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You've been Trumped!

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 24 Oct , 2019 3:47 pm
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Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Excuse me?!
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... cum-remark
Quote:
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Thursday that President Trump does not regret calling “Never Trump” Republicans “human scum” and said they “deserve strong language like that.”

“The people who are against him, and who have been against him and working against him since the day they took office are just that,” Grisham said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning.

“It is horrible that people are working against a president who’s delivering results for this country and has been since day one.”...
This woman seems to have sold every scrap of decency to support everything Trump does. I hope he pays her well for this. Though actually we're the ones paying her salary, which is fairly appalling.





A pretty good summary of the situation IMO:
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... lf-dealing
Quote:
Whistleblower exposed much more than Trump's self-dealing
By Kris Kolesnik, opinion contributor
Kris Kolesnik is a 34-year veteran of federal government oversight. He spent 19 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Kolesnik then became executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. Finally, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.
Quote:
A perfect storm of bad news is crushing President Donald Trump and his defenders. Whistleblower#1’s complaint to Congress has exposed Trump’s self-dealing with the Ukrainian president. But that’s not all. It has also exposed a network of shady, sneaky agents advancing Trump’s schemes, against the national interest.....

What Trump is up against is something he never had a clue existed and could therefore never be prepared for: the structured phalanx of professional, disciplined, honest civil servants in the intelligence and diplomatic communities who will never let him get away with self-dealing if it subverts global democracy.

Trump knew there would be some in government wise to his antics and who would speak out. That’s why he adopted the bogeyman “Deep State” to dismiss them as “angry Democrats” who disagree with his politics, so they launched a “witch hunt.”

Trump comes from a world in which self-dealing was in the DNA...In his business and then his campaign for president, Trump was always surrounded by yes men. If you didn’t facilitate his dealings, you were gone. He’d find someone else who would.

He’s using that approach in the White House. The tsunami of staff turnover in his administration, White House included, is ample evidence....



During and after two years of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Trump and his defenders bullied, denied, obfuscated, and hoodwinked Congress and the public into a stalemate. The scheme has worked so far, thanks to some deceit by Attorney General William Barr in misinterpreting Mueller’s findings, and the profound incompetence of the House Democrats as a worthy opponent.

Now, it’s a different story.

The whistleblower complaint has turned the tables, giving the House the upper hand. That’s because Trump, Barr, et al, neither control the information nor who comes through the revolving door of witnesses. As each witness comes forward, we’re learning who the shady characters are and what their schemes were. Team Trump has ordered witnesses not to cooperate. He’s already lost that battle. The dam has broken...


So far, we have the president caught red-handed. He has no plausible deniability. Also caught red-handed are the shady operators conspiring with equally shady pro-Russian Ukrainians. Many of them, like Giuliani, have neither security clearances nor any recently sworn oaths to the Constitution...


https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4672 ... ms-control
Quote:
The admiral nominated to lead the U.S. military command in charge of nuclear weapons sidestepped questions Thursday on whether the United States should stay in a pair of treaties arms control advocates fear are on President Trump’s chopping block.

Vice Adm. Charles Richard, the nominee to be commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee he would give the president his “best military advice” on the New START and Open Skies treaties, and listed several pros and cons with each.

But he would not definitively say whether he supports staying in the treaties or withdrawing despite several senators’ attempts to get him to do so...

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/467 ... erican-bar
Quote:
The Senate confirmed a President Trump district court pick on Thursday who was labeled "not qualified" by the American Bar Association (ABA).

Justin Walker was confirmed as a judge for the Western District of Kentucky in a 50-41 party-line vote.
The ABA noted in a recent memo to senators that the “Standing Committee believes that Mr. Walker does not presently have the requisite trial or litigation experience or its equivalent.” The committee gave Walker a "not qualified" rating....



Why did the Secret Service investigate a rap group for song lyrics?
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/i ... hreatening
Quote:
The Secret Service interviewed eminem over "threatening" lyrics against President Trump, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. The interview with the rapper stemmed from the Secret Service being alerted to a 2017 ITK story detailing lyrics included on Eminem's album "Revival."

On one of the tracks, the 47-year-old performer, born Marshall Mathers, rapped of the commander in chief: “Time to bury him, so tell him to prepare to get impeached.”

The Secret Service, in the documents obtained by BuzzFeed, said the song was "exhibiting inappropriate behavior" and "threatens" their protectee...
I don't listen to rap, partly because the repetitive rhythm makes me want to smash something - preferably the sound system playing it ;) - but even I know how nasty some of the lyrics can be. These "threatening" lyrics, and even the ones mentioned later about Ivanka, strike me as pretty mild in comparison. Unless they had more than song lyrics to worry about, this is Soviet style suppression/ intimidation. Even if they "declined to refer the case to a federal prosecutor" after the interview.
It also makes you wonder what other artists and musicians they've been visiting.



This amused me:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4673 ... mpeachment
Quote:
Fox News analyst: Republicans are protesting their own impeachment inquiry rules


More news:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... aries-near
Quote:
A new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule proposal would shrink enforcement responsibilities for farmers by narrowing the areas they must restrict human contact during pesticide applications, a move the agency is labelling easier management.

The rule announced Thursday shrinks enforcement of the boundaries established under the Application Exclusion Zone to just within farm owner property. The previous statute extended the exclusion zone to areas outside the farm, where workers and others might come into close proximity to the process and equipment used to spread pesticides...

It also no longer requires family members to leave the farm during pesticide applications, though that part of the rollback doesn't bother me. If they don't want to leave, that's their own business - they can do whatever they chose to do before 2017, when the new rules went into effect. But the new rules to protect people outside the farm from pesticide drift looked like a very good thing.



And this is mind-boggling. Barr refused to investigate the whistleblower complaint, which is now revealing clear evidence of corruption, with long tendrils in the government that seem to implicate several Trump appointees, including him. Instead, he's now opening a criminal investigation into his own department based on the conspiracy theories Trump promoted (about the events that eventually led to the Mueller investigation). I reserved judgement, to some extent, when I heard that Trump told Ukraine's president to coordinate things with Giuliani and Barr. No more. It looks to me like we have a corrupt president and a crooked attorney general, which is far worse than Trump alone.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... own-russia
Quote:
The Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into its own Russia probe The New York Times reports.

The newspaper reports that after former special counsel Robert Mueller closed the official investigation months ago, a new criminal inquiry will proceed to find out how the investigation of Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election and Trump's alleged collusion with Russia "all began."

Attorney General William Barr has closely reviewed how the department handled the Russia investigation. But shifting the administrative review to a criminal inquiry would allow the prosecutor presiding over the inquiry, John H. Durham, to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, people familiar with the matter told the Times...
Original story in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/p ... ation.html
Quote:
Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation. In May, Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that the F.B.I. officials who opened the case — a counterintelligence investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Moscow’s election sabotage — had committed treason.
Quote:
Mr. Barr is closely managing the Durham investigation, even traveling to Italy to seek help from officials there to run down an unfounded conspiracy that is at the heart of conservatives’ attacks on the Russia investigation — that the Italian government helped set up the Trump campaign adviser who was told in 2016 that the Russians had damaging information that could hurt Clinton’s campaign.

But Italy’s intelligence services told Mr. Barr that they played no such role in the events leading to the Russia investigation, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said in a news conference on Wednesday. Mr. Barr has also contacted government officials in Britain and Australia about their roles in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

Revelations so far about Mr. Durham’s investigation have shown that he has focused in his first months on the accusations that Mr. Trump’s conservative allies have made about the origins of the Russia inquiry in their efforts to undermine it. Mr. Durham’s efforts have prompted criticism that he and Mr. Barr are trying to deliver the president a political victory, though investigators would typically run down all aspects of a case to complete a review of it...

Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation...
I wouldn't be surprised if this is all just an attempt to persuade the conservatives appalled by the Ukraine scandal, Turkey/ Kurds, etc. that they should just continue to support Trump and some deep conspiracy 3 years ago, which will magically vindicate all his actions, will be revealed. I'm sure Trump and his minions are getting very worried about the increasing support for impeachment in recent polls. And if Trump manages to get re-elected, then surprise, surprise, the investigation quietly closes after finding no wrong-doing, but oops, too late... Barr's investigation into the DOJ may also give congressional Republicans an excuse not to remove Trump when he's impeached, which seems increasingly likely to happen. Trump doesn't seem at all intelligent, but that doesn't mean he didn't learn a lot of dirty tricks from Roy Cohn.

btw, they're investigating what happened before the Mueller investigation. So none of this seems to implicate his investigation in any way, though I'm sure Trump and his supporters will try to throw dirt in that direction.

Which reminds me - we haven't heard anything more lately about Barr's attempt to criminally prosecute McCabe on Trump's behalf. If I remember right, the judge told them to drop the bullshit and either file a case or drop the whole thing within a certain number of days. I think I can guess which happened.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 25 Oct , 2019 12:50 pm
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https://thehill.com/latino/467408-aclu- ... y-reported
Quote:
The Trump administration said in federal court that 1,556 more parents and children were separated from each other than previously known, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)....

A January Department of Health and Human Services watchdog said that possibly thousands more children had been separated than previously known, according to the wire service. As a result, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw gave the administration six months to identify the children. ..
Our government released the numbers one day before the deadline. (I'm not sure how 6 months turned into October - the article is a little confusing.)




The Education Dept seems lawless too:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... 00000-fine
Quote:
A federal judge issued a $100,000 fine on the Department of Education Thursday after finding Secretary Betsy DeVos violated a preliminary injunction when the department continued to collect loan payments from Corinthian Colleges students, The Washington Post reported.

“There is no question that the defendants violated the preliminary injunction. There is also no question that [the] defendants’ violations harmed individual borrowers,” Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco wrote in her ruling Thursday, according to the Post.

“Defendants have not provided evidence that they were unable to comply with the preliminary injunction, and the evidence shows only minimal efforts to comply.”...

Of course, this is the same lot that has been threatening to remove the funding for a college-level Islamic studies program for, gasp, focusing on Islam and not Christianity.

Background on the Corinthian College lawsuit:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/201 ... ief-claims Though, regardless of the background, the recent news seems simple - the Trump administration defied an actual court order and that defiance cost the taxpayers (us) money.




https://thehill.com/regulation/court-ba ... records-to
Quote:
President Trump's attorneys told a federal appeals court Thursday that they intend to take a legal battle with the House Oversight Committee over the president's financial records to the Supreme Court...

The D.C. Circuit panel earlier this month ruled 2-1 in favor of the House Oversight Committee, upholding a district judge ruling allowing the subpoena to go into force. The president later appealed, leaving in place a hold on the subpoena until the court fight was resolved.

In the filings to the D.C. Circuit, Trump's lawyer's attacked last week's decision, arguing that the congressional committee had no legitimate legislative purpose for seeking the financial records, and that the only way they can investigate presidential wrongdoing is through an impeachment proceeding, which the House's lawyers have not invoked in this case.

But last week, the House panel asked the appeals court to expedite the order, citing an urgency created by the newly-launched impeachment inquiry...
I am really, really curious what Trump is fighting so hard to conceal.




This doesn't affect the investigation into Trump holding back the Ukrainian aid authorized by Congress, in order to pressure Ukraine into launching investigations into his political rivals. But it does suggest the budget office (OMB) broke the law by agreeing to do it. As I said after Taylor's testimony, no wonder the Trump appointees that head OMB are defying the subpoenas.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/more-role-o ... ainian-aid
Quote:
Russell Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), announced on Twitter that he and Michael Duffy, an OMB political appointee, are refusing to be deposed by House committees pursuing an impeachment investigation. With this in the news, it is worth revisiting OMB’s delay in releasing nearly $400 million in foreign assistance to Ukraine.

In a post on Oct. 16, two of us questioned whether OMB satisfied its legal obligations by postponing the release of this assistance ($141 million from the State Department and $250 million from the Defense Department, as noted). We concluded that the answer was unclear. Further investigation suggests that while the withholding of State Department funds likely did not breach OMB’s legal obligations, the White House’s decision to use OMB to hold Defense Department aid appears to have exceeded OMB’s authority. ...


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50180445
Quote:
A Russian woman who admitted acting as an agent and infiltrating US political groups is set to be freed from a Florida prison and deported.

Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months earlier this year after admitting to a single count of conspiracy, but was given credit for time already served.

The 30-year-old gun activist tried to infiltrate the National Rifle Association (NRA) to influence policy.

Russian officials say she is expected to arrive in Moscow on Saturday....
Interesting timing, with the impeachment investigation heating up.



Sure, Dear Leader is getting out of the Middle East. Not only has a sent a bunch of US military to Saudi Arabia, it seems they're also considering sending more military to Syria.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/ ... 17393.html
Quote:
The United States will station additional forces in eastern Syria to protect oilfields in another policy shift that one former senior American official called a "shocking ignorance" of history and geography.

The planned reinforcement will take place in coordination with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to prevent the oilfields from falling into the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), a Pentagon statement said....

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Joshua Landis, a Middle East expert at the University of Oklahoma, said the announcement was "emblematic of the chaos that has set in in the American foreign policy process".

"It is in free-fall and the president is going back and forth," Landis said. "This doesn't really make much sense." The new deployment could mean US forces would be like "sitting ducks" being stationed in an area, in which the borders are guarded by Russian and Syrian troops, he added. "Who is going to safeguard them? The Kurds will have nothing to do with America. They have now made a deal with the Assad government. The whole thing makes no sense."...
A Wall Street Journal article, mostly behind a paywall, suggests battle tanks are among the planned deployment.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-weighs ... 1571958019


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/ ... 20646.html
Quote:
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded the United States hand over the commander of Kurdish-led forces in Syria, in a sharp rebuke of Washington's call for negotiations with the Syrian Kurds.

The call for Mazloum Abdi's extradition on Thursday came after US President Donald Trump, in a letter to Erdogan on October 9, said the Kurdish commander was "willing to negotiate" with the Turkish president and "make concessions that they would have never made in the past". ..

EDIT to add:

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-ba ... ler-report
Quote:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) must hand over to Congress certain redacted information from Robert Mueller's special counsel report, a federal judge ruled Friday in a major win for House Democrats investigating President Trump.

The judge ruled that House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had proven that they have a justifiable reason for obtaining the records related to Mueller's grand jury now that they're pursuing an impeachment inquiry into the president....

The order directs DOJ to turn over all information that was redacted from the Mueller report in order to protect grand jury secrecy. That includes more than 240 redactions from the first volume of the report alone....

Also this week, in another case that seems destined for the nation's highest court, Trump's personal lawyers doubled down on their assertion that the president is immune from criminal investigation and prosecution while in office — a view that has been endorsed by DOJ.

Howell on Friday noted in her opinion that theory of blanket immunity for the president "has never been adopted, sanctioned, or in any way approved by a court."
Quote:
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I bet they didn't.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... testify-in
Quote:
Tim Morrison, a top National Security Council (NSC) official, is the first [currently serving] White House official slated to testify as part of Democrats' impeachment inquiry that is examining President Trump's contacts with Ukraine.

An attorney for Morrison, who took over Fiona Hill’s role as the senior director for European and Russian affairs on the NSC, says her client intends to testify if he is subpoenaed, even if the White House seeks to block him from testifying.

“If subpoenaed, Mr. Morrison plans to appear for his deposition,” attorney Barbara Van Gelder said in a statement, while declining to preview what he will say in his upcoming testimony.

Morrison is seen as a key witness by Democrats. He is believed to be involved on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... ee-members
Quote:
Attorneys for former national security adviser John Bolton are in touch with House committee staffers about the possibility of his testifying in Democrats' impeachment inquiry into President Trump, NBC News and CNN reported Friday. ...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -effect-on
Quote:
Dozens of government watchdogs are warning that a Justice Department memo arguing that the head of the intelligence community wasn't required to give the Ukraine complaint to Congress could have a "chilling effect" on future whistleblowers.

Nearly 70 inspectors general signed onto a letter saying they disagreed with the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) stance that the whistleblower complaint at the center of the impeachment inquiry wasn't an "urgent concern," a finding that contradicted the intelligence community's inspector general (ICIG)...

