The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Lois]

Fox news has some folks that can no longer ignore the lies.

[Athos_131]

But we were ordered to,

Move on.

!

Does this apply to Fox News as well?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

U.S. Secret Service rejects suggestion it vetted Trump son's meeting

"Well, I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in. The president had Secret Service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me," Jay Sekulow, a member of the president's legal team, said on Sunday on the ABC news program "This Week."

In an emailed response to questions about Sekulow's comments, Secret Service spokesman Mason Brayman said the younger Trump was not under Secret Service protection at the time of the meeting, which included Trump's son and two senior campaign officials.

"Donald Trump, Jr. was not a protectee of the USSS in June, 2016. Thus we would not have screened anyone he was meeting with at that time," the statement said.

Trumpers, this is chess not checkers.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

16 Things You Must Believe to Buy the ‘Witch Hunt’ Russia Narrative

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[Athos_131]

White House planning ‘Made in America’ week

But critics have accused Trump of hypocrisy when he’s pushed “Made in America” in the past because so many of the products he and his family members have sold over the years were manufactured overseas. That includes merchandise sold under his own name and his eldest daughter’s, including clothing items and shoes.

Asked whether the president would use his “Made in America” week to commit the Trump organization and his daughter’s brand to make more of their products in America, rather than overseas, Ferre was non-committal.

“We’ll get back to you on that,” she said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Outgoing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’

“It’s hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we’re not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility,” Mr. Shaub said in a two-hour interview this past weekend — a weekend Mr. Trump let the world know he was spending at a family-owned golf club that was being paid to host the U.S. Women’s Open tournament. “I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.”

Mr. Shaub called for nearly a dozen legal changes to strengthen the federal ethics system: changes that, in many cases, he had not considered necessary before Mr. Trump’s election. Every other president since the 1970s, Republican or Democrat, worked closely with the ethics office, he said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

6 defenses of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting — each more dubious than the last

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[Athos_131]

Trump has repeatedly broken his core campaign promise

Trump’s central pitch, redistilled and redistributed on a near-daily basis over the course of 2016, was a simple one: I am a dealmaker, and I will make deals. It was a simple premise and his core campaign argument, simpler and more important than “make America great again.” Once you bought into the idea that Trump’s business acumen would translate into handshake agreements solidifying the future of our country, you were bought into the idea that he could do anything. Which is what he promised. He made sweeping assertions of what he could do, powered — not inhibited — by the objections of realists.

“Health care that covers everyone for less cost and with better options!” Trump would promise. But that’s impossible!, the realists would respond. “That’s because you don’t know how to make deals,” Trump would reply. If you bought into the idea that Trump could close the deal, you bought into the idea that the naysayers simply didn’t get it.

Trump can’t close the deals.

What deals has he made? He got a conservative appointment confirmed for the Supreme Court — after having Neil M. Gorsuch recommended to him by outside groups and after the Senate changed its rules to assure the confirmation. He’s signed a lot of executive orders, but those aren’t deals and some of those were blocked by the courts. He discussed a cease-fire in Syria during his sit-down with Vladimir Putin, which seems to be holding.

But legislation? No.

There’s an anecdote that didn’t get much attention last week that’s relevant here. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was addressing a small crowd in D.C. when he told a story about a conversation between Trump and his secretary of defense, Jim Mattis. From Washingtonian’s report:

“We’re asking permission to send 50 of our soldiers into a village outside Raqqa,” Mattis told Trump, according to Graham. “Why are you calling me?” Trump replied. “I don’t know where this village is at.” Mattis told him, “Well, that’s what we’ve done for the last 8 years.”

Trump, Graham said, then asked, “Who’s asking to go into that village?” Mattis told him, “A major, first in his class at West Point.”

“’Why do you think I know more about that than he does?’” Graham said Trump asked. “And then he hung up.”

