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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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Swiper
Banned
ha ha ha ha ha now that’s some funny shit
the sad thing is all the uninformed will believe it. so many suckers in this county
Paranoia is enveloping the White House and President Donald Trump’s network of former aides and associates as Robert Mueller’s Russia probe heats up.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of the plea deal he reached last week, adding to the worry already inside Trump’s circle surrounding the secret deal struck earlier this summer by former campaign aide George Papadopoulos, whose cooperation was kept quiet for months before being unsealed in late October.
Both cases raise the possibility that other current or former colleagues have also flipped sides — and they'reprompting anxiety that those people could be wearing wires to secretly tape record conversations.
“Everyone is paranoid,” said a person close to Trump’s White House. “Everyone thinks they’re being recorded.”
Mueller is doing little to abate those suspicions. Tucked inside last week’s 10-page plea deal Flynn struck with government prosecutors is an agreement that the former White House national security adviser could avoid a potential lengthy jail term in part by “participating in covert law enforcement activities.”
Wiring up cooperating witnesses is a routine law enforcement tactic used hundreds — if not thousands — of times a year in criminal cases and on occasion for more complex white-collar investigations. It’s done to obtain a record of other conspirators and witnesses talking about their conduct, which can be used as confirmation when pressing for indictments and as first-hand evidence to be introduced during trial. Mueller, a former FBI director, and the team of veteran Justice Department prosecutors he’s surrounded himself with are schooled in the benefits of the wiring technique.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday urged the Pentagon to start moving U.S. military dependents, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea is getting close.
“It’s crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea given the provocation of North Korea,” Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“So I want them (the Pentagon) to stop sending dependents and I think it’s now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea,” Graham said. The United States has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
On Wednesday, North Korea tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range, South Korea said on Friday.
Graham said this development showed conflict is approaching.
“We’re getting close to military conflict because North Korea is marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that can not only get to America, but deliver the weapon. We’re running out of time,” Graham told CBS.
John Dowd, President Trump's outside lawyer, outlined to me a new and highly controversial defense/theory in the Russia probe: A president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice.
The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd claims.
Dowd says he drafted this weekend's Trump tweet that many thought strengthened the case for obstruction: The tweet suggested Trump new Flynn had lied to the FBI when he was fired, raising new questions about the later firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Dowd: "The tweet did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion."
Why it matters: Trump's legal team is setting the stage to say the president cannot be charged with core crimes discussed in the Russia probe: collusion and obstruction. Presumably, you wouldn't preemptively make these arguments unless you felt there was a chance charges are coming.
One top D.C. lawyer told me that obstruction is usually an ancillary charge rather than a principal one, such as a quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and Russians.
But Dems will fight the Dowd theory. Bob Bauer, an NYU law professor and former White House counsel to President Obama, told me: "It is certainly possible for a president to obstruct justice. The case for immunity has its adherents, but they based their position largely on the consideration that a president subject to prosecution would be unable to perform the duties of the office, a result that they see as constitutionally intolerable."
Remember: The Articles of Impeachment against Nixon began by saying he "obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice."
Bob Woodward tells me this "is a legal thicket and really has not been settled":
"I think a president can only be reached through impeachment and removal. But the House and Senate could conclude a president had obstructed, and conclude that was a 'high crime.'"
"In Watergate there was political exhaustion — plus, as Barry Goldwater said, 'too many lies and too many crimes.' These questions are now, in the end, probably up to the Republicans. The evidence was in Nixon's secret tapes. Is there such a path to proof now in one way or the other? We don't know."
Be smart: The one thing everyone agrees on is that the House of Representatives, with its impeachment power, alone decides what is cause for removal from office. For now, at least, the House is run by Republicans.
By Billy Bush
Dec. 3, 2017
He said it. “Grab ’em by the pussy.”
Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.
We now know better.
Recently I sat down and read an article dating from October of 2016; it was published days after my departure from NBC, a time when I wasn’t processing anything productively. In it, the author reviewed the various firsthand accounts about Mr. Trump that, at that point, had come from 20 women.
Some of what Natasha Stoynoff, Rachel Crooks, Jessica Leeds and Jill Harth alleged involved forceful kissing. Ms. Harth said he pushed her up against a wall, with his hands all over her, trying to kiss her.
“He was relentless,” she said. “I didn’t know how to handle it.” Her story makes the whole “better use some Tic Tacs” and “just start kissing them” routine real. I believe her.
Kristin Anderson said that Mr. Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/woman-says-trump-reached-under-her-skirt-and-groped-her-in-early-1990s/2016/10/14/67e8ff5e-917d-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html?utm_term=.71a33acaf147 (reached under her skirt) and “touched her vagina through her underwear” while they were at a New York nightclub in the 1990s. That makes the “grab ’em by the pussy” routine real. I believe her.
President Trump is currently indulging in some revisionist history, reportedly telling allies, including at least one United States senator, that the voice on the tape is not his. This has hit a raw nerve in me.
I can only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him, and did not receive enough attention. This country is currently trying to reconcile itself to years of power abuse and sexual misconduct. Its leader is wantonly poking the bear.
...
To these women: I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump. You have my respect and admiration. You are culture warriors at the forefront of necessary change.
