The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Elizabeth]

I think the real question is very simply........"How much more can we (are we) going to take from Trump, before Congress actually does something??".......The Trump problem is not going to go away by itself.......

Love,
Liz

[Northwest]

I think the real question is very simply........"How much more can we (are we) going to take from Trump, before Congress actually does something??".......The Trump problem is not going to go away by itself.......

Love,
Liz

That's right, Liz. But the people who would or could remove him are busy giving him cover rather than holding him to account.

But that's changing in two important ways.

1. Every new disclosure dribbles a bit more weight onto the side of the scale that says "dump the guy", and it's possible that there's going to be one big disclosure which makes that inevitable.

2. Every day which passes members of Congress think a little bit less about what Trump needs, and a little bit more about what they're going to face in the mid-term elections. We're still in what passes for the honeymoon (and it's not going well, and not expected to improve either). Give it a few months.

I can imagine the Dems in Congress are sharpening their knifes, and getting ready to campaign again "Ivan over there" who gave America's leadership away to the Russians. The Ivans, of course, are the members of Congress who are currently running interference for Trump. But, remember, YouTube never forgets nothing. Things will come back to haunt.

[MissBarbara]

One of the headlines on the front page of today's NY Daily News reads:

"Evidence-Free Charge is Mark of Instability"

You think?

[Athos_131]

AP FACT CHECK: Trump's skewed ledger of achievements

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations

#Resist

[Lois]

Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations

#Resist

From the Washington Post.  I've already used up the number of free articles I get to read there 

[Northwest]

Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations

#Resist

From the Washington Post.  I've already used up the number of free articles I get to read there 

I never run into any limits on free articles (and I never even hear about them either) and I read lots and lots of WP stories. Do you have your browser set to discard your cookies every time you close it? You should.

Try that and see if that helps.

[Lois]

Cleared cookies and now I can read the articles.  Thanks!

[Northwest]

I nearly split a gut.

[Northwest]

Cleared cookies and now I can read the articles.  Thanks!

You should set your browser to auto dump them every time you shut down. That makes it a little bit harder for the goons to track you.

My cookie settings:

1. No third party cookies ever.

2, Clear regular cookies when I close my browser.

(Yikes; a mass of typos -- now corrected -- in the OP. It was definitely time to go to bed!)

[Athos_131]

DONALD TRUMP’S WORST DEAL

Before signing a deal with a foreign partner, American companies, including major hotel chains, conduct risk assessments and background checks that take a close look at the country, the prospective partner, and the people involved. Countless accounting and law firms perform this service, as do many specialized investigation companies; a baseline report normally costs between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars. A senior executive at one of the largest American hotel chains, who asked for anonymity because he feared reprisal from the Trump Administration, said, “We wouldn’t look at due diligence as a burden. There certainly is a cost to doing it, especially in higher-risk places. But it’s as much an investment in the protection of that brand. It’s money well spent.”

But the Mammadov family, in addition to its reputation for corruption, has a troubling connection that any proper risk assessment should have unearthed: for years, it has been financially entangled with an Iranian family tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideologically driven military force. In 2008, the year that the tower was announced, Ziya Mammadov, in his role as Transportation Minister, awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts to Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company. Keyumars Darvishi, its chairman, fought in the Iran-Iraq War. After the war, he became the head of Raman, an Iranian construction firm that is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. government has regularly accused the Guard of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad, and money laundering. Reuters recently reported that the Trump Administration was poised to officially condemn the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

But the Trump Organization may have broken the law in its work with the Mammadov family. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, passed in 1977, forbade American companies from participating in a scheme to reward a foreign government official in exchange for material benefit or preferential treatment. The law even made it a crime for an American company to unknowingly benefit from a partner’s corruption if it could have discovered illicit activity but avoided doing so. This closed what was known as the “head in the sand” loophole.

Even a cursory look at the Mammadovs suggests that they are not ideal partners for an American business. Four years before the Trump Organization announced the Baku deal, WikiLeaks released the U.S. diplomatic cables indicating that the family was corrupt; one cable mentioned the Mammadovs’ link to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In 2013, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project investigated the Mammadov family’s corruption and published well-documented exposés. Six months before the hotel announcement, Foreign Policy ran an article titled “The Corleones of the Caspian,” which suggested that the Mammadovs had exploited Ziya’s position as Transportation Minister to make their fortunes.