And I'm really starting to wonder whether Giuliani is dropping a trail of breadcrumbs for investigators to follow. I expect he knows Trump will throw him under the bus as soon as expedient
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... r-reporter
Quote:
President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared to accidentally call an NBC News reporter and leave a voicemail in which he can be heard discussing money, NBC reported Friday.

The call came in after 11 p.m. on Oct. 16 and Giuliani appeared to be speaking with someone else in the same room, according to the news outlet, which published a portion of the audio. ..

“You know, Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case ‘cause he didn’t do any due diligence," Giuliani said.

.."Let's get back to business," he reportedly continued. "I gotta get you to get on Bahrain."

Giuliani is then heard saying he has “got to call Robert again tomorrow.”

"Is Robert around?” Giuliani asked.

“He’s in Turkey,” responded the other man in the room.

“The problem is we need some money,” Giuliani said, adding after several seconds of silence, “we need a few hundred thousand.”...
It doesn't look like Dear Leader is going to have a nice weekend.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 28 Oct , 2019 2:09 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4675 ... in-ukraine
Quote:
A leading State Department official testified before Congress on Saturday and touched upon Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's role in the administration's dealings with Ukraine — the issue at the center of the Democrats' fast-evolving impeachment investigation into President Trump.

Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of European and Eurasian Affairs, broached the topic of Pompeo while being deposed in the Capitol by the three House committees — Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign Affairs — leading the impeachment investigation...
The information from a Republican member, Scott Perry, is confusing. He defends Trump and Pompeo and says they did nothing wrong (which has been his position ever since this began, no matter what any of the witnesses say), but at the same time he says about Pompeo:
Quote:
"I can't get into the details," ... "but certainly there are questions."
Democrats on the committee say that Reeker provided more evidence to corroborate wrongdoing.



https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... tract-book
Quote:
A new book reportedly alleges that President Trump instructed then-Defense Secretary James Mattis to "screw Amazon" out of the opportunity to bid on a $10 billion contract in 2018.

Military news outlet Task & Purpose reported that an upcoming book, "Holding The Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis," written by the former secretary's erstwhile speechwriter and communications director Guy Snodgrass, divulges and outlines the accusation.

A portion of the book also details Mattis's ethical struggle with the president's demands.

"Relaying the story to us during Small Group, Mattis said, 'We're not going to do that. This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically," Snodgrass reportedly wrote. ...
There were stories earlier about the Pentagon apparently trying to delay publication of this book. It sounds like Mattis isn't happy either, presumably since he isn't prepared to let us know what was going on during his tenure (yet).



https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... 33-million
Quote:
A Virginia-based company with ties to President Trump's brother has reportedly been awarded a $33 million government contract, according to The Washington Post.

The firm CertiPath received the multimillion-dollar contract with the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) earlier this year, the Post reported. CertiPath is partially owned by a company tied to the president's brother Robert Trump, according to the newspaper.

The Post reported Saturday that a rival bidder anonymously filed a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General following the award, accusing CertiPath of failing to disclose that "one of the President’s closest living relatives stood to benefit financially from the transaction."...



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/p ... trump.html
Quote:
Trump’s Syria Troop Withdrawal Complicated Plans for al-Baghdadi Raid

President Trump’s abrupt decision to pull forces from northern Syria forced the Pentagon to press ahead with a risky night operation that killed the ISIS leader, military officials said.
Quote:
...For months, intelligence officials had kept Mr. Trump apprised of what he had set as a top priority, the hunt for Mr. al-Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted terrorist.

But Mr. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal order three weeks ago disrupted the meticulous planning underway and forced Pentagon officials to speed up the plan for the risky night raid before their ability to control troops, spies and reconnaissance aircraft disappeared with the pullout, the officials said.

Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death in the raid on Saturday, they said, occurred largely in spite of, and not because of, Mr. Trump’s actions. ...
I won't post Trump's disgusting remarks about the death of al-Baghdadi . Even some Republicans were bothered by them. No doubt al-Baghdadi got what he deserved, when he blew himself up - and three children - after being tracked down. All the same, Dear Leader sounded like somebody discussing the raid with his buddies in a bar (the kind you move away from because they sound like jerks), not like the leader of any normal nation.



EDIT:

This article has some convoluted writing, but, basically, there are more hints that one of Trump's strong supporters in the Senate, Ron Johnson, might have something to do with Trump's quid pro quo offer in Ukraine.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/467 ... mat-before
Quote:
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a top ally of President Trump in the Senate, spoke with a Ukrainian official about unsubstantiated claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election just days before Trump told the Ukrainian President he thought he should investigate former Vice President and top tier 2020 Democratic hopeful Joe Biden.

Former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Teilzhenko told The Washington Post on Monday that in July at the Capitol Johnson discussed unproven claims that Ukraine worked with the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to dig up dirt on onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort....

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... to-mueller
Quote:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Monday it plans to appeal a judge’s order from last week compelling disclosure of materials from the Mueller report...

The agency asked Chief District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, to hold off on enforcing the Democratic subpoena while the case plays out....

btw, I was amused that the story of Trump getting booed at the World Series was the top story on Euronews today, at least for a while. If nothing else, that should help rehabilitate our image a bit as a sane people.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/28/tru ... e-n1072626
I'm glad this happened. I remember stories, early in Trump's presidency, about how his staffers were told to promote favorable news stories of him and suppress critical ones - probably something that has been happening his entire life. He also gets a very skewed picture during his campaign rallies, where everyone in view of the cameras has to cheer or get booted out (AKA "plaid shirt guy"). It may all be feeding Trump's delusion that most Americans adore him and the mainstream media is out of step with everyone and promoting fake news. He got a dose of reality at the World Series.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 29 Oct , 2019 12:41 pm
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https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... ing-threat
Quote:
Democrats are preparing to counter any White House efforts to allow mining near the Grand Canyon, with Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) leading the charge to pass legislation aimed at warding off what he called “an imminent threat” to the country’s most iconic national park...
Grijalva's measure, which aims to ban mining on all federal land in Arizona, is probably too broad to be passed by the Senate. It also strikes me as overkill, at least as it sounds in this article, by treating all federal lands and all mining the same. And why ban mining on federal land in Arizona but not other states? (His reasoning for the broad proposal is "climate change.")

But the threat from Trump is real:
Quote:
The legislation, Grijalva said, is designed to guard against forthcoming recommendations from a White House Uranium Mining Group, consisting largely of industry leaders...

Trump began signaling support for renewed uranium mining near the Grand Canyon early on in his presidency, starting with a 2017 decision to declare uranium a critical mineral for national security purposes. And earlier this year, the Commerce Department recommended mining reserves of uranium, a key component of nuclear weapons.

By July, the White House was putting together a working group to advise on methods of maintaining a strong nuclear fuel supply chain.

The working group, which has postponed its recommendations until mid-November, is including in their considerations a Cold War-era law that mandates the federal government buy uranium for enrichment for national security purposes...
All this is happening because there is a 20-year moratorium on mining uranium and other minerals near the Grand Canyon, implemented in 2012, and Trump is looking for ways to bypass it. (The uranium mining industry was, needless to say, not happy about the moratorium.) Personally, I'd like to see someone introduce a law that could get bipartisan support in the House and Senate and stop this. Any damage they do could be irreversible. And the Trump administration took measures, early in Trump's tenure, to reduce the responsibility of mining industries for the environmental damage they cause.



https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4678 ... ver-trumps
Quote:
READ: Army officer to tell investigators he twice reported concerns over Trump's Ukraine dealings
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4678 ... in-inquiry
Quote:
A judge scheduled a Thursday hearing for a former aide to President Trump who refused to appear for his deposition Monday in the House's impeachment inquiry, The Washington Post reported...

The former deputy had filed a lawsuit Friday asking a federal judge about whether he should comply with the House’s subpoena or listen to the White House, who requested [sic . I'd say "demanded" is a more accurate word] he not testify. He did not testify after no decision was made Monday morning.

D.C. District Judge Richard J. Leon, a President George W. Bush appointee, scheduled the hearing for 3 p.m. because of “the time-sensitive nature of the issues raised in this case,”...

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 31 Oct , 2019 2:37 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4682 ... nt-inquiry
Quote:
Tim Morrison, a top White House Russia expert, arrived Thursday to testify behind closed-doors about President Trump’s contacts with Ukraine, the latest in a growing string of witnesses to buck the president and appear as part of the Democrats’ impeachment investigation....

Morrison, who announced Wednesday that he would be leaving his position as the senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council (NSC), has been mentioned by previous witnesses as someone who voiced dismay that the president was demanding a quid pro quo for the aid....


Some people suggest he resigned because Trump (or his minions) tried to stop him from testifying. It's not clear whether that's true or not, but the timing is suspicious. And knowing Trump, it would not be the least bit surprising. I expect Morrison would have been fired today if he didn't step down first. https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/3 ... ony-000309
Quote:
Morrison, who was senior director for European and Russian affairs, had been expected to leave the NSC for some time to pursue opportunities in the private sector but the timing so close to his testimony was notable, according to two people familiar with Morrison's plans.


https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/3 ... nor-062084
Quote:
Trump lures GOP senators on impeachment with cold cash
Quote:
President Donald Trump is rewarding senators who have his back on impeachment — and sending a message to those who don't to get on board.

Trump is tapping his vast fundraising network for a handful of loyal senators facing tough reelection bids in 2020. Each of them has signed onto a Republican-backed resolution condemning the inquiry as “unprecedented and undemocratic.”

Conspicuously absent from the group is Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a politically vulnerable Republican who’s refused to support the resolution and avoided taking a stance on impeachment. With his new push, Trump is exerting leverage over a group he badly needs in his corner with an impeachment trial likely coming soon to the Senate — but that also needs him. ...

Arizona Sen. Martha McSally, another vulnerable Republican facing reelection, was also omitted, though apparently for a different reason. While McSally signed onto the anti-impeachment resolution, she has frustrated Republican officials over her reluctance to exclusively use WinRed, a Trump-endorsed online fundraising tool. ...



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... with-trump
Quote:
China Doubts Long-Term Trade Deal Possible With Trump
Quote:
Chinese officials are casting doubts about reaching a comprehensive long-term trade deal with the U.S. even as the two sides get close to signing a “phase one” agreement.

In private conversations with visitors to Beijing and other interlocutors in recent weeks, Chinese officials have warned they won’t budge on the thorniest issues, according to people familiar with the matter. They remain concerned about President Donald Trump’s impulsive nature and the risk he may back out of even the limited deal both sides say they want to sign in the coming weeks....



I'm not sure what to make of this glimpse into a strange world of Trump supporters.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... al/601177/
Quote:
The Trump Campaign’s Nonsensical Halloween Celebration

The party brought Trumpworld stars all the way to rural Pennsylvania. But it had absolutely no point.
Quote:
In the cavernous space, all is silent save for one small room upstairs, where a hundred or so people, outfitted in bright-orange hats with jack-o-lantern faces and the words “Keep America Great,” are singing “happy birthday” to one Ivanka Trump.

...as former White House official Mercedes Schlapp would go on to explain, you should fear “the Democrat nightmare that we’re living in.” “It is very clear that the Democrats are out to threaten our family, threaten our faith, and threaten our country,” Schlapp, standing on a makeshift stage flanked by two inflatable green witches, warns the room. ... “They want”—and Schlapp cannot stress this enough—"ultimate control.”...

Joining them are the pro-Trump video bloggers Diamond and Silk, who are dressed in judges’ robes, with Silk carrying a gavel and block to bang at random intervals. (The Schlapps, for their part, attend the costume party as themselves, and poll the crowd on what they should dress up as the next night. “How about I’m Peter Strzok?” Matt says. “And”—he points to his wife—“Lisa Page.” The crowd cackles. “Or,” he continues, “how about I’m Hunter Biden?” Mercedes then vamps for the room: “And I’m the Ukrainian model.”)...

The Schlapps and Diamond and Silk are big names in Trumpland, but you wouldn’t know it based on the crowd, which fills less than half the room...

The Schlapps quickly outline in grave tones what will happen if they don’t send Trumpists to Washington..... that the country is “teetering” on the brink of “all that socialism and secularism”; and that the House’s ongoing impeachment inquiry is “fake,” “faux,” and “not real." The speeches made for a bizarre contrast with the event’s kitschy Halloween vibe...

This reminds me - Trump and his supporters have been trying to rename the Democratic party to the "Democrat party," apparently because they don't like associating the word democratic with their opponents. The very strange thing is that this is catching on, even among some people who don't support Trump at all. I guess it's just another example of how ignorance spreads. Still, it's bothersome that people don't realize they're being manipulated.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 04 Nov , 2019 3:34 pm
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This long article doesn't add a lot of new information but it does bring together the various international strands of the Mueller investigation, describe the conspiracy theories Barr is following (including instances where something has been debunked), and mention that the foreign intelligence services of our allies are appalled at what's happening. I did think it unusual that the Italians held a press conference a week or two ago to say Barr was following a line of inquiry there that's not true. My guess is that they were afraid the Trump administration would bury the truth.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 81641.html
Quote:
‘It’s like nothing we have come across before’: UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump administration’s requests for help with counter-impeachment inquiry

As impeachment inquiries heat up, president’s people are busy pursuing a counter offensive aimed at discrediting Mueller’s findings that Russia interfered in 2016 election
Quote:
As the impeachment hearings get more and more alarming for Donald Trump, with damning new evidence emerging every day, there appears to be increasing urgency in the parallel counteroffensives under way by the president’s team in an attempt to defend him.

There are attacks against the witnesses giving testimony by Trump and his supporters... And there have been the extraordinary scenes of congress Republicans breaking into the proceedings and disrupting them. At the same time, overshadowed by the publicity around the impeachment, is the ever-broadening investigation by William Barr, the attorney general, which the White House sees as a game-changer. An investigation which is seeking nothing less than to overturn the conclusion of the US intelligence services and special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia interfered in the last US presidential election....

It may also seem odd that Trump, having repeatedly claimed that the Mueller report was a “complete and total exoneration” of him over Russiagate, is now going to such lengths to try and discredit it...

The attorney general is focusing on the theory, aired on far-right conspiracy sites, and raised by Trump and Giuliani, that Ukraine framed Vladimir Putin over the US election in a complex triple-cross operation by impersonating Russian hackers...

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

The UK, in particular, has been viewed by Trump followers, especially far-right conspiracy theorists, as a deep source of woes for the president...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... nt-inquiry
Quote:
Four White House officials will not show up for scheduled closed-door depositions on Monday as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump, CNN reports. An unidentified source told the network that National Security Council lawyers John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis will not testify.

Two other officials, Robert Blair, assistant to the president and senior adviser to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and Brian McCormack, associate director for natural resources energy and science at the Office of Management and Budget, had already declined to testify, outlets reported Saturday...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... -possessed
Quote:
President Trump and officials on his 2016 presidential campaign had several private conversations about how they could obtain stolen Democratic emails WikiLeaks had possession of in 2016, according to new interview notes from former special counsel Robert Mueller obtained and released by CNN.

The notes recount interviews with former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates in which he detailed the Trump campaign’s efforts to obtain damaging information on 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, including emails that the intelligence community later concluded were stolen by Russian hackers.

"Gates recalled a time on the campaign aircraft when candidate Trump said, 'get the emails.'...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ersions-of
Quote:
In a tweet, Trump claimed House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) "will change the words that were said to suit the Dems purposes." His tweet came as Schiff said Democrats were planning to release transcripts of the interviews held in the probe so far.

"If Shifty Adam Schiff, who is a corrupt politician who fraudulently made up what I said on the 'call,' is allowed to release transcripts of the Never Trumpers & others that are & were interviewed, he will change the words that were said to suit the Dems purposes," he tweeted.

