohen was intimately involved for years in that business, making deals and putting out fires. If he’s telling Mueller everything he knows, Trump could be in serious trouble.

    I hope his aides packed plenty of changes of underwear for his trip to Argentina.

  • The perp raids the prosecution’s evidence

    Trump ups his obstruction of justice game:

    President Trump on Monday ordered the Justice Department to declassify significant materials from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, including portions of a secret court order to surveil one of his former campaign advisers and the text messages of several former high-level FBI officials, including former FBI director James B. Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe.

    The White House said in a statement the move came at the request of “a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency.” Conservative lawmakers critical of the Russia probe had been agitating for the materials to be made public.

    He’s interfering with investigations that he has a direct personal stake in. That’s abuse of power, and corrupt, and authoritarian, and not how any of this works, and wrong.

    Specifically, the president ordered the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify sections of the secret court order to surveil former campaign adviser Carter Page, along with FBI reports and interviews of him.

    Trump also ordered the department to declassify interviews with Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr, who worked in the deputy attorney general’s office and had conversations with the author of a controversial dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

    This is what happens when you elect a criminal president.

    So that sounds like a constitutional crisis then.

  • Trump thinks they’re very duplicitous

    Well golly gee. Trump artlessly told the Wall Street Journal that he went after Brennan in order to obstruct justice in the Mueller inquiry.

    President Trump drew a direct connection between the special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and his decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan and review the clearances of several other former officials.

    In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Brennan as among those he held responsible for the investigation, which also is looking into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Russia has denied interfering.

    Much as a mob bus might tell a lieutenant that Jones has to be silenced because he knows where the bodies are buried.

    “I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “And these people led it!”

    See what I mean by “artlessly”? He seems to think that we will take his calling it the rigged witch hunt as a decisive reason to agree that it is a rigged witch hunt. “Ohhhh, that’s what you call it, well that changes everything.”

    He seems to think we’ll believe him. That’s an enormous gap between belief and reality.

    Earlier in the day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was also reviewing the clearances of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and former National Security Agency and CIA chief Michael Hayden.

    “I don’t trust many of those people on that list,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “I think that they’re very duplicitous. I think they’re not good people.”

    Says the most duplicitous and evil person on the planet.

    Mr. Trump and Mr. Brennan have sparred publicly for months, with Mr. Trump frequently tweeting quotes by others critical of Mr. Brennan.

    After Mr. Trump’s news conference last month with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Mr. Brennan wrote in a tweet that Mr. Trump’s conduct “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’ ” and called it “nothing short of treasonous.”

    Last month, he likened Mr. Trump to Bernie Madoff, the investor who executed a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, tweeting that the two shared “a remarkably unethical ability to deceive & manipulate others, building Ponzi schemes to aggrandize yourselves.”

    Cool. I’ve compared Trump to Madoff myself. Mind you it’s a pretty obvious comparison. Famous Psychopaths We Have Seen.

    Millions of U.S. citizens hold security clearances, needed for many government and private-sector jobs. The practice of having senior national security officials retain clearance after leaving the government is longstanding and serves various functions, national security officials and analysts said.

    When the White House first threatened to revoke the former officials’ security clearances last month, national security analysts described the move as unprecedented.

    “I cannot remember a time when the president of the United States got personally involved in the status of individual security clearances within the country,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former chief of staff at the CIA. “This is an administration shooting itself in the foot by depriving itself of experience and knowledge that could be used for its benefit.”

    That’s because it’s an administration that has no important goal other than the promotion and protection of Donald Trump.

  • Hey, for $500 million it’s worth it

    Talk about leaving a trail…

    A mere 72 hours after the Chinese government agreed to put a half-billion dollars into an Indonesian project that will personally enrich Donald Trump, the president ordered a bailout for a Chinese-government-owned cellphone maker.

    “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast,” Trump announced on Twitter Sunday morning. “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

    To think that was only two days ago. I wondered about it at the time but thought it was a brain fart via talking to someone; I didn’t consider the bribery possibility (or I guess that should be likelihood). Probably because he said it on Twitter? I probably assumed, without thinking about it, that he wouldn’t announce an openly corrupt act on Twitter. Silly me.

    Trump did not mention in that tweet or its follow-ups that on Thursday, the developer of a theme park resort outside of Jakarta had signed a deal to receive as much as $500 million in Chinese government loans, as well as another $500 million from Chinese banks. Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has a deal to license the Trump name to the resort, which includes a golf course and hotels.

    No, he didn’t mention that. I guess he wanted reporters to do the work. He’s such a big tease!

    “You do a good deal for him, he does a good deal for you. Quid pro quo,” said Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush and now a Democratic candidate for Senate in Minnesota.

    “This appears to be yet another violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” Painter said, referring to the prohibition against the president receiving payments from foreign governments.

    The White House did not respond to HuffPost queries asking if there was a connection between the “MNC Lido City” project and Trump’s directive regarding ZTE.

