Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lawyers-seek-to-undercut-muellers-russia-investigation/2017/07/20/232ebf2c-6d71-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html?utm_term=.eb87e16445ea

Trump’s lawyers seek to undercut Mueller’s Russia investigation

 

TLDR: Trump wants to know if he can pardon family and friends and even himself. He's mad that Mueller might get his tax returns and they're trying to pretend that his finances have nothing to do with the Russia probe. His spokesman resigned (I've never heard of this spokesman tbh) and they're trying to make up some conflict of interest that would "justify" firing Mueller. 

Because nothing says "this administration is a finely tuned machine" like pardoning yourself. 

Spoiler

 

By Carol D. Leonnig, Ashley Parker, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger July 20 at 9:10 PM 

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation.

“This is not in the context of, ‘I can’t wait to pardon myself,” a close adviser said.

With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers.

A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job.

The president is also irritated by the notion that Mueller’s probe could reach into his and his family’s finances, advisers said.

Trump has been fuming about the probe in recent weeks as he has been informed about the legal questions that he and his family could face. His primary frustration centers on why allegations that his campaign coordinated with Russia should spread into scrutinizing many years of Trump dealmaking. He has told aides he was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns.

Breaking a tradition that began with President Jimmy Carter, Trump has repeatedly refused to make his tax returns public after first claiming he could not do so because he was under audit or after promising to release them after an IRS audit was completed.

Further adding to the challenges facing Trump’s outside lawyers, the team’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, resigned on Thursday, according to two people familiar with his departure. Corallo did not respond to immediate requests for comment.

“If you’re looking at Russian collusion, the president’s tax returns would be outside that investigation,” said a close adviser to the president.

Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s private lawyers, said in an interview Thursday that the president and his legal team are intent on making sure Mueller stays within the boundaries of his assignment as special counsel. He said they will complain directly to Mueller if necessary.  

“The fact is that the president is concerned about conflicts that exist within the special counsel’s office and any changes in the scope of the investigation,” Sekulow said. “The scope is going to have to stay within his mandate. If there’s drifting, we’re going to object.”

Sekulow cited Bloomberg News reports that Mueller is scrutinizing some of Trump’s business dealings, including a Russian oligarch who purchased a Palm Beach mansion from Trump for $95 million in 2008. 

“They’re talking about real estate transactions in Palm Beach several years ago,” Sekulow said. “In our view, this is far outside the scope of a legitimate investigation.”

 The president has long called the FBI investigation into his campaign’s possible coordination with the Russians a “witch hunt.” But now, the president is coming face-to-face with a powerful investigative team that is able to study evidence of any crime they encounter in the probe — including tax fraud, lying to federal agents and interference in the investigation.

“This is Ken Starr times 1,000,” said one lawyer involved in the case, referring to the independent counsel who oversaw an investigation that eventually led to House impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. “Of course, it’s going to go into his finances.” 

Following Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey — in part because of his displeasure with the FBI’s Russia investigation — Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel in a written order. That order gave Mueller broad authority to investigate links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” and any crimes committed in response to the investigation, such as perjury or obstruction of justice.

Mueller’s probe has already expanded to include an examination of whether Trump obstructed justice in his dealings with Comey, as well as the business activities of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Trump’s team could potentially challenge whether a broad probe of Trump’s finances prior to his candidacy could be considered a matter that arose “directly” from an inquiry into possible collusion with a foreign government.

The president’s legal team has also identified what they allege are several conflicts of interest facing Mueller, such as donations to Democrats by some of his prosecutors.

Another potential conflict claim is an allegation that Mueller and Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia had a dispute over membership fees when Mueller resigned as a member in 2011, two White House advisers said. A spokesman for Mueller said there was no dispute when Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, left the club.

Trump also took public aim on Wednesday at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein, whose actions led to Mueller’s appointment. In an interview with the New York Times Wednesday, the president said he never would have hired Sessions if he knew he was going to recuse himself from the case.

Some Republicans in frequent touch with the White House said they viewed the president’s decision to publicly air his disappointment with Sessions as a warning sign that the attorney general’s days were numbered. Several senior aides were described as “stunned” when Sessions announced Thursday morning he would stay on at the Justice Department.

Another Republican in touch with the administration described the public steps as part of a broader effort aimed at “laying the groundwork to fire” Mueller.

“Who attacks their entire Justice Department?” this person said. “It’s insane.”

Law enforcement officials described Sessions as increasingly distant from the White House and the FBI because of the strains of the Russia investigation. 

Traditionally, Justice Department leaders have sought to maintain a certain degree of autonomy from the White House as a means of ensuring prosecutorial independence.

But Sessions’s situation is more unusual, law enforcement officials said, because he has angered the president for apparently being too independent while also angering many at the FBI for his role in the president’s firing of Comey. 

As a result, there is far less communication among those three key parts of the government than in years past, several officials said. 

Currently, the discussions of pardoning authority by Trump’s legal team is purely theoretical, according to two people familiar with the ongoing conversations. But if Trump pardoned himself in the face of the ongoing Mueller investigation, it would set off a legal and political firestorm, first around the question of whether a president can use the constitutional pardon power in that way.

“This is a fiercely debated but unresolved legal question,” said Brian C. Kalt, a constitutional law expert at Michigan State University who has written extensively on the question.

The power to pardon is granted to the president in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, which gives the commander in chief the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” That means pardon authority extends to federal criminal prosecution but not to state level or impeachment inquiries.

No president has sought to pardon himself, so no courts have reviewed it. Although Kalt says the weight of the law argues against a president pardoning himself, he says the question is open and predicts such an action would move through the courts all the way to the Supreme Court.

“There is no predicting what would happen,” said Kalt, author of the book, “Constitutional Cliffhangers: A Legal Guide for Presidents and Their Enemies.” It includes chapters on the ongoing debate over whether presidents can be prosecuted while in office and on whether a president can issue a pardon to himself.

Other White House advisers have tried to temper Trump, urging him to simply cooperate with the probe and stay silent on his feelings about the investigation.

On Monday, lawyer Ty Cobb, newly brought into the White House to handle responses to the Russian probe, convened a meeting with the president and his team of lawyers, according to two people briefed on the meeting. Cobb, who is not yet on the White House payroll, was described as attempting to instill some discipline in how the White House handles queries about the case. But Trump surprised many of his aides by speaking at length about the probe to the New York Times two days later.

Some note that the Constitution does not explicitly prohibit a president from pardoning himself. On the other side, experts say that by definition a pardon is something you can only give to someone else. There is also a common-law canon that prohibits individuals from serving as a judge in their own case. “For example, we would not allow a judge to preside over his or her own trial,” Kalt said.

A president can pardon an individual at any point, including before being charged with a crime, and the scope of a presidential pardon can be very broad. President Gerald Ford pardoned former president Richard M. Nixon preemptively for offenses he “committed or may have committed” while in office.

Devlin Barrett and Sari Horwitz contributed to this report. 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@AmazonGrace -- I was just coming to post that. It makes me want to scream.

 

Because hiring foreign workers is the way to tout "Made in America":   "During ‘Made in America Week,’ President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club applies to hire 70 foreign workers"

Spoiler

President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida has asked permission to hire 70 foreign workers this fall, attesting — in the middle of the White House's “Made in America Week” — that it cannot find qualified Americans to serve as cooks, waiters and housekeepers.

Those requests were made to the Department of Labor in recent days and posted online Thursday. The for-profit club, where Trump spent numerous weekends this spring, asked permission to hire 15 housekeepers, 20 cooks and 35 waiters.

In addition, Trump's golf club in nearby Jupiter, Fla. asked permission to hire six foreign workers as cooks. The applications to the Department of Labor are a first step in the process of applying for H-2B visas, which would allow the clubs to bring in foreigners for temporary work between October and next May.

The applications were first reported Thursday by BuzzFeed News.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration said it would expand the number of H-2B visas available nationwide this year by 15,000, using power granted by Congress to go beyond the statutory cap of 66,000 per year. This category of visas are given to foreign workers filling temporary jobs outside the agriculture industry, in fields like construction, fishing and tourism.