Construction of the building began in 2008. I have spoken with more than a dozen contractors who worked on it. Some of them described behavior that seemed nakedly corrupt. Frank McDonald, an Englishman who has had a long career doing construction jobs in developing countries, performed extensive work on the building’s interior. He told me that his firm was always paid in cash, and that he witnessed other contractors being paid in the same way. At the offices of Anar Mammadov’s company, he said, “they would give us a giant pile of cash,” adding, “I got a hundred and eighty thousand dollars one time, which I fit into my laptop bag, and two hundred thousand dollars another time.” Once, a colleague of his picked up a payment of two million dollars. “He needed to bring a big duffelbag,” McDonald recalled. The Azerbaijani lawyer confirmed that some contractors on the Baku tower were paid in cash.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization lawyer, did not deny that there was corruption involved in the project. “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said. But, from a legal standpoint, he argued, the Trump Organization was blameless. In his opinion, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act doesn’t apply to the Baku deal, even if corruption occurred. “We didn’t own it,” he said of the hotel. “We had no equity. We didn’t control the project. The flow of funds is in the wrong direction.” He added, “We did not pay any money to anyone. Therefore, it could not be a violation of the F.C.P.A.”

“No, that’s just wrong,” Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School, who specializes in the F.C.P.A., said. “You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the F.C.P.A.” She added, “Nor can you escape liability by looking the other way. The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag—the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”

I asked Garten why the Trump Organization hadn’t cancelled the Baku contract in 2015. He said that there was “no rush,” because “the project had already stalled and was showing no signs of moving forward.” The Azerbaijani lawyer who worked on the project has seen the hotel’s interior, and told me that it is almost finished. In an interview with the magazine Baku, published in April, 2015, Ivanka Trump said that she was eager to enjoy the hotel’s “huge spa area,” and promised that the hotel would open “in June.”

Moreover, Garten said, the Trump Organization had signed binding contracts with the Mammadovs and couldn’t simply abandon its agreements. But Jessica Tillipman, the law-school assistant dean, told me, “You can’t violate sanctions just because you have a contract with someone.” According to Erich Ferrari, the lawyer who specializes in sanctions, companies that learn of a possible sanctions violation typically commission a “look-back” investigation that “reviews all payments you received, to make sure they didn’t originate with a sanctioned entity.” He added, “All the big four accounting companies do them routinely.” The Trump Organization did not commission a look-back.

More than a dozen lawyers with experience in F.C.P.A. prosecution expressed surprise at the Trump Organization’s seemingly lax approach to vetting its foreign partners. But, when I asked a former Trump Organization executive if the Baku deal had seemed unusual, he laughed. “No deal there seems unusual, as long as a check is attached,” he said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The dangerous rage of Donald Trump

The trouble for Trump — and all of the rest of us — is that Trump is now president. And there are real-world consequences to both how angry he gets and how he chooses to blow off that steam. An angry call with the Australian prime minister, for example, has real-world implications. So does an open and aggressive attempt to disqualify the free and independent press. Or the accusation that your predecessor used the powers of the federal government to specifically target you.

#Resist

[Lois]

I rarely watch TV because I don't have one.  But today CNN was on in he place where I ate my lunch.  Everyone was saying how they thought Trump had lost his mind.

 

[Sensualtravler]

In January 20th, New York Times, Michael Schmidt wrote that Team Trump had Russia connections, and to support his point, said that Trump’s people were wiretapped. So Trump tweets over the weekend that Obama’s wiretapping him. This same reporter comes back and says there’s no evidence of Trump being wiretapped. Trump’s a lunatic and insane.

How can this be? The New York Times has the word “wiretapped” in a headline. The writer, one of three on the piece, claims that Trump had Russian connections and to support the point, he said that Trump’s people were wiretapped. So Trump comes along, “Yeah, I was wiretapped.” Same reporter: “There’s no evidence of that.” Now, what’s going on at the New York Times? How in the world — do they know what they’re doing or did they just forget what they did? Are they so obsessed with hatred that that’s what the Democrat Party and the left has become? Are they telling so many lies they can't keep track of them all?