"Republicans should give their own transcripts of the interviews to contrast with Schiff’s manipulated propaganda. House Republicans must have nothing to do with Shifty’s rendition of those interviews. He is a proven liar, leaker & freak who is really the one who should be impeached!" Trump added....
It seems Trump and his sycophants got what they pretended to ask for* - the release of the information from the interviews- and now they're not happy. ;) The trouble is, Trump is the boy who cried wolf and anyone with half a brain knows it. Only last week, his own military spokespeople had to pussyfoot around and try not to directly contradict Trump while refusing to agree that his personal account of al Baghdadi's death is true.

*presumably for the purposes of alleging: It's Unfair! It's a conspiracy to thwart the will of the people and remove Dear Leader! Etc.




https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... wer-plants
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday announced it would roll back regulations on how coal-fired power plants dispose of waste laden with arsenic, lead and mercury. The proposal from the Trump administration weakens an Obama-era rule dealing with the residue from burning coal, known as coal ash, which is often mixed in water and stored in giant pits that could leech into local waterways.

The 2015 Obama administration rule required power plants to invest in wastewater treatment technology -- measures they estimated would stop some 1.4 billion pounds of coal ash from entering rivers and streams. It also assumed many companies would voluntarily install additional pollution controls. The proposal was spurred by a court decision ordering EPA to overhaul the unlined ponds. ...


https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... admissions
Quote:
President Trump has approved a plan to reduce the cap for refugee admissions to the country for fiscal 2020 to 18,000, the lowest level on record since the program began more than three decades ago.

In a statement announcing the move this weekend, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “the core of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy is a commitment to make decisions based on reality, not wishes, and to drive optimal outcomes based on concrete facts.” ... “this year’s determination on refugee admissions does just that, even as we sustain our longstanding commitment to help vulnerable populations and our leadership as the world’s most generous nation.” ...

According to The New York Times, under the new move by the Trump administration, only 5,000 people who wish to flee their home countries for fear of persecution due to their religion will be allowed admission into the U.S. as part of the refugee program.

Fewer than 2,000 Central Americans will reportedly be allowed admission under the program going forward as well as 4,000 Iraqis who aided the United States military during the Iraq War....Under the Trump administration during fiscal 2019, just 153 Iraqi refugees whose applications were given high priority were admitted into the country. ...
For reference, President Obama's proposed cap on refugees in 2016 was 116,000. They don't mention any others.




Another rare opportunity for ordinary, non-Trump-supporting Americans to express how they feel about Trump - and some people took it. :
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... to-ufc-244
Quote:
President Trump was welcomed into Madison Square Garden on Saturday night with heavy booing from the crowd. Trump, who was also met with some cheers, was at the arena to watch the main fight of UFC 244....

EDIT:
And it's about to get even more interesting:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1XE297
Quote:
Lev Parnas, an indicted Ukrainian-American businessman who has ties to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is now prepared to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators, his lawyer told Reuters on Monday....

Parnas, who helped Giuliani look for dirt on Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, is a key figure in the impeachment inquiry that is examining whether Trump abused his office for personal political gain....

“We will honor and not avoid the committee’s requests to the extent they are legally proper, while scrupulously protecting Mr. Parnas’ privileges including that of the Fifth Amendment,” said the lawyer, Joseph Bondy, referring to his client’s constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. ...

Analyses of the first interview transcripts are starting to be released. You can also read the whole transcripts yourself if you feel like wading through 300+ pages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/us/p ... eased.html
Quote:
Excerpts and Analysis From 2 Impeachment Inquiry Transcripts

House Democrats released the first two transcripts of their closed-door impeachment testimonies.
Quote:
The president’s private lawyer tried to meddle in State Department consular affairs to advance his shadow campaign.

Yovanovitch transcript, Page 264: “And the next thing we knew, Mayor Giuliani was calling the White House as well as the assistant secretary for consular affairs, saying that I was blocking the visa for Mr. Shokin, and that Mr. Shokin was coming to meet him and provide information about corruption at the embassy, including my corruption.”

Much has been reported about the efforts of the president’s private lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani — both public and behind the scenes — to court Ukrainian officials who would help in his bid to ultimately damage the reputations of Mr. Trump’s political opponents. Ms. Yovanovitch’s account of Mr. Giuliani’s attempts to interfere in the State Department decision provides additional details about just how open he was about his campaign to enlist Ukraine to help Mr. Trump win re-election....

As Yovanovitch fought for her job, allies turned to two Trump standbys: Hannity and Twitter. ...


McKinley resigned because he felt the president was using the State Department for political gain.

McKinley transcript, Page 112: “In 37 years in the Foreign Service and different parts of the globe and working on many controversial issues, working 10 years back in Washington, I had never seen that.”

Mr. McKinley told investigators that his resignation was prompted by his belief that the State Department was being used to dig up dirt on the president’s political opponent, something he characterized as unprecedented....

Mr. McKinley recounted a conversation he had with George P. Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, who described internal bullying by State Department officials who were trying to mute his concerns. Mr. Kent also worried that the State Department had given inaccurate information to Congress, Mr. McKinley said....


https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ts/601387/
Quote:
Government Officials Are Living in Fear of Trump’s Tweets

Testimony from a former ambassador vividly illustrates how the president wields his Twitter account to bend bureaucrats to his will.
Quote:
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch could tell the knives were out for her, even if she couldn’t figure out why. ... Yovanovitch, a career Foreign Service officer, reached out to her contacts stateside, including her boss at the State Department and the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert. They all expressed “total support,” she said. She then asked the State Department to back her publicly, worrying that otherwise she simply couldn’t represent the U.S. government credibly. A State Department official ran the request up to Secretary Mike Pompeo, and the answer came back: No dice.

“I was told that there was caution about any kind of a statement, because it could be undermined” by the president in “a tweet or something,”...


Meanwhile, Pompeo seems to be quite busy in Kansas:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... as-swagger
Quote:
What has Mike Pompeo got to swagger about and why is he doing it in Kansas?
Quote:
Mike Pompeo has a new badge he has been handing out to students and aspiring diplomats in the midwest. “United States Department of State” it says around the outside, with the word SWAGGER stamped in red capitals diagonally across the middle. In the background, printed in pale blue like subliminal messages are a list of attributes, such as “patriotic”, “confident”, “respected” as well as “cool vibe”....

With foreign service officers being summoned daily to testify in the Ukraine impeachment hearing... Pompeo’s staff have questions on why he is handing out “swagger badges” and why he is doing it in Kansas. He spent half of last week in his home state, attending events on “workplace development” with Ivanka Trump. Pompeo suggested it was all part of being secretary of state...

To many – in Kansas and beyond – that looked like a stretch. The badges, glad-handing and posing with Ms Trump seemed more like someone lining up his next job, particularly as it coincides with one of the state’s Republican senators stepping down....
The people of Kansas don't seem terribly impressed.
Quote:
If Pompeo is not running for the Senate, the Kansas City Star noted irritably, he had “better things to do” than to keep coming back. And if he did really want to run “then he should quit his rather important day job and do that”....
Quote:
Burdett Loomis, professor emeritus in political science at the University of Kansas, argued that the longer the impeachment process, the Syrian fiasco and other Trump travails continue, the more they would weigh down a Pompeo Senate candidacy.

“Four or five months ago, he would simply be able to walk in here and big-foot his way into the nomination. Right now, I think it’s somewhat less likely,” Loomis said. “Even though Kansas is a certainly Republican state or red state, it’s never been one that has been wildly enthusiastic about Trump.”


Is this why people elected their Republican representatives in Congress, to spread propaganda and play stupid high school games?
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4689 ... mpeachment
Quote:
The RNC paid for about 11,000 calls to almost three dozen House Democrats to influence public opinion on the impeachment inquiry and clog the representatives’ phone lines, affecting access to the lawmakers, two people briefed on the effort told the Times.

RNC officials reportedly discussed the plan at an event with more than a dozen GOP aides, advisers and officials, called the “Off the Record” dinner, the sources told the Times. The officials signaled the calls were automated and the goal was to jam the Democrats’ phone lines.

Republican committee officials told the Times the calls were not prerecorded “robocalls” and the organization utilized a vendor to ask voters their opinions on the inquiry. If voters were against the inquiry, the call allowed them to be forwarded to their House representative’s office.

“Our supporters are incredibly fired up to help us fight this impeachment charade,” Mike Reed, an RNC spokesman, told the Times...

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 05 Nov , 2019 8:13 pm
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https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... th-ukraine
Quote:
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland revised his congressional testimony this week to indicate there was clear quid pro quo between President Trump's request for Ukraine to launch investigations and the U.S. withholding military aid.

...Sondland, a Trump appointee, said in his revised testimony that he spoke with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to the Ukrainian president, on Sept. 1 ... “After a large meeting, I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland said in the written testimony....
If I remember right, Sondland was one who was somewhat evasive and had interesting gaps in his memories of events. Presumably he decided Trump isn't worth the price he (Sondland) would have to pay if he doesn't tell the truth. The transcripts of his testimony and Volker's were released today. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4689 ... transcript



Instead of putting the smartest, most impartial members of the GOP on the Intelligence Committee, the Republicans are now thinking about stacking it with rabid Trump defenders instead. It's obvious that their leadership doesn't give a damn about investigating corruption and doing what's right. Their primary purpose is not to impeach Trump. :
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4690 ... mpeachment
Quote:
Top Republicans in the lower chamber are weighing temporarily placing House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on the House Intelligence Committee as the impeachment moves toward public hearings.

Doing so would put one of President Trump's most vocal defenders in position to go head-to-head in televised hearings with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Jordan, a leading member of the House Freedom Caucus, is seen as a sharp debater who would represent the GP and Trump well in high-profile hearings....

...“Nothing set in stone yet. But [GOP lawmaker] said there might be two or three changes, not just Jordan,” the source told The Hill...
I'm not sure I'd describe Jordan as a "sharp debater" if sharp is intended to imply he's a good one. But he certainly is aggressive when it comes to defending Dear Leader, no matter what he does.

IMO, it will be very interesting to see who in Congress those two Florida "businessmen" were funneling campaign contributions to....


Is Trump going for the "I'm too dumb to know what I was doing" defense? A tweet today:
Quote:
Virginia has the best Unemployment and Economic numbers in the history of the State. If the Democrats get in, those numbers will go rapidly in the other direction. On Tuesday, Vote Republican!
Virginia's governor and lieutenant governor are Democrats. :D



I agree with the writer of this editorial - if Republicans want to block this bill, they should do it honestly, by actually voting on it. We deserve to know how they stand.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog ... can-people
Quote:
Three times. That’s how many attempts Senate Democrats have made to pass much-needed democracy reform legislation in recent months, only to have it blocked by Senate Republicans. The latest example was last Wednesday when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Republicans blocked a critical vote on H.R. 1, the For the People Act, a groundbreaking democracy reform bill that passed with unanimous Democratic support in the House earlier this year.

...The bill includes three key areas of reform: voting and election laws, campaign finance and ethics. Some of the new changes it proposes include allowing national automatic voter registration, ending partisan gerrymandering, strengthening election security, requiring the president and vice president to disclose 10 years of tax returns, requiring super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public, and eliminating loopholes in rules designed to prohibit coordination between candidates and super PACs.


EDIT to add news I missed earlier:

Barr is trying to find new ways to defend Trump:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... mpeachment
Quote:
The Justice Department opened a new front in the legal battle between congressional impeachment investigators and the White House on Tuesday... In a newly released memo, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said “the assistance of agency counsel” is needed because testimony has the potential to disclose information “protected by executive privilege.”

The House Intelligence Committee, which has taken the lead on the impeachment inquiry, has heard from a number of witnesses whose personal lawyers have been allowed to attend depositions. But the Justice Department argued in its memo that the exclusion of government lawyers deprives Trump of his constitutional power to screen privileged information from lawmakers...
Some of the people defying subpoenas today used this justification as their excuse.



https://thehill.com/policy/defense/poli ... -questions
Quote:
President Trump has reportedly given the green light for an expanded military operation to secure expansive oil fields in eastern Syria, according to U.S. officials, The Associated Press reported.

Sources close to the situation told the AP that the decision came after Trump met with his defense advisers. The new plan would have hundreds of U.S. troops protect a stretch of nearly 90 miles from Deir el-Zour to al-Hassakeh that is currently controlled by Kurdish forces...
As the article notes, this brings up the possibility of direct conflict with Russian and Syrian military in the area. (and what the hell are we doing there anyway? Trump is acting like it's our oil. Which he did imply in a tweet once, though I can't remember exactly when.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 06 Nov , 2019 2:05 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ranscripts
Quote:
House Democrats released transcripts from depositions with two key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker.

The transcripts also added to a growing body of evidence that military aid to Ukraine was made contingent on investigations being pushed by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Here are five things to know about the hundreds of pages of testimony.

Giuliani was key player, to Pompeo’s chagrin...

[and] The release of the transcripts Tuesday provided seemingly explosive details about the Trump administration’s machinations with respect to security assistance to Ukraine. ...
It includes this bizarre tidbit:
Quote:
Trump aides working to secure a statement from Zelensky at one point floated the possibility of having him do a television interview that would satisfy Trump’s desire to hear a statement on anti-corruption measures, according to Sondland.

Sondland told lawmakers that by early September the idea for a press statement had morphed into a possible television interview that would take place on a network “Trump would obviously see.”

“Fox. On Tucker,” Sondland mused, referencing Tucker Carlson’s show that Trump regularly watches and shares quotes from.
I don't know whether that was serious or intended as a joke, but clearly some people in the room found it funny. btw, Sondland portrayed himself as the naive little innocent, totally unaware of what Giuliani was up to, in his testimony. Which strongly suggests he knew how bad it was when he played his part in Trump's quid pro quo attempt.




https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... s-security
Quote:
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday appeared in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, where he was questioned by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)
One of the first questions the 2020 White House hopeful asked Wray was whether he knew if President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani "holds any security clearance of any kind."

"I don't know the answer to that," Wray replied....
And we're supposed to believe that Wray didn't know that question would be asked, and was never even curious enough to look it up himself, given all the news about Giuliani? Trump's defenders must think we're all stupid.




La, la, la, la, fingers in my ears, I can't hear anything or see anything I might have to acknowledge.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/469 ... ranscripts
Quote:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday that he wouldn’t read newly disclosed transcripts pertaining to a pair of witnesses in the House impeachment inquiry into President Trump, arguing that the process unfolding is "B.S."

"I've written the whole process off. ... I think this is a bunch of B.S.," Graham told CBS News when asked whether he would read transcripts of testimony from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine.

The comments from Graham came just hours after the House released revised testimony Sondland offered in which he acknowledged that Trump's dealings with Ukraine amounted to a quid pro quo. ...



And thanks, New York Times, for revealing too much about the whistleblower and discouraging future whistleblowers from saying anything if they hope to stay anonymous. It seems their clues were enough for some people to guess the whistleblower's name. Some right wing outlets have apparently published it and Trump's defenders in Congress are considering whether to say it themselves. So it won't be a secret for long.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/469 ... t-strategy
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/469 ... owers-name




https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4691 ... ce-members
Quote:
Defense Secretary Mark Esper will advise President Trump not to intercede on behalf of U.S. servicemembers facing war crimes charges, according to CNN.

Three Pentagon officials told the network that Esper plans to discuss the cases of Army Green Beret Maj. Matt Golsteyn, Army Lt. Clint Lorance and Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher with Trump ahead of Nov. 11.

...Trump has ordered a review of charges against Golsteyn and Lorance, and is considering restoring the rank of Gallagher, who was acquitted on murder charges in July but demoted from chief petty officer to petty officer first class, CNN noted.

Pentagon officials told the network they are concerned a presidential pardon could undermine both the integrity of the military justice system and U.S. relations with allies....




https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... onal-parks
Quote:
A team of Trump administration advisers – consisting mostly of appointees from the private industry – are urging “modernization” of national park campgrounds, with a vision of food trucks, wifi and even Amazon deliveries.

“Our recommendations would allow people to opt for additional costs if they want, for example, Amazon deliveries at a particular campsite,” Derrick Crandall, vice-chairman of the Made in America Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, told the Los Angeles Times. “We want to let Americans make their own decisions in the marketplace.”

The committee published its recommendations in a letter to the Interior Department last month....

