The Trump thread: All things Donald

[joan1984]

https://news.grabien.com/story-cnn-cuts-away-trump-speech-after-crowd-shouts-cnn-sucks

Seems CNN was unhappy with the spontaneous reaction of the overflow crowd at President Trump's Rally to celebrate, and announce his re-election plans.

[Athos_131]

Democrats and some Republicans question Trump’s vetting process after Shanahan withdrawal

Senators from both parties are asking why they did not have advance notice of the domestic violence incidents in Patrick Shanahan’s family that ended his bid to become President Trump’s permanent defense secretary, calling his nomination’s collapse the latest example of shoddy White House vetting.

“Look what happens when you don’t vet,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday. “This Shanahan fiasco shows . . . what a mess the administration’s national security and foreign policy is.”

With his withdrawal and resignation, Shanahan joins several other former candidates for prominent Cabinet and military leadership positions in the Trump administration who bowed out after compromising details came to light. That list includes Trump’s first picks to lead the Army and Navy, and previous nominees to head the departments of Labor and Veterans Affairs.

Most Democrats and Republicans said they were caught completely off guard by news of Shanahan’s withdrawal, which came amid reports that he was involved years ago in an altercation with his now former wife and then, following their divorce, rushed to defend their teenage son after he attacked his mother with a baseball bat. Shanahan denied his ex-wife’s claim that he himself struck her.

There was particular consternation among some senators that Congress was not apprised of the incidents by the administration, the FBI or Shanahan himself. As some lawmakers noted, a background check would have accompanied Shanahan’s nomination in 2017 to become the deputy defense secretary, a post he held until the departure of Trump’s first Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis, in December.

“I don’t understand it,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “These names, once they are out there, before they get made public, there has been a level of vetting that has gone on — so it does cause you to wonder.”

But while Democrats are calling for a reckoning over the administration’s vetting practices, it is clear that Republican leaders would prefer to simply move on.

“We need to do a better job. If they had the information they should share it,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a close ally of the president’s, said of the allegations surrounding Shanahan.

Graham quickly added: “That’s over. I appreciate his service, but it’s now time to find somebody else.”

Democrats have called for deeper investigation. Standing beside Schumer on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wondered whether Shanahan’s past “was deliberately concealed or mistakenly covered up.”

“I think there ought to be an investigation by the [inspector general] in the Department of Defense,” he said, contemplating whether Shanahan may have violated the law by failing to disclose to Congress the incidents that were documented in his divorce records.

President Trump has defended his administration’s procedures, telling reporters Tuesday that “we have a very good vetting process.”

Some Republican senators, such as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), also have defended the process, dismissing concerns about the omissions on Shanahan’s record.

“There’s so much you can do in a vetting process, and I think, as a general rule, on anything except the No. 1 position, they only go back historically ten years,” Inhofe said. “So I think the vetting process, the process is probably all right.”

Shanahan’s son’s assault on Shanahan’s ex-wife occurred in 2011 — eight years ago. Despite Republican leaders’ stance, some expressed surprise that Shanahan even sought the job, knowing that such an episode was part of his record.

“Frankly, I’m a little surprised he hung in there as long as he did or that he was interested,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Armed Services panel. “Seeking a position like that, that there was no way that the scrutiny wasn’t going to get to those issues.”

But others dismissed conjecture that the allegations reflect poorly on Shanahan.

“I don’t think that he was the instigator in any of these instances. It sounds like there was somebody else,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). “I believe he handled it appropriately. Whether that should have come up sooner, I don’t know, because we only know what we know now.”

Several Democrats pointed to a long line of episodes in which Trump’s nominees have withdrawn from consideration for Cabinet posts, assistant secretaryships and federal judgeships after compromising personal or professional details emerged. Notable examples include Mark Green, who withdrew from consideration to become Army secretary in 2017 over his past comments about Islam, evolution and LGBT issues; and Philip Bilden, Trump’s pick for Navy secretary in the same year, who withdrew over financial concerns. Last year, Ronny L. Jackson withdrew from consideration to become VA secretary over allegations of professional misconduct, while two nominees — Andrew Puzder for labor secretary and Heather Nauert for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — withdrew their bids over legal-documentation issues related to immigrant household employees since Trump took office.

“There ought to be a complete investigation of that whole process,” Blumenthal said, noting that lawmakers were concerned about the White House but also needed to have faith that the FBI vetting process was “not only credible but also effective and penetrating.”

Senators also have to be sure “that the FBI has no fear about asking for information that may reflect badly on a potential nominee,” Blumenthal said. “They can’t be intimidated from finding bad news.”

Shanahan’s withdrawal means that Mark Esper, the current Army secretary, takes over as acting defense secretary, and both Democrats and Republicans said Tuesday they hope he will become Trump’s nominee.

“When you have the word ‘acting’ after your name, you’re not it, and you’re perceived by other countries as not the person in charge, and that’s a problem,” said Inhofe, who spoke with Trump by phone Tuesday. Trump did not commit to nominating Esper during that conversation, he said.

“At a time when we face critical national security and budgetary challenges, it is imperative that we have a confirmed civilian leader atop the Pentagon who is accountable to the President, Congress, and the American people,” Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) also weighed in on Esper, saying in a statement that “the Department would benefit from his leadership.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s State of Exception

The Trump administration would like everyone to know that it will shoulder no blame for the death of a 7-year-old child in the government’s care. “Does the administration take the responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get through this country? No,” said the White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, responding to questions about Jakelin Caal Maquín’s death from dehydration and shock after she was taken into custody by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents. “This family chose to cross illegally,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen argued on Fox. Also on Fox, former Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz—a reliable defender of the administration—declared that Caal Maquín’s death sent a useful message: “Don’t make this journey. It will kill you.”