Mar-a-Lago is open only during Palm Beach's ritzy winter “season,” when the club's wealthy members arrive from colder climes and the ballrooms are used for charity galas. It has applied for H-2B visas in past years, although this year's request is slightly larger than the one in 2016. That year, Trump's club asked for 64 workers: This year, he is asking for one more cook and five more waiters.

Now, the Labor Department — which reports to Trump — must make decisions that will affect two for-profit business that the president still owns.

The next step, a Department of Labor spokesman said, is that the two clubs must take steps to try to recruit American workers for these jobs. That often involves placing help-wanted ads in local newspapers and contacting former workers. If those efforts are unsuccessful, then Trump's clubs can ask for the Department of Labor to certify that it has tried and failed to hire Americans. After that, the Trump clubs can ask the Department of Homeland Security to issue visas for workers it has found in other countries.

Egan Reich, a spokesman for the Labor Department who is a career employee, wrote in response to inquiries from The Washington Post that "The Department of Labor does not give preference or special treatment to any business or individual.”

Trump built his campaign last year in part on an appeal to American workers angry that their jobs had been taken by immigrants or laborers overseas. In his inaugural address, Trump said that under his leadership the country would “follow two simple rules: buy American, and hire American.”

And this week, Trump has celebrated American companies and American labor, including an event at the White House where the president climbed into the cab of an American-made firetruck. In a proclamation Monday, Trump said he called “upon Americans to pay special tribute to the builders, to the ranchers, to the crafters, and to all those who work every day to make America great.”

Earlier this year, the Trump Winery near Charlottesville, Va., applied for visas to hire 23 foreign workers under a different visa program meant for farm workers.

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions sent by email on Thursday afternoon, asking why American workers could not be found to fill these jobs — and if the company had made any extra efforts this year, in light of Trump's calls to hire American workers.

The Secret Service did not respond to a query asking whether it would have a role in vetting any foreign laborers hired to work in a club that serves, at times, as the president's home.

 

[AmazonGrace]

NYT says that the spokesman who resigned used to caution Trump against publicly trashing Mueller. Oh well, when did Trump ever listen to any advice. 

Also NYT: Trumpkins are trying to insinuate that supporting Democrats is a disqualifying conflict of interest, and there's yet another lawyer representing Trump: John Dowd. Trump is also saying that Mueller has a conflict of interest because he had an interview to be FBI director the day before he was appointed. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/politics/donald-trump-robert-mueller-russia-investigation.html?smid=tw-share
 

Spoiler

 

Trump Aides, Seeking Leverage, Investigate Mueller’s Investigators

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MAGGIE HABERMAN and MATT APUZZOJULY 20, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s lawyers and aides are scouring the professional and political backgrounds of investigators hired by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, looking for conflicts of interest they could use to discredit the investigation — or even build a case to fire Mr. Mueller or get some members of his team recused, according to three people with knowledge of the research effort.

The search for potential conflicts is wide-ranging. It includes scrutinizing donations to Democratic candidates, investigators’ past clients and Mr. Mueller’s relationship with James B. Comey, whose firing as F.B.I. director is part of the special counsel’s investigation.

The effort to investigate the investigators is another sign of a looming showdown between Mr. Trump and Mr. Mueller, who has assembled a team of high-powered prosecutors and agents to examine whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers aided Russia’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election.

Some of the investigators have vast experience prosecuting financial malfeasance, and the prospect that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry could evolve into an expansive examination of Mr. Trump’s financial history has stoked fears among the president’s aides. Both Mr. Trump and his aides have said publicly they are watching closely to ensure Mr. Mueller’s investigation remains narrowly focused on last year’s election.

During an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he was aware that members of Mr. Mueller’s team had potential conflicts of interest and would make the information available “at some point.”

Mr. Trump also said Mr. Mueller would be going outside his mandate if he begins investigating matters unrelated to Russia, like the president’s personal finances. Mr. Trump repeatedly declined to say what he might do if Mr. Mueller appeared to exceed that mandate. But his comments to The Times represented a clear message to Mr. Mueller.

“The president’s making clear that the special counsel should not move outside the scope of the investigation,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, said during a news briefing on Thursday.

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the special counsel, declined to comment.

For weeks, Republicans have publicly identified what they see as potential conflicts among Mr. Mueller’s team of more than a dozen investigators. In particular, they have cited thousands of dollars of political donations to Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, made by Andrew Weissmann, a former senior Justice Department official who has expertise in fraud and other financial crimes. News reports have revealed similar donations by other members of Mr. Mueller’s team, which Mr. Trump’s allies have cited as evidence of political bias. Another lawyer Mr. Mueller has hired, Jeannie Rhee, represented the Clinton Foundation.

To seek a recusal, Mr. Trump’s lawyers can argue their case to Mr. Mueller or his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. The Justice Department has explicit rules about what constitutes a conflict of interest. Prosecutors may not participate in investigations if they have “a personal or political relationship” with the subject of the case. Making campaign donations is not included on the list of things that would create a “political relationship.”

The examination of Mr. Mueller’s investigators reflects deep concerns among the president’s aides that Mr. Mueller will mount a wide-ranging investigation in the mold of the inquiry conducted by the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr during the 1990s. Mr. Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton began by reviewing an Arkansas land deal and concluded several years later with the president’s impeachment over a lie about a sexual affair.

By building files on Mr. Mueller’s team, the Trump administration is following in the footsteps of the Clinton White House, which openly challenged Mr. Starr and criticized what Mr. Clinton’s aides saw as a political witch hunt.

Mr. Trump’s advisers are split on how far to go in challenging the independence of Mr. Mueller, a retired F.B.I. director and one of the most respected figures in law enforcement. Some advisers have warned that dismissing Mr. Mueller would create a legal and political mess.

Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has kept up the attacks on him. In his interview with The Times, which caught members of his legal team by surprise, he focused on the fact that Mr. Mueller had interviewed to replace Mr. Comey as the F.B.I. director just a day before Mr. Mueller was appointed special prosecutor, saying that the interview could create a conflict.

“He was sitting in that chair,” Mr. Trump said during the Oval Office interview. “He was up here, and he wanted the job.” Mr. Trump did not explain how the interview created a conflict of interest.

 

In addition to investigating possible collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump’s advisers, the special counsel is examining whether the president obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey. Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters have portrayed Mr. Mueller and Mr. Comey as close friends. While they worked closely together in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush and are known to respect each other, associates of both men say the two are not particularly close.

Mr. Mueller’s team has begun examining financial records, and has requested documents from the Internal Revenue Service related to Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, according to a senior American official. The records are from a criminal tax investigation that had been opened long before Mr. Trump’s campaign began. Mr. Manafort was never charged in that case.

Federal investigators have also contacted Deutsche Bank about Mr. Trump’s accounts, and the bank is expecting to provide information to Mr. Mueller.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Jay Sekulow, declined to address the potential conflicts he and the other lawyers for Mr. Trump have uncovered about Mr. Mueller’s team. He said, however, that “any good lawyer would raise, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate venue, conflict-of-interest issues.”

Mr. Sekulow is one part of a legal team in the midst of being reorganized, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The role of Marc E. Kasowitz, the president’s longtime New York lawyer, will be significantly reduced. Mr. Trump liked Mr. Kasowitz’s blunt, aggressive style, but he was not a natural fit in the delicate, politically charged criminal investigation. The veteran Washington defense lawyer John Dowd will take the lead in representing Mr. Trump for the Russia inquiry.

Mr. Sekulow, a firebrand lawyer with deep conservative credentials, will serve as Mr. Dowd’s deputy. Two people briefed on the new structure said it was created because the investigation is much more focused in Washington, where Mr. Dowd has a long history of dealing with the Justice Department.

Mark Corallo is no longer working as a spokesman for the legal team. A former Justice Department spokesman, Mr. Corallo was one of several people cautioning against publicly criticizing Mr. Mueller.