“Overall capacity has not kept up with growth and changes in camping demand, and the infrastructure that does exist, with few exceptions, fails to meet expectations of the contemporary camping market,” the group said, calling US national campgrounds an “underperforming asset”.

“Evidence suggests that occupancy rates at many campgrounds could grow and additional services, from wifi to utilities, equipment rentals and camp stores, food and extended family sites are desired and would substantially boost net agency revenues, especially when operational costs are transferred to private sector partners,” the committee added....
Wonderful. Like I want drones zooming over our tent and hiking trails in the national parks so some idiot who can't survive without his iPhone and next day Amazon delivery can shop in the campground. Some of the people on the committee included those who run the hotel concessions in the campgrounds now, the CEO of Choice Hotels, and and the CEO of Kampground of America, which is probably one of those pseudo-campgrounds for people who'd really prefer a hotel and want a place as close to that as possible.

We've already stopped going to some national park campgrounds when they turned over the management from the rangers to for-profit concessions, and it was no longer pleasant to stay there if you like quiet, nature, and a view that doesn't include someone's RV 10 feet from your tent.


And coming soon to dual use hike/bike trails in your favorite national park:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/poli ... s-1837814/
Quote:
Motorized electric bicycles may soon be humming their way into serene national parks and other public lands nationwide, under a new Trump administration order — hotly opposed by many outdoors groups — allowing the so-called e-bikes on every federal trail where a regular bike can go.

Sales of the bikes, powered by both pedals and batteries and small motors, are booming, and some aging or less fit people have sought the rule change. The change would allow them to whirr up and down biking trails in the country’s roughly 400 national parks and other federally managed backcountry.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed the order without fanfare Thursday, classifying e-bikes as non-motorized bikes and giving agencies 14 days to adjust their rules...

Interior’s order allows motorized bikes that can go up to 28 mph to be classified as regular bikes...





EDIT: The transcripts have been released for William Taylor. These should be major bad news for Trump and his defenders.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... rns-public
Quote:
House Democrats on Wednesday released the transcript of their interview with the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, who delivered dire warnings that President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine “fundamentally undermined” U.S. interests in the country.

Bill Taylor, who serves as the chargé d’affaires for Ukraine, had testified in meticulous detail last month about what he considered to be an effort by Trump and his allies to create a shadow foreign policy designed to pressure Ukraine into opening investigations that would benefit Trump politically.

The contours of that Oct. 22 deposition have been known for weeks, since Taylor’s opening statement was widely disseminated at the time. But the 324-page blow-by-blow transcript provides new layers of detail about Trump’s efforts to find dirt on political rivals — and the extent to which it alarmed veterans in the State Department. ..
The whole thing is here but I expect news organizations will be analyzing and releasing the most important points soon.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4692 ... ill-taylor


https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... refuses-to
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) independent watchdog criticized agency head Andrew Wheeler for his resistance to addressing his chief of staff's refusal to cooperate with investigations.

A letter released Wednesday from EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) outlines multiple instances in which Ryan Jackson, Wheeler’s chief of staff, refused to turn over documents or answer questions as the watchdog investigated how EPA officials obtained advance copies of outside testimony designated for lawmakers.

“The particularly serious or flagrant problem I am reporting concerns two instances of refusal to fully cooperate and provide information to the [inspector general], one during an audit and one during an administrative investigation. They center on a single employee -- Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson,” wrote acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan in an Oct. 29 letter that was released Wednesday. ...

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 08 Nov , 2019 2:53 pm
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The EPA seems to be thumbing its nose at everyone. The refusal to cooperate with their own inspector general is the worst but they're also defying congressional oversight.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... -following
Quote:
The EPA had until Tuesday to provide the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee with internal materials related to one of its chemical programs and to make an agency representative available for an interview. While the agency provided the committee with documents by the committee's deadline, staffers on the panel say the materials were not adequate — keeping open the door to a lingering subpoena fight....

The committee was looking for documents related to an EPA decision to limit the study of the health effects of formaldehyde and nine other chemicals.

...Members of the committee, which has jurisdiction over EPA, have complained of months of feet-dragging by EPA and instances of outright refusal to respond to records and interview requests with agency officials.

“The agency has made claims of privilege on an item of interest and has flooded this committee with thousands of irrelevant documents while positioning itself as fully responsive to my requests,” Johnson wrote in her October letter....





https://thehill.com/regulation/court-ba ... unications
Quote:
Prosecutors on Thursday revealed an extensive paper trail to cast doubt on Roger Stone's testimony to Congress that he had no records of communications regarding WikiLeaks or its leader Julian Assange.

Stone himself appeared for the third day of his trial as the Department of Justice (DOJ) presented its case that the longtime Trump adviser had lied to Congress about his claims of being an intermediary between the 2016 Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released damaging emails stolen from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide....

Jurors heard evidence that Stone had dozens of communications with campaign officials. And they heard a recording from Stone's congressional testimony in which he denied discussing any contacts with WikiLeaks with the campaign....
Several far right conspiracy theory promoters have been in the room during the trial.




https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... se/601537/
Quote:
Donald Trump Is All Alone

Presidents have long relied on attentive aides to help them cope with the stresses of office. Not Trump.
Quote:
Past presidents relied on aides to ease pressures and tell them hard truths—all of which help deter poor decisions. Trump doesn’t seem to have any of that, and as the stressors of impeachment grow, so does the prospect of more erratic behavior and self-sabotage.

A person close to Trump told me that the president feels isolated and has complained that he has no one in whom he can confide. “These heavy issues are weighing on him. He has nobody around him. There’s nobody,” this person said.

Trump at one point had adults in the room: confidants and pedigreed generals and accomplished corporate executives. Their numbers have dwindled as his term winds on and he depends more on his own judgment. ... Surrounding Trump instead is a mismatched set of advisers whose focus seems to be their own survival and ambition in a West Wing that has resembled a fast-spinning turnstile. They’ve seen that standing up to Trump is often a path to getting fired. All of which points to a predicament of Trump’s own making: He’s lost or chased away many of the advisers best suited to help him at the perilous moment he most needs their guidance.
Quote:
Albeit with limited success, former aides tried to give Trump’s day some structure. They’d wait for him to come down from the residence, at around 11 a.m. eastern time. He’d have a meeting or two, then eat lunch and, often, retreat to his private study to read newspapers and watch TV-news coverage. He might then have another meeting before returning to the residence. “That was his day,” the person close to the White House told me.

A former White House official who is still in touch with his colleagues in the building described Trump’s routine these days as follows: “He comes down to the residence whenever he wants and leaves whenever he wants. He has a meeting if he wants—or he doesn’t have a meeting. He’s totally in control, and if he wants or needs something, he does it.” (That’s a much lighter schedule than other presidents in the modern era have kept. One November day at a comparable point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan worked from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., taking part in a nonstop series of nearly 20 meetings, briefings, news interviews, photo ops, and phone calls.)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... iefing-the
Quote:
Excerpts from a new book by an anonymous White House official titled "A Warning" released Thursday evening detailed the difficulties Trump's staff encountered trying to brief him....

... briefers were told “to cut back the overall message (on complicated issues such as military readiness or the federal budget) to just three main points,” but even doing that “was still too much.”

Soon, the author notes, the best practice to briefing the president became “come in with one main point and repeat it – over and over again, even if the president inevitably goes off on tangents – until he gets it.” When briefers did attempt to give Trump a traditional memo, it didn’t end well, the author writes. “’What the f*** is this?’” the president would shout, looking at a document one of them handed him. ‘These are just words. A bunch of words. It doesn’t mean anything.’”...

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4694 ... led-forces
Quote:
Revenue from oil fields that U.S. forces are protecting in northeast Syria will go to U.S. partner forces in the region and not the United States, the Pentagon's top spokesman said Thursday....

President Trump last week gave the go-ahead for an expanded military operation to secure expansive oil fields in eastern Syria, and the Pentagon has already sent new troops and armored vehicles to the area....

Trump on Friday still insisted that “we want to bring our soldiers home,” but left soldiers in the country “because we’re keeping the oil.” “I like oil. We’re keeping the oil,” he told reporters on the White House lawn.

Later that day at a rally in Tupelo, Miss., Trump told the crowd the United States would distribute the oil to “help out the Kurds and we'll help out other people. We'll also help out ourselves if that's OK."...
The Pentagon is trying to make this more acceptable by "interpreting" Trump's words - they claim he simply meant that the U.S. wants to deny ISIS access to the Syrian oil fields. Sometimes I wonder why no one in his administration ever rebels against constantly having to say "No, Dear Leader didn't really say what you heard. What he meant was...." or "It was a joke. Don't you guys get jokes?" and so forth. (There were certainly times, early on, when I thought the media was taking something Trump said as a joke, blowing it out of proportion, and getting ridiculously outraged. But now Trump's defenders are using the "joke" defense even for things that show no hint of being said in jest.)



Too close to the truth! :)
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowit ... repainting
Quote:
In a move that raised eyebrows in the nation’s capital, the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, announced on Monday that the United States Senate would be closed until the year 2021, ... McConnell said that repainting the Senate was “the most urgent problem facing our democracy today.”...

Although the proposed paint job would require the Senate to be on recess for the next fifteen months, McConnell could not guarantee that that would give Republican senators enough time to read the whistle-blower’s complaint.
That's the most bizarre aspect of this whole thing to me - that rational people in positions of power are being so willfully blind, well past the point where it makes even the slightest bit of sense. I keep wondering if this is just extreme tribalism or if they're somehow tangled up in corruption themselves and someone has dirt on them.



EDIT to add:
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/0 ... ion-067566
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is investigating whether chief of staff Ryan Jackson was involved in destroying internal documents that should have been retained... The IG's office is asking witnesses whether Jackson has routinely destroyed politically sensitive documents, including schedules and letters from people like lobbyist Richard Smotkin, who helped arrange a trip for then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to Morocco when he was in office, according to one of the sources, a former administration official who told investigators he has seen Jackson do that firsthand.

The previously unreported allegations add to the controversy around Jackson, a former aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) who has been at EPA since the early days of the Trump administration...

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/46960 ... nia-report
Quote:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued civil subpoenas to four car manufacturers that agreed to a tailpipe emissions agreement with California over the summer, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Trump administration has been working for years to roll back tailpipe emissions standards, going head-to-head with California, which for decades has been permitted to enact tougher standards than the rest of the nation.

As negotiations between the state and administration hit a wall, California announced in July an emissions pact between Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, BMW and the California Air Resources Board.

DOJ then reached out to the companies in late August to see if they coordinated with each other before agreeing to the state's guidelines. Such communications would raise antitrust questions, the department told the automakers....


And this is just funny. After all the trouble Trump supporters went to, fussing about initial stage of the impeachment inquiry being "private tribunals" and the like...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ing-public
Quote:
President Trump on Friday said there should be no public hearings in the impeachment inquiry as he railed against the process unfolding in the House.

"They shouldn’t be having public hearings. This is a hoax," Trump said as he left the White House for events in Georgia....

Trump is going to Atlanta for a private fundraiser.https://www.gpbnews.org/post/trump-visi ... st-planned
Quote:
Trump on Friday is also rewarding Sen. David Perdue for his loyalty by making Perdue the first beneficiary of a new Trump-backed fundraising group. An event is scheduled at a nondisclosed location in Buckhead at 10 a.m.

He also plans to launch a coalition the White House is calling "Black Voices for Trump" at an event about 3 p.m.

Edit 2:

And the net widens to involve Mulvaney:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... quo-effort
Quote:
Two White House witnesses in the Democrats' impeachment inquiry implicated acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in an alleged effort to press Ukraine for investigations sought by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to transcripts of their private testimony released Friday.

Former National Security Council (NSC) official Fiona Hill described a meeting with Ukrainian officials on July 10 ...

“Sondland, in front of the Ukrainians, as I came in, was talking about how he had an agreement with Chief of Staff Mulvaney for a meeting with the Ukrainians if they were going to go forward with investigations. And my director for Ukraine was looking completely alarmed,"...

Hill said that then-national security adviser John Bolton was so alarmed by what transpired during the meeting, where Mulvaney was not present, that he directed her to report it to NSC’s lawyer, John Eisenberg.

“He made it clear that he believed that they were making, basically, an improper arrangement to have a meeting in the White House, that they were predicating the meeting in the White House on the Ukrainians agreeing, in this case, based on the meeting on July 10th, to restart investigations that had been dropped in the energy sector,” Hill testified.

“You go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this, and you go and tell him what you’ve heard and what I’ve said,” Hill said, quoting Bolton.

Another NSC official, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, also tied Mulvaney to the effort ..

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4696 ... on-ukraine
Quote:
A lawyer for national security adviser John Bolton said that his client was involved in "many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed" in the House's impeachment inquiry into President Trump's dealings with Ukraine. ..

Cooper also wrote in the letter — which was addressed to House general counsel Douglas Letter...

"We are dismayed that the Committees have chosen not to join us in seeking resolution from the Judicial Branch of this momentous Constitutional question as expeditiously as possible," Cooper wrote. "It is important both to Dr. Kupperman and to Ambassador Bolton to get a definitive judgment from the Judicial Branch determining their Constitutional duty in the face of conflicting demands of the Legislative and Executive Branches."

The House did not subpoena Bolton and withdrew a subpoena for Kupperman this week. ...

Cooper addressed this Friday, writing, "The House Chairs are mistaken to say Dr. Kupperman’s lawsuit is intended 'to delay or otherwise obstruct the Committees’ vital investigatory work.'"

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-ba ... -wikileaks
Quote:
Stephen Bannon, President Trump's former White House adviser and campaign CEO, testified in court on Friday that the campaign saw Roger Stone as a potential intermediary with WikiLeaks.

"I think it was generally believed that the access point or potential access point to WikiLeaks was Roger Stone," Bannon testified at Stone's criminal trial.

"I was led to believe he had a relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange," he added, referring to the site's founder....

Prosecutors showed an email that Stone had sent to Bannon on Aug. 18, 2016 — the day after Bannon was announced as the campaign CEO. "Trump can still win —but time is running out," Stone wrote. "Early voting begins in six weeks. I do know how to win but it ain’t pretty."...
Cue Trump calling Bannon a traitor in 3...2...1...

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 12 Nov , 2019 5:11 pm
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The American Bar Association has judged several of Trump's judicial nominees as "not qualified" on the basis of inexperience or lack of judicial temperament (e.g., someone who is unethical or displays obvious bias). This is not a political thing and they did it for all previous administrations, to help lawmakers judge who has the basic qualifications to be considered, and who doesn't.

Is Trump's response "There are plenty of qualified people in the world and we'll make better picks" ? No, of course not. It's not enough that the Republicans in the Senate have ignored the advice from the ABA and confirmed some people who should never have become judges (or at least not until they got a little experience). Now Trump's minions want to hide it from us that they're doing it. In other words, no more ABA ratings allowed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/us/p ... udges.html
Quote:
White House Ends Bar Association’s Role in Vetting Judges

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 13 Nov , 2019 1:50 pm
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Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
If there's one thing Trump learned from his reality TV show, it's that everything he doesn't like can be fixed by making people lose their jobs.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... at-private
Quote:
An indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, said he discussed Ukraine with the president at a private dinner for super PAC donors in Washington, according to The Washington Post.

Lev Parnas, who, along with his business partner Igor Fruman, has been indicted in connection with an alleged campaign finance fraud scheme, has told associates that the two told Trump at the 2018 dinner in his Washington hotel that then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was hostile to his interests, the Post reported on Tuesday.

Parnas has said Trump responded by suggesting Yovanovitch should be fired...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ney-report
Quote:
President Trump has reportedly been threatening to fire acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney for weeks over recent missteps amid the House’s impeachment investigation.

Three people familiar with the discussions told The Washington Post that the president has griped about Mulvaney’s appearance at an Oct. 17 press conference in which he admitted military aid to Ukraine was withheld to pressure Kyiv to launch investigations into 2016 election meddling and former Vice President Joe Biden, a chief political rival of Trump’s. He later backtracked, clarifying that there was “absolutely no quid pro quo.”

