Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[sawasdee]

@fraurosenaThanks!

I loved Sen Harris comment that when an armed robber says 'I hope you are going to give me your money' it's not exactly just asking!

[Penny]

I wonder i there are tapes of the TT and Comey meetings. Comey is saying release them, he has nothing to hide.

[fraurosena]

And this: "Lordy I hope there are tapes!"

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/comey-on-solo-trump-meeting-lordy-i-hope-there-are-tapes-962932803579

There's a video where he says this in the link.

After I read his written statements yesterday, I noticed he mentioned "the door by the grandfather clock" several times when he was recounting his converstation in the oval office after everyone else was asked to leave the room. It was such a strange detail to put in, because it doesn't add anything to what was actually said and done. Unless (and here I'm putting on my tin foil hat and am not entirely serious) Comey knows that's where a recording device is hidden, and this is his subtle way of telling the administration he was aware he was being taped.

 

[candygirl200413]

So I think I totally missed that but that makes a lot of sense because king of trolling Pete Souza uploaded this

Spoiler

 

 

[sawasdee]

I loved Sen King of Maine - his was to the point, his questions made sense, and he also cracked a joke or two!

He also weirdly resembles the British entertainer Bruce Forsyth.....

[Gobsmacked]

If there are tapes, will Donald John's pals be rushing to "lose" them is the question. 

DJ's  threat is coming back to bite his orange derrière big time.

[fraurosena]

Here's something else that jumped out at me when I was watching Comey testify. At some point, he was asked about why he gave a friend of his (who turns out to be Daniel Richman) copies his memo's to leak to the press. Comey replies, and then the senator asks if his friend still has the copies of those memo's. Comey says he does't know, seems to think about it a bit, and then aquieces that his friend probably does. And then this happens:

"So it would be possible for you to get those copies back and give them to us?"

"Yes."

That's is monumental, because the original memo's are the property of the FBI, not Comey, even though he is the author of them. They are now in Mueller's possession. However, copies of the memo's are Comey's personal property. And he can do with them what he wants. By having those copies, they are now available to the SSCI, which the originals are not. This was incredibly smart of Comey. He layed the groundwork for this long before he was fired. He knew that this information needed to be available. Doubly so, because it also sends the message to the presidunce that he cannot suppress this information.

[sawasdee]

Clever, clever Comey!

[AnywhereButHere]

"will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest," - Great parallel!

I was listening to the CNN live stream at work, but my phone kept glitching, so I missed big chunks.  I expected that the tone of the questioning to shift depending on whether a democrat or republican was doing the asking, but it really annoyed me that they kept trying to bring Hillary into it. Especially McCain at the end. It was his tone as much as anything. The - but why not herrrrrr" was almost whiny, and he was a bit rambly. I appreciate his views on some things, but I think he's spent a bit too long at the fair.

 

[Zola]

Loving the replies here: 

https://mobile.twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/872868394193866754

Dumbass actually asked for it.

[fraurosena]

16 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

"will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest," - Great parallel!

I was listening to the CNN live stream at work, but my phone kept glitching, so I missed big chunks.  I expected that the tone of the questioning to shift depending on whether a democrat or republican was doing the asking, but it really annoyed me that they kept trying to bring Hillary into it. Especially McCain at the end. It was his tone as much as anything. The - but why not herrrrrr" was almost whiny, and he was a bit rambly. I appreciate his views on some things, but I think he's spent a bit too long at the fair.

 

I have to say I was somewhat surprised that only one or two repubs were mildly reproachful and most were actually asking pertinent questions. Although there were some hints of it, there wasn't much partisanship going on. 

However...

McCain was just so awkwardly off key in the whole thing that it was more than jarring. He made a complete and utter fool of himself. So much so, that I wouldn't be surprised if it does turn out he has some form of dementia going on. (And I'm not saying that to be snarky.)

 

Ok, now that I've been watching some of it again, Rubio was way too defensive of the presidunce. Wasn't he one of them that had dinner with the Tangerine Toddler yesterday? Not so surprising then. 

[apple1]

Regardless of agreement or disagreement - I hate to see McCain showing such public signs of mental deterioration. It's sad (overused word, I know). I would hope his family would get him out of the public eye and be able to deal with such a thing privately.

23 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

"will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest," - Great parallel!

I love that.

[Rachel333]

People have found three legal cases where someone used the words "I hope" and were convicted of obstruction of justice.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, Rachel333 said:

People have found three legal cases where someone used the words "I hope" and were convicted of obstruction of justice.

Ha, take that senator that asked that question repeatedly (don't remember his name).

And UGH!

 

[sawasdee]

And Huckabee Sanders wins the award for Stand Up Comedian of the Year!

