Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele remains a subject of fascination—or, depending on your perspective, scorn. Indeed, it was much discussed during former FBI Director Jim Comey’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 7. Published almost two years ago by BuzzFeed News in January 2017, the document received significant public attention, first for its lurid details regarding Donald Trump’s pre-presidential alleged sexual escapades in Russia and later for its role in forming part of the basis for the government’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page.

Our interest in revisiting the compilation that has come to be called the “Steele Dossier” concerns neither of those topics, at least not directly. Rather, we returned to the document because we wondered whether information made public as a result of the Mueller investigation—and the passage of two years—has tended to buttress or diminish the crux of Steele’s original reporting.

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As we noted, our interest is in assessing the Steele dossier as a raw intelligence document, not a finished piece of analysis. The Mueller investigation has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele’s reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

However, there is also a good deal in the dossier that has not been corroborated in the official record and perhaps never will be—whether because it’s untrue, unimportant or too sensitive. As a raw intelligence document, the Steele dossier, we believe, holds up well so far. But surely there is more to come from Mueller’s team. We will return to it as the public record develops.
 


After documenting every day of the Trump presidency and covering the story of a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government for years, a great number of dots have connected. It’s now clear there was indeed collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government. What we don’t know is if it will be considered a criminal conspiracy and how much Trump knew about it. Based on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments, all available reporting, and public records, here’s a 6-minute-read of the important facts related to the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia, including my theory on the potential quid pro quo:
 
@Michael Scally MD your such a True Fan of Trump. Thank you for all the Love letters you post up about how Great he is doing for America. Just remember, HE WILL GO FOR 2 TERMS!!! May as well start to Love and Enjoy him now, he isn’t going anywhere!!!
 


This evening, as the Affordable Care Act's enrollment period ended, Judge Reed O'Connor of the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Texas issued his much-awaited opinion in Texas v. United States, concluding that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and that, as a consequence, the entire Affordable Care Act is invalid. This is a surprising result, and one that is hard to justify.

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Judge O'Connor's opinion declares the individual mandate to be unconstitutional, and declares the rest of the ACA to be inseverable and invalid -- all of it, including those provisions that have nothing to do with health insurance markets. Yet Judge O'Connor has not (as yet) issued an injunction barring enforcement of the law. Rather, his opinion merely purports to provide declaratory relief to the plaintiff states, meaning its immediate practical effect has yet to be determined, though a stay (either from Judge O'Connor or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit) seems likely.

As noted above, I do not believe this opinion is long for this world. However superficially plausible the plaintiff states' claims initially appear, they melt upon inspection. The more one digs into them, the less substantial they appear. I expect this to be clear to the Fifth Circuit, and do not believe the states' arguments have much of a chance before the Supreme Court. Indeed, I would not be surprised were this decision to be overturned on standing on appeal, in which case certiorari would almost certainly be denied. Stay tuned.
 


Even for the commentators whose job it is to follow these things, tracking the progress of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing and wide-ranging investigation into potential election crimes committed by the Trump campaign has been no easy task. Mueller has run a tight ship, reeling out information at his own methodical pace and permitting few leaks; and the investigation has become so broad—to date, 33 individuals or companies have been charged with or pled guilty to crimes—that it’s often been hard to remember its origins and purpose. The investigation’s bewildering complexity is in some ways an advantage to the president, whose message is simple: He did nothing wrong, and the Democrats and the Fake News Media are trying to bring him down out of pure spite.

That’s precisely why the sentencing memorandums filed by prosecutors on Friday are so important: They condense the facts, the ones we know anyway, into a single narrative easy to understand. The two memos in question were filed Friday afternoon by prosecutors for both Mueller and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York (SUDY), and concerned the crimes of President Trump’s longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. Trump exploded on Twitter when law enforcement first began poking around Cohen last May, and now it’s easy to see why: The reports assert that Trump both directed Cohen to buy the silence of women claiming to have had sexual affairs with the candidate and used him as a go-between to conduct business deals in Russia far into his presidential campaign—deals that both Cohen and Trump claimed were scotched long before they were.

The documents are, even for those skeptical of the left’s “collusion” narrative, deeply incriminating.
 