Senior aides have reportedly advised that firing Mulvaney at such a pivotal moment during the House’s impeachment inquiry could be risky...

“I don’t think you’ll see him going anywhere until after December,” one Trump adviser told The Post. “But the president was very unhappy with that press conference. That was a very bad day for the president.”..
Insiders are claiming that Trump also wants to fire the whistleblower but people are telling him that won't look good while the impeachment investigation is going on.

btw, the first hearings will be televised today.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 14 Nov , 2019 1:46 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4703 ... was-boring
Quote:
Top Republicans in the House dismissed the first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump as boring and said they don't believe any new information emerged that would justify impeaching the president.

They brushed off a key piece of testimony from William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that Democrats said was cause for alarm as mere hearsay. Taylor testified Wednesday that a staffer told him U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said Trump was more interested in investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, than in Ukraine....
They remind me of sulky teenagers sometimes. "Oooh, that's boring. I'm not going to listen to it."


https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/470 ... stleblower
Quote:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Wednesday that a Senate trial must reveal the identity of the whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry.

Graham told Fox News's Sean Hannity that a Senate trial needed to "expose the whistleblower," so that President Trump could "confront his accuser." "I will not accept a trial in the Senate until I know who the whistleblower is," Graham said. ...
He fails to explain why this is important, beyond wanting to ruin someone's career. We've moved well beyond relying on the whistleblower's letter. It's like demanding that a police informant's name be released when their information led you to a bunch of people with a stockpile of pipe bombs and a plan to assassinate someone.




https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ys-erdogan
Quote:
President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had a chummy meeting at the White House on Wednesday just a month after they ignited a bipartisan firestorm in Washington over Ankara’s invasion of northern Syria....

Trump touted that he and Erdoğan are “very good friends,” adding later that Erdoğan is “doing a fantastic job for the people of Turkey.” Trump also claimed Erdoğan has a “great relationship” with the Kurds amid reports of ethnic cleansing in the Syria offensive.

Erdoğan, for his part, used his White House platform to swipe at Congress. Erdoğan blasted those supporting Kurdish “terrorist organizations” as “deeply disturbed” and aimed at “harming our relations” with the United States. Erdoğan also railed against the House for passing a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide....

The United States removed Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program earlier this year after Ankara bought a Russian-made S-400 missile defense system. U.S. law requires sanctions on those who do business with Russia’s defense industry, but Trump has yet to levy sanctions on Turkey for the S-400. Trump has floated a $100 billion trade deal as an enticement for Turkey to keep the S-400 turned off....
At least Erdogan's thugs didn't get to beat up protesters this time, then skip the country with no consequences.

The first questions from reporters were about the impeachment proceedings, of course.
Quote:
“You’re talking about the witch hunt,” Trump said, adding that he didn’t watch the proceedings. “I hear it’s a joke,” Trump continued, saying he was told the witnesses testifying Wednesday relied on “thirdhand information.”...
Yet, strangely enough, Trump has been tweeting rants and details about them, which of course he's choosing to interpret in his favor. ;)



https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... hite-house
Quote:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly took out an iPad to show President Trump and a group of Republican senators a propaganda film about Kurdish-led forces during a White House meeting on Wednesday.

Axios, citing three unidentified sources familiar with the meeting, reported that Erdoğan displayed the film as he met with lawmakers who have been outspoken in their opposition of Turkey’s recent invasion in northern Syria. The film reportedly depicted the Kurdish YPG, which leads the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, as terrorists.

The film left senators in the Oval Office meeting unpersuaded, and many of them reportedly took turns pushing back against the narrative that the film tried to present. ...
Versus:
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... -the-kurds
Quote:
“I think the president has a great relationship with the Kurds,” Trump said. “Many Kurds live currently in Turkey, and they’re happy, and they’re taken care of, including health care — we were talking about it before — including health care and education and other things, so that’s really a misnomer.”
That's a big part of the problem with this idiot we have as president. Intelligent people listen to briefings (or even just news of world affairs) and realize that Erdogan does not have a good relationship with the Kurds. Or pretty much anybody - he runs a very repressive regime that likes to jail dissidents, academics and anyone else who looks like a potential threat. But Trump can be persuaded by a few nice words and a propaganda video, despite having vast resources at his fingertips that would tell him the truth. In small words, pictures and videos, if necessary for a president who finds written reports too long and boring to read.

I was amused to hear Dear Leader touting a universal healthcare system when we don't have one and the Republican leadership rails against the possibility as "socialism."


EDIT to add:
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... etaliation
Quote:
A career State Department employee was forced out of her job on baseless accusations that she opposed President Trump, was loyal to the Obama administration and was guilty of compromised objectivity due to her Iranian ethnicity, according to an inspector general report released Thursday.

Of the several cases reviewed by the Office of the Inspector General in its report, released Thursday, it was the only one in which the office determined that political and presidential appointees at the State Department retaliated against a career service employee based on political motivations and other “improper personnel practices."

Of four other cases the OIG investigated, there was inconclusive evidence for two instances, with the OIG saying was unable to “obtain essential information from key decision makers.”

Two other cases were cleared, with the OIG finding no evidence of wrongdoing....

The report describes the termination of career state employee Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who is currently a research fellow on Iran at Harvard University. According to the report, Nowrouzzadeh was working in the Office of Policy Planning, a kind of internal think tank for the department, but was eventually reassigned from her work based on accusations stemming from conservative news articles.

These accusations were reenforced by other department employees who referred to career staffers as “Obama/Clinton loyalists” and “not supportive” of “Trump’s agenda.”...
Interesting how these career staffers managed to be loyal to Clinton and Obama but miss both Bush presidencies somehow. Quite a trick.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 15 Nov , 2019 8:44 pm
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https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/1 ... aks-070368
Quote:
The Roger Stone trial is no longer just about Roger Stone.

Despite the profane Stone texts and caustic friendships that have dominated chatter about the case, the Republican provocateur’s court battle will likely be remembered for something far different: It revealed that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign aides knew more about WikiLeaks’ plans than they have let on, and the president may have later misled Robert Mueller about it.

Buried amid days of blasphemy and bombast were quieter new details that collectively showed Trump and his aides discussed WikiLeaks with Stone months earlier than anyone has acknowledged. The revelations have immediately raised questions about Trump’s claims — made months later under oath to the special counsel — that he did not recall any such conversations with Stone....

Additionally, a wider cast of Trump aides participated in WikiLeaks strategy sessions than previously known as they mapped out an attack plan to take advantage of the hacked Democratic emails. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign CEO Steve Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller were all part of those broader discussions about how to best turn the WikiLeaks surprises into political gold.

Perhaps most politically damning, Trump himself discussed the matter with Stone during a phone call in the heat of the summertime general election campaign, according to testimony from former-Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates, who witnessed the call while riding with the GOP nominee from his namesake tower in Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport. While the testimony might not put Trump in any fresh legal peril, it has highlighted a potential contradiction in Trump’s written responses to Mueller’s team.

“I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign,” Trump wrote....

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/1 ... ump-070836
Quote:
For once, Roger Stone is letting others do the talking.

The political provocateur has spent decades verbally sparring with almost anyone who is willing to engage. But as his trial over lying to Congress and tampering with a witness nears its end, Stone has left his defense in the hands of external factors: lawyers, God, the race card, a coterie of MAGA-world figures and, if all else fails, President Donald Trump.

Given the chance to tell his side of the story, Stone chose not to take the witness stand. Given the opportunity to call witnesses, his attorneys opted instead to simply play portions of the congressional testimony in question.

As a legal strategy, it caught many by surprise, even if Stone’s defenders have done their part in court since the trial started to poke as many holes as they can in the government’s case.

As a political play, though, it might be perfectly tailored for a very different audience — MAGA-ites and the president himself. After all, a conviction on any of the seven counts opens Stone up to prison time and raises the question of whether Trump would face pressure to issue an election-year pardon to his longtime friend, who has a passionate following in Trump land....

Stone was convicted today. I believe it was on all 7 counts.





https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... all-report
Quote:
The White House has begun preparations to seize private land so that construction of the border wall can continue.

A pair of officials within the Trump administration told NBC News that Jared Kushner will meet with military and administration officials to discuss next steps in acquiring the private land.

The officials also told the news network that counsel from the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice had already prepared letters of rights of entry to notify the landowners that government officials will be accessing their property to appraise the land, test the soil and conduct land surveys....



https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... llegations
Quote:
Yovanovitch says John Solomon's columns were used to push false allegations
Quote:
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified Friday that a shadow campaign led by Rudy Giuliani and his associates appeared to be behind what she said were false attacks against her that led to her ouster.

She singled out columns in The Hill written by former conservative opinion contributor John Solomon, which the staff counsel to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) highlighted during the committee's second public impeachment hearing...
I actually had a gut feeling that there was something up with Solomon's column's in the last year or so.




https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ump-229894
Quote:
The 5 People Who Could Have Stopped Trump

Gambling regulators once contemplated yanking Trump’s casino licenses. Why they didn’t holds a lesson for lawmakers today.
Quote:
In the spring and summer of 1991, a handful of state watchdogs in Atlantic City, New Jersey, considered whether to put an end to Donald Trump.

The members of the Casino Control Commission, in a series of hearings in the Arcade Building on the corner of Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk, had to determine whether Trump was sufficiently “financially stable” to merit renewals of his licenses to own and operate his three casinos in the perpetually ground-down regional gaming capital. The stakes hardly could have been higher.

Trump was in his mid-40s and only four years earlier had published the pure brand boost of The Art of the Deal, but now he was in trouble. He needed the licenses to keep his casinos open to have any shot at staving off personal bankruptcy and a potentially permanent reputational stain....

Today, more than a generation later and a year out from the 2020 election, Trump in the White House is staring at a fundamentally similar scenario—the growing probability that his fate will be decided by a group of regulators, albeit of a different, more high-profile ilk but nonetheless obligated to determine whether he can remain in office long enough for voters to decide whether he deserves a second term. Just as there are people who are empowered to stop him now—members of Congress, in particular Republicans—there were people who could have stopped him then. And didn’t....

Some of the commissioners, too, engaged in occasional harrumphing and finger-wagging, logging into the record words like “incomplete,” “confusing,” “disappointing” and “disheartening,” sounding at times like precursors to GOP lawmakers’ mostly toothless tsk-tsking toward Trump these past few years. In the end, though, worried about the prospect of shuttered casinos, thousands of jobs lost and general area economic disarray that might have rippled on account of his ousting, they essentially let him skate....

There was as well something more subtle at play, perhaps, something that speaks more to human nature than selfless concern for casino workers on the edge. If the commissioners had cracked down totally on Trump, it would have accentuated how often before they had given him a pass. To all of a sudden cut him down would have forced questions about the manner in which for years they so reliably had built him up.

“He sniffed that weakness, that they were not going to really, you know, enforce anything,” fellow Trump biographer Gwenda Blair said. “They were not going to take away his license. They couldn’t. It sounds awfully simple-minded, but that’s it. He figures it out so that for people to go against him it’s going to make them look bad: It’s going to make them look bad that they ever approved his casinos, it’s going to make the bankers look bad that they ever gave him his loans, it’s going to make the Republican Party look bad that it ever got behind him.”

This chapter provided a prime and lasting lesson for Trump. ... From his marital infidelities to his iffy fiscal picture, the first half of the decade was for Trump a rolling borderline catastrophe—and yet what he ended up internalizing was a sense of his own invulnerability....

But pulsing, too, through this episode involving Trump’s regulators from the past are lessons for his regulators of the present. As the latter calculate the advantages and downsides of challenging the most powerful elected official on the planet, they would be wise to recall that Atlantic City’s decision to save Trump was part of a broader effort to save the city itself. And it didn’t work....

A look into Republican party machinations to support Trump. I suspect that some of this might behind all those announcements from Republicans that they will not seek reelection.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ess-229904
Quote:
From the moment Francis Rooney expressed alarm to his House colleagues that Donald Trump might have abused presidential power in his dealings with Ukraine—and more dramatically, that an impeachment inquiry could be warranted—the Florida Republican was a marked man.

He made for a most unusual suspect. A silver-haired business tycoon, former ambassador and card-carrying member of the GOP establishment, Rooney had reliably played the role of good soldier for the party since easily winning his Naples-area congressional seat in 2016. ...

But as summer turned to fall, Rooney wasn’t just bitching and complaining anymore. He was talking about impeachment. And he was talking not in a manner that was abstract or academic, but concrete and ominous. Initially in one-on-one conversations, and then in larger group settings, Rooney cautioned his colleagues that there could be no turning a blind eye to the fact pattern emerging from Trump’s relationship with Ukraine. ..

All of a sudden, the once-invisible congressman was the subject of constant surveillance. ...Before long, the president himself was briefed on the threat from Rooney. ...

Ultimately, Republican leaders in Washington and Florida settled on a simple course of action. They would beat Rooney at his own game, doing nothing to undermine him openly but instead orchestrating a whisper campaign aimed at sowing doubts about his devotion to the president.The focal point would be Florida’s 19th, Rooney’s bloody red district, which Trump had carried by 22 points. That way, if and when Rooney broke ranks, the uprising back home would appear instant and organic. The recoil wouldn’t just scare Rooney straight; it would provide a cautionary tale for any Republican tempted to follow his lead....

Rooney knew the trap was being laid, but he didn’t bother avoiding it. ...Rooney’s remarks—in particular, his unsolicited comparison of Trump to Nixon—left his colleagues slack-jawed. House Republicans, having received hair-on-fire emails from staffers alerting them to the comments, tip-toed through the Capitol to avoid reporters asking for comment. Video of the little-known congressman’s interview rocketed around Twitter and turned official Washington on its head for a matter of hours, fueling immediate speculation that a broader revolt might be brewing. Here, at last, was a Republican lawmaker openly entertaining the prospect of impeaching a Republican president.

And sure enough, as though a switch had been flipped, Rooney found himself under siege....

The intensity of that criticism—and the threats on his career, made implicit and explicit by Florida Republicans in the hours after his CNN appearance—left him with an inescapable conclusion: There would be no coming back to Congress. He had mulled retirement in the months prior, but now the decision was being made for him. The very next day, appearing on Fox News, Rooney announced he would not seek reelection in 2020....

The implication was clear: Any Republican who so much as flirted with impeachment would no longer have a home in the party....

Rooney insists he’s not alone. It was only after he spoke candidly on CNN, he says, that other members began confiding in him that they, too, were losing confidence in their defense of the president. “There are a lot of Republicans who feel varying levels of disquiet at the idea of using American foreign policy power to gin up domestic political investigations,” Rooney says...

And yet, Trump cannot stand to be embarrassed—and there is no greater embarrassment to a president than being impeached, much less with the abetting of his own tribe. There is an urgency, then, not only to limit defections but eliminate them. The administration, working in concert with its allies on Capitol Hill, has been hard at work identifying potential turncoats in the party and monitoring their activities to catch any sign of slippage. Believing that a unified party-line vote is needed in the House to prevent any narrative of Republicans abandoning Trump when action moves to the Senate, the president’s allies are determined to stay one step ahead of any lawmaker who might be going soft, gaming out scenarios for who could desert and why. ...




btw, it looks like the self-serving advisory committee on national parks might have gone too far even for this administration. Though you never know, with this lot. Sometimes it's just that the public criticism has shined a light on something they don't want revealed and they take it underground.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... ization-at
Quote:
The Trump administration abruptly disbanded an advisory committee earlier this month whose recent recommendations to greater privatize national parks were met with heavy criticism.

The Interior Department quietly ended meetings of the Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee on Nov. 1, more than four months before its charter was set to expire on March 13, 2020...

“No action has been taken on the committee's recommendations nor will any action be taken in the future unless and until the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service determine the recommendations will improve the visitor experience, protect national park resources, and are determined to be prudent investments,” a National Park Service spokesperson told the Hill in a statement.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Sat 16 Nov , 2019 7:23 pm
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Did Trump listen to Pentagon officials, who were asking him last week not to undermine military justice systems and pardon those they actually convicted? Of course not.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4707 ... imes-cases
Quote:
The White House said in a statement issued late Friday that Trump had signed executive grants of clemency for both Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn and Army Lt. Clint Lorance.