Caal Maquín traveled from Guatemala with her father and crossed the southern border into New Mexico on December 6. Much remains uncertain about her death. Caal Maquín’s family has, for example, disputed the initial statement by CBP agents that she had gone without food and water in the days before entering the United States. Because of this ambiguity, it’s hard to say to what extent the Trump administration’s cruelty-first approach to immigration enforcement contributed directly to Caal Maquín’s death. But the government’s response is uniquely Trumpian in its callousness. “Please present yourselves at a port of entry,” CBP admonished immigrants—despite the fact that the agency has placed sharp limits on the daily number of asylum seekers allowed through such ports, possibly illegally, which has pushed more families seeking asylum to cross without authorization. The same policy stoked chaos last spring, when the administration engineered a humanitarian crisis by separating children from parents at the border.

What ties this together with the rhetoric around Caal Maquín’s death is not just the administration’s cruelty but also its posture toward the border—as a place where the law, as it’s commonly understood in liberal democracies, no longer quite applies. The border is not only the edge between countries, but the uncertain line between law and the absence of law. It’s a space where the importance of preserving the rule of law is paramount, yet where that system of protections and responsibility frequently fails to function on any level other than raw power. Caal Maquín was in government custody, but to listen to Nielsen and Gidley, the government had no particular obligations toward her as a person worthy of rights and respect.

The administration has gone out of its way to portray the immigration-enforcement agencies not only as lawful, but as the very foundation of the rule of law itself. In April, then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions decried an effort by immigrants to enter the country by traveling together in a caravan as a “deliberate attempt to undermine our laws,” and warned, “Promoting and enforcing the rule of law is essential to protecting a nation, its borders, and its citizens.” His successor, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, emphasized in a recent speech: “We are restoring the rule of law in this country … That means that we are restoring the rule of law to our borders and to our immigration system.” Nielsen defended CBP’s use of tear gas against a group of asylum seekers attempting to cross the border by stating that the Department of Homeland Security “will not tolerate this type of lawlessness.”

The administration has made preserving the integrity of the border its priority. And as it carries out this work—in ice’s case, by arresting those improperly within the interior of the country, and in CBP’s case, by policing the border itself—the Department of Homeland Security is on the front lines of upholding the rule of law. Speaking recently on Good Morning America, the White House aide Stephen Miller insisted that proper immigration enforcement will determine “whether or not the United States remains a sovereign country.” The stakes, in other words, are high.

Trump has tweeted about “the rule of law” exactly nine times (10 if you count retweets), as Peter Beinart has pointed out. Seven of those tweets are about immigration and the importance of enforcing the border. (“Respect for the rule of law is at our country’s core,” reads one tweet from July 2015, right after Trump first declared his candidacy for president. “We must build a wall!”) Likewise, the president tends to focus particular anger on the courts when a judge hands down an adverse ruling on a matter concerning immigration. (“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” he tweeted after one of the earliest rulings against the first, and harshest, manifestation of the travel ban.) Almost always, he emphasizes that judges who rule against his efforts to secure the border are not the arbiters, but the enemies, of the law. (“That’s not law,” he said in a recent speech railing against a court ruling barring the rollout of his administration’s restrictions on asylum.)

It’s tempting to dismiss these paeans to the law as incoherent or even hypocritical. After all, this is a president who has encouraged police to engage in brutality while arresting suspects; who pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, previously found guilty of contempt of court in a case involving his targeting of Latinos at traffic stops; and whose new policy limiting grants of asylum is arguably itself illegal. And that’s without even touching on the numerous criminal investigations into Trump’s own conduct and that of his businesses and associates.

But there is a deeper logic at work. Writing in The Atlantic, Beinart argued that Trump’s tweets linking the rule of law with immigration enforcement reflect a preoccupation with stopping what Trump sees as the corruption of racial hierarchy and the pure body politic. Chris Hayes has made a similar case about Trump’s use of law to evoke “the preservation of a certain social order.”

Caal Maquín’s death, in this view, does not raise questions of lawlessness or impunity. Quite the opposite: It maintains the strength of that hierarchy—who is inside the United States and who is out, who is worthy of concern and who is not, who is “legal” and who is not. This is an understanding of the rule of law at odds with the liberal-democratic vision of law as a restraint on power and an assurance against abuse.

Or perhaps not so at odds. The prewar German jurist Carl Schmitt—who later became notorious for his opportunistic alliance with the Nazi Party—famously argued that all systems of law, no matter how carefully regulated, cannot erase the possibility of the moment of emergency in which the leader will need to make a decision outside the bounds of what the law allows. Schmitt called this “the state of exception.” It is a vision of power attractive to someone like Trump, who seems to barely understand the Constitution as a check on his authority.

One way to understand Schmitt is that, following his reasoning, the government has the ability to decide, on a whim, who is inside the state of exception and who is out. To be outside the state of exception is to enjoy the protection the government provides and the privileges of membership in the political community. To be within the state of exception is to exist in a space that both is and is not governed by law; it is to be subject to the government’s power without any protections against the cruelest use of that power. Riffing on Schmitt, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls this “bare life.” It’s life on the margin between law and something other than law. To put it another way, it’s life on the border.

The idea of the border as a space in which law doesn’t quite apply in the same way it does elsewhere long predates the Trump administration. To pick one example among many, the Fourth Amendment’s usual requirements ebb at the boundaries of the United States, where the government may search travelers without probable cause or a warrant. But Trump’s rhetorical commitment to securing the border as a matter of extreme national importance—so dire that, if it should fail to happen, the nation itself might literally cease to exist—shifts the matter into something much closer to Schmitt’s state of exception, as a matter of existential peril.