Mr. Honig is a former federal and state prosecutor.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial entitled “The Flynn Entrapment.” In it, the Journal—picking up on arguments made by attorneys for former national security advisor Michael Flynn in his sentencing memo—limply casts Flynn as the victim of an FBI set-up. The Journal distorts the facts, ignores the law, and disregards common sense in its apparent effort to turn Flynn into a popular cause for anti-government conspiracy theorists.

The most remarkable thing about the Journal editorial is what it omits: any mention of the actual lie that Flynn told the FBI. So, as a reminder, here it is: in December 2016 (during the presidential transition), Flynn told Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that Russia should not escalate tensions after then-President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn—who was about to become President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor—essentially gave Russia the old wink-and-nod: “Hey Russia, stay cool, don’t fire back because we’ll take care of you when we take over in a few weeks.” Then, when the FBI asked Flynn about this conversation—which carried global political and economic implications—he lied about it. He also lied about it to Vice President Mike Pence and Sean Spicer, then the spokesman for the Trump transition. No mention whatsoever in the Journal article of those small facts.

The closest the Journal gets to even brushing by the actual crime that Flynn committed is this laughable spin to the benign: “Flynn had done nothing wrong in conversing with the Russian ambassador—it was part of his job.” That’s like arguing that Bernie Madoff did nothing wrong when he spoke with his clients—it was part of his job.

The Journal raises three particular complaints about the FBI’s questioning of Flynn, none of which stands up to scrutiny.
 
AGUA
https://claytoonz.com/2018/12/15/agua/

A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died in the Custody of Border Patrol (CBP) last week. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) statement has only raised more questions than it answers.

The girl and her father were apprehended with a large group of migrants in a remote span of the New Mexico Desert. Reportedly, she hadn’t eaten or consumed water for several days. After being in the custody of CBP for over eight hours, she started having seizures. She was transported to an El Paso hospital where she died from dehydration and shock.

Asked if food and water were given to the child, DHS only replied with blame for the father for taking his daughter on the journey to the United States through dangerous elements. She didn’t die on the journey. She died in Border Patrol custody. She died when she was their responsibility.

CBP and DHS need to take responsibility. If someone’s life is in danger after they’re apprehended, saving their life should take precedent over detainment. The Trump administration needs to take responsibility too.

White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley said the administration isn’t to blame for the child’s death. Gidley said, “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country? No.” He then heaped additional blame on Democrats saying, Congress should “pass some common-sense laws to disincentivize people from coming up from the border and encourage them to do it the right way, the legal way, then those types of deaths, those types of assaults, those types of rapes, the child smuggling, the human trafficking, that would all come to an end. And we hope Democrats join the president.

While the U.S. government will only consider claims of asylum from migrants presenting themselves at ports of entry, the Trump administration has disincentivized them from doing so, forcing them to wait in Mexico for lengthy, indeterminate periods of time before considering their claims.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also avoided addressing concerns about how CBP treated the girl, but instead characterized her death as “just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey.” Nielsen is a sad example of a cabinet member.

The Guatemalan girl’s death comes months after a toddler died from an illness she developed at an Immigration and Border Customs Enforcement facility in Dilley, Texas.

Aura Bogado, an immigration reporter with Reveal, sent a tweet detailing conditions in hieleras, the facilities CBO uses to detain border crossers.

She wrote, “This is the water people are forced to drink. It’s grey and it’s disgusting. It routinely makes people sick. There isn’t even a place to dry your hands after you wash them. Everything is full of fecal matter.”

Cynthia Pompa, an advocacy manager for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Rights Center, said the girl’s death “represents the worst possible outcome when people, including children, are held in inhumane conditions.”

“Lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP have exacerbated policies that lead to migrant deaths. In 2017, migrant deaths increased even as the number of border crossings dramatically decreased.” Pompa added.

The condition migrants are escaping from are so bad that Donald Trump’s threats and racist fear mongering isn’t discouraging them. People seeking asylum, at least those below our southern border, know they won’t be welcomed with open arms. Now, it seems they can’t be met with compassion or humanity.

We’re the United States and we’re supposed to be better than this. Before January 20, 2017, we were.

cjones12212018.jpg
 
AGUA
https://claytoonz.com/2018/12/15/agua/

A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died in the Custody of Border Patrol (CBP) last week. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) statement has only raised more questions than it answers.