Trump also signed an order restoring the rank of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher to that which he held before he was tried and found not guilty of nearly all charges in the death of an ISIS prisoner in Iraq.

Reports had circulated prior to Friday’s announcement that Trump was considering intervening in the cases despite objections from the Pentagon....
Trump just spit in the faces of those who were honorable and came forward to testify against these men. And put Gallagher back into a position of power too.

This, from a military source, no less.
https://taskandpurpose.com/think-lt-cli ... e-murderer
Quote:
Why I Think Lt Clint Lorance Is A Murderer




https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... on-between
Quote:
David Holmes, a State Department aide, reportedly confirmed in his closed-door testimony Friday that he overheard a conversation between President Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland regarding their efforts to convince Ukraine to open investigations that could politically benefit the president.

Holmes said he overheard Sondland on July 26 tell Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would do "anything you ask him to," and that he confirmed Kyiv was going to "do the investigation."

"Sondland told Trump that Zelensky 'loves your ass,'" Holmes said, according to a copy of his opening statement obtained by CNN. "I then heard President Trump ask, 'So, he's gonna do the investigation?' Ambassador Sondland replied that 'he's gonna do it,' adding that President Zelensky will do 'anything you ask him to.'" ...


https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... conviction
Quote:
President Trump on Friday complained of a historic "double standard" after his longtime associate Roger Stone was convicted on seven felony counts, including lying to Congress and witness tampering related to his efforts to feed the Trump campaign information on WikiLeaks in 2016.

Trump bemoaned in a tweet shortly after the verdict was announced that Stone was convicted of lying when several of his political rivals were not. Among those Trump suggested should be considered were Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former special counsel Robert Mueller.

"Didn’t they lie?" Trump tweeted. "A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country?"...

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 19 Nov , 2019 3:38 pm
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Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Trump/ Pompeo say that America likes it when countries encourage their citizens to act like thugs and take over other peoples' property:
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... tional-law
Quote:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the U.S. will not consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law, putting American policy at odds with the widely held belief that settlement expansion is harmful to the Israeli and Palestinan peace process.

Pompeo said that the decision helps strengthen the U.S.'s position ahead of the expected release of its Mideast peace plan, authored by President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. The secretary didn't give an update on any expected date for that plan, but said the U.S. will release it "when the conditions are right."...
I'll bet Putin loves announcements like this, too.

Some background:
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2 ... index.html
Quote:
To the casual visitor or tourist driving through the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem, Israeli settlements may appear as just another set of houses on a hill. The middle-class suburban style townhouses, built fast and locked in a grid of uniform units, stand like fortified compounds, in direct contrast to the sprawling limestone Palestinian homes below.... The largest settlement, Modi'in Illit, houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews in the occupied West Bank. The mega-settlement has its own mayor, as well as schools, shopping malls and medical centres. Some settlements even have their own universities.

Today, between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis live in these sizeable settlements, equivalent to roughly 11 percent of the total Jewish Israeli population.They live beyond the internationally recognised borders of their state, on Palestinian land that Israel occupied in 1967, comprising East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since then, the Israeli government has openly funded and built settlements for Israeli Jews to live there, offering incentives and subsidised housing. So why have these housing compounds caused so much rancour and been called a threat to the prospect of peace in the Holy Land?

Follow this journey to find out....
Quote:
Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Jews were allocated 55 percent of the land, encompassing many of the main cities with Palestinian Arab majorities and the important coastline from Haifa to Jaffa. The plan would deprive the Palestinian state of key agricultural lands and seaports, which led the Palestinians to reject the proposal.....

The international community recognised Israel based on the 1948 borders. But less than 20 years later - in 1967 - another Arab-Israeli war broke out. During the fighting, Israel militarily occupied the rest of historical Palestine, consisting of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Israel also occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the Syrian Golan Heights. With the exception of the Sinai Peninsula, all the other territories remain occupied until today. In response, the UN Security Council members voted unanimously for Resolution 242 on November 22, 1967 - exactly fifty years ago.

The resolution stated that Israel must withdraw from the territories it seized in the war and formed the basis for all ensuing diplomatic negotiations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the concept of “land for peace”. Israel, however, did not accept the resolution...

Shortly after the 1967 war, Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem and declared it part of its “eternal, undivided” capital. ....The international community, including the US, officially regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory...

The dilemma of the settlements and the occupation has effectively split Israelis between those who believe it is their God-given right to settle land that was promised to the Jewish people, and others who believe the settlements are a death sentence for the Jews....
Quote:
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which defines humanitarian protections for civilians caught in a war zone, an occupying power is forbidden from transferring parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies....

But the Israeli government maintains that the status of the Palestinian territories is ambiguous, as there was no internationally recognised government in the territories prior to the 1967 war. The Israeli government argues that it took the territory from Jordan, which had control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967, while Egypt had control of the Gaza Strip.

Israel regards the West Bank as “disputed” territory and thus refutes the existence of a military occupation there; saying the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply. But the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice, and the international community have all affirmed that it does....
Quote:
Why the locations of settlements matter

Settlements are scattered across the West Bank in a way that makes a contiguous Palestinian state impossible, while in Jerusalem the Israeli government has built settlements around the city to consolidate control over it. These “ring neighbourhoods” are a set of major settlement blocs to the north, east and south of the Jerusalem, which Israel hopes to annex to its state....

In 2004, Israel began building the separation wall, which was meant to provide “security” for Israelis by dividing between the West Bank and Israel following the second Palestinian uprising in 2000.... Israel has however used the wall to annex more land to its borders and has built it around some of the largest settlements in the West Bank, placing them on the “Israeli side”....
Quote:
Does Israel hope to annex the West Bank as well?

While many Israeli members of parliament hope to annex the entire West Bank - which they call by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria - there is a fear that bringing the territory into the boundaries of Israel would upset the population ratio by tipping the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinians in the country. Annexing the West Bank would mean giving the 3.1 million Palestinians who live there Israeli citizenship and extending Israeli law, instead of martial law, to the area. ...

All the settlements are located in Area C, where some 300,000 Palestinians live - a figure consistently under-reported by Israeli politicians. Annexing the territory would mean that Israel could absorb the maximum amount of land with the least number of Palestinians.

The settlements in the West Bank are already connected to East Jerusalem and Israel through a series of Jewish-only roads that give the settlers the luxury of crossing the Green Line without having to pass through Palestinian population centres...
Quote:
By the end of 2016, there were 572 obstacles to the free movement of Palestinians, including military checkpoints and roadblocks, in the occupied West Bank.
The separation wall has physically separated Palestinian communities from one another and added hours to otherwise short commutes.
Palestinians in certain areas must cross a checkpoint to enter and exit their villages.

Due to the close proximity of settlements to Palestinian homes, friction and violence between settlers and Palestinians is a near-daily reality....
Of course, the Israeli government also has the political problem that, if they were to give up the settlements, where would all those settlers go? And they would almost certainly vote against the politicians who made them give up what they now consider theirs. But Netanyahu's government was making things even worse by siding with the settlers and pursuing its political aims while Trump is in power. It has become obvious that Trump is not sophisticated about international affairs and will simply give them what they ask for, without asking for anything in return. Netanyahu made some comments that made it clear he knew this was an unprecedented opportunity for his hardliners.

The response to Pompeo's announcement was predictable glee.
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... n-reversal
Quote:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Trump administration's reversal on Israeli settlements a “huge achievement” that “fixed a historic wrong,” The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Netanyahu visited the West Bank on Tuesday to celebrate Pompeo's announcement, which is just the latest gift to his government from the Trump administration. “I think it is a great day for the state of Israel and an achievement that will remain for decades,” he said while speaking to supporters, according to the AP....

Netanyahu ... is hoping his opponent in the last election, Benny Gantz, will not meet a deadline Wednesday night for forming a government. Pompeo's announcement could also play a factor in the internal negotiations among Israel's political parties.



https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4710 ... -this-week
Quote:
Impeachment guide: The 9 witnesses testifying this week
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ion-report
Quote:
The U.S. Army is ready to move Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his family to a secure location on a military base if they are found to be in danger due to his testimony in the House impeachment inquiry into President Trump, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Vindman reportedly requested a security assessment to analyze his and his family’s physical and online security, which was completed in recent weeks, according to the Journal.

The Journal reported that Army security officials have been tracking Vindman and his family at all times to ensure there are not imminent threats against them.

“The Army will make sure he’s safe, and the Army is actively supporting any safety needs as deemed necessary,” an official told the Journal. “It’s hard that he has been catapulted into the public eye. He served his country honorably for 20 years, and you can imagine this is a tough situation for him and his family.”...

I guess getting rid of Shep Smith didn't work out as well as some Trump supporters hoped: ;)
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4710 ... mpeachment
Quote:
Fox News's Neil Cavuto on Monday launched into a blistering critique of President Trump over his attacks against "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace, saying that journalists are "obligated to question" the president and his defenders, even if it means "inviting your wrath."

Cavuto made the statements just a day after Trump blasted Wallace as "nasty" and "obnoxious" following an interview in which the Fox News anchor repeatedly pressed House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) over the House's impeachment inquiry into Trump's dealings with Ukraine.

"What makes something fake news?" Cavuto asked on Fox News. "I would assume if the news being reported is fake or wrong and the person presenting that news knows it is fake or wrong that is bad. But what if the news being reported is accurate?"

"My colleague Chris Wallace has discovered again the president doesn’t distinguish," Cavuto added before noting that Wallace's interview with Scalise caused an "apparently furious" Trump to lash out at the broadcaster.

Cavuto went on to note that Scalise has gained Trump's support given his consistent defense of the president on matters related to impeachment.

"Let’s just say [Trump] doesn’t like Chris for challenging Scalise on that," ...
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4710 ... ying-about
Quote:
"Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace predicted President Trump testifying in impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill "would be akin to Prince Andrew testifying about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein" during commentary on "America's Newsroom" on Tuesday.

"This question of President Trump, and he did lay out the possibility that he was going to testify, I would think that that would be akin to Prince Andrew testifying about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which one British critic said was like an airplane crashing into an oil tanker causing a tsunami that set off a nuclear explosion," deadpanned Wallace.

"It’s an entertaining thing and it’s certainly got us all talking but my guess is it’s not going to happen and if it did it would be a very controversial and perhaps unwise policy by the president,"....
No wonder Dear Leader isn't very happy with Fox these days (other than Hannity et al, of course)
and prefers One America News or whatever that Pro-Trump-News-All-the-Time channel is.

What's mind-boggling to any sane person is that Fox executives picked up John Solomon after The Hill dumped him, thanks to the conspiracy theories he was hatching on Trump's behalf. Do they want to destroy whatever reputation they have left?


Not that this is really news any more but Dear Leader has gone back to one his favorite topics, tariff threats, again:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... trade-deal
Quote:
President Trump on Tuesday threatened to raise tariffs on China if the two sides are unable to come to an agreement on a trade deal. "I have a good relationship with China," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting. "We’ll see what happens. I'm very happy right now. If we don’t make a deal with China, I’ll just raise the tariffs even higher."

The comment is likely to jolt markets and throw further into question the ability of the Trump administration to secure a trade agreement with Beijing.

"Look, China’s going to have to make a deal that I like. If they don’t that’s it. OK?" Trump said...

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 20 Nov , 2019 1:37 pm
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Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
And, bit by bit, Trump destabilizes the world.

Trump is driving South Korea into China's arms. (as China works to assert as much control over Asia as possible, while strengthening ties with Russia).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/1 ... ul-demand/
Quote:
The defence ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in north-east Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s long-standing alliances in the region are fraying. ...Jeong Kyeong-doo, the South Korean minister of defence, and his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, agreed to set up more military hotlines and to push ahead with a visit by Mr Jeong to China next year to “foster bilateral exchanges and cooperation in defence”, South Korea’s defence ministry said.

Seoul’s announcement coincided with growing resentment at the $5 billion (£3.9bn) annual fee that Washington is demanding to keep 28,500 US troops in South Korea.That figure is a sharp increase from the $923 million that Seoul paid this year, which was an 8 per cent increase on the previous year....

Mr Trump has previously threatened to withdraw US troops if his demands are not met, with [an] editorial accusing the president of regarding the Korea-US mutual defence treaty “as a property deal to make money”....

There is also irritation at the pressure that Washington is applying to the South to make Seoul sign an extension to a three-way agreement on sharing military information with the US and Japan....


https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/trum ... 03021.html
Quote:
A "phase one" trade deal between the United States and China was supposed to be a limited agreement that would allow leaders from both countries to claim an easy victory while soothing financial markets.....

China's commerce ministry said this month that removing tariffs imposed during the trade war was an important condition to any deal. The demand has US officials* wondering if higher Chinese purchases of US farm goods, promises of improved access to China's financial services industry and pledges to protect intellectual property are enough to ask in return.

Two people briefed on the talks said Trump has decided that rolling back existing tariffs, in addition to cancelling a scheduled December 15 imposition of tariffs on some $156bn in Chinese consumer goods, requires deeper concessions from China.

"The president wants the option of having a bigger deal with China. Bigger than just the little deal" announced in October, said Derek Scissors, a China scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Scissors, who consults with administration officials, said whether Trump will agree to remove existing tariffs depends largely on whether he believes it will benefit his re-election chances. Some White House advisers* would like to see China agree to large, specific agricultural purchases, while the US maintains existing tariffs for future leverage....
I doubt this will end well. Demands of "give us everything we want and, in return, we'll give you as little as we please" rarely do. At least, when you're dealing with sovereign countries and not some poor beauty pageant competitor who said something disparaging about Trump.


*I think you can probably translate these unnamed "US officials" and "White House advisors," as Peter Navarro. From an article a few weeks ago:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/trump-a ... urces.html
Quote:
As negotiators work to flesh out the "Phase One" trade deal President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping are expected to sign next month, trade hawk Peter Navarro has been fighting the deal behind the scenes, according to three people close to the talks.

Navarro has taken particular issue with the shelving of certain protections for intellectual property and technology that appeared in earlier versions of the deal, according to these three sources.

So far, Navarro's effort has been unsuccessful....
Unsuccessful, that is, unless he got the ear of our idiot president, who has no problem overruling his own experienced trade negotiators if Navarro can feed Trump's grandiose ideas and ambitions.




The best analysis I've seen of Stephen Miller's emails, for those of us who had no clue what he was referring to sometimes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ls/602242/
Quote:
Stephen Miller’s liberal critics were right after all. The influential White House aide and immigration hard-liner has long been a liberal target. Prominent conservatives such as the National Review editor Rich Lowry have defended Miller as a “wunderkind” and praised his “knowledge, energy, and doggedness.” But liberals have maintained for years that Miller is pushing an agenda far more sinister than straightforward immigration restriction.

A cache of Miller’s emails, provided by the former Breitbart News staffer Katie McHugh to the Southern Poverty Law Center, draws a straight line between the Trump administration’s immigration policies and previous, explicitly racist immigration laws. The emails show Miller praising racist immigration restrictions from a century ago, while bitterly lamenting the law that repealed them....

“Stephen Miller is a very intense and obsessive person,” McHugh, who broke from the far right earlier this year, told NBC News. “He’s one of those white nationalists who puts a veneer of intellectualism on things, so he was able to get away with them.”...

The most revealing exchanges involve Miller’s praise for 1920s immigration restrictions targeting Africans and Asians, as well as eastern and southern Europeans, and his frustration with the 1965 law that repealed them.

In a 2015 exchange, Miller praised Calvin Coolidge for “shutting down immigration.” As I wrote back in February, the immigration laws of the 1920s, which barred African and Asian immigration but also sought to reduce immigration of Europeans deemed to have inferior genetic stock, such as Italians and Jews, were rooted in racist pseudoscience positing that America’s success was the result of its citizens of “Nordic” genetic background.