It seems highly unlikely that anyone in the White House has actually read Schmitt. (Michael Anton, this White House’s self-styled philosopher, departed last spring.) But the jurist’s framework helps crystallize the administration’s vision of the border as existing not only at the edge of two countries but on the edge of the law—a place where the state is not subject to the same legal constraints it is elsewhere, precisely because of the importance of reestablishing the rule of law along that edge. It’s a vision of the absence of law at the heart of the law. Consider Miller’s argument that hard-line immigration enforcement is a matter of “national sovereignty”: Another way to put this is that the ability of the government to place people outside the protections of law is what makes that government the ultimate authority within its territory, which is what Miller means when he describes “sovereignty.”

None of this means anything if it doesn’t come back to the death of a child. It’s not yet clear how the CBP agents on the ground in Caal Maquín’s case handled the situation; Caal Maquín’s father has said he is grateful for their efforts to save his daughter. But from the top down, the administration’s rhetoric around her death echoes this view of the border as a state of exception. It situates Caal Maquín’s death as a regrettable error or possibly a useful deterrent, a body among many other bodies rather than a child to whom the government had some responsibility of care.

This bleak vision of the border is more consistent than it might first seem with the usual American understanding of law as a restraint on government. Schmitt’s unsettling insight, after all, was that the rule of law as commonly understood was centered on a void with the potential to swallow the legal order whole. To put it another way, democratic government will always contain within itself the potential for absolute dictatorship. This president, who has no respect for legal restraints on his power but also no interest in the sustained effort required for genuine authoritarianism, hasn’t bothered to strip away the core protections of citizenship. Instead, he has targeted those who were already weakest, balanced at the edges of the law’s protection.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump Administration to Hold Migrant Children at Base That Served as WWII Japanese Internment Camp

The Trump Administration has opted to use an Army base in Oklahoma to hold growing numbers of immigrant children in its custody after running out of room at government shelters.

Fort Sill, an 150-year-old installation once used as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, has been selected to detain 1,400 children until they can be given to an adult relative, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency said Fort Sill will be used “as a temporary emergency influx shelter” to help ease the burden on the government as it prepares to house a record number of minors even though it already operates about 168 facilities and programs in 23 states.

Health and Human Services said in a statement that it has taken about 40,900 children into custody through April 30. That’s a 57% increase from last year, which is a rate on-pace to surpass the record figures in 2016, when 59,171 minors were taken into custody. The agency had assessed two other military bases before selecting Fort Sill.

The children would be held inside facilities that are separate from the general on-base population. HHS personnel, not American troops, will oversee them.

Using military bases in this way is not new. In 2014, the Obama Administration placed around 7,700 migrant children on bases in Texas, California and Oklahoma, including Fort Sill. The temporary shelters were shuttered after four months. Last year, the government evaluated several military bases to shelter migrants, but ultimately decided not to use the facilities.

However, it appears unavoidable this year. Apprehensions of children at the border are already nearing record numbers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection released data last week that showed the figures had skyrocketed to 56,278 at the end of May, a 74% increase over last year. The influx of migrants, mainly from Central America, is straining an already exhausted system, U.S. officials say. Several children have died while in U.S. custody since last year.

Fort Sill, located southwest of Oklahoma City, was one of several internment camps where Japanese-Americans were held during World War II. Between 1942 and 1946, the U.S. government forcibly removed an estimated 120,000 men, women and children from their homes and incarcerated them across the country. Fort Sill was later used to hold German prisoners of war.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

House panel to question former Trump aide about hush-money payments to women alleging affairs

House Democrats on Wednesday will question one of President Trump’s most trusted former advisers about potential obstruction of justice, Russian attempts to woo Trump associates during the 2016 campaign and hush-money payments to women alleging affairs with Trump.

Hope Hicks, the onetime White House communications director who is mentioned more than 180 times in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, is scheduled to testify privately before the House Judiciary Committee, which plans to release a transcript upon conclusion.

The session constitutes a breakthrough for Democrats, their first interview with a former White House official since Trump has asserted executive privilege to bar current and former aides’ cooperation.

A White House lawyer will be present to keep Hicks from answering questions they say should be kept secret under the broad claims of executive privilege. The committee fully expects Hicks to decline to answer questions about her time at the White House, speaking only about the campaign.

But that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t try to unearth information that could shed light on Trump’s mind-set during several instances of potential obstruction outlined in Mueller’s report. Due to her past status in Trump’s orbit, Hicks was privy to and witnessed Trump’s unguarded impulses during several of those key episodes.

Indeed, Democrats have already laid out topics they hope to probe, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey and his feelings toward former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to law enforcement about his contacts with a Russian diplomat. They plan to ask her about Trump’s attitude toward former attorney general Jeff Sessions, as well as what she knew about the campaign-time hush-money payments, according to a committee official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the plans.

The session could set the stage for the panel to replicate the forum as they try to break new ground investigating the president. Committee Democrats are expanding their document and witness-testimony requests to other Trump officials identified in the Mueller report, including Rick A. Dearborn, former White House deputy chief of staff, and Jody Hunt, Sessions’s chief of staff.

Some of the lawmakers on the panel have also mentioned a desire to speak with former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who could also unpack parts of the Mueller report.

Hicks, however, is of key interest to Democrats because of her closeness to the president. She worked for Trump before he declared his bid for office, served as press secretary on the Trump campaign and then served as White House communications director.

While the 30-year-old largely stayed out of the limelight during her White House stint, administration insiders have long said that Hicks had Trump’s ear in a way many others never could. In fact, a Russian Embassy official reached out to Hicks at 3 a.m. after the election was called to try to connect Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and the president-elect.

“Can you look into this? Don’t want to get duped but don’t want to blow off Putin!” Hicks wrote at the time to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unsure of the authenticity of the phone call and a follow-up email.