The girl and her father were apprehended with a large group of migrants in a remote span of the New Mexico Desert. Reportedly, she hadn’t eaten or consumed water for several days. After being in the custody of CBP for over eight hours, she started having seizures. She was transported to an El Paso hospital where she died from dehydration and shock.

Asked if food and water were given to the child, DHS only replied with blame for the father for taking his daughter on the journey to the United States through dangerous elements. She didn’t die on the journey. She died in Border Patrol custody. She died when she was their responsibility.

CBP and DHS need to take responsibility. If someone’s life is in danger after they’re apprehended, saving their life should take precedent over detainment. The Trump administration needs to take responsibility too.

White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley said the administration isn’t to blame for the child’s death. Gidley said, “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country? No.” He then heaped additional blame on Democrats saying, Congress should “pass some common-sense laws to disincentivize people from coming up from the border and encourage them to do it the right way, the legal way, then those types of deaths, those types of assaults, those types of rapes, the child smuggling, the human trafficking, that would all come to an end. And we hope Democrats join the president.

While the U.S. government will only consider claims of asylum from migrants presenting themselves at ports of entry, the Trump administration has disincentivized them from doing so, forcing them to wait in Mexico for lengthy, indeterminate periods of time before considering their claims.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also avoided addressing concerns about how CBP treated the girl, but instead characterized her death as “just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey.” Nielsen is a sad example of a cabinet member.

The Guatemalan girl’s death comes months after a toddler died from an illness she developed at an Immigration and Border Customs Enforcement facility in Dilley, Texas.

Aura Bogado, an immigration reporter with Reveal, sent a tweet detailing conditions in hieleras, the facilities CBO uses to detain border crossers.

She wrote, “This is the water people are forced to drink. It’s grey and it’s disgusting. It routinely makes people sick. There isn’t even a place to dry your hands after you wash them. Everything is full of fecal matter.”

Cynthia Pompa, an advocacy manager for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Rights Center, said the girl’s death “represents the worst possible outcome when people, including children, are held in inhumane conditions.”

“Lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP have exacerbated policies that lead to migrant deaths. In 2017, migrant deaths increased even as the number of border crossings dramatically decreased.” Pompa added.

The condition migrants are escaping from are so bad that Donald Trump’s threats and racist fear mongering isn’t discouraging them. People seeking asylum, at least those below our southern border, know they won’t be welcomed with open arms. Now, it seems they can’t be met with compassion or humanity.

We’re the United States and we’re supposed to be better than this. Before January 20, 2017, we were.

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This is SOO Gay. You do realize that the OBAMA ADMINISTRATION was where this Border Control shit ACTUALLY started don’t you? Of course not hu? Ignorance. For the Record, they are ILLEGAL ALIENS, here ILLEGALY. The kid passing away while detained doesn’t mean AMERICA done it. The Kid was highly dehydrated BEFORE they detained them. Carry on Clown...
 


As if the country didn’t have enough to be divided about, now the forces aligned for and against President Trump are battling over whether his presidency is legitimate.

The evidence emerging in recent days and months of crimes committed to help Trump win the presidency is fueling arguments from Democrats and other Trump critics that the man in the Oval Office got the job through nefarious means. Even without proof that those crimes swayed votes, the critics say Trump has no moral hold on the office.

In the past week, the legitimacy debate has swelled with each new court filing in cases stemming from the investigations into Trump’s 2016 campaign.
 
This is SOO Gay. You do realize that the OBAMA ADMINISTRATION was where this Border Control shit ACTUALLY started don’t you? Of course not hu? Ignorance. For the Record, they are ILLEGAL ALIENS, here ILLEGALY. The kid passing away while detained doesn’t mean AMERICA done it. The Kid was highly dehydrated BEFORE they detained them. Carry on Clown...

ha ha. yes i thought he was a clown or troll too but quickly realized he’s mentally ill. he has no thoughts of his own. he can only post other peoples thoughts and article. he has no opinions because he doesn’t have the mental ability to form them. i think he has some kind of personality disorder, an obsession for Trump and definitely has the Trump derangement syndrome. it consumes his life 24/7. he cannot stop posting or talking about trump. that is his entire life. so i try no to make fun of him anymore because it not right to do that to the mentally challenged.
 
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