In one sense, that’s understandable: The guy on the ground has more intimate familiarity with what’s happening than does Trump. But in two senses, it’s amazing. First, Trump is the ultimate decision-maker on military matters, a role he embraces in the abstract but that, here, seemed to take him aback. But, second, we can easily see a way in which this is handled if the incursion into that village goes south: Well, Trump might say, it’s not my fault.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Today’s big takeaway: Robert Mueller is now investigating Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting

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[Northwest]

Today’s big takeaway: Robert Mueller is now investigating Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting

#Resist

Right; not a surprise, but huge nonetheless.

That's also the first time I've seen it confirmed in writing that Trump is under investigation for obstruction, although, we could all surmise that because some of his public activities alone could be construed as obstruction (firing Comey, for example).

[Athos_131]

Trump and Putin Held a Second, Undisclosed, Private Conversation

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[Athos_131]

In Interview, Trump Expresses Anger at Sessions and Comey, and Warns Mueller

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump said Mr. Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned that investigators would cross a red line if they delve into Trump family finances unrelated to Russia. Mr. Trump never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mr. Mueller, nor would he outline circumstances under which he might do so. But he left open the possibility as he expressed deep grievance over an investigation that has taken a political toll in the six months since he took office.

But Mr. Trump left little doubt during the interview that the Russia investigation remained a sore point. His pique at Mr. Sessions, in particular, seemed fresh even months after the attorney general’s recusal. Mr. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Mr. Trump’s candidacy and was rewarded with a key Cabinet slot, but has been more distant from the president lately.

“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”

Mr. Trump also faulted Mr. Sessions for his testimony during Senate confirmation hearings when Mr. Sessions said he had not met with any Russians even though he had met at least twice with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak. “Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers,” the president said. “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t.”

But Mr. Comey and other intelligence officials decided it was best for him to raise the subject with Mr. Trump alone because he was going to remain as F.B.I. director. Mr. Comey testified before Congress that he disclosed the details of the dossier to Mr. Trump because he thought that the media would soon be publishing details from it and that Mr. Trump had a right to know what information was out there about him.

Mr. Trump refuted Mr. Comey’s claim that in a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office on Feb. 14, the president asked him to end the investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Mr. Comey testified before Congress that Mr. Trump kicked the vice president, attorney general and several other senior administration officials out of the room before having the discussion with Mr. Comey.

“I don’t remember even talking to him about any of this stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “He said I asked people to go. Look, you look at his testimony. His testimony is loaded up with lies, O.K.?”

Mr. Trump was also critical of Mr. Mueller, a longtime former F.B.I. director, reprising some of his past complaints that lawyers in his office contributed money to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. He noted that he actually interviewed Mr. Mueller to replace Mr. Comey just before his appointment as special counsel.

“He was up here and he wanted the job,” Mr. Trump said. After he was named special counsel, “I said, ‘What the hell is this all about?’ Talk about conflicts. But he was interviewing for the job. There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”

Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expands to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

The president also expressed discontent with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a former federal prosecutor from Baltimore. When Mr. Sessions recused himself, the president said he was irritated to learn where his deputy was from. “There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any,” he said of the predominately Democratic city.

He complained that Mr. Rosenstein had in effect been on both sides when it came to Mr. Comey. The deputy attorney general recommended Mr. Comey be fired but then appointed Mr. Mueller, who may be investigating whether the dismissal was an obstruction of justice. “Well, that’s a conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said. “Do you know how many conflicts of interests there are?”

Someone is very panicky.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show

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[Athos_131]

Kushner to testify before Senate intel panel Monday

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[Athos_131]

A running list of Trumpland's often-shifting stories on their Russia ties

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[Northwest]

Someone is very panicky.

#Resist

I agree with you, Athos; clearly Trump is trying out a new, aggressive legal strategy, no doubt the opening salvo from his new defense team (I also watched the guy make the rounds on the Sunday talk shows). It may or may not be as obvious to them as it is to me sitting on the outside that all of these devious manueverings by Trump make him look guilty as hell.

He can't stop this train, and he can't even slow it down, but he sure as hell can burn through whatever little bit of remaining political capital he has fighting these PR battles which won't actually matter.