The shake-up comes weeks after Mr. Dowd and Mr. Kasowitz had a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Mueller. The lawyers said they hoped Mr. Mueller would conduct a thorough investigation but asked that he wrap it up in a timely manner because of the cloud it had cast over the presidency, according to a senior American official and two others briefed on details of the meeting. Mr. Dowd said Mr. Trump would fully cooperate with Mr. Mueller, one of the people said.

It is not unusual for lawyers to meet with prosecutors to establish a line of communication, or to encourage them to move quickly. Mr. Trump’s situation is unique, though, because of his team’s public threats that they could fire Mr. Mueller at any time.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

There's no end to the corruption: "Former Trump campaign consultant warns president’s surrogates away from House Intel probe"

Spoiler

A former consultant to the Trump campaign is warning other surrogates away from talking to the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors as it probes Russian influence in the 2016 elections, and is demanding that the panel publicize the transcript of his own testimony after one member suggested that he might have lied under oath.

Michael Caputo’s complaint stems from an interview that committee Democrat Rep. Jackie Speier (Calif.) gave to CNN on Tuesday, in which she suggested that Caputo “may have actually lied” during the briefing.

It’s not the first time that Caputo and Speier have locked horns as the House Intelligence Committee probes evidence of links between the Trump team and Russian officials. Speier has referred to Caputo in an open hearing in March as “Putin’s image consultant,” referring to the years Caputo spent in Russia during the 1990s and 2000s working for the U.S. government and then as an employee of oil and energy company Gazprom’s media arm, a conglomerate controlled by the Russian state. Caputo has denied the characterization.

This latest spat, however, could have implications for the investigation if Caputo’s warnings are heeded by other Trump surrogates who have yet to be interviewed by the panel.

“I caution everyone against participating in closed hearings into this matter, because it’s starting to feel like a rigged game,” Caputo said in an interview Wednesday.

Caputo, who left the Trump campaign in June 2016, has denied allegations that there were contacts between the campaign and Russian officials.

He says he left the Friday interview with House Intelligence Committee lawmakers “with a positive impression” that the panel was being “fair and thorough” in how they were doing their work.

But he has taken particular umbrage at Speier’s comments, made even though Speier acknowledged during the interview that she had not actually been present during Caputo’s testimony.

In a July 19 letter to Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who is running the committee’s Russia probe, and panel ranking member Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), Caputo’s lawyer Dennis C. Vacco argued that “for raw partisan political gain and without any regard to the work of HPSCI, Rep. Speier again made irresponsible and un-vetted allegations against Mr. Caputo in public that are likely to unfairly tarnish Mr. Caputo’s reputation.”

They requested the committee release the transcript publicly to set the record straight.

“Rep. Speier’s careless remarks make full transparency absolutely necessary,” Caputo said during an interview, charging that her comments displayed “typical smear-first, ask-questions-later tactics.”

A spokeswoman for Speier declined to comment for this article.

Spokesmen for Conaway and Schiff did not immediately return a request for comment on whether they think Caputo’s warning would upset their investigation, or whether they were concerned about him lying to the committee.

Caputo stressed that his ire is primarily directed toward the House Intelligence Committee, noting that he has “yet to see this kind of scurrilous activity at the Senate,” and was thus “not ready to make this kind of judgment on the Senate.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee panel has requested documents from him, Caputo said, adding that he looks “forward to being responsive to their inquiry.”

Caputo added that he has not yet been contacted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team.

No, honey, the only rigged game is the one being played by this corrupt administration.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why Trump gave the Jeff Sessions scoop to the ‘failing’ New York Times"

Spoiler

The New York Times's latest scoop reads, at first, like the product of yet another leaked account of a private conversation involving President Trump. Here's the lead:

President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”

This time, however, the Times did not hear about Trump's remarks from a third party; reporters heard the remarks from Trump himself, in an interview.

That's right. The president who routinely accuses the “failing” New York Times of publishing “fake news” handed a big, exclusive story to the object of his fury — the newspaper that just last week exposed a campaign-year meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton from a woman described to him as a Russian government lawyer.

Why would he do that?

MSNBC's Chris Hayes is onto something here:

...<tweet: The sheer #thirst that the president has for the New York Times' approval is something to behold.>

Recall that Trump, during the transition period between his election and inauguration, seemed to make an effort to improve his relationship with the Times. He met privately with the paper's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and also spoke on the record with reporters, whom he attempted to flatter.

“I will say the Times is — it’s a great, great American jewel,” Trump said. “A world jewel. And I hope we can all get along. We’re looking for the same thing, and I hope we can all get along well.”

To Trump, getting along would mean friendly treatment by the Times. That has not happened. Yet he continues to grant interviews to the paper and seems to consider Maggie Haberman, one of the reporters with whom he discussed Sessions on Wednesday, particularly important. CNN's Dylan Byers described Haberman as the “reporter Trump can't quit” in an April article.

Here's an excerpt, featuring an extremely telling quote from former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg:

“She's always going to have a special place with the president,” said Nunberg. “She's one of the most influential political reporters, and it's the New York Times. It may be 'the failing New York Times,' but it's also the crown jewel, and he loves it.”

There may be no reporter Trump respects, and fears, more than Haberman. He may bash and beat up on the Times, and her, but he inevitably returns to her to share his thinking and participate in interviews. He does so because, in addition to having known her for so long, he knows that she matters, that she will not treat him with kid gloves but not be unfair either, that she commands the respect of the political communities in both Washington and New York.

On Twitter Thursday, Haberman offered her own thoughts about Trump's willingness to talk:

...

All of these factors probably played into Trump's decision. “Engaging” with the media is a kind of sport for him, and he does enjoy it. Power and influence exert a magnetic force on Trump, and the Times certainly possesses those qualities.

Trump loves defying conventional wisdom — including that of his own aides. A businessman with a transactional view of the media, he still thinks he can soften Times coverage by offering access.

Whether Trump aides would agree he should have said what he said to the Times — or even agreed to the interview in the first place — is debatable. But Haberman is right; he knew what he was doing.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A great piece by Jennifer Rubin: "Disloyalty begets disloyalty"

Spoiler

In case anyone had forgotten, President Trump’s New York Times blockbuster interview reminded us that he is bereft of loyalty, the glue that holds political parties, alliances and administrations together. He rebukes his attorney general for daring to recuse himself from the Russia matter as was required under government ethics rules — even in light of Jeff Sessions’s subsequent agreement to participate in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey. Trump’s churlishness is par for the course.

Remember, Trump summoned his political attack dogs to go after senators who opposed his incoherent health-care plan. “Joking” for the cameras, he seemed to threaten one of the most vulnerable Republicans. He pointed to Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.): “This was the one we were worried about. You weren’t there. But you’re gonna be. You’re gonna be.” He continued, “Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he? And I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think they’re gonna appreciate what you hopefully will do. Any senator who votes against starting debate is really telling America that you’re fine with Obamacare.” Nice Senate seat you’ve got there. Shame if anything happened to it.

Again and again, Trump has undermined U.S. intelligence agencies as part of his effort to deny that he was the beneficiary of help from the Russians in the 2016 election. He’s more than willing to take Vladimir Putin’s word over that of his own appointees and the professionals throughout the intelligence community.

Trump’s endemic disloyalty shouldn’t surprise us. For a world-class narcissist, other people are means to an end; when they are not helpful — or worse, disagree or challenge you — past service counts for nothing. But this is what makes his defense of former national security adviser Michael Flynn so weird. Since when does Trump ever go out of his way to defend underlings past or present? Surely, he must believe that Flynn — like Putin — can do something for him or bolster his standing in some fashion.

Disloyalty comes with risks, however. Sessions for now remains on the job, but what happens when he is questioned by the special prosecutor? And disloyalty to one adviser, especially one as devoted as Sessions, sends a signal to others.

An Associated Press story making clear that national security adviser H.R. McMaster has disagreed with Trump on many aspects of Russia policy reveals that McMaster is done spinning for Trump, as he did when he defended Trump’s decision to share code-word intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. McMaster allies apparently want others to know Trump’s Putin courtship does not have McMaster’s backing:

McMaster expressed his disapproval of Trump’s course to foreign officials during the lead-up to his trip to Germany. The general specifically said he’d disagreed with Trump’s decision to hold an Oval Office meeting in May with top Russian diplomats and with the president’s general reluctance to speak out against Russian aggression in Europe, according to the three foreign officials.