Hicks was also involved in responding to news articles about some of the most closely guarded secrets in Trump World, including hush-money payments that Democrats and federal prosecutors say constituted campaign finance violations.

Three days before the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal reported that the National Enquirer had agreed to pay $150,000 to model Karen McDougal, who said she’d had an affair with Trump a decade earlier, but never ran a story. Asked about the payment at the time, Hicks told the Journal: “We have no knowledge of any of this,” adding that McDougal’s claim of an affair was “totally untrue.”

In fact, Trump attorney Michael Cohen and David Pecker, chief executive of the magazine’s parent company, American Media Inc., had acknowledged that Pecker agreed to pay McDougal as a way of securing her silence before the election. Cohen — who pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation in connection with the episode last year — said the deal was arranged at Trump’s direction.

Democrats are likely to ask Hicks who she spoke to before issuing the denial of the Journal’s reporting and whether Trump was involved in the release of false information. They could also inquire about any contacts she had directly with Pecker. The Journal has reported that Hicks called Pecker to discuss the story before giving her statement to the Journal.

In March, Trump appeared to acknowledge the hush-money payments while insisting he had not violated campaign finance laws.

During the campaign, the presidential transition and her time in the White House, Hicks repeatedly played down Russian contacts with campaign officials, following Trump’s lead. Hicks told Mueller’s investigators that Trump saw the intelligence community’s assessment that Russians interfered in the election as his “Achilles’ heel” because he worried voters would think Russia helped him win, undercutting his victory.

Two days after the 2016 election, when a Russian official told the media that their government had been in touch with the Trump campaign before the election, Hicks as campaign spokeswoman said that was false: “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign,” she said at the time.

When Trump campaign official Carter Page started to come under scrutiny for his contacts with Russia and pro-Russian foreign policy views in the summer of 2016, Hicks instructed others in the campaign — including Kellyanne Conway and Stephen K. Bannon — to downplay Page’s role with the team and tell reporters they had “no knowledge of activities past or president,” the report said.

Page was let go from the campaign in September 2016.

Democrats will also ask Hicks about the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting when Trump officials — including Donald Trump Jr. — met with a Russian lawyer after they were promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. Rick Gates, deputy campaign manager, told investigators that Hicks was one of several people in attendance at a campaign meeting before the huddle, in which Trump Jr. told the others that he had a lead on negative information on the Clinton Foundation.

Hicks denied to prosecutors that she had known anything about the meeting with the Russian lawyer before 2017.

Hicks did, however, tell investigators intricate details of her role in crafting a false statement about the Trump Tower meeting as media prepared to report about the session in July 2017. Mueller’s prosecutors wrote that it was not clear that the false statement was intended to mislead investigators and obstruct their work; it is not illegal to lie to the public.

According to an account she gave prosecutors, Hicks pushed the president to be fully transparent about the meeting, saying the emails looked “really bad” and predicting they would create a “massive” story unless the Trump campaign got out ahead of it.

But Trump directed Hicks at least three times between late June and mid-July 2017 to not disclose the truth, the report found. “Leave it alone,” Trump told her. Or “we’re done.”

On July 8, 2017, aboard Air Force One, she put together a statement at Trump’s direction to be released by Donald Trump Jr. to the New York Times that omitted any reference to dirt on Clinton and instead said that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children.

Just remember, lying to Congress is a crime.

#Resist

[Lois]

So Trump has declared his re-election campaign.

Do we really want 4 more years of corruption?

I say NO!

[joan1984]

What is the specific ongoing corruption which concerns you so?

I presume actual 'corruption' is addressed when found, so what is it that is as yet unaddressed by the Administration that is known, is public, is current?

How does it affect the economy over the next 2, then 6 years?

Please be specific, and how would you like it addressed now?

So Trump has declared his re-election campaign.

Do we really want 4 more years of corruption?

I say NO!

[Jed_]

My coworker told me the other day about getting a TV from her conservative dad in Texas.  It seems the Fox News logo was actually burned into the pixels at lower corner of the screen.  It apparently was all he watched.

You got a TV like that joan?  Because it’s the only explanation for your last post asking about incidents of corruption.

[Athos_131]

All you need to know is there is a thread on a 400+ page report that Yellow Wall has been terrified to respond in regards to Dolt 45.

http://www.kristensboard.com/forums/index.php?topic=65332.msg542459#msg542459

#Resist

[Lois]

The latest corruption concerns, once again, not bothering to vet nominees to high level positions.  Instead, Trump relies on his own corrupt metrics that are not known as "Best Practices."

The resignation of Donald Trump's acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, is the latest example of the problem.

And there is a disturbing trend with regards to domestic violence-related disqualifications.  One might think Trump cares little for such offenses.

[Athos_131]

The latest corruption concerns, once again, not bothering to vet nominees to high level positions.  Instead, Trump relies on his own corrupt metrics that are not known as "Best Practices."

The resignation of Donald Trump's acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, is the latest example of the problem.

And there is a disturbing trend with regards to domestic violence-related disqualifications.  One might think Trump cares little for such offenses.

Trump Team’s Conflicts and Scandals: An Interactive Guide

Cue the "Leftist Media" or "FAEK NUWZ!!!" excuse by the Yellow Wall.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

U.N. investigator calls for probing Saudi officials in Khashoggi killing

Suspicions over the role of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince in the coldblooded murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi returned to the spotlight Wednesday, as a special U.N. investigator called for a criminal investigation of high-level Saudi officials.

Agnes Callamard, a human rights expert who is a special rapporteur for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, released a 101-page report on her months-long inquiry into Khashoggi’s death last year at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Callamard faulted the United States and other countries for not exerting more pressure on Saudi Arabia despite “credible evidence” that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was likely involved in some way. She called for sanctioning and freezing the prince’s assets until he is either cleared or implicated by a U.N. investigation.