I have faith that when the hard work of exposing these injustices is over, the current media drama of who did what to whom will give way to a constructive dialogue between mature men and women in the workplace and beyond. The activist and gender-relations expert Jackson Katz has said that this is not a women’s issue — it’s a men’s issue. That’s a great place to start, and something I have real thoughts about — but it is a story for another day.
Today is about reckoning and reawakening, and I hope it reaches all the guys on the bus.
The parallels between the Republican Party positions on taxes and climate change are striking. Both are morally appalling and reject the available evidence and expert opinion.
The Initiative on Global Markets’ panel of economic experts was recently asked about the Republican tax plan. Among the experts who took a position either way, there was a 96% consensus that the plan would not substantially grow the economy more than the status quo, and a 100% consensus that it would substantially increase the national debt.
Those numbers are quite similar to the 97% consensus among climate scientiststhat humans are driving global warming and the 95% consensus among economists that the US should cut its carbon pollution.
The House and Senate Republicans have passed similar versions of their tax bill, and neither chamber is allowing any climate policy to move forward.
So what’s making Republican Party leaders reject the expert consensus on these incredibly important issues?
By now, few American elected leaders -- other than President Donald Trump, on occasion --dispute that elements of the Russian state interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. What remains unproven is whether anybody from Trump’s winning campaign assisted in that interference. As Trump dismisses talk of collusion as "a total hoax," a wide-ranging criminal investigation has produced indictments against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy; a guilty plea by a junior foreign policy adviser that hinted at the Trump campaign playing ball with the Russians; and a guilty plea by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.
President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, acknowledged in court last week that he lied to F.B.I. investigators about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States in the run-up to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. While Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty to only one count of making materially false statements, his admissions leave little doubt that he also violated a federal criminal statute known as the Logan Act. Mr. Flynn’s filings further reveal that a “very senior member” of the Trump transition team almost certainly violated the Logan Act, too.
We do not yet know the identity of this “very senior” official. Possibilities include Jared Kushner, who is Mr. Trump’s son-in-law; Mike Pence, vice president-elect at the time; and Mr. Trump himself. Whoever it was, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, can make out a powerful criminal case against that person.
The Logan Act makes it a crime for a United States citizen, “without authority” from the federal government, to communicate with foreign officials in order to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” in a dispute with the United States or “to defeat the measures of the United States.” A conviction can result in a prison sentence of up to three years.
The statute, which has been on the books since the early days of the republic, reflects an important principle. The president is — as the Supreme Court has said time and again — “the sole organ of the nation in its external relations.” If private citizens could hold themselves out as representatives of the United States and work at cross-purposes with the president’s own diplomatic objectives, the president’s ability to conduct foreign relations would be severely hampered.
...
n response to the Flynn plea and questions about the Logan Act, President Trump’s lawyer, Ty Cobb, said that the statute doesn’t apply to transition team members. But that claim is surely false. A president-elect and his team may certainly introduce themselves to foreign leaders and conduct discussions with them about foreign policy. But there is a wide gap between those activities and trying to persuade a foreign power to thwart the sitting president’s foreign operations and initiatives. The former is not prohibited by the Logan Act; the latter is flatly banned.
Some commentators have suggested that the Logan Act is a dead letter under a legal doctrine known as “desuetude,” which holds that a law can become unenforceable after a lengthy period of disuse. Only two peoplehave ever been indicted under the statute, and neither of those indictments resulted in a conviction.
However, no federal court has ever refused to enforce a law because of desuetude. In 1964, a federal district court specifically held that the Logan Act remains valid. Quoting Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” the court said of the statute: “The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.” And the Supreme Court referred to the statute as recently as 1991.
Others have argued that the Logan Act cannot be enforced because it violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. But the Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in a 2010 case called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.
The court held that the freedom of speech must give way to a federal statute banning “material support” for foreign terrorist groups. The court’s rationale — that citizens do not have an absolute First Amendment right to aid a foreign entity adverse to United States interests — would seem to apply regardless of whether the entity is a terrorist group or an often-hostile foreign state.
Why, then, have so few cases been brought under the law? Often prosecutors do not bother to bring cases against defendants whose wrongdoing poses little danger. Very few private citizens have any hope of persuading a foreign country to change its United Nations votes. Mr. Flynn, however, was no ordinary private citizen but the incoming national security adviser. He would soon be in a position to reward Russia for cooperating with the Trump transition team.
Another reason that few cases have been brought under the Logan Act may be that citizens who conspire to thwart United States foreign policy rarely do so in the open. Richard Nixon, as a candidate during the 1968 campaign, almost certainly violated the statute when he sought to sabotage the Johnson administration’s peace overtures to North Vietnam, but details of Mr. Nixon’s effort did not emerge until after his death.
“Nixon did it,” never much of an excuse for a president, thus doesn’t work here. Indeed, Mr. Nixon’s sabotage of the peace talks illustrates the importance of the statute and the potentially dire consequences of its violation.
If Mr. Flynn violated the Logan Act, then so did the “very senior” official who directed his actions. If that official is Mr. Kushner, then Mr. Kushner could go to jail. If it is Mr. Pence or Mr. Trump, then impeachment proceedings could be in order. To be sure, the Republican-controlled Congress, not Mr. Mueller, decides who to impeach. But if the phrase “high crimes or misdemeanors” means anything, it includes violation of a serious criminal statute that bars citizens from undermining the foreign policy actions of the sitting president.