McMaster and other national security aides also advised the president against holding an official bilateral meeting with Putin.

In a highly unusual move, McMaster did not attend the bilateral meeting with Putin. Only Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and a translator made up the U.S. side.

That’s a pretty bold effort to disassociate McMaster (not my idea!) from Trump’s Russia infatuation, a way to protect McMaster’s reputation at the expense of the president. Not very loyal, but then loyalty has to be earned. McMaster and others should have learned by now that it’s every man for himself in this administration. Defending Trump carries the risk of personal embarrassment or even a visit from the special prosecutor.

 

[candygirl200413]

We’re on the Brink of an Authoritarian Crisis

Quote

There were many reasons to be alarmed by the transcript of President Donald Trump’s Wednesday interview with The New York Times, but if you drew back the lenses of time and context far enough, it foretold a deeper crisis than the text suggested—one that may be unfolding already.

The scope of that crisis is much clearer now that the Washington Post is reporting that Trump is discussing the possibility of pardoning himself, his family, and his closest aides to short-circuit the sprawling investigation of his campaign’s complicity in Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election. Trump’s team is also, according to the Post and another Times story, digging up dirt on the special counsel investigators in an attempt to discredit them.

SCHMIDT: Last thing, if Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia—is that a red line?

HABERMAN: Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?

TRUMP: I would say yeah. I would say yes.

And what lit the fuse was contemporaneous reporting, first from the Times and then from Bloomberg, that Mueller is indeed investigating Trump’s business entanglements, as it was widely expected he would. “FBI investigators and others,” Bloomberg reported, “are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008.”

The confluence of these two developments confronts Trump with a choice between backing down from his threat and making good on it, perhaps while issuing pardons promiscuously and to catastrophic effect.

The loud hum of chaos and spectacle engulfing the Trump administration is drowning out a creeping reality: We are on the brink of an authoritarian crisis that will make the firing of FBI Director James Comey seem quaint in hindsight.

In a more rule-bound environment, Mueller’s interest in opening Trump’s books would probably be checkmate for the president. Quite apart from the question of whether his campaign conspired with Russian intelligence to criminally sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it is widely suspected that a peek under the hood of the Trump organization will reveal serious financial crimes. Assuming that informed speculation is correct, and assuming our system of checks hadn’t broken down, Mueller would either uncover the wrongdoing and bring down a president, or Trump would fire Mueller and Congress would step in to edge Trump out (as it edged out Richard Nixon) or remove him.

But at the moment there are no reliable sources of accountability. None.

Republicans have given every indication over the course of the past several months that no malfeasance, no matter how naked and severe, will impel them to rein in Trump or impeach him. Outside of Congress, the hope would be that firing Mueller—let alone pardoning the subjects of his investigation—would essentially cost Trump control of the Justice Department. George W. Bush nearly lost his DOJ when his senior aides attempted to subvert department protocols to renew an unlawful spying program. Nixon, in the Saturday Night Massacre, had to fire DOJ leaders one after one until he found an appointee—Solicitor General Robert Bork—who would dismiss the Watergate counsel.

We unfortunately cannot count on any similar blowback here. By unmanning the attorney general to the newspaper of record, Trump raised speculation that Sessions would resign, but Sessions is living his best life destroying minority communities at the moment, so resigning is the farthest thing from his mind. “I have the honor of serving as attorney general,” he said on Thursday. “It’s something that goes beyond any thought I would have ever had for myself. We love this job. We love this department.”

Sessions’s deputy, Rod Rosenstein, isn’t as obviously invested in the Trump presidency as his boss is. But Rosenstein was complicit in Comey’s firing. He resisted pressure to appoint a special counsel for more than a week after Trump fired Comey, and only relented after Comey seemingly forced his hand. More recently, Rosenstein appeared on Fox News and issued a less-than-full-throated defense of the special counsel investigation that he oversees. “At the Department of Justice, we judge by results,” he said, “and so my view about that is, we’ll see if they do the right thing.”

Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Chris Wray, lacks the obvious baggage that Sessions and, to a lesser extent, Rosenstein carry. But he is Trump’s handpicked Comey replacement. And, as Trump made clear to the Times, he sees no meaningful impediment to coopting federal law enforcement agencies and their leaders. “I could have ended that whole [investigation] just by saying—they say it can’t be obstruction because you can say: ‘It’s ended. It’s over. Period,” Trump said, adding, “The F.B.I. person really reports directly to the president of the United States.”

Should Trump fire Mueller, with the tacit assent of Republicans in Congress and the DOJ leadership, there will be little recourse. It is feasible (though difficult) to imagine a GOP House and Senate passing an independent counsel statute to restore Mueller to his job; it is nearly impossible to imagine them doing so by veto-proof margins. And should Trump pardon himself and his inner circle, it is dispiritingly easy to imagine Republicans reprising their familiar refrain: The president’s power to pardon is beyond question.

If this crisis unfolds as depicted here, the country’s final hope for avoiding a terminal slide into authoritarianism would be the midterm election, contesting control of a historically gerrymandered House of Representatives. That election is 16 months away. Over that time, Trump’s DOJ and his sham election-integrity commission will seek to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as possible, while the president himself beseeches further foreign interference aimed at Democratic candidates. Absent the necessary sweep, everything Trump will have done to degrade our system for his own enrichment and protection will have been ratified, and a point of no return will have been crossed.

 

My biggest fear is that he'll fire Mueller and then the GOP in congress will be like ehh. I am personally prepared to drop everything and protest if that happens but I'm mad because it SHOULDN'T happen.

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/opinion/trump-sessions-russia-investigation.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

From the failing New York Times: 

Everything You Need to Understand About Trump and Russia

Andrew Rosenthal JULY 20, 2017

Quote

 

Donald Trump apparently wanted to set the record straight on the Kremlin Kaper in the strange interview he gave this week to The New York Times. Thank goodness for that, because the story line was getting hard to follow.

Here’s where things stand.

 

Spoiler

First, everything is fine because nothing happened between Trump and the Kremlin. And if anything did happen, no one should care and the only people who do are liberals whining about the election results. (Don’t get distracted by the fact that the main person still trying to reargue the vote tally is Trump himself. That’s the kind of thing that liberals toss in to muddy the waters.)

Trump and his people never spoke to any Russians, and if they did, they either forgot about it or innocently failed to mention it because it was just normal socializing. And if it wasn’t just socializing, then there was no discussion of the campaign, and if there was discussion of the campaign, it was perfectly appropriate.

It is not at all strange for a presidential candidate to get help from the Kremlin to win an election. Who knew that you’re not supposed to sign up Boris Badenov as a campaign adviser? (Or that health care would be hard, or that the president is not supposed to ask the F.B.I. chief to go easy on his friends, or that France is America’s oldest ally?)

By now, you should be convinced that there was nothing to investigate about Russia. And if there was, Trump wasn’t being investigated personally.

It may seem like Trump picked Jeff Sessions as attorney general at least partly to run interference on the non-investigation of the non-collusion. But move along; there’s nothing to see here either. After all, what’s the point of even having an attorney general if he can’t shut down investigations of your actions?

In fact, the president suggested that the crafty Sessions hoodwinked him into giving him the top legal job in the first place. If he had known Sessions would recuse himself on the Russia thing (which didn’t actually happen or Trump didn’t know about), then Trump would never have done that.

Got everything so far?

In the interview, Trump said Sessions was being “very unfair to the president,” which surprised the rest of us, who thought Senator Jeff had been basically the biggest toady around. (Chris Christie gave him a run for the money before the New Jersey governor slunk away from presidential politics so he could spend more time with his family on beaches he had closed to the public.)

Trump told The Times peevishly that Sessions’ recusal stuck him “with a second man,” Rod Rosenstein, adding helpfully that the second man is called “a deputy.” Then he claimed Sessions hardly knew Rosenstein, who Trump said derisively was “from Baltimore.”