Her report yanked the attention back on the crown prince and senior Saudi officials, ending weeks of respite from international censure as Khashoggi’s killing faded from conversations with allies and investors. Instead the focus had turned to Iran, with Riyadh positioned as a valued key to countering Tehran.

Saudi officials brushed off the report as “nothing new,” but it was a vivid reminder of what can happen to journalists and activists who cross the ruling family.

The report provides new, grisly details of Khashoggi’s death that Callamard gleaned from listening to audio provided by Turkish authorities. The audio captured Saudi agents discussing the dismemberment of Khashoggi’s body before he arrived at the consulate, as well as his killing, the report said. 

Callamard said the culpability for Khashoggi’s killing extends beyond the 11 Saudis who are on trial in a closed-door judicial proceeding in Saudi Arabia. She called it an extrajudicial killing, and she said Saudi authorities had participated in the destruction of evidence.

Although Callamard said she found no “smoking gun” incriminating the crown prince himself, she said he had played an essential role in repressing dissidents and almost certainly knew that a criminal mission targeting Khashoggi was being planned.

“Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances,” she wrote. “While the Saudi government claims that these resources were put in place by Ahmed Asiri, every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the Crown Prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”

Asiri, Saudi Arabia’s former deputy head of intelligence, is one of two senior Saudi officials implicated by the kingdom’s prosecutors in the killing, and the only senior official on trial.

Callamard’s account of Khashoggi’s death is the most definitive to date, even though her inquiry was hampered by Saudi Arabia’s refusal to allow her to visit the kingdom to conduct interviews.

[Read the U.N. report on the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi]

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump have deplored the killing of Khashoggi, who was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post in the year before his death. But they have said the relationship with Saudi Arabia is too important to be sidetracked by a single incident.

Pompeo recently said the United States, invoking emergency powers because of the rising tensions with Iran, will sell weapons worth $8 billion to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s minister of state for foreign affairs, dismissed Callamard’s report and its recommendations in a series of messages on Twitter on Wednesday. He said the report included “contradictions and unfounded allegations.” He also rejected the report’s calls for a U.N.-assisted criminal inquiry into the killing, saying that the “judicial authorities in the kingdom are the only ones competent to hear this case.”

But human rights groups echoed her call for an international investigation.

“Callamard’s report underscores that there will be no justice for Jamal Khashoggi unless Congress steps up,” said Rob Berschinski, vice president for policy for Human Rights First. “Saudi leaders have made it clear that they intend to get away with murder. President Trump has made it clear that he values arms sales over the killing and dismemberment of a U.S. resident. Congress must make it clear that it will not let this stand.”

In a telephone interview from Geneva, Callamard characterized the U.S. responses ambiguous and conflicted.

“At the highest level of the U.S. government, there has not been a determination to hold to account the state of Saudi Arabia,” she said. She called U.S. sanctions against 17 suspects, most of them low- to mid-level officials, insufficient.

Callamard offered a macabre account of Khashoggi’s final moments, drawn from audio recordings that captured events inside the consulate in the days before Khashoggi visited and on the day of his killing. She said she was permitted to listen to 45 minutes of conversation — a small fraction of the seven hours of audio captured by Turkish intelligence.

Some of the audio was hard to make out. “For instance, on the basis of recordings, the Special Rapporteur could not reach firm conclusions about what [she and her investigators] were told was the sound of a ‘saw’ in operation. The Turkish authorities undoubtedly have more information and intelligence about events in the Saudi Consulate than they were willing or able to share with the inquiry,” the report said. 

According to the report, 13 minutes before Khashoggi entered the consulate on Oct. 2, two of the Saudi agents, Maher Mutreb and Salah Tubaigy, a forensic expert, discussed dismembering the body.

“Joints will be separated,” Tubaigy told Mutreb. “First time I cut on the ground. If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished.” Khashoggi’s name was not mentioned, but rather he was referred to as the “sacrificial animal” by Mutreb.

The report also said that Tubaigy “expressed concerns” about what was about to transpire, telling Mutreb: “My direct manager is not aware of what I am doing. There is no one to protect me.”

The audio tape suggests they attempted to make Khashoggi believe he would be kidnapped, not killed, and repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

After Khashoggi arrived at the Saudi Consulate, he was invited to the consul general’s office and asked whether he would return to Saudi Arabia.

“He responded that he wanted to return in the future,” the report states.

But the Saudi agents, using the pretext of an Interpol warrant, said they were there to bring him back to the kingdom.

More conversation followed, the report said. Khashoggi insisted that people were waiting for him outside, as one of the agents tried to persuade him to send a message to his son. “What should I say?” Khashoggi asked. “See you soon? I can’t say kidnapping.”

“Type it Mr. Jamal,” one of the agents replied. “Hurry up. Help us so that we can help you because at the end we will take you back to Saudi Arabia and if you don’t help us you know what will happen at the end.”

Then, in the recordings, “sounds of a struggle can be heard,” the report said.

In her report, Callamard painted a poignant picture of Khashoggi, as if trying to bring him alive through his struggles and successes.

An important but traditionalist journalist in Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi “was not seen by dissidents to be naturally ‘one of them,’ ” Callamard wrote. Increasingly isolated by his views, he went into self-exile. Living in the Washington area, he had little income, little security and little status, making him lonely and unhappy, Callamard wrote. His decision to remarry suggested he was preparing to live a fuller, more settled life, she said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Federal judge says census citizenship question merits more consideration in light of new evidence

A federal district judge in Maryland on Wednesday ruled that new evidence in the case of a census citizenship question merits additional consideration, opening the possibility that legal wrangling over the question could continue even after a Supreme Court ruling on it that is expected this month.