[fraurosena]

 

" I'm not lying, you're lying!" 

Doesn't sound childish at all... 

[AnywhereButHere]

10 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Ha, take that senator that asked that question repeatedly (don't remember his name).

And UGH!

 

Don't worry. Given his track record, and since he likes to contradict everything his staff says, Caligula will probably be tweeting a refute to this before too long. Don't you know?

"I'm the best liar. I lie all the time. No one tells better lies than I do."

This is probably not going to happen, but sadly with this guy anything, no matter how off the wall, is possible!

[Cartmann99]

23 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Cain was just so awkwardly off key in the whole thing that it was more than jarring. He made a complete and utter fool of himself. So much so, that I wouldn't be surprised if it does turn out he has some form of dementia going on. (And I'm not saying that to be snarky.)

 

11 minutes ago, apple1 said:

Regardless of agreement or disagreement - I hate to see McCain showing such public signs of mental deterioration. It's sad (overused word, I know). I would hope his family would get him out of the public eye and be able to deal with such a thing privately.

That was very sad to see. I hope his family steps in and gets him some help. 

[fraurosena]

2 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Don't worry. Given his track record, and since he likes to contradict everything his staff says, Caligula will probably be tweeting a refute to this before too long. Don't you know?

"I'm the best liar. I lie all the time. No one tells better lies than I do."

This is probably not going to happen, but sadly with this guy anything, no matter how off the wall, is possible!

I can totally see him tweeting: 

"Yes, I asked for loyalty, of course I did. Everyone should be loyal to the president."

[onekidanddone]

17 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

And Huckabee Sanders wins the award for Stand Up Comedian of the Year!

I'm rubber your're glue. Everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

[fraurosena]

The most important Comey takeaway is that congressional Republicans don’t care

Spoiler

Paul Ryan, as speaker of the House of Representatives, is the leader of his party’s caucus in the lower chamber. He’s also a constitutional officer of the United States, with obligations to the Congress and the country that transcend party. Here is his take on former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony that President Donald Trump repeatedly sought to intervene in an ongoing criminal investigation in an inappropriate way: “He’s just new to this.” Ryan told reporters on Thursday that he “probably wasn’t steeped in long-running protocols.”

James Lankford, a senator from Oklahoma who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, described Trump’s intervention in the Flynn matter as a “light touch.”

Meanwhile, virtually every Republican celebrated the news that, at the time Comey was still in office, Trump was not personally under investigation from the FBI.

This is part of an ongoing process of Republicans lowering the bar for Trump’s statements and conduct in a way that is both nonsensical and dangerous. The president of the United States is not supposed to interfere in criminal investigations. There’s no “he only did it with a light touch” or “it was to help out a buddy, not himself personally” exemption to that rule. And “he’s too ignorant to know that was the rule” is an absurd excuse to make for a septuagenarian who also happens to be president of the United States.

Either he has the character, intellect, temperament, and disposition to do the job properly or he doesn’t.

The answer to that question is ultimately more political than legal, and Republicans are giving their misguided answer to it on a daily basis.

The GOP’s absurdly low bar for Trump

The Republican spin on this involves a twofold absurdity:

The first plank is pretending not to notice that after Trump’s request to Comey regarding Flynn was not fulfilled, Trump fired Comey. That’s not a light touch at all.

The second plank is pretending not to notice that a president covering for subordinates’ crimes is serious wrongdoing, even if the president himself is not under investigation.

Forget Russia. Trump, like any president, has a wide range of contacts with friends, political supporters, donors, and the broader social and professional networks of his subordinates. He also oversees a vast executive branch that is responsible for supervising a huge range of law enforcement officials and regulatory agencies.

He could, if he were so inclined, sit in the Oval Office and spend his time making various phone calls to various law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and regulators and suggest to them that they should drop various investigations and enforcement activities into his various friends and donors. That would, of course, end up transforming the United States into the kind of authoritarian kleptocracy that the founders feared.

The safeguard would be Congress. Congress is supposed to stiffen the spine of executive branch officials by reminding them that their oath is to the Constitution and not to the president. Congress is supposed to oversee the executive branch and police not only legal misconduct but political misconduct, like perverting the legal process to benefit his friends and allies.

Instead, congressional Republicans have chosen to stand on the ground that it’s okay to order an investigation quashed as long as you do it with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge — even if you follow up by firing the guy you winked at. And they’re standing on the ground that it’s okay to quash an investigation as long as the investigation you quashed targeted a friend and close political associate, rather than the president himself.