That’s a Democratic city, explained Trump, who is from New York, a Democratic city.

Despite the visible tire treads on his body from the wheels of the Trump bus, Sessions said Thursday that he will stay on as long as it’s appropriate. To whom? The president already thinks it’s not appropriate and has vaguely threatened to fire more people if the probe goes into his personal finances, which it kind of has to.

I don’t think Sessions should have been made attorney general — for other reasons. But he should stay on and let Trump fire him. Of course, if Trump does that, then his soldiers of disinformation will probably explain that, well, gee, the president didn’t know you’re not supposed to do that.

It’s truly disturbing how often we hear that lame spin from this White House: Trump and his team are not evil or criminal or corrupt. They are merely ignorant and poorly informed and innocent of Washington’s arcane ways. That is why they have trouble making moral judgments that most children could make.

 

[kunoichi66]

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"6 months of President Trump, in 7 issues"

  Reveal hidden contents

On Thursday, President Trump will have been in office for 181 days, a.k.a. 4,344 hours, a.k.a. 260,640 minutes, a.k.a. six months.

My first reaction is: “Only six months?” Perhaps it's because so much has happened in those six months. And perhaps it feels like time has slowed down because, paradoxically, Trump has not overseen many tangible policy changes since becoming president.

So how has he spent these six months? Here's a rundown, in seven issues that were central to his campaign.

1. Health care

The promise: Repeal and replace Obamacare.

The reality: A fractious Republican Party hasn't done either, and Trump has seemed mostly uninterested in trying to help them find a way to come together on it. On the day — actually, the moment — the bill died, he was chit-chatting over dinner with Republican senators who support the bill.

Watch for: Whether Trump (and Republicans) give up trying to repeal Obamacare and work with Democrats to tweak it.

2. Immigration

The promise: Build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The reality: He still really wants to build that wall. Trump hasn't been one to delve into policy details, but he's uncharacteristically engaged on the finer details of the wall, our ace White House team reports: “The wall of his dreams — 700 to 900 miles long, with transparent sections so that border agents aren’t hit on the head by 'large stacks of drugs' tossed over from the Mexican side, and outfitted with solar panels.”

Buuut Trump hasn't figured out how to make Mexico pay for it, which means Congress would reluctantly have to.

Watch for: Whether Trump demands funding for a wall as Congress funds the government by Oct. 1, which could lead to a government shutdown. (He backed down from a fight with Congress in April.)

2b. The travel ban

The promise: Temporarily ban Muslims or people from terrorism-prone countries from coming to the United States.

...

The reality: As of Wednesday, his travel ban is half on pause while a federal court decides whether it's actually constitutional. Washington Post Justice Department reporter Matt Zapotosky explains what to watch for:

...

3. Federal government

The promise: Make it work more efficiently.

The reality: Depends how you look at this. The Post's Lisa Rein reports that the federal government workforce of 2.1 million people has become a target for Trump and his allies to “drain the swamp,” blunting morale for many of these workers.

Also interesting: A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that about half of Americans believe in the concept of a deep state — i.e. “military, intelligence and government officials who try to secretly manipulate government policy.”

No evidence of this exists, leading The Fix's Aaron Blake to call this “Trump's most compelling conspiracy theory.”

Watch for: Whether Trump nominates people to lead a historically understaffed federal government or leaves much of it vacant.

...

4. China

The promise: Stop China from taking advantage of the United States.

The reality: Again, depends how you look at this. International relations experts argued that when Trump left the Paris climate agreement, it empowered China, the world's other largest greenhouse gas emitter, to cozy up to Europe. Trump also did an about-face from a key campaign promise when he suddenly decided China is not a currency manipulator.

Watch for: China and the United States' so-so relationship to deteriorate. Any day now, Trump could light the spark for a trade war with China (and Europe) by restricting imports of steel.

5. Russia

The promise: To get along with Russia better than Obama did.

The reality: Trump may be getting along with Russia at the expense of his perception by Americans. We learned on Tuesday that he had a previously undisclosed one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit earlier this month.

And a July Washington Post-ABC News poll found that of the 60 percent of Americans who think Russia tried to influence the election, 41 percent think Trump's campaign helped.

Watch for: Only special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his growing team of lawyers can answer what happened. They're investigating potential collusion (like Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer), financial crimes and whether the president obstructed justice. Mueller's timeline is months, maybe even years.

...

6. Congress

The promise: To make it work.

The reality: Trump does not have a good relationship with Congress. He works under chaos; Congress has a hard time functioning in chaos. He prefers to threaten lawmakers; Congress prefers to be cajoled. He's not interested in details; Congress must have details.

The differences have manifested themselves in Republicans' inability to pass major legislation, despite the fact that their party controls Washington.

Watch for: Privately, Republicans are fed up with Trump's penchant for controversy. So is it a matter of when, not if, some of them start ditching him publicly?

7. Winning

... <TT's blather about winning so much that everyone will be sick of winning>

The promise: See above.

The reality: This one's in the eye of the beholder.

It's only been six months? It seems like sixty years.

You know, I was saying almost that exact thing to my friends...and I'm not even in the US!

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump can usually make it about a third of the way through an interview without mentioning Hillary Clinton"

Spoiler

President Trump was 20 words into his recent interview with the New York Times when he raised a topic that he seemingly can’t resist: Hillary Clinton.

“Hi fellas, how you doing?” he said to the three Times reporters, two of whom were fellas. Then, asked about his meeting on health care with Republican senators, he continued. “It was good. We are very close. It’s a tough — you know, health care. Look, Hillary Clinton worked eight years in the White House with her husband as president and having majorities and couldn’t get it done. Smart people, tough people — couldn’t get it done.”

Clinton is Trump’s eternal foil, the person who, Trump seems to think, can always be identified as the unpopular yang to his yin, the looming reminder to his supporters of What Could Have Been. Whatever Trump does or doesn’t do, he’s always willing to point out what Clinton did or didn’t do that’s worse.

So she comes up in his interviews a lot. In fact, in 19 interviews that he’s conducted since becoming president, we found that Clinton tended to be mentioned much earlier than a number of Trump’s other favorite topics: The 2016 election, the votes he received, the electoral college and Barack Obama. Tallying the first appearance of each word in those 19 interviews, we figured out how far into an interview Trump first made mention of them, on average. (Making it 100 percent into the interview means he never mentioned it at all.)

Those figures:

... <great charts>

In 17 of 19 of his interviews, Clinton came up, on average about 36 percent of the way in. That’s more frequently and earlier than his mentions of Obama, who made it into only 16 interviews, about 43 percent of the way in.

The two interviews in which Trump didn’t mention Hillary came, interestingly, at the beginning of his time in office. The second was his Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly. His introduction of the subject in that Times interview released this week was the earliest she’d come up.

...

While Trump mentioned Obama immediately after Clinton in that interview, he’s still mentioned his predecessor earlier in other past interviews. (These percentages are the first appearance of the word relative to the total number of characters in the transcript of Trump’s comments from the interview.)

...

Surprisingly, Trump has mentioned the electoral college or vote in only about a third of the interviews we looked at.

...

But the election and the vote have come up in 14 of 19 (though not the same 14).

...

How much does Trump like to raise the subject of Hillary Clinton? He even mentions her more frequently and sooner than his other favorite opponent: the press.

...

We’ve come up in only 14 of his interviews, about 53 percent of the way in, on average.

But, as with his one-time and eternal political opponent, it’s a safe bet we’ll come up.

You know, sometimes I get into a state where I keep thinking about the same topic repeatedly. However, I don't give interviews to national media and I can think things without expressing them. Of course, I passed toddlerhood almost five decades ago, unlike the orange menace.

[fraurosena]

Oh boy...

Russia’s Lavrov Says Trump May Have Met Putin More Times

Quote

President Donald Trump may have held more meetings with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit earlier this month, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday — but he shrugged off the importance of the encounters.

“They might have met even much more than just three times,” he told NBC News’ Keir Simmons in an exclusive interview, dismissing speculation about the leaders' meetings. "Maybe they went to the toilet together," he joked.