Civil rights groups who had sued the government over its addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census had asked U.S. District Court Judge George J. Hazel to reconsider his ruling on whether the government was guilty of conspiracy and intent to discriminate after new evidence in the case emerged last month. Files discovered on hard drives of a deceased Republican redistricting strategist suggested he had communicated with the Trump administration about how to get the citizenship question onto the survey and that the strategist had determined that adding the question would create an electoral advantage for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. In his ruling Tuesday Hazel wrote that the plaintiffs’ motion “raises a substantial issue” in the case.

Hazel had ruled in April against the question, joining two other federal judges in finding that the government had violated administrative law when it added it last year. But in that decision he did not find enough evidence to support plaintiffs’ claims that the government intended to discriminate against immigrants, Latinos and Asian Americans by adding the question, or that adding it was part of a conspiracy within the Trump administration to violate the constitutional rights of non-citizens and people of color.

The case is technically closed in Hazel’s court. It now resides with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which can either return the case to Hazel or decide to rule regardless of his recommendation. Hazel’s ruling means plaintiffs’ lawyers can now request that the appeals court return the case to him.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of this month on whether to uphold the three lower courts’ rulings. But the Maryland plaintiffs had also claimed the administration intended to cause an undercount of minorities in violation of the equal-protection clause of the Fifth Amendment and that it conspired to deprive racial minorities of their constitutional rights. If Hazel or the appellate court decides this was the case, their ruling would bring the question into areas the high court is not currently considering, and could provide a path for the question to come before the Supreme Court once again, opening the possibility that litigation could stretch into the fall.

At a hearing in Greenbelt, Md. on Tuesday, plaintiffs’ lawyers argued the new evidence was enough to prove a clear connection between the strategist, Thomas Hofeller, and Trump administration officials who pushed for the question to be added. Department of Justice lawyers at the hearing sought to discredit the new evidence, calling into question its relevance and its authenticity.

“There’s no evidence that (a 2015 study by Hofeller on the effects of adding a citizenship question) was ever shared with anyone inside or outside the federal government," said Department of Justice attorney Josh Gardner.

Gardner also said the plaintiffs had failed to authenticate the Hofeller files, adding that a declaration from a computer forensic expert “cannot establish the authenticity of the hard drives or who the authors were,” and added that "all it shows is they were found in his house.”

Hazel could have reversed his earlier decision; his ruling Wednesday does not definitively indicate how he would rule if the case is returned to him. But plaintiffs’ lawyers hailed it as a win.

“This is a significant move by the district court that gives credence to what we all know, that the government conspired to discriminate against Latinos and immigrants of color when it added a citizenship question to the 2020 census,” said Andrea Senteno, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a plaintiff in the case.

Requests for comment from the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce were not immediately returned.

Opponents of the question say it will suppress participation by Latinos and immigrants, leading to an inaccurate count. Census data is used to determine hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding, as well as Congressional apportionment and redistricting.

The Supreme Court had expedited consideration of the question in order to enable census forms to be sent to the printer in July, and is expected to announce a decision before its term ends next week. In argument in April, the conservative majority appeared inclined to defer to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s authority in adding questions to the census form, including the one on citizenship.

But after the new evidence emerged, civil rights groups in the New York case asked the high court to delay its ruling, saying if it was not prepared to affirm the lower court rulings, it should send the issue back to a lower court to consider the new evidence.

If Hazel were to regain jurisdiction over the case and reverse his decision on conspiracy and intent to discriminate, that could provide a path for litigants to return the case to the Supreme Court when it reconvenes in the fall.

“Today’s news opens up the possibility that there could be additional viable legal challenges to the citizenship question beyond what the Supreme Court now has in front of it," said Thomas Wolf, counsel with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

The Justice Department has denied that Hofeller influenced the administration’s decision to add the question, and characterized the new claims as a “frivolous” last-ditch effort to derail the Supreme Court’s decision.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers also suggested in court Tuesday that the July deadline for printing the forms may not be fixed, noting that the census bureau’s chief scientist has said forms could be printed as late as October of this year.

Hazel is expected to issue an opinion with more details. In the meantime, Shankar Duraiswamy, an attorney with Covington and Burling who is representing some of the Maryland plaintiffs, said Hazel’s willingness to reconsider his prior decision “underscores just how significant the Hofeller documents are...these documents make it crystal clear that by adding this question, the Trump administration intended to deprive Latinos and immigrants of political representation.”

Judge Jesse Furman, who ruled against the question in New York, said at a hearing earlier this month that the new evidence was serious, but declined to act upon it until more formal proceedings can take place later this summer.

As lawyers continue to sift through Hofeller’s files, more material has come to light. Last week documents emerged showing he was in direct contact with top census official Christa Jones as early as 2015 about adding a citizenship question, and lawyers say his business partner evaded a subpoena for computers he took from Hofeller’s house upon his death.

The administration this month invoked executive privilege to withhold documents related to the question sought by the Democrat-led House oversight committee. Committee chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md) on Tuesday sent a letter to Jones, requesting an interview. Lawyers have also sought computers removed from Hofeller’s house by his business partner, but said the partner had evaded their subpoena.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

TRUMP HOTEL PRICES SKYROCKET AROUND 4TH OF JULY

By any measure, the cost to stay at Trump International Hotel around the 4th of July is extraordinary. The hotel, which almost never sells out, is sold out on the 3rd and 4th of July. On the 5th, the prices are double the average for the cheapest room available in comparable luxury hotels. The rate on the 5th is also more than double the average for comparable Fridays at the Trump Hotel.