The authors of these laws believed that America’s “Nordics” were committing “race suicide” by allowing the genetically inferior to immigrate, an early intellectual version of the “white genocide” conspiracy theory that has inspired terrorism from Pittsburgh to New Zealand. Coolidge supported such restrictions on the basis of his belief that “certain divergent people will not mix or blend.” ...

Elsewhere in the emails, Miller recommends another white-genocide touchstone: the French novel The Camp of the Saints, which dramatizes the apocalyptic scenario of Europe being overwhelmed by nonwhite immigration, leading to the end of civilization....

In a later exchange, Miller attacked the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which repealed the racist and anti-Semitic restrictions of the 1920s.....

Miller is not alone.....
The author also makes an interesting point:
Quote:
Nothing prevents Republicans from preaching the gospel of conservatism to these new arrivals. The notion that immigrants from left-wing nations are somehow immune to conservatism is ludicrous; some of the leading lights of the conservative movement are Soviet-era Jewish immigrants whose politics are deeply conservative precisely because of the illiberal left-wing regime their families fled. One need only look to the staunchly Republican Cuban American community in Florida to see the fallacy of this ugly genetic determinism, and the bigotry that animates it. The problem for Trump’s white-nationalist vanguard is not that nonwhites are incapable of being conservatives or Republican voters; it is that they are incapable of being white.


https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-naftoga ... 81627.html
Quote:
U.S. federal prosecutors are planning to interview Andrew Favorov, an executive of the Ukrainian state-owned Naftogaz oil and gas conglomerate, as part of an investigation into the business dealings of Rudy Giuliani and two of his Soviet-born business associates.

A lawyer for Favorov confirmed to AP on November 19 that the dual Ukrainian-U.S. citizen is scheduled to meet voluntarily with prosecutors....
Regarding the source: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/radio-fr ... o-liberty/
Quote:
Factual Reporting: HIGH

Notes: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a private, nonprofit, multimedia broadcasting corporation that was founded and funded by the US government during the cold war era to counter Soviet propaganda....RFE/RL is currently funded by the U.S. Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). ...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) utilizes headlines that are written in neutral tone, without bias favoring one side or another.... They also conduct interviews and produce reports through their correspondents in respective countries, however it is difficult to determine their accuracy or if the interview actually occurred. From a purely news reporting aspect RFE/RL is balanced and sourced to credible media outlets.

Overall, we rate RFE/RL Least Biased based on neutral language and balance of coverage, as well as High factually due to use of proper sources.


EDIT to add:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... to-conduct
Quote:
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified Wednesday that he did not believe Ukraine's government actually had to carry through with investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter to satisfy President Trump....

"He had to announce the investigations, he didn’t actually have to do them as I understood it," Sondland said of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sondland cited his own conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer who was pressing for the investigations, in reaching his conclusion....
Sondland just made it very, very plain that Trump didn't even have the bad excuse of pretending to investigate the corruption in Ukraine. He just wanted an announcement that would damage his political rival.

I also think it's significant Trump wanted the president of Ukraine to be the one to announce that he's investigating the Bidens. That doesn't sound like normal procedure to me - it seems more like Trump looking to make the biggest impact possible.

Don't even ask me how the Republicans plan to spin this one. I assume they will smear Sondland and call him a liar. Not that I think much of Sondland - IMO, he's a slimy guy desperately trying to save himself after being up to his ears in Trump's corruption and finding out, too late, that he was the only witness willing to lie and pretend amnesia to protect Trump during the closed door hearings earlier.



https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... stigations
Quote:
Vice President Mike Pence's office pushed back on Sondland's testimony Wednesday that he raised concerns that aid for Ukraine had become tied to Trump's desire for investigations.

“The Vice President never had a conversation with Gordon Sondland about investigating the Bidens, Burisma, or the conditional release of financial aid to Ukraine based upon potential investigations," Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, said in a statement

Sondland said in his opening statement that he brought up the issue during a Sept. 1 meeting with Pence in Warsaw....

Jennifer Williams, a Pence aide detailed from the State Department, testified Tuesday that she found Trump's July 25 call with Zelensky to be "unusual." A short time later, Pence's office issued a statement from his national security adviser noting that she never raised those concerns with the vice president.
If Pence was tangled up in this - and it certainly looks that way to me - it's probably not good news for those of us who want Trump gone ASAP so he can't do any more damage. I don't think there's the slightest chance Senate Republicans will vote to impeach Trump if Nancy Pelosi will become president.

Otherwise, Pence seems to be following the Vice President's manual of "stay as far from DC as possible during impeachment proceedings and work on plausible deniability." He left again this morning. We'll see if he's successful in his efforts to stay clear. In any case, Pence's movements sure make it look like the GOP isn't all that confident Trump will survive this.



btw, it looks like the new defense is "I hardly knew him." :
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... m-sondland
Quote:
"I came into this at Volker’s request. Sondland is speculating based on VERY little contact. I never met him and had very few calls with him, mostly with Volker," Giuliani said in a since-deleted tweet during the hearing.

"Volker testified I answered their questions and described them as my opinions, NOT demands. I.E., no quid pro quo!" he added.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -very-well
Quote:
“I don’t know him very well. I have not spoken to him much. This is not a man I know well. He seems like a nice guy though,” Trump said.

“He was with other candidates. he actually supported other candidates. Not me — came in late,” he said of Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and donor to the president’s inaugural committee.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 21 Nov , 2019 8:48 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4713 ... -testimony
Quote:
President Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to the European Union appeared Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where the latest witness in the Democrats’ impeachment investigation delivered hours of explosive testimony tying Trump directly to a politically motivated pressure campaign in Ukraine.

Gordon Sondland, a Republican mega-donor turned EU ambassador, had previously denied that Trump leveraged White House meetings and U.S. military aid in return for investigations into the president's political rivals.

On Wednesday, with the TV cameras rolling, Sondland changed his tune, telling impeachment investigators that the quid pro quo was explicit — and came from Trump himself.

Here are five bombshells from Sondland’s nearly seven hours of testimony.

Sondland refutes Trump: Clear quid pro quo
Sondland wasted no time getting to the guts of the impeachment inquiry....



https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ia/602425/
Quote:
Through four long days of impeachment hearings, witness after witness sat passively by as Republican lawmakers responded to their detailed testimony by arguing that President Donald Trump had a legitimate reason to be suspicious of Ukraine, because he believed that the country “tried to take me down” in 2016.

That silence from the witness table ended this morning...

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill, the former top expert for Ukraine and Russia on the National Security Council, told the lawmakers. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Hill warned in stark terms that Russia is already preparing its efforts to interfere in the 2020 election, and suggested that it had succeeded in sowing discord in the United States....

“We are running out of time to stop them,” she said of the Russians. And then she addressed lawmakers again: “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

...A veteran Russia expert and the co-author of a biography of Vladimir Putin, Hill served under John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. She testified today alongside David Holmes, a staffer in the Ukrainian embassy who recounted in exhaustive detail a phone call he overheard between Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland, after which, Holmes said, Sondland said that the president cared only about “big stuff” like “the Biden investigation.”...

Both her testimony and that of Holmes are likely to prove damaging to the president’s case. They’ve filled in key details pointing to the existence of a quid pro quo...
I wish I saw her rake them over the coals. It sounds like she's an impressive woman and not one to tolerate bullshit. It also sounds like her testimony, and that of Holmes, poked holes in Sondland's attempts to paint his part in Trump's scheme in a good light.

Apparently, the Republicans (except for Hurd, the only one who seems reasonable - and is, of course, retiring) mostly didn't even try to ask Hill any questions. Despite her warning, they used the time allotted them for questions to pontificate and regurgitate tired old conspiracy theories instead. Then again, can you blame them? I suspect she would have easily and bluntly revealed their nonsense for what it is.

At least his constituents are getting a good look at the unvarnished Jim Jordan. I wonder if they like what they see?

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 22 Nov , 2019 2:28 pm
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Interesting parallels here.. No wonder these two crooks are such good buddies. :
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 12236.html
Quote:
Donald Trump has erupted over the ongoing impeachment inquiry in a series of false and misleading tweets in which he accused investigators of being “human scum”....

“This has never happened to a President before. What they are doing is not legal. But I’m clean, and when I release my financial statement (my decision) sometime prior to Election, it will only show one thing – that I am much richer than people even thought – And that is a good thing. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”...

“I never in my wildest dreams thought my name would in any way be associated with the ugly word, Impeachment! The calls (Transcripts*) were PERFECT, there was NOTHING said that was wrong. No pressure on Ukraine. Great corruption & dishonesty by Schiff on the other side!” Mr Trump said, though he provided no evidence to support him claims over Mr Schiff....


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/ ... 48301.html
Quote:
A defiant Benjamin Netanyahu rejected all allegations of fraud on Thursday, saying he would not step down as Israel's prime minister despite being indicted on a series of corruption charges.

Netanyahu denounced what he called the "false" and "politically motivated" allegations, hours after being charged by the attorney general with bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denied all wrongdoing. "What is going on here is an attempt to stage a coup against the prime minister," Netanyahu said. "The object of the investigations was to oust the right wing from government."

... Netanyahu said the investigators "weren't after the truth, they were after me".

In a 15-minute speech, Netanyahu railed against his political rivals and state institutions, accusing the police and judiciary of bias. The veteran politician argued it was time for an "investigation of the investigators", and vowed to continue in his position despite potential court dates and intense political pressure.

"I will continue to lead this country, according to the letter of the law," he said. "I will not allow lies to win."
Note on Trump's tweet:
*Again, they were NOT transcripts the White House released; they were readouts that describe what was said in the conversation. And there are clear gaps.Not to mention that this no longer hinges on a single phone call. It started much earlier, involved a lot of people, and was an ongoing effort. At least, until the whistleblower showed up, efforts to suppress him/her failed, and the aid to Ukraine was suddenly and magically released.






btw, some news organizations are putting out summaries of the impeachment hearing so far. Here's Al-Jazeera's, including reactions and public statements by Trump and his White House staff. I've found they're more likely to report straight news and avoid "spin" than most U.S. sources. :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/ ... 49252.html

There are some things I missed earlier but picked up on in their summary. Like what the spokesperson for the executive branch is telling us.
Quote:
The top White House spokeswoman on Thursday accused Democrats running the impeachment probe into Donald Trump of a "sick" and "rabid" desire to take down the president.

"The Democrats are clearly being motivated by a sick hatred for President Trump and their rabid desire to overturn the 2016 election. The American people deserve better," Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement as impeachment hearings continued in Congress.
How very professional of her. They must have searched far and wide to find someone of her caliber.



This is intriguing:
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... ter-hiatus
Quote:
President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton posted a cryptic message to Twitter on Friday ...

"Glad to be back on Twitter after more than two months. For the backstory, stay tuned," Bolton wrote.

Glad to be back on Twitter after more than two months. For the backstory, stay tuned........
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) November 22, 2019

Before Friday, his most recent tweet was on Sept. 10, when he said he had offered his resignation to Trump. ...
EDIT:It seems Dear Leader thought he could prevent Bolton from accessing his account. I think Trump made a serious mistake in making an enemy of him. Unlike some former advisers, I doubt Bolton will worry too much about behaving decently, in fighting back against Trump. And he's a lot smarter than Trump.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... ter-it-was
Quote:
Former national security adviser John Bolton claimed Friday that he "liberated" his Twitter account after it was "suppressed unfairly" following his September departure from the White House.

"We have now liberated the Twitter account, previously suppressed unfairly in the aftermath of my resignation as National Security Advisor. More to come," Bolton tweeted.

He later added that the White House "refused to return access to my personal Twitter account" and that he was "sorry to disappoint" any who speculated he would not eventually speak out....
What's wild is that Trump denied doing it and - given Trump's hundreds of obvious lies so far - I didn't even have to wait a second to decide which of them I believe. And yet this is John Bolton.
Things are strange indeed.


https://www.propublica.org/article/trum ... -the-money
Quote:
The Ukraine scandal is mostly viewed through the prism of politics — an attempt by President Donald Trump to gain an advantage over a political opponent. But, as most things are, it’s also about money — and we found lots of it flowing between key players in the scandal.

On this week’s episode of “Trump, Inc.,” we follow the money.
First, Let’s Meet Our Cast of Ukraine Players

Richest among them is Dmitry Firtash, an oligarch who has been battling to avoid an extradition flight to Chicago, where he faces federal charges of bribery. The Department of Justice has described Firtash as an “upper-echelon” associate “of Russian organized crime.” (He denies the charges and says the prosecution is politically motivated.)...

https://www.propublica.org/article/pros ... eisselberg
Quote:
Prosecutors Investigating the Trump Organization Zero In on Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg
Quote:
The focus on Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, a 72-year-old accountant now running the business with Trump’s two adult sons, stems from his involvement in arranging a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump (which Trump has denied). Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, or SDNY... granted legal immunity to Weisselberg and later closed their 18-month investigation with the guilty plea of one Trump associate, Michael Cohen. But Weisselberg’s immunity deal applied only to federal proceedings. Now Vance’s state grand jury is examining whether Weisselberg, among others — and even the Trump Organization — should face state criminal charges for falsification of business records...
The article describes how the Department of Justice, under Bill Barr, has been in conflict with New York state prosecutors. And how the delays, by both the Trump organization and the DOJ, may be harming New York's case:
Quote:
Vance originally launched his investigation back in August 2018, after Cohen’s guilty plea and public testimony revealed the Trump Organization’s deceits. But when one of Vance’s staffers placed a courtesy call to inform the federal prosecutors of their investigation... the DA was asked to “stand down.” The reason: The U.S. attorney’s office said it was still investigating the Trump Organization, pursuing additional targets. ...

Vance’s probe remained on hold for nearly a year — until July 18, 2019 — when Pauley revealed that federal prosecutors had informed him their investigation was “effectively concluded.”

With that, the Manhattan DA quickly restarted his state investigation.... Over the next few weeks, Trump’s business turned over 3,376 pages of documents, court filings show. Those documents did not include tax records. A subsequent filing by the DA asserted that “approximately two-thirds” of those 3,376 pages consisted of “non-substantive Google alerts.”

On Aug. 29, the DA subpoenaed Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, demanding Trump’s personal and business tax returns dating back to 2011, as well as work papers and financial statements. Lawyers for the president then filed suit in federal court on Sept. 19 to quash the Mazars subpoena. The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case, backing Trump’s request to keep the dispute in federal, rather than state, court. ....

That’s when the tensions between the federal and state prosecutors surfaced ...

The Manhattan DA’s office argued in court that the delay caused by the SDNY’s request to stand down has harmed its ability to bring a case. The clock is now running out on the DA’s ability to bring misdemeanor false-records charges....
It's also interesting how the Trump organization's flood of useless documents resembles what the EPA is doing to the House committee investigating it. Unless this is some sort of standard tactic, it looks like Trump may have brought some of his business practices to the federal government.






btw, some of the pro-Trump brigade on messageboards is amazingly vitriolic and nasty about Fiona Hill. The level is beyond what they said about most of the men who testified. I don't have much patience for public figures who twist every criticism into misogyny, but certain Americans do seem threatened by strong, no-nonsense women.

Though, on second thoughts, I'm not sure how much of that is due to being a woman vs. an American culture where many people like a certain level of "niceness" and familiar, friendly behavior, even from professionals.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 25 Nov , 2019 2:39 pm
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https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4718 ... rimes-case
Quote:
Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday asked for the resignation of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer over his handling of a controversial war crimes case.

Esper told The Washington Post in a statement Sunday that he was "deeply troubled" by reports that Spencer had reached out to White House officials promising that an accused Navy SEAL would be allowed to retire as a SEAL despite his conviction for posing with the corpse of a slain enemy combatant....

A Pentagon spokesman added in a statement that Spencer's offer, which he said was conditional on the president not interfering in Gallagher's proceedings, was "contrary to Spencer's public position" on the issue.

That offer was kept secret from Esper, the spokesman added, despite multiple conversations between the two officials about Gallagher's case....
I assume the full news reports contain more information about the accusations against Gallagher and the very odd way he managed to escape conviction for the most horrendous of the accusations, which included deliberately killing two innocent civilians, an old man in one case, a schoolgirl walking with her friends in another (via a sniper rifle), as well as actually murdering the teenage combatant while they were supposedly rendering medical aid to him (the one whose corpse Gallagher later held up like a trophy, later sending a text to a buddy along the lines of "Got him with my hunting knife - good story.") This is the guy Trump wants so much to retire with full honors.