Asked whether the two presidents had other conversations or met in the corridors of the G-20 meeting, Lavrov used the analogy of children mingling at a kindergarten. When you are bought by your parents to a kindergarten do you mix with the people who are waiting in the same room to start going to a classroom?” he asked.

He added: "I remember when I was in that position I did spend five or ten minutes in the kindergarten before they brought us to the classroom.”

Lavrov echoed the White House account of a third meeting between Trump and Putin during a social-dinner at the summit in Hamburg. The other two meetings — one a scheduled bilateral meeting and another when the pair shared a handshake — had already been widely reported.

“After the dinner was over…I was not there…President Trump apparently went to pick up his wife and spent some minutes with President Putin…so what?” he said.

[...]

1

To be honest, I think Lavrov is purposely stoking the fires here. It's obvious it's in Putin's interests to keep things divisive and divided in the adversary's camp, and Lavrov's comments are sufficiently ambiguous to get the rumors going but not really saying anything of substance. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm thinking the answer is yes: "Does President Trump want a constitutional crisis?"

Spoiler

It's time to start talking seriously about a constitutional crisis, because apparently President Trump is talking about one.

The Post reported Thursday night that Trump and his legal team have at least sought to understand how Trump could pardon not just those around him, but also himself. Doing the former would cause major political upheaval; doing the latter would take us into uncharted territory both legally and for our republic, given a president has never attempted to pardon himself.

The White House is emphasizing that the prospect of pardons has only been raised hypothetically. According to them, it was simply Trump being curious about his legal powers.

But this is a president who has shown little regard for the legal and institutional barriers that exist for his presidency. The first time the prospect of a constitutional crisis was raised came when he repeatedly attacked the judiciary and its independence, a move that has earned a rebuke from his own Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch.

Trump also removed James B. Comey as FBI director and later suggested it was because he didn't like the Russia investigation. That has earned him a federal investigation into whether he obstructed justice. And now, in the face of that obstruction and widening Russia probe, he's pretty clearly also considering trying to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The White House asserted Thursday that Trump has the authority to do so — which is very much in question — but added that he didn't “intend” to do so “at this time.” That's hardly a Shermanesque denial; in fact, it suggests it's very much on the table.

So on the day that marked the sixth month of his presidency, Trump's White House both asserted that it was possible he might try to fire a second person investigating him and/or his campaign (Comey wasn't probing Trump personally at the time of his firing) and was reported to be entertaining the possibility of pardoning himself.

For more on what constitutes a constitutional crisis, see here. A president attempting to pardon himself would certainly qualify; Trump trying to fire Mueller unilaterally — as the White House has suggested he can — would seem to fit the bill as well.

On the surface, that looks a whole lot like Trump being very concerned about what might become of all of this. If he's done nothing wrong, after all, why not let the investigation play out and let the evidence speak for itself?

But applying conventional logic to Trump is always a fool's errand. Trump is known for his ego and also his desire to constantly foment controversy. He is also a president constantly in search of ways to consolidate his own power and chop down his enemies. It seems possible that he merely wants a showdown over just how far he can take his power. And nothing in Trump's past suggests he will heed the warnings of those who urge him against firing Mueller or pardoning those around him or himself. Trump has done and said too many things that seemed politically unthinkable before, and he has lived to tell the tale, with a Republican base largely standing behind him. That's a recipe for hubris and chutzpah.

Trump's combativeness is rooted in those sensibilities, but also in his professed belief that the entire Russia investigation is an effort to undermine him and question his legitimacy as president. And if Trump believes this is truly a witch hunt that is meant to take him down — fairly or not — it would seem he's liable to do anything to prevent that from happening, up to and including possibly testing his powers as president using unprecedented means. If he thinks this is going to destroy his presidency, would he not try anything to stop it?

Trump may never pardon himself, but the fact that he even asks about it is a huge story in and of itself. This whole thing seems to be moving in one direction — a direction that is decidedly not away from a constitutional crisis.

 

[GrumpyGran]

16 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Next he is going to give them an offer they can't refuse.  I hope none of them owns any horses.

Lol, thanks, @onekidanddone! But sadly I do think he is reaching desperation point. I don't think he's ever been pushed like this before and I think something's going to give. Mass firings next week? EMS responding to the CC in New Jersey this weekend? Secret phone calls to Vlad? I don't think Twitter is going to suffice for much longer.

[GreyhoundFan]

13 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Lol, thanks, @onekidanddone! But sadly I do think he is reaching desperation point. I don't think he's ever been pushed like this before and I think something's going to give. Mass firings next week? EMS responding to the CC in New Jersey this weekend? Secret phone calls to Vlad? I don't think Twitter is going to suffice for much longer.

Well, he often pitches his worst hissy fits on Friday night and Saturday morning when Ivanka is out of pocket, so I'm feeling like there may be an explosion tonight or tomorrow.

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

I'm a little out of the loop (about whatever Spicey and Scaramucci have going on) but I'm impressed that Spicer found his spine. I mean, lying about crowd sizes and Russia and policy details was okay but appointing a person he didn't like went too far.

[onekidanddone]

18 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

I'm a little out of the loop (about whatever Spicey and Scaramucci have going on) but I'm impressed that Spicer found his spine. I mean, lying about crowd sizes and Russia and policy details was okay but appointing a person he didn't like went too far.

Spicey Poo may have been "invited' to resign.  Kind of a you resign or you'll be sorry kind of thing.  I'm sad for Melissa she had such a sweet job with SNL.

[AnywhereButHere]

2 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Spicey Poo may have been "invited' to resign.  Kind of a you resign or you'll be sorry kind of thing.  I'm sad for Melissa she had such a sweet job with SNL.

Sounds like what they were trying to do with Sessions, except Sessions was like - Hell no. I like this job, thank you very much.  Sorry though Spicer, it's too late. That ulcer is never going away!

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm thinking the answer is yes: "Does President Trump want a constitutional crisis?"

  Hide contents

It's time to start talking seriously about a constitutional crisis, because apparently President Trump is talking about one.

The Post reported Thursday night that Trump and his legal team have at least sought to understand how Trump could pardon not just those around him, but also himself. Doing the former would cause major political upheaval; doing the latter would take us into uncharted territory both legally and for our republic, given a president has never attempted to pardon himself.

The White House is emphasizing that the prospect of pardons has only been raised hypothetically. According to them, it was simply Trump being curious about his legal powers.

But this is a president who has shown little regard for the legal and institutional barriers that exist for his presidency. The first time the prospect of a constitutional crisis was raised came when he repeatedly attacked the judiciary and its independence, a move that has earned a rebuke from his own Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch.

Trump also removed James B. Comey as FBI director and later suggested it was because he didn't like the Russia investigation. That has earned him a federal investigation into whether he obstructed justice. And now, in the face of that obstruction and widening Russia probe, he's pretty clearly also considering trying to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The White House asserted Thursday that Trump has the authority to do so — which is very much in question — but added that he didn't “intend” to do so “at this time.” That's hardly a Shermanesque denial; in fact, it suggests it's very much on the table.

So on the day that marked the sixth month of his presidency, Trump's White House both asserted that it was possible he might try to fire a second person investigating him and/or his campaign (Comey wasn't probing Trump personally at the time of his firing) and was reported to be entertaining the possibility of pardoning himself.

For more on what constitutes a constitutional crisis, see here. A president attempting to pardon himself would certainly qualify; Trump trying to fire Mueller unilaterally — as the White House has suggested he can — would seem to fit the bill as well.

On the surface, that looks a whole lot like Trump being very concerned about what might become of all of this. If he's done nothing wrong, after all, why not let the investigation play out and let the evidence speak for itself?

But applying conventional logic to Trump is always a fool's errand. Trump is known for his ego and also his desire to constantly foment controversy. He is also a president constantly in search of ways to consolidate his own power and chop down his enemies. It seems possible that he merely wants a showdown over just how far he can take his power. And nothing in Trump's past suggests he will heed the warnings of those who urge him against firing Mueller or pardoning those around him or himself. Trump has done and said too many things that seemed politically unthinkable before, and he has lived to tell the tale, with a Republican base largely standing behind him. That's a recipe for hubris and chutzpah.