That’s a standard of conduct that sets the United States up for massive and catastrophic erosion of the rule of law, not only, or even especially, because the president is behaving corruptly, but because Republican Party members of Congress have chosen to allow it.

Republicans know something is wrong, but they don’t care

Ezra Klein rightly wrote yesterday that Trump’s presidency is an American crisis.

I would only add that it’s a political crisis. Anyone who has had any occasion to speak to Republican members of Congress or other pillars of the Washington conservative establishment knows they are perfectly aware that Trump is unfit to serve as president.

“Washington conservatives know that reporters are not making up these incredible quotes, or relying only on Democratic holdovers, or getting bits of gossip from the janitor,” as Megan McArdle put it in an excellent Bloomberg View column speaking as a member of the beltway right trying to address the grassroots right. “They know that the Trump administration is in fact leaking like a rusty sieve — from the top on down — and that this is a sign of a president who has, in just four short months, completely lost control over his own hand-picked staff.”

Over lunch, a right-of-center think tanker told me that during the transition his colleagues joked that in this administration, you’d rather get a job in a federal agency than a White House job — because that way you’d stay out of jail when the indictments come down.

But Republicans have decided they aren’t going to address this crisis situation. Instead, they are going to try to manage it in pursuit of the shared agenda of tax cuts, welfare state rollback, and deregulation of banks and polluters.

A political crisis needs a political solution

The Comey hearing was a moment of high political drama. But it was also a fundamentally meaningless spectacle.

Nobody approached the hearing with an open mind, and, more to the point, there is no real legal issue to investigate. The question of Russian interference in the 2016 election is an important foreign policy and counterintelligence matter, and it’s possible it will reveal that crimes have been committed. But as far as Trump is concerned, the only evidence that matters was the evidence from his interview with Lester Holt in which he said he fired the FBI director in order to stymie the Russia investigation.

The question before Congress is whether or not it’s appropriate for a president to fire law enforcement officials in order to protect his friends and associates from legal scrutiny. And the answer congressional Republicans have given is that it’s fine.

The question before the public is now whether or not they will face political consequences for having reached that conclusion.

This is the first part of the article. It delves deeper into the DOH's reaction after this and gives an interesting analysis.

Quote

Paul Ryan, as speaker of the House of Representatives, is the leader of his party’s caucus in the lower chamber. He’s also a constitutional officer of the United States, with obligations to the Congress and the country that transcend party. Here is his take on former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony that President Donald Trump repeatedly sought to intervene in an ongoing criminal investigation in an inappropriate way: “He’s just new to this.” Ryan told reporters on Thursday that he “probably wasn’t steeped in long-running protocols.”

James Lankford, a senator from Oklahoma who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, described Trump’s intervention in the Flynn matter as a “light touch.”

Meanwhile, virtually every Republican celebrated the news that, at the time Comey was still in office, Trump was not personally under investigation from the FBI.

This is part of an ongoing process of Republicans lowering the bar for Trump’s statements and conduct in a way that is both nonsensical and dangerous. The president of the United States is not supposed to interfere in criminal investigations. There’s no “he only did it with a light touch” or “it was to help out a buddy, not himself personally” exemption to that rule. And “he’s too ignorant to know that was the rule” is an absurd excuse to make for a septuagenarian who also happens to be president of the United States.

Either he has the character, intellect, temperament, and disposition to do the job properly or he doesn’t.

The answer to that question is ultimately more political than legal, and Republicans are giving their misguided answer to it on a daily basis.

 

[sawasdee]

Thank you, @fraurosena that Vox article was excellent!

For me, one of the most telling points was that 'beltway' people are joking that it's better to get a job in a federal agency than in the administration as that way, 'you may avoid the indictments'...

That sounds as though insiders are now almost taking the fact that indictments WILL be coming down as a matter to be accepted.. That such a situation is a given  less than five months into the presidency is mindboggling. If that level of corruption/ineptitude is where it's at now, where will it be in a year?

And the Repugs in Congress, instead of acting as the second arm of the ruling triumvirate, and fulfilling their duty to make the executive branch accountable, are making excuses.

They are despicable, and traitors to everything the US Constitution stands for.

Jennifer Rubin on Comey's testimony:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/08/comey-paints-a-portrait-of-trump-will-no-one-rid-me-of-this-meddlesome-priest/?utm_term=.11f22a3fc1b2

Spoiler

Quote

In an extraordinary hearing, former FBI director James B. Comey told a compelling tale of a president trying to pressure and sway the lead investigator — first to lay off Michael T. Flynn and then to “lift the cloud” of the Russian investigation. What Comey confirmed was a point we have made frequently — President Trump is in peril for abusing his powers, perhaps obstruction of justice, not for the underlying collusion investigation. Comey supplied a big part of the picture and made clear that here is substantial evidence from Comey and others to support that conclusion.