Behind the Trump Team's Bluster, a Dark Legal Strategy
By Ruth Marcus

WASHINGTON -- President Trump's attorney, Jay Sekulow, seems to be an adherent of the just-yell-louder-school of legal argumentation. That tactic was on vivid display again Sunday, as the blustering lawyer made the full round of talk shows. It might have been the most striking part of Sekulow's performance, but it wasn't the most ominous.

He combines obstreperousness ("I'm going to answer your question, I am, and you're going to let me answer it," he lectured/interrupted Fox News's Chris Wallace) with obfuscatory legal jargon ("I'm not in privity of contract, as we say, with the party that's responsible for the actual payment of the bill").

Sekulow compulsively redirects ("I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in," he told ABC's Jonathan Karl). The Secret Service said later in the day that Donald Trump Jr. wasn't under protection at that time. Sekulow is internally inconsistent ("I mean, opposition research in campaigns happens all the time," he told CBS' John Dickerson, just after noting that Trump Jr. had said that "if he had to do it all over again, there are things he would do differently").

So watching a Sekulow performance, it is tempting simply to ask: Why is this man shouting?

The better question is: What is this man shouting? Because if you turn down the volume and pay attention to Sekulow's words, you can deduce the disturbing outlines of where the president's legal team may be heading. He signaled the expansion of the Trump team's assault on former FBI director James Comey and, in turn, on the legitimacy of special counsel Robert Mueller. This is worrisome, because it lays the foundation for firing Mueller and/or issuing pardons and declaring, "Case closed."

Thus, when Wallace asked Sekulow whether the Trump team's repeated denials of dealings with Russia were now "suspect," it triggered this disquisition:

"I think it's important to put the framework here. How did we end up with a special counsel? ... Comey had a series of meetings with the president of the United States. In those meetings, he took notes. He put them on his government computer, put them in his government desk, and when he was terminated from [that] position, which you would acknowledge that the president had the authority to do, he gave them to a friend of his to leak to the press ... to get a special counsel."

In this retelling, Mueller is the fruit of the poisonous tree planted by Comey. Therefore, Mueller's appointment is illegitimate and he should go -- and with him the investigation.

"So the basis upon which this entire special counsel investigation is taking place is based on what? Illegally leaked information that was a conversation of the president of the United States with the then-FBI director," Sekulow told NBC's Chuck Todd. "And I think that raises very serious legal issues as to the scope and nature of what really can take place."

Does it? In his previous round of Sunday shows, Sekulow muddied the waters by claiming that Comey had violated attorney-client privilege in revealing his conversations with Trump. As Wallace explained Sunday, this assertion was incoherent, since Comey was not acting in any way as Trump's lawyer.

Sekulow's pivot to executive privilege is scarcely more convincing. Perhaps Trump could have asserted privilege to bar Comey from testifying before Congress, especially before the firing. That's different from claiming that Comey's decision as a private citizen to reveal information about his conversations with the president was "illegal," even if Comey proceeded through the distasteful cutout of a memo leaked by a friend. If such disclosures were against the law, every administration veteran who wrote a tell-all book would be in jail.

Another strand of Sekulow's argument involves the notion that the memo was essentially government property, not Comey's to decide to convert to his own use, even if the information contained in it is unclassified. Irony alert: This argument requires concluding that Comey took something of value from the U.S. government, while asserting that the Trump campaign did not solicit anything of value from the Russian government. On the Lawfare blog, Timothy Edgar and Susan Hennessey assess the argument that Comey's action violated the conversion statute as "cutout."

Even if it weren't, what would be the relevance? Comey's alleged crime wouldn't make Mueller's appointment void or voidable. A leak of classified information that is intended to trigger a criminal investigation doesn't make the ensuing investigation improper.

But watch that space. I suspect -- and fear -- that we haven't heard the last of this bogus argument.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/07/18/behind_the_trump_teams_bluster_a_dark_legal_strategy_134490.html

[Athos_131]

The President vs. Federal Law Enforcement: Trump Attacks Everyone

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[Athos_131]

Big German Bank, Key to Trump’s Finances, Faces New Scrutiny

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[Athos_131]

Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

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[Northwest]

Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

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No, no; this can't be. Don warned him not to do that.

LOL.