Trump's combativeness is rooted in those sensibilities, but also in his professed belief that the entire Russia investigation is an effort to undermine him and question his legitimacy as president. And if Trump believes this is truly a witch hunt that is meant to take him down — fairly or not — it would seem he's liable to do anything to prevent that from happening, up to and including possibly testing his powers as president using unprecedented means. If he thinks this is going to destroy his presidency, would he not try anything to stop it?

Trump may never pardon himself, but the fact that he even asks about it is a huge story in and of itself. This whole thing seems to be moving in one direction — a direction that is decidedly not away from a constitutional crisis.

 

No, he's going to try to get the "judge" to dismiss the "lawsuit" because there isn't enough evidence that he didn't hold up his end of the "contract" and one of the "plaintiff's" cousins is married to the "judge's" niece so the "judge" can't be impartial. He probably keeps asking when the court date is and if they can't get a continuance.

32 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

 

I'm a little out of the loop (about whatever Spicey and Scaramucci have going on) but I'm impressed that Spicer found his spine. I mean, lying about crowd sizes and Russia and policy details was okay but appointing a person he didn't like went too far.

And what? Did this guy beat Spicy up behind the hedges? THIS is what makes him leave?

[formergothardite]

36 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Sounds like what they were trying to do with Sessions, except Sessions was like - Hell no. I like this job, thank you very much. 

Yeah, I think Trump thought he could humiliate Sessions into resigning, but Sessions is a long time politician, it is going to take more than Trump saying he doesn't like him to get him to quit. Spicy looked like a broken man who would be easily manipulated by Trump. Sessions is a whole other ball game, I don't think Trump is used to dealing with people who aren't afraid of him and can't be pushed around. 

[GreyhoundFan]

28 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Yeah, I think Trump thought he could humiliate Sessions into resigning, but Sessions is a long time politician, it is going to take more than Trump saying he doesn't like him to get him to quit. Spicy looked like a broken man who would be easily manipulated by Trump. Sessions is a whole other ball game, I don't think Trump is used to dealing with people who aren't afraid of him and can't be pushed around. 

Sessions is too happy to be screwing the American public; that is, the American public that does not consist of old rich white men.  They'll have to cart him out in either handcuffs or a straightjacket.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "This presidency can’t be saved. It’s all downhill from here."

Spoiler

In light of news reports that President Trump’s team is scouring the record for conflicts of interest on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team (the essence of chutzpah) and contemplating pardons (of aides and/or himself), it is worth considering how this may all play out.

We offer several scenarios:

1. Trump orders Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Mueller. Sessions quits, as does Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand. Eventually someone agrees to fire Mueller. Republicans either will not pursue impeachment or are obliged to begin impeachment hearings but refuse to vote out articles of impeachment. In 2018, Democrats sweep to victory in the House and gain a seat or two in the Senate. Trump cannot be removed (two-thirds of the Senate is required for removal), but his presidency is in tatters. Some aides or ex-aides face criminal prosecution. LESSON: Republicans’ failure to stand up to Trump early dooms his presidency and crashes the GOP.

2. Trump orders Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Mueller. Sessions quits, as does Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand. Eventually someone agrees to fire Mueller. Republicans, together with Democrats, pass by a veto-proof majority an independent prosecutor statute. Before impeachment proceedings can finish, Democrats sweep to victory in 2018 in the House and gain a seat or two in the Senate. Trump cannot be removed, but his presidency is in tatters. Some aides or ex-aides face criminal prosecution. LESSON: Fire Mueller, and Congress will hire him back.

3. Republicans join Democrats in warning Trump not to fire Mueller. Mueller remains and keeps digging. Mueller subpoenas damaging documents; Trump refuses to comply. A court orders him to comply. He doesn’t. We have a full-blown constitutional crisis. LESSON: Congress cannot delegate all responsibility to Mueller. It must conduct a parallel investigation and, if need be, commence impeachment proceedings.

4. Republicans join Democrats in warning Trump not to fire Mueller. Mueller remains and keeps digging. Mueller subpoenas damaging documents; Trump refuses to comply. A court orders him to comply. He declares this a witch hunt, an attack on his family (or whatever). Then he resigns, claiming he has already made America great. He tells the country that Vice President Pence will carry on in his place. LESSON: Congress must protect Mueller and preserve the possibility that Trump may be forced to resign.

5. Republicans join Democrats in warning Trump not to fire Mueller. Mueller subpoenas damaging documents. Trump complies. The evidence of collusion and/or obstruction is overwhelming. Mueller recommends prosecution or impeachment. The GOP turns on Trump, who is impeached and removed (with the GOP by that time possibly in the minority in one or both houses). LESSON: Congress must protect Mueller and pay the price for failure to oppose Trump’s nomination and election.

Is there a sixth scenario in which Mueller exonerates Trump? That’s the least likely outcome after Trump has fired former FBI director James B. Comey and threatened the special counsel. Why would he do those things unless there was something really, really bad to find? And if there is something bad, Mueller will find it. You can understand then why Trump sounds frantic. In no scenario does Trump’s presidency recover.

I would love option 4 or 5, but I doubt it.

[GrumpyGran]

I wonder if Trump really understands what "pardon" means. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that he thinks it's just a do-over. "I'll pardon myself and then we can all move on and you people will forget what I've said or done. Until I do it again. Not going to say I'm sorry, but I'm pardoned now. All good" He does understand that to be pardoned follows a certainty of a commission of a crime, right?

So if he's asking about it, isn't that a tacit admission that he's committed a crime?

As for Sessions, I'd just be happy if he just went home to live with his relatives on the Chattahoochee River. Cue the banjo music.

[GreyhoundFan]

40 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

So if he's asking about it, isn't that a tacit admission that he's committed a crime?

As for Sessions, I'd just be happy if he just went home to live with his relatives on the Chattahoochee River. Cue the banjo music.

They are backpedaling, saying the question was "hypothetical". Yeah right, and I have some lovely oceanfront property in Arizona, And Sessions needs to go live under the Chattahoochee River bridge like the troll that he is.

 

"Trump Wants to Take on Bob Mueller? Good Luck With That."

Spoiler

The news that President Trump’s legal team is already evaluating the scope of his pardon authority, as well as steps that can be taken to push back on the breadth of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, rippled across social media Thursday night.

Of particular interest was that Mueller’s potential inquiry into the president’s financial dealings (and his tax returns) has apparently so incensed President Trump and resulted in a warning that the former FBI director should not cross that proverbial “red line.”

President Trump, of course, has a long history of being a more-than-capable litigant in his pre-presidential life, and he certainly is not a newcomer to the legal game. His battles with Eric Schneiderman, for instance, were legendary—at one point, Trump even filed a complaint about the New York attorney general with the state’s ethics commission. In 2010, he used civil litigation to effectively persuade Deutsche Bank (and other lenders) to grant him an extension on a $640 million construction loan.

As president of the United States, however, Trump’s past litigation experience—and his own self-assured view of what he learned from those experiences—has resulted in a miscalculation of potentially serious political consequences. President Trump has underestimated Mueller while simultaneously overestimating his own ability to restrict the level of scrutiny that can be applied to a president.

Lest there be any confusion, there are no restrictions on the president’s authority to grant pardons beyond the limitations set forth in the text of Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution. If the president wishes to pre-emptively pardon his campaign staff and family members for federal crimes they might have committed, absent invocation of the 25th Amendment or impeachment of the president there simply isn’t anything anyone can do to stop him from issuing pardons galore. Such is the privilege of being elected to sit in the Oval Office.

The president’s miscalculation is not about his pardon authority. Rather, it is about the extent to which the legal machinations that worked for him in private, civil litigation against ordinary individuals (or even various state attorneys general) can be applied to a wide-ranging criminal and counterintelligence investigation run by Mueller and what appears to be an All-Star cast of lawyers and investigators. The president can’t try and drag out things and hope Mueller’s investigation runs out of money; the funding is derived from a permanent congressional appropriation account. Nor can the president realistically hope that he will be able to undercut the investigation with “conflicts of interest” or “ethics” complaints. Mueller has already been vetted by the Justice Department’s ethics officers, and the petty complaints raised about the personal political donations made by some on his team reek of desperation.