While the cost is extraordinary, it is not a complete mystery–President Trump plans to hijack and politicize the Washington D.C. 4th of July celebration this year, and his namesake hotel is just blocks away from the National Mall, where the festivities will take place. It’s likely that his supporters and political allies plan to descend on his hotel around the holiday, which would come as no surprise, given that no modern president has so blatantly profited from his political position before, or centered the 4th of July celebration so squarely around himself.

The Trump Hotel is known to be more expensive, and more vacant than other comparable DC hotels, but it has also been one of the only bright spots in Trump’s financial portfolio. In 2018, he made more than $40 million from his DC hotel alone, which is known to be a social center for the president’s supporters and popular destination for those looking to curry favor with the president.

This July 4th presents a unique opportunity for the President to both promote himself politically, and to increase his bottom line. He has not been restrained about using his platform to make the holiday about him, and tweeted on February 24th that he would be making an address at the Lincoln Memorial. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the Trump administration “ordered major changes in the traditional Fourth of July celebration that draws hundreds of thousands of people to the National Mall each year,” noting that Trump’s decision to personally take a “starring role” is one that “no other president has in modern times.”

Based on the unusually high price on the 5th, and the fact that the hotel is sold out for the night before and the night of the event, it appears that he also stands to profit massively by driving tourism to the area around his DC hotel.

The Trump Hotel was already sold out for the 3rd and 4th of July by June 14th. On that date, the price for a one night stay on the 5th was going for $1,166, compared to the hotel’s typical nightly cost of around $477. That makes the nightly cost for the 5th nearly two and a half times as much as the hotel’s standard going rate. By June 18th, the cost of a one night stay on the night of the 5th had declined to $757 per night, compared to an average rate of $408.

The high price of a room cannot be explained by the day of the week. As of June 18th, stays on the surrounding Friday nights went for $357, on June 28th, and $370 on July 12th. That means on average a room on July 5th costs at least double what it would be on other comparable weekends.

As of June 18th, other DC luxury hotels near the White House had not experienced the same surge in price around the holiday. The Willard was not sold out on the 3rd or 4th and on the 5th, a room was $168, while their average rate was $252. The Ritz Carlton in Georgetown was not sold out on the 3rd or the 4th and on the 5th, a room was $369, significantly below their average rate of $526. The Hay Adams was sold out on the 4th, but the price on the 5th was only $469, $100 more than their average rate, but still far below the cost of a room at Trump Hotel that night. The Four Seasons was $615 on the 5th, but it was not sold out on the 3rd or 4th, and that was comparable with their typical rate ($585).

The cost to stay at the President’s hotel around the 4th of July cannot be explained by normal market logic. This surge may be the result of the president’s blatant self promotion on a federal holiday, as his supporters may be acting on what has become obvious over the past two years: the way to celebrate with the president is to patronize his properties. Now, apparently the President’s preferred way to celebrate America includes lining his own pockets as well.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Deutsche Bank Faces Criminal Investigation for Potential Money-Laundering Lapses

Federal authorities are investigating whether Deutsche Bank complied with laws meant to stop money laundering and other crimes, the latest government examination of potential misconduct at one of the world’s largest and most troubled banks, according to seven people familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation includes a review of Deutsche Bank’s handling of so-called suspicious activity reports that its employees prepared about possibly problematic transactions, including some linked to President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, according to people close to the bank and others familiar with the matter.

The criminal investigation into Deutsche Bank is one element of several separate but overlapping government examinations into how illicit funds flow through the American financial system, said five of the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the inquiries. Several other banks are also being investigated.

The F.B.I. recently contacted the lawyer for a Deutsche Bank whistle-blower, Tammy McFadden, who publicly criticized the company’s anti-money-laundering systems, according to the lawyer, Brian McCafferty.

Ms. McFadden, a former anti-money-laundering compliance officer at the bank, told The New York Times last month that she had flagged transactions involving Mr. Kushner’s family company in 2016, but that bank managers decided not to file the suspicious activity report she prepared. Some of her colleagues had similar experiences in 2017 involving transactions in the accounts of Mr. Trump’s legal entities, although it was not clear whether the F.B.I. was examining the bank’s handling of those transactions.

The same federal agent who contacted Ms. McFadden’s lawyer also participated in interviews of the son of a deceased Deutsche Bank executive, William S. Broeksmit. Agents told the son, Val Broeksmit, that the Deutsche Bank investigation began with an inquiry into the bank’s work for Russian money launderers and had expanded to cover a broader array of potential misconduct at the bank and at other financial institutions. One element is the banks’ possible roles in a vast money-laundering scandal at the Danish lender Danske Bank, according to people briefed on the investigation.

The broader scope of the investigations and many details of precisely what is under scrutiny are unclear, and it is not known whether the inquiries will result in criminal charges. In addition to the F.B.I., the Justice Department’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section in Washington and the United States attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn are conducting the investigations. Representatives for the agencies declined to comment.

Deutsche Bank has said that it is cooperating with government investigations and that it has been taking steps to improve its anti-money-laundering systems.

Even so, the governmental scrutiny — from regulators, members of Congress and now the Justice Department and F.B.I. — has been a drag on the bank’s stock price, which is hovering near historic lows because of investors’ doubts about its future.

The congressional investigations are focused on Deutsche Bank’s close relationship with Mr. Trump and his family. Over the past two decades, it was the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump, who had a history of defaulting on loans. The bank lent him a total of more than $2 billion, about $350 million of which was outstanding when he was sworn in as president.

Two House committees have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records related to Mr. Trump and his family, including records connected to the bank’s handling of potentially suspicious transactions. The president has sued to block Deutsche Bank and Capital One, where he also holds money, from complying with the subpoenas. A federal judge rejected Mr. Trump’s request for an injunction, and the president has appealed that ruling.

