https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4449 ... returns-to
A draft memo written by an IRS lawyer last fall found that the agency has to provide tax returns sought by Congress's tax committees unless executive privilege is invoked, The Washington Post reported Tuesday....
The draft memo is not in line with Mnuchin's reasoning for denying Democrats' request, and it signals there may be disagreement within the executive branch on the tax return issue, the Post reported...
The IRS said in a statement provided to The Hill that "the memo in question is a draft background paper that was never finalized" and "is not the official position of the IRS." "The document was prepared last fall. The IRS Commissioner and the Chief Counsel were unaware of the paper until this week’s media inquiry. The document was not sent to Treasury," the agency added...
How I read this is that the IRS asked for a lawyer's expert opinion and Trump's political appointees didn't like what they heard, so they buried it.
So now they're trying to find the person who embarrassed them:
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4449 ... turns-memo
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday said that the department is trying to find out who wrote a draft IRS memo that found that the agency has to provide tax returns to Congress unless executive privilege is invoked. ...“We're trying to find out who wrote the memo, where it came from, when it was and why it wasn't distributed," Mnuchin said at a House Financial Services Committee hearing.
Mnuchin last week rejected a subpoena from House Democrats for six years of Trump's tax returns, saying their request lacks a legitimate legislative purpose.
btw, I heard a new term the other day for a situation where a political appointee twists the real findings into something different that's favorable to their boss. Someone said Mnuchin (or Mulvaney?) "pulled a Barr." Seems an appropriate legacy for Barr.
We have a president who folds his arms, stomps his feet and refuses to act on important unrelated matters because the Democrats are not being nice to him:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... f-cover-up
President Trump cut off infrastructure talks with congressional Democratic leaders and lit into them during an appearance at the White House Rose Garden after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said he was “engaged in a cover up.”
...“I walked into the room and I told Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi that I want to do infrastructure ... but you know what, you can’t do it under these circumstances," he said.
This is the best part
:
Trump spoke at a lectern with a placard attached to it reading “ No Collusion No Obstruction” with statistics attacking special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Seems straight out of second grade.
What prompted Trump's hissy fit:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4449 ... a-cover-up
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday accused President Trump of being "engaged in a cover up" following a special meeting of House Democrats focused on ongoing congressional investigations into the Trump administration.
"We do believe that it is important to follow the facts, we believe that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States, and we believe the president of the United States is engaged in a cover up, in a cover up," Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill.
But inside the closed-door meeting, Pelosi apparently continued to urge caution about rushing down the path of impeachment...
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4449 ... -committee
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday met with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and their staff to discuss his tenure at the State Department.
Tillerson met with Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the panel’s chairman and ranking member, respectively, and a small number of majority and minority staff. A committee aide told The Hill the meeting covered a wide variety of topics from Tillerson’s time as secretary of State....
This seems a familiar pattern for the Trump administration but I'll be happy to let them use any face-saving excuse they like so long as they don't start another pointless, expensive and unjustified war that results in another country in ruins and a public relations boost to Islamic extremists:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ave-worked
Trump officials say US efforts to deter Iran have worked
btw, it seems there are no limits whatsoever on presidential pardons:
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... ngress-act
Congress cannot interfere with the exercise of that power, but there are some procedural reforms it can make. In addition, it would be worthwhile to identify neutral principles for its exercise. Doing so would foster informed consideration of the president’s actions in the court of public opinion as well as in the House of Representatives, where impeachments begin.
The starting point is an 1866 Supreme Court decision, Ex parte Garland, ... The court wrote:
"This power of the President is not subject to legislative control. Congress can neither limit the effect of his pardon nor exclude from its exercise any class of offenders. The benign prerogative of mercy reposed in him cannot be fettered by any legislative restrictions."...
To me, this seems an insane amount of power to give any one individual, who could be corrupt or crazy.
Edit:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4450 ... ation-with
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has ordered new restrictions on how the Pentagon shares information about international military operations with Congress, according to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post...
The memo, which was reportedly shared widely within the Pentagon but was sent to key lawmakers after inquiries from The Post, lists six guidelines for information sharing with Capitol Hill. The document orders military officials and political appointees to determine whether a congressional request “contains sufficient information to demonstrate a relationship to the legislative function” and urges officials to provide a summary briefing instead of the requested plan or order itself. It also gives responsibility for evaluating congressional requests to the undersecretary of defense for policy, often a political appointee...
An anonymous Pentagon official told The Post that the agency’s officials had been worried about potential congressional interference in the formulation of military plans, what the Defense Department considers to be an executive branch function. The official added that Congress had been most interested in Special Operations activities, which are highly sensitive and have produced significant public backlash in recent years...
So it seems the argument is that if Americans are likely to disapprove of what our military is doing, we can't be allowed to know it...
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4450 ... ran-strike
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday rejected a Democratic proposal to require congressional approval before the U.S. can take military action against Iran.
The panel voted 13-9 against a proposal blocking the administration from using funding to carry out a military strike in or against Iran without congressional signoff, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the committee.
We lost 13-9. Every Republican except for @RandPaul opposed it.
https://t.co/auz8pCRQkv...