The president is used to overpowering and overwhelming his legal opponents, but Mueller – who ran the FBI for 12 years and oversaw the transformation of that agency in the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11 – is unlikely to be intimidated. Mueller’s team appears to be methodically examining the Russian government’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, and it borders on axiomatic that his team will uncover whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin in any way (a question that, of course, remains unresolved).

Mueller’s investigation will go where the facts lead it, but the president is doing himself no favors by providing a fresh set of bread crumbs on a regular basis. His Twitter rants and stream-of-consciousness remarks in media interviews are easy fodder for the special counsel’s team, and provide it with an unusual degree of access to the president’s state of mind and motivations. It may be cathartic for Trump to express these thoughts publicly, and it might rouse his political base, but it is doing nothing to put out the three-alarm political fires that are routinely emerging in the wake of new reports about previously undisclosed contacts with Russian operatives or inquiries into his financial dealings.

If the president truly wishes to survive the mess in which he finds himself, he needs to come to grips with the simple truth that everything he learned before Jan. 20, 2017, is irrelevant. There is no one who can just make this situation “go away.” There is no deal to be made, no financial settlement that can resolve the matter. The investigation will find what it finds, and it very well might ensnare several close associates of the president (and potentially even a family member) along the way.

If President Trump tries to bully his way into Mueller’s lane, however, he could find himself joining Richard Nixon in a two-man “members only” club of presidents forced out of office before the end of their terms. If he hopes to avoid this fate, one smart move would be to stop talking, do his job and let Mueller do his.

Yeah, not going to happen, he wouldn't take advice from anyone. I'm glad Mueller isn't one who can be intimidated or bullied. I remember I used to have a coworker who was a crybaby and bully (hey, kind of sounds like Trumplethinskin). One time, he got really ugly and said to me that I didn't seem to be upset. My reply: "I've dealt with more than you and better than you." I thought he was going to stamp his foot like a toddler.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Looking for normalcy in Washington? Don’t look to Trump and his White House."

Spoiler

Anyone searching for signs of normalcy in President Trump’s administration would have come up empty this week. Instead, the president used his days to demonstrate disdain for the structures of constitutional government, a misunderstanding of the proper powers of the presidency and a continued willingness to disrupt his own operation.

Friday’s dramatic staff shake-up was only the culmination of a turbulent week in the Trump presidency, one that also included a remarkable presidential scolding of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an apparent warning to special counsel Robert Mueller, and the dramatic collapse of the Senate health-care bill that produced an exhortation by Trump for the senators to get back to work — without offering constructive ideas of his own.

These were new and ominous signs of an administration that remains adrift and of a president frustrated with almost everything and everyone around him. Together, they portray a president who appears to believe that if he can only put the most loyal people in the most critical jobs, his troubles will somehow disappear. That, too, is a misunderstanding of the situation in which he now finds himself.

Take them one at a time, starting with the White House staff changes. Out the door went Sean Spicer, the embattled press secretary who always had a tenuous relationship with the president and who was cast into one of the most difficult positions in the White House. Trump has long been unhappy about critical news coverage, and the blame often fell on Spicer’s shoulders and his press operation, to his undoing.

In as communications director came Anthony Scaramucci, the financier and hedge fund operator who has been one of the president’s most combative public defenders. Scaramucci was one of the few big-time fundraisers who went all in for Trump almost immediately after Trump clinched the GOP presidential nomination.

Scaramucci is a loyalist to be sure with the same kind of New York-inspired confidence often projected by the president. He has no formal background for the responsibilities that traditionally come with the post he now holds, but Trump will serve as the communicator-in-chief regardless.

The arrival of Scaramucci appeared to undercut White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who was closely allied with Spicer from their days at the Republican National Committee and who, like Spicer, has been in an embattled position for months. Scaramucci expressed his friendship with Priebus on Friday when addressing reporters in the White House briefing room and dismissed reports that the two were at odds.

Still, Spicer is the second key ally Priebus has lost from the White House staff he helped assemble. Earlier, he lost Katie Walsh, who was a deputy White House chief of staff. She will soon be returning to the RNC, where she previously served as Priebus’s chief of staff.

Yet Friday was only one of the shocks of the week. Earlier, in a remarkable interview with three New York Times reporters, the president attacked Sessions and Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation. Privately, according to separate reports in The Post and the Times, Trump also has been rearranging his legal team due to his personal dissatisfaction and asking about his powers to pardon those now under investigation while some advisers plot a strategy apparently designed to discredit the special counsel and members of his unit.

The president’s concerns about the Russia investigation are real and perhaps justifiable. His comments about Sessions and Mueller are only the latest data points highlighting the degree to which he is obsessed with the investigation and would like to find a way to contain it, control it, shut it down or otherwise make it disappear.

So far as president he has fired an acting attorney general (Sally Yates), fired an FBI director (James B. Comey) and belittled one of his earliest allies for doing the proper thing in recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Sessions was forced to do that because he had compromised himself by not giving full and accurate testimony to the Senate during his confirmation hearings. Trump does not seem to understand why Sessions had to recuse himself.

He also seems to believe that had Sessions not taken that step, Mueller would not be where he is today. It’s true that by recusing himself, Sessions left Rod J. Rosenstein, the former career prosecutor who is now deputy attorney general, with oversight over the FBI’s Russia investigation, and it was Rosenstein who appointed Muller. But it was Comey’s firing, a decision in which Sessions participated, that brought Mueller into the picture.

Interestingly, Trump also now blames Rosenstein for the decision to fire Comey. That is a 180-degree reversal on an earlier 180-degree reversal by the president and his White House about the circumstances that led to that controversial and consequential decision.

Rosenstein and Sessions initially were cited as the reason Comey was dismissed, with the White House pointing to Rosenstein’s memo that outlined a bill of particulars against Comey for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and later testimony before Congress. Trump undercut that claim days after Comey was fired, saying he had already decided to get rid of the FBI director before receiving the recommendation from Sessions and Rosenstein. Now he tells the Times that Rosenstein made him do it.

All of this angst that Trump displays over the Russia probe portends an inevitable and potentially explosive collision between the presidency and the Mueller investigation, unless there is some pulling back on the part of the president, which is not in his character. Mueller, by all indications, continues to plow ahead and is digging into areas that increasingly could come close to the president or his family.

Meanwhile, after the collapse of the Republican health-care bill in the Senate, the president issued a series of conflicting statements about what he thought should happen next. He summoned GOP senators to lunch at the White House and made comments that once again showed limited patience with the legislative process and limited knowledge of details of the bill that have tied up the senators.

Throughout the Senate process, Trump has been a mostly minor player. The powers of the presidency had little impact on the various senators who have problems with the bill. To the extent he has been an influence on the legislative battle, it often has been negative — sending signals contrary to what congressional leaders wanted or needed from the White House. He conveys impatience with the inevitable ups and downs of drafting and passing complex legislation. As in other areas, he tries to use cheerleading, generalities and sometimes outright misstatements as a substitute for real leadership.

The president has now crossed the six-month mark of his presidency. He is the same now as he was on Inauguration Day, the same as he was 53 weeks ago when he accepted the Republican nomination. But the successes he imagined coming his way largely have not, even as the Russia investigation has clouded his presidency in ways he never imagined. The past few days have demonstrated his unhappiness, and that’s not likely to be eased by shuffling the personnel ranks of his administration. Bigger things are at work.

I like the last paragraph, it's so very true.

[onekidanddone]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The president has now crossed the six-month mark of his presidency. He is the same now as he was on Inauguration Day, the same as he was 53 weeks ago when he accepted the Republican nomination. But the successes he imagined coming his way largely have not, even as the Russia investigation has clouded his presidency in ways he never imagined. The past few days have demonstrated his unhappiness, and that’s not likely to be eased by shuffling the personnel ranks of his administration. Bigger  Bigly things are at work.

Better now.