[Lois]

I did a search on this and it seems Rush Limbaugh said that the article in question was named "WIRETAPPED DATA USED IN INQUIRY OF TRUMP AIDES".  I searched and could not find this article on the NYT website.  However, a reddit post showed an image of the front page of the print edition.

Question: Why would the NYT print edition have a story not contained in their online archive?

As for the investigation of Trump's aids, surely this is not the same as "wiretapping" Trump?  And if the article appeared on January 20th, why is he getting all outraged about it now?  It makes no sense.

Clearly Trump's team is trying to defend Trump by drudging up whatever they can to explain his current behavior.

[Lois]

THis is the online version of the article, which published Jan 19.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html

It does not prove any wiretapping of Trump by President Obama.

It does say that certain associate's of Trump were being monitored, including Paul Manafort, because of his ties to pro-Russian groups.  Specifically they were looking for financial transactions that might indicate he was still being paid by foreign sources.  Sounds legit to me.

[Northwest]

Not being able to see the difference between "Somebody got wiretapped." and "Trump was wiretapped."

Not be being able to see the difference between "Somebody wiretapped him." and "Obama had him wiretapped.

These arguments are so dim witted that they would be rejected and criticized if they were made by a grade school student, yet people are making them, with a straight face, in the national media.

How is it that the people who lack even basic thinking skills have become mouth pieces, and we are forced to listen and react to complete nonsense? Oh yeah, Trump.

[Northwest]

If we are done pretending to be baffled and mystified by things which are, in fact, merely silly, there's this. What Hayden says here makes perfect sense (which means he'll never work in government again as long as Trump is claiming to be president); Trump can get to the bottom of this with a couple of phone calls.

Hayden: Trump ‘Forgot That He Was President,’ Could See Wiretapping Proof



The former director of the CIA said Monday that President Trump could simply demand proof that his phones had been tapped from the intelligence community, and that perhaps Trump “just for a moment forgot that he was President,” in making the claim without proof.

Michael Hayden told “Fox and Friends” that “my instinct is no,” President Obama did not order that Trump be wiretapped. The White House has demanded that Congress investigate Trump's claim.

“It looks as if the President just for a moment forgot that he was President,” Hayden continued. “Why didn’t he simply use the powers of the presidency to ask the acting director of national intelligence, the head of the FBI, to confirm or deny the story he apparently read from Breitbart the evening before?”

“President Trump, in order to clear this up, could he demand to see this? Again, it would be unprecedented, but we’re in unprecedented circumstances," Hayden said.

As House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and others have noted in response to Trump’s claim, a paper trail would reveal whether or not a court had granted a warrant to tap Trump’s phones. Trump would have the ability as President to demand that paper trail.

Either way, Hayden said, Obama wouldn't have ordered the surveillance himself.

"He wouldn't even be involved," Hayden said. "You stay way back from this because of the separation of powers."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hayden-trump-forgot-that-he-was-president

[Sensualtravler]

Not being able to see the difference between "Somebody got wiretapped." and "Trump was wiretapped."

Not be being able to see the difference between "Somebody wiretapped him." and "Obama had him wiretapped.

These arguments are so dim witted that they would be rejected and criticized if they were made by a grade school student, yet people are making them, with a straight face, in the national media.

How is it that the people who lack even basic thinking skills have become mouth pieces, and we are forced to listen and react to complete nonsense? Oh yeah, Trump.

And just who would you suspect of having the authority to order such a wiretapping? The Pope? I suspect it would have clearance of the highest nature to be implemented,not necessarily written either .

Also, has the Hillarious camp complained of any wiretapping? Well, except poor Bernie, whose possible run for the Presidency was cut short by Hillarys  criminal actions. I'm sure Obama was clearly notified of her actions and he kept quiet about it afterwards. They're all as guilty as the proverbial fox caught in the hen house with a hen in it's jaws.

[Northwest]

And just who would you suspect of having the authority to order such a wiretapping? The Pope? I suspect it would have clearance of the highest nature to be implemented.

Only the Courts can legally authorize a wiretap.

Tell me, Sensualtravler, do you actually read news articles? You come across as staggeringly uninformed of the basic facts.

The second part of your comments in the post above are unintelligible, and I have no comment beyond that.