    At Monday’s daily briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah referred questions about the Indonesian project to the Trump Organization. “That’s not something that I can speak to,” he said.

    Yeah that won’t do. Trump is “the Trump Organization” and vice versa, and he is doing favors for China in exchange for favors for Trump and his organization. They don’t get to refuse to answer questions about it. This is pathetic.

    ZTE phones have already been described as a security risk by the U.S. military and intelligence community. Two weeks ago, the military banned their use on bases for fear they could be used to track the locations of service members.

    The company, which is owned 33 percent by Chinese-government-owned enterprises, had been fined $1.2 billion last year after it was found to be violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea. After it was determined that ZTE officials had lied about their actions, the U.S. government last month banned it from purchasing U.S. components for seven years — a decision that essentially forced the company to shut down.

    Violating US sanctions against Iran…Trump just pulled the US out of the Iran deal, yet he’s doing favors for a Chinese company that violated US sanctions against Iran.

    Trump followed up late Monday afternoon with a new tweet on the issue: “ZTE, the large Chinese phone company, buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies. This is also reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.”

    His personal relationship ffs – as if that’s supposed to determine foreign policy. (Also as if he actually has one, and it’s as cozy as he seems to think. What an imbecile.)

    The new statement, however, still did not address the question of the Indonesian resort and the Trump Organization’s coming profit thanks to Chinese investment.

    “This is stunning. They perpetually find new things to surprise me,” said Robert Weissman, president of the open government advocacy group Public Citizen. “The idea of the president intervening in a law enforcement matter to satisfy a foreign government is extraordinary. And it’s extraordinary because it doesn’t happen. Opening that door threatens the integrity of all corporate law enforcement.”

    Well that wouldn’t bother Trump any.

    During his campaign, Trump attacked China almost daily for “stealing” U.S. jobs by manipulating its currency and using unfair trade practices. “No one has ever stolen jobs like other countries have taken from us,” Trump told a Nevada rally on Nov. 5, 2016. “We’ve lost 70,000 factories since China joined the WTO,” Trump told a Pittsburgh-area audience the following day.

    Blah blah blah. He was just kidding.

    For ethics advocates, the timing of the ZTE tweet on the heels of the Indonesian development announcement is yet another example of the consequences of Trump’s unwillingness to abide by the emoluments clause.

    “The Chinese government seems to have figured out a way to manipulate President Trump,” Weissman said. “It’s exactly why this anti-bribery clause of the Constitution is common sense.”

    Oh well!

  • Can we arrest him?

    NBC reports that Trump has A Plan.

    Sources say that Trump has adopted a two-track strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation.

    One is an un-Trumpian passivity and trust. He keeps telling some in his circle that Mueller — any day now — will tell him he is off the hook for any charge of collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice.

    But Trump — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller.

    “I think he’s been convinced that firing Mueller would not only create a firestorm, it would play right into Mueller’s hands,” said another friend, “because it would give Mueller the moral high ground.”

    Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.

    Again – that whole thing about the Justice Department in all its branches being independent of the White House? Such that a president “asking” an Attorney General to prosecute a Special Counsel for investigating said president is a grotesque violation of all the boundaries? Just pretend that’s not there, because as long as the Republicans in Congress remain corrupted, it might as well not be.

    In short

    DANGER

  • Trump ignores another law

    The next item in the ongoing constitutional collapse here in the US is the Trump administration’s refusal to implement legislation that Congress passed by a massive majority.

    The Trump administration has announced it will not impose additional sanctions on Russia, despite Congress passing a law allowing the President to do so.

    With Monday the deadline for the White House to impose any new measures, the US State Department insisted the threat of sanctions was already acting as a deterrent.

    The new sanctions would have required the US Treasury Department to penalise foreign governments and companies doing business with Russia’s defence and intelligence sectors.

    The Trump admin says oh foreign governments and companies are already put off by the very mention of sanctions so we’re not going to actually impose any.

    Congress voted almost unanimously to pass a bill last year that punished Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US election and aggression in east Ukraine.

    Mr Trump, who wanted warmer ties with Moscow and had opposed the legislation as it worked its way through Congress, signed it reluctantly in August, branding the bill “seriously flawed”.

    And he’s simply refusing to carry it out.

    The bill allowed sanctions to be delayed or waived, but any inaction would have to come with evidence to Congress that Russia was making progress in cutting back on cyber meddling.

    And evidence means evidence, not just a Trump stooge uttering words.

    The measure, known as the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)”, also required the administration to list “oligarchs” close to Russia president Vladimir Putin’s government and issue a report detailing possible consequences of penalising Russia’s sovereign debt.

    Monday’s deadline to release those reports was seen as a test of Trump’s willingness to clamp down on Russia. Critics condemned him for failing to announce any sanctions.

    And for releasing a laughably bogus list of oligarchs.