Murphy added that Congress should "remind this administration that they do not have legal authorization to launch a war against Iran without our consent and that no one else is responsible but Trump for putting us on this blind campaign of escalation with no off-ramp."...
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4450 ... -for-amash
The influential DeVos family of Michigan has said it will end its longtime support of Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) following remarks he made accusing President Trump of committing impeachable offenses.
The family of GOP megadonors, which includes current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, said it has not made any contributions to Amash this cycle and has "no plans to do so," according to a statement provided to The Detroit News....
In the ensuing fallout, Amash has found a new primary challenger in state Rep. Jim Lower (R) and been the brunt of criticism from members of his own Freedom Caucus, including its leader, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). "Mr. Amash’s conclusions are poorly informed and fatally flawed," Meadows told The Hill on Monday.
The move by the DeVos family comes after years of publicly supporting Amash. Betsy DeVos and her husband endorsed the lawmaker during his first run for Congress in 2010. The family most recently gave him a combined total of $24,300 to his reelection campaign in 2018...
Not sure what this means, if anything, but McGahn does seem to have a financial incentive to cooperate with the GOP and defy the Democratic subpoena:
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/rnc-m ... id/917033/
The Republican National Committee shelled out $2 million in April for legal services to former White House counsel Donald McGahn’s law firm — raising questions about its impact on his decision not to testify Tuesday before Congress...
An interesting take on the border by conservatives in DHS:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ump-226573
Yes, There’s a Crisis on the Border. And It’s Trump’s Fault.
Despite the administration’s attempts to shift blame for the chaos, make no mistake: It is Donald Trump himself who is responsible. Through misguided policies, political stunts and a failure of leadership, the president has created the conditions that allowed the asylum problem at the border to explode into a crisis. The solution to our current border troubles lies in reforming the U.S. asylum system and immigration courts and helping Central America address its challenges—not in a “big beautiful” wall or shutting down the border. Yet effective action on these issues has been missing. And the president has now so poisoned the political well with his approach that there is little hope of meaningful congressional action until after the next election. Unless the administration changes course, the immigration crisis will only continue to worsen...
...the nature of undocumented immigration to the U.S. has changed. Today, it is primarily driven not by Mexican economic migrants—and not by a flood of criminals, as Trump claims—but rather by large numbers of families and minors from Central America who are seeking political asylum. ... and they will descend on a border and immigration court system ill-equipped to handle those claims...
Though this whole "crisis at the border" thing seems odd to me and makes no sense at all. And seems awfully convenient for Trump - he kept bleating for years about a crisis, and everyone including Fox kept pointing out that the numbers are way down, there is no crisis. Then suddenly the crisis appears just when he needs to justify his emergency grab for Wall funds.
Yet no nonpartisan investigative reporters seem to be going down to Central America and investigating root causes. Did something suddenly change in the countries people are fleeing? Why do they all want to come to the US now, under Trump's draconian measures, instead of waiting until a better time? What are potential migrants being told down there?
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btw, I’m going to take a break for a while. By now, Trump’s incompetence, ignorance, lack of interest in educating himself or governing well or listening to experts, nasty streak, and complete lack of ethics should be obvious to anyone with a brain who has been paying attention to the news. The agendas of Miller, Bolton, Mulvaney, Wheeler (EPA), et al should also be clear.
But it doesn’t seem to matter. For whatever reason, the Republican leadership holds their noses at the things they supposedly dislike –including throwing US intelligence agencies under the bus on Putin’s say-so – and continues to praise and protect Trump. The GOP rank and file in Congress are mostly cowards – no matter how much they might mutter in private, they’re not willing to go against party leadership and take the risk of losing re-election or defend their colleagues who do. Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership talks openly about how terrible Trump is, and happily used him to get votes in the midterm elections, but now they won’t do anything but investigate endlessly while Trump thumbs his nose at them and controls the media narrative.
And much of the media - who helped elect Trump by giving him endless attention but refusing to bore Americans by providing much beyond fluff and clickbait - continues to benefit from the boost to their ratings. And produces poll after poll about what percentage of the American public approves of Trump or supports impeachment, getting all breathless about a tiny change in his ratings, well within the margin of error. Polls that assume everyone follows politics closely, when the reality is that only a minority of the country pays much attention to any news beyond the TV headlines. Or they bring on talking heads who pontificate endlessly and learnedly about how Congress can’t impeach Trump without the Senate Republicans on board (Nonsense. They can impeach but not remove) or how impeaching Clinton backfired on the GOP (If Americans are so stupid that we can’t tell the difference between impeaching someone for lying about a blow job and impeaching someone for corruption, maybe we deserve all this mess.) And everyone bows down to the wisdom of the very same people who convinced everyone that Clinton could never lose to Trump. I, for one, don’t trust their crystal ball.
So I’ve kind of had enough for now. Yeah, Trump is a corrupt clownshow and charlatan probably leading us down the path to ruin. But many of the rest of the players stink, too, and since they don't seem willing to impeach the worst president we've ever had, including Nixon, I’m pretty sick of the lot of them. So, like Bilbo, I think I’m going to pop on my magic ring and vanish for at least a couple of weeks, though after a while I might stop by now and then if I see something interesting to post.