OK, this is weird. The Hill article suggests Spencer was fired for coordinating with Trump. But this says Spencer was originally opposing Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/us/p ... agher.html
Quote:
The secretary of the Navy and the admiral who leads the SEALs have threatened to resign or be fired if plans to expel a commando from the elite unit in a war crimes case are halted by President Trump, administration officials said Saturday.

The high-level pushback to Mr. Trump’s unambiguous assertion on Twitter this past week that the commando, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, should remain in the unit was an extraordinary development in what was already an extraordinary case, one with few precedents in the history of presidential relations with the American military.

The Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer, later denied that he had threatened to resign but said disciplinary plans against Chief Gallagher would proceed because he did not consider Mr. Trump’s statement on Twitter to be a formal order. Mr. Spencer added that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to intervene and that it would stop “the process.”...

...On Thursday, the president intervened again in the case, saying that the commando should not be ousted. Referring to the pin that signifies membership in the SEALs, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin...

Mr. Esper and General Milley had scrambled to come up with a face-saving compromise this past week in a bid to persuade Mr. Trump to change his mind. Administration officials said they now hoped that Mr. Trump would allow the proceedings to continue...

This article suggests someone is lying. I have no idea who it is. But my bet would be that Trump fired Spencer. It fits Trump's usual pattern - fired unexpectedly on a weekend for revenge - where I'd think the Pentagon would follow a set procedure and do it on a weekday. But I really have no idea what's going on. :
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4718 ... navy-chief
Quote:
Spencer, Esper's spokesman said, had made overtures to White House officials urging them to accept that Gallagher would retire at his current rank if the president agreed to not intervene in his case.

In his own letter, Spencer seemed to suggest that his ouster hinged instead on an order from the president apparently related to the Gallagher case that Spencer could not follow due to moral reservations.
And, for some reason, Trump thinks Spencer should be replaced with the ambassador for Norway. Huh?
Quote:
President Trump announced Sunday that Kenneth Braithwaite, the current ambassador to Norway, would replace Richard Spencer as the secretary of the Navy shortly after Spencer's ouster earlier in the day.
EDIT: Never mind - it's not as loony as it sounds. Braithwaite is apparently a retired admiral. From a Norwegian news source:
https://www.newsinenglish.no/2018/02/16 ... ettles-in/
And, of course, he meets the crucial requirement of praising Trump:
Quote:
...Such reassurances can be needed with a US president known for being unpredictable, but Braithwaite told NTB that he thinks much of the Norwegian skepticism towards Trump is based on misunderstandings. He described Trump as “a warm and honest man, committed and with a strong personality.” He also said he’ll work towards setting up a reciprocal visit that would bring Trump to Norway.

He thinks Trump would enjoy a trip to Norway. While the government would be obliged to welcome him, it’s not sure whether the public would....
Though I have no idea why they didn't just promote someone within the Pentagon.


EDIT: The BBC has a summary of the confusing situation regarding Spencer.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50541045
It includes a couple of things that, to me, lean toward Trump having forced out Spencer, via Esper, and/or lied to Esper to get rid of Spencer, though there's nothing definitive about who's telling the truth.
Quote:
Mr Trump tweeted on Sunday he was not happy with how the navy had handled Gallagher's trial, and high costs in the navy's contracting procedures.

"Therefore, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer's services have been terminated," he said, adding: "Eddie will retire peacefully with all of the honours that he has earned, including his Trident pin."
Quote:
Mr Esper has instructed that Gallagher be allowed to retire as a Navy Seal, retaining his Trident pin which symbolises membership of the elite unit.

While Mr Esper had wanted the disciplinary process to "play itself out objectively", he had decided to let Gallagher keep his pin "given the events of the last few days", defence spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.
The "high costs" sounds to me like overkill, someone coming up with extra excuses to justify what happened. Which really just make anyone who looks at it critically wonder if the original justification was too weak and/or not true.
The BBC article also has some background in the Gallagher case - see their link to "A murder trial that tore band of brothers apart." I think I posted this link (and some to other articles) earlier.


And there's more. Now it looks like Esper was not being honest about why Gallagher gets to remain a Seal.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/11/25/def ... s-n1090581
Quote:
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday that President Donald Trump directed him to allow a Navy SEAL acquitted of war crimes to retire without losing his elite status.

Esper told reporters during a Pentagon briefing that Trump gave him a direct order to drop disciplinary action against Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, who was prosecuted by the Navy and later acquitted of war crimes.
This is not looking good.








https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... m-giuliani
Quote:
The House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), is reportedly in possession of audio and video recordings of a close associate to Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's lawyer, related to their efforts to persuade Ukraine's government to launch investigations politically benefiting the president.

Recordings provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, one of two Giuliani associates previously arrested on suspicion of committing campaign finance violations, include conversations between Giuliani and Trump himself, ABC News reported Sunday....
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4718 ... ne-trip-to
Quote:
An associate to President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani is prepared to testify that aides to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) dropped a planned trip to Ukraine to obtain dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden (D) in order to avoid alerting House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)...

Are these people all nuts? I thought the "chosen one" business was silliness before, more than likely some tongue-in-cheek remark taken out of context. But this doesn't sound like it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... chosen-one
Quote:
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a portion of an interview released by Fox & Friends this past weekend that he believes President Trump is the “chosen one.”

"God's used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect,” Perry said in the clip.

“And I actually gave the president a little-one pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago and I shared it with him,” he continued. “I said, 'Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, 'You were.’ "

"I said, 'If you're a believing Christian, you understand God's plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government,’ ” he added....


More corruption:
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... ut-turkish
Quote:
President Trump asked multiple federal agencies to address Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's "concerns" that Turkey’s state-owned bank would be under threat of U.S. sanctions, according to a response from the Treasury Department to a senior Democratic senator....



https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... sidency-is
Quote:
John Dean, the former White House counsel to President Nixon, on Monday mocked an assertion by President Trump's lawyer of having an "insurance" policy against Trump, calling it evidence of Trump's inner circle working as a "Mafia" crime family....

Giuliani's comments about an "insurance" policy came during an interview with Fox News's Ed Henry, during which the former New York City mayor said it would be "ridiculous" to imagine Trump throwing him under the bus.

"I’ve seen things written like he’s going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn’t, but I have insurance," Giuliani said Saturday....The former mayor previously made similar comments during an interview with The Guardian, though at the time his lawyer jumped in to assure the interviewer that Giuliani was "joking."

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 26 Nov , 2019 3:34 pm
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It seems I'm not the only one sensing something is "off" about the Trump/Spencer/Esper/Gallagher war crimes incident - which seems to have resulted in Esper giving Gallagher the same deal that he supposedly fired Spencer for offering to Trump (Gallagher gets to stay a Seal but retires). :
https://www.vox.com/2019/11/25/20981788 ... rump-esper
Quote:
The dramatic ouster of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer this weekend is part of a much bigger crisis: one that involves a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes, competing Pentagon and White House stories, congressional anger, and a president who has waded into one of the most sensitive and politically charged military justice cases in decades....



...the multiple official stories from the Trump administration don’t mesh with one another, and on their faces the Pentagon and White House accounts don’t make much sense....

The key part there is that Esper says Spencer worked a secret deal, likely with the president, to rig the disciplinary review to allow Gallagher to keep his Trident pin. Keeping Esper out of the loop didn’t sit well with him, per this telling, so he asked Spencer to resign.

The problem is that this narrative doesn’t make much sense. Trump wanted Gallagher to keep his Trident pin, as his tweets indicate. If Spencer was going to give Trump what he and Gallagher wanted, then why would the president want the Navy chief gone?

Esper added a wrinkle to all this on Monday, telling reporters he received an order from Trump for Gallagher keep his pin, and that Spencer told him he might have to resign if asked to implement that directive. But again, if Spencer and Trump already worked out this secret deal, then why would the president need to give that order in the first place?

If you’re sensing that something seems off, you’d be right. It only gets more confusing when you see Spencer’s letter on the whole thing, which led Esper also to tell reporters “I can’t reconcile public statements with private statements with the written word.” ...



There appears to be a broader back story to this situation, though. A source close to Spencer told me that Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, worked to broker a deal that would allow Spencer to keep his job and allow the Gallagher review to move forward, though the source wasn’t sure what the exact deal was.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius seemingly heard the same on Sunday night. He reports that as of Thursday it seemed that Milley’s back-channel work had paid off. “Missiles back in their silos … for the time being,” a Pentagon official told Ignatius at the time. But, Ignatius writes, on Saturday the White House wanted to know if Spencer had threatened to resign, despite his denials....

And, of course, Trump muddied the waters up even further soon after the letter’s release....

And a new shock today:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-w ... rt-2019-11
Quote:
Trump wants convicted or charged war criminals on the campaign trail with him, report says
This is unbelievable. The current president of the United States actually thinks that campaigning with pardoned war criminals is a good thing and a way to get reelected.



Not to mention the broader issue, that Trump has sent a message, loud and clear, to people in the military (These links are not new but I thought them worth re-posting with recent events, especially since much of the media seems to be carefully avoiding everything except the one crime Gallagher was actually convicted of, and people may have forgotten the backstory.):
-He apparently intervened in Gallagher's trial, since lawyers connected to Trump showed up as new defense lawyers soon after Trump started to tweet in defense of gallagher: https://taskandpurpose.com/navy-seal-ch ... nal-lawyer
Quote:
3 members of Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher's defense team have close ties to Trump
- He then punished the military prosecutors who prosecuted Gallagher:
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... agher-case
Quote:
Navy officials said Wednesday they are pulling achievement medals from prosecutors who argued the case against a decorated Navy SEAL who was acquitted in the death of a wounded Islamic State captive after President Donald Trump intervened.

Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday that he had directed the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations to “immediately withdraw and rescind” the Navy Achievement Medal from prosecutors who argued the case against Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who was acquitted by military jurors earlier this month.
- He ordered Gallagher released before his trial, when and his friends had threatened the Seals who spoke up about what he had done. And there were a number of very odd things that happened during this trial. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/us/n ... scott.html




So now the criminals the military justice system wants to punish and the assholes they need to restrain know that, if they get Trump's ear, they can get off without punishment or, at worst, be pardoned.

It's an ongoing thing too. An article this October:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/us/e ... -seal.html
Quote:
The Navy Wants to Push Out Problem SEALs. But Trump May Get in the Way.

A push to strengthen discipline in the SEAL teams has been stymied by one member’s support in the White House.
Quote:
Spiking drinks with cocaine, shooting Iraqi civilians, strangling a Green Beret: The Navy SEAL teams have been rocked by one high-profile scandal after another in recent months, and the leader of the elite commando force, Rear Adm. Collin P. Green, has vowed to clean house.

Admiral Green has come down hard on misconduct, fired two key leaders and made an unusually public admission that the Navy’s secretive warrior caste has an “ethics problem.” At the same time, though, he has steered wide of the SEAL at the center of one of the grimmest episodes, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who was charged with shooting civilians, murdering a captive Islamic State fighter with a knife, and threatening to kill witnesses.

...Admiral Green and other Navy leaders were planning to demote him and force him out of the SEALs — sending a message that such conduct had no place in one of the country’s premier fighting forces.

None of that has happened, though, because one of Chief Gallagher’s most vocal supporters happens to be the commander in chief. President Trump has repeatedly intervened, and has posted so many expressions of support for the SEAL on Twitter that the Navy now sees Chief Gallagher as untouchable, according to three Navy officials familiar with the case. Any talk of punishment has been shelved, not only for the chief, but for two other SEALs who had been facing possible discipline in the case, these officials said....
And the people in other countries who have been outraged at incidents like this are going to be calling even more strongly for US military bases to be closed (Putin must be smiling).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/worl ... -rape.html
Quote:
Former US Marine Gets Life in Prison for Okinawa Rape and Murder
https://abcnews.go.com/International/dr ... d=39622023
Quote:
An incident in which an American sailor allegedly drove drunk in the wrong direction on a freeway on Saturday represents the latest chapter in the story of a growing rift between the U.S. Military and residents of Okinawa, Japan, many of whom want to see an end to the robust American presence that has been in place there since the end of World War II....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... ary-pilots
Quote:
Japan’s defence ministry is to call on US forces based in the country to ensure the safety of their aircraft after pilots from a marine corps unit involved in a deadly crash last year were shown taking selfies and reading books while flying.

A US military report on the investigation into the December 2018 crash revealed widespread misconduct among the unit’s pilots...“Examples of such unprofessionalism included prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, adultery, orders violations, and failures in following fundamental principles of professional aviation training and operations,” the report said....

As this article points out, there have been a number of cases where members of the military seemed to escape justice even before Trump. So he's not intervening in a situation where soldiers are unfairly restrained by military justice, as some of his defenders argue. And even the cases where justice seems to be appropriate have consequences for our relationships with other countries.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/21/am ... p-pardons/
Quote:
The report that U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to pardon a number of U.S. war criminals, both accused and convicted, has sparked rightful outrage. ... Trump has repeatedly expressed his support for torture and atrocity in war, though as with Trump’s previous pardons of murderers in uniform, many of those who, unlike the president, actually served in the military are particularly disgusted by the move.

But while the violence of Trump’s rhetoric is new, effective impunity for U.S. soldiers in foreign lands is not. Iraqis’ resentment of U.S. forces is obvious and violent, but the pardons will also further corrode U.S. credibility among its calmer allies. That’s especially true in East Asia, where the inequities of U.S. military justice have frequently riled locals. In South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, among others, the perceived impunity of U.S. military personnel has turned residents against the presence of military bases, sparked mass protests, and strained diplomatic relations....

None of this is the responsibility of U.S. soldiers as a group themselves, who are no better or worse than any other group of young people away from home. The root of the resentment is not their behavior but the agreements that protect them, and the frequent failure of U.S. military institutions to deliver justice. In Okinawa, the Japanese island that holds America’s key Pacific bases, they were immune from local justice until 1972 and rarely prosecuted by their own forces. ...

In South Korea in 2002, the deaths of two schoolgirls in a horrendous accident during U.S. military exercises, and the subsequent (and probably fair, from witness accounts) acquittal of the soldiers involved on negligent homicide charges by a military court, produced huge riots and a massive swelling of anti-American feeling. I was teaching in Seoul at the time, and my 10-year-old students would tell me they hated Americans because “Americans killed Shin Hyo-sun and Shim Mi-seon.” The deaths are still commemorated by annual protests.

These emotions have practical consequences. ...

It's not just overseas either. Don't forget that Trump has sent the military to the US border. I expect most of them are decent enough people, but there will undoubtedly be bastards among them. Does anyone really think Trump would hesitate to pardon someone who murdered one of his so-called "invaders," - in other words, a would-be immigrant who crossed the border anywhere other than at an official crossing*?

*where the Trump administration has slowed entries to a crawl, leaving people trapped on the Mexican side of the border and easy prey for any criminal. I can't say I really blame anyone who tries to get in another way after trying the official channels to apply for asylum and instead finding themselves trapped there indefinitely with their families.


https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... imes-cases
Quote:
President Trump on Monday defended his intervention in cases involving U.S. service members accused of war crimes, telling reporters he needed to “protect our warfighters.”

“A lot of warfighters and people in the military have thanked us very much.* It’s about time,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

“They wanted to get his pin away and I said no you’re not going to take it away,” Trump continued, particularly referring to his order that Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher be allowed to keep his Trident pin and Navy SEAL status.

“These are not weak people. These are tough people and we’re going to protect our warfighters,” Trump said....

"One of them, Lorance, served 6 years in jail had many years left, as a fighter,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “No, we’re not going to do that to our people."...
*Every time he does something like this, he claims he's been thanked by a bunch of people. It usually turns out to be a lie.



And yet the Republican leadership is still defending this monster and attacking any Republican in Congress who dares to break ranks and express doubts about him.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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