Comey focused on the Feb. 14 meeting when Trump cleared the room and then said he “hoped” he would let go of the Flynn probe. As Comey pointed out, when a president sends everyone out, looks the FBI director in the eye and says he hopes a case will go away, that amounts to an order. “I took it as a direction,” he said. That in and of was itself was inappropriate in the extreme. As Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) put it, clearing the room and making the “ask” was wrong. Playing defense, Republicans on the committee tried to shift the issue to Comey’s failure to immediately rebuke the president. “I was stunned,” he said. He also explained that in essence there was no one to report it to, given Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s impending recusal. Republicans did their best to deflect the question as to Comey’s failure to raise a red flag. While politically predictable, their questioning implicitly recognized that Trump had acted improperly, if not illegally.

In response to questions about Trump’s public comments. Comey said bluntly that Trump had not told the truth when he said Comey had requested the infamous dinner meeting and when he said he never asked for Comey’s loyalty. This is more significant than one might imagine. In essence, it is part of a coverup of conduct that may be illegal and certainly was improper.

Comey made clear that Flynn is under investigation for allegedly lying to FBI investigators. He did, however, confirm that Trump was not personally the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. Interestingly, he noted that one person in his executive team was concerned that this was problematic, since the campaign was under investigation and so the candidate of that campaign might be part of that.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) led Comey in a series of questioning that made clear that in all these questions Trump didn’t inquire about the danger to the United States posed by Russia as a result of interference with our electoral system. The lack of concern about an investigation into a hostile power’s cyberattack on the United States contrasts with Trump’s insistence on clearing himself from a “cloud.” Trump looks upon the entire Russia investigation as a “cloud,” a political problem for him. The lack of concern about the nature of the underlying Russian meddling confirms what many knew already — this is a deeply narcissistic man who cannot help but put himself first.

Perhaps the highlight of the hearing came during questioning from Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who incidentally was also a star in Wednesday’s hearing when senior intelligence officials refused to answer questions without legal justification. Trying to determine what Trump was asking him in the Feb. 14 Oval Office meeting, Comey suggested this was not a Henry II situation, quoting the line as the British monarch expressed exasperation with his nemesis, Thomas Becket (later murdered in Canterbury Cathedral): “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” King echoed the line, agreeing that he had a similar thought. (” I was just going to quote that, in 1179, December 27th, Henry II said, who will rid me of the meddlesome priest, and the next day, he was killed. Exactly the same situation. We’re thinking along the same lines.”)

Comey certainly raised a number of questions. For one thing, what Trump meant by “cloud” is unclear. If he was referring merely to clear him publicly, the request is not so serious. If the “cloud” was the Russian investigation as a whole, then it was a request to get rid of the entire investigation, a far more problematic request. Comey also suggested that both Sessions and Jared Kushner hung around after others left the Feb. 14 meeting, raising the possibility that they knew Trump was going to behave inappropriately.

Much as Republicans tried to make this about Comey’s conduct — his failure to tell the president not to ask him about Flynn, his decision to leak the contents of his memo — Comey succeeded in painting a disturbing picture of a president trying to convert an FBI director into his minion and trying to get his friend into the clear. And just as disturbing is the realization that in the most devastating attack on American democracy, Trump cares only about Trump.

 

She ain't pulling no punches!

[47of74]

47 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

And Huckabee Sanders wins the award for Stand Up Comedian of the Year!

And I've got one of these for sale if anyone believes any thing she or anyone else in der Trumpenfuehrer's administration says.

I can do cash or paypal.

 

[formergothardite]

I can't believe Trump hasn't started rage tweeting yet. Did they steal his phone? 

[47of74]

12 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Thank you, @fraurosena that Vox article was excellent!

For me, one of the most telling points was that 'beltway' people are joking that it's better to get a job in a federal agency than in the administration as that way, 'you may avoid the indictments'...

That sounds as though insiders are now almost taking the fact that indictments WILL be coming down as a matter to be accepted.. That such a situation is a given  less than five months into the presidency is mindboggling. If that level of corruption/ineptitude is where it's at now, where will it be in a year?

And the Repugs in Congress, instead of acting as the second arm of the ruling triumvirate, and fulfilling their duty to make the executive branch accountable, are making excuses.

They are despicable, and traitors to everything the US Constitution stands for.

I wish we could have a more Federation like government.

Namely this when it comes to any government personnel at any level becoming aware of crimes committed by fellow government personnel;

Quote

"Regulations are quite harsh, but they're also quite clear, Captain. If you do not act, you will be considered equally guilty."