The Justice Department has been investigating Deutsche Bank since 2015, when agents were examining its role in laundering billions of dollars for wealthy Russians through a scheme known as mirror trading. Customers would use the bank to convert Russian rubles into dollars and euros via a complicated series of stock trades in Europe and the United States.

In early 2017, federal and state regulators in the United States and British authorities imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties on Deutsche Bank for that misconduct, but prosecutors never brought a criminal case against the bank. That led some senior Deutsche Bank executives to believe they were in the clear, according to people familiar with their thinking.

By last fall, though, federal agents were investigating a wider range of anti-money-laundering lapses and other possible misconduct at the bank.

F.B.I. agents met this year with Val Broeksmit, whose father was a senior Deutsche Bank executive who committed suicide in January 2014. Mr. Broeksmit said he had provided the agents with internal bank documents and other materials that he had retrieved from his father’s personal email accounts.

Until his death, William Broeksmit sat on the oversight board of a large Deutsche Bank subsidiary in the United States, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, which regulators have criticized for having weak anti-money-laundering systems.

Many of the bank’s anti-money-laundering operations are based in Jacksonville, Fla., where Ms. McFadden was one of hundreds of employees vetting transactions that computer systems flagged as potentially suspicious.

Ms. McFadden told The Times that she had warned in summer 2016 about transactions by the Kushner Companies involving money being sent to Russian individuals. Other Deutsche Bank employees prepared reports in 2017 flagging transactions involving legal entities associated with Mr. Trump, including his now-defunct charitable foundation, according to current and former bank employees. In both instances, the suspicious activity reports were never filed with the Treasury Department.

Deutsche Bank officials have said that the reports were handled appropriately and that it is not uncommon for managers to overrule employees and opt not to file suspicious activity reports with the government.

There is no indication that Kushner Companies is under investigation. The company said any allegations regarding its relationship with Deutsche Bank that involved money laundering were false. A Trump Organization spokeswoman said that she had no knowledge of any Deutsche Bank transactions being flagged.

The federal Bank Secrecy Act requires financial institutions to alert the government if they suspect that transactions involve criminal proceeds or are being used for illegal purposes. Banks can face civil or criminal penalties for failing to file reports about transactions that are found to be illegal. In recent years, banks like JPMorgan Chase and HSBC have incurred such penalties.

Banks argue that when they err on the side of reporting potential problems, they end up flooding the government with false leads.

Former Deutsche Bank employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Times that the company had pushed them to rush their reviews of transactions and that managers sometimes created obstacles that discouraged them from filing suspicious activity reports.

Deutsche Bank has scrambled to toughen its anti-money-laundering procedures.

To address complaints about inadequate staffing, it brought in contractors to supplement its Jacksonville work force, although some employees said that the contractors were inexperienced and lacked the appropriate training.

Deutsche Bank also recently sent letters to hundreds of companies, warning that they could be cut off from the bank’s services if they did not swiftly provide up-to-date information about the sources of their money and the names of their business partners, according to bank employees who saw the letters. Deutsche Bank officials said the letters, first reported by the Financial Times, were part of their efforts to comply with “know your customer” rules, a crucial component of any bank’s anti-money-laundering efforts.

In Jacksonville, Deutsche Bank’s anti-financial-crime staff works in a white, three-story building surrounded by palm trees. The F.B.I. has a field office just down the road, clearly visible from the bank’s campus.

Bank employees recently have taken to joking that when the F.B.I. raids their offices, they will be able to see the agents coming.

It's almost like these people knew they were backing criminals, and when the ring leader ran for office they didn't think people would look into all the shady shit going on.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Feds Tell 9th Circuit: Detained Kids ‘Safe and Sanitary’ Without Soap

The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.

All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.

“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?'” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher also questioned the government’s interpretation of the settlement agreement.

“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”

The settlement at issue came out of Jenny Lisette Flores v. Edwin Meese, filed in 1985 on behalf of a class of unaccompanied minors fleeing torture and abuse in Central America.

Finally agreed upon in 1997, the settlement established guidelines for the humane detention, treatment and release of minors taken into federal immigration custody. The guidelines include the right to a bond hearing and requirements that immigration authorities timely release children to parents or guardians and place those not released in facilities that meet certain standards. The facilities are supposed to be “safe and sanitary.”

The settlement landed back in court in 2015, when class members moved to enforce it following the Obama administration’s announcement that it would scrap bond hearings because they conflicted with newer immigration laws. In legal filings, the class contended the elimination of bond hearings and dirty and dangerous conditions at short-term holding facilities operated by the Border Patrol violated the agreement.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles granted the class’ motion and ordered the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure government compliance with Flores.

Gee said the administration had breached Flores by failing to provide detainees with adequate food and clean drinking water, or with hygiene items like soap, toothbrushes and towels. She also concluded that the children were being deprived of sleep and access to bathrooms, and were subjected to near-freezing temperatures.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed much of Gee’s ruling in July 2017, finding that detainees were still entitled to bond hearings.

On Tuesday, Fabian asked the Ninth Circuit to reverse Gee’s findings because they added new requirements – such as giving detainees soap and toothbrushes – that were not specifically included in Flores.

“One has to assume it was left that way and not enumerated by the parties because either the parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine,” Fabian said.

“Or it was relatively obvious,” Fletcher shot back. “And at least obvious enough so that if you’re putting people into a crowded room to sleep on a concrete floor with an aluminum-foil blanket on top of them that it doesn’t comply with the agreement.”

“It wasn’t perfumed soap, it was soap. That’s part of ‘safe and sanitary.’ Are you disagreeing with that?” he added.

Class counsel Peter Schey said that, although Gee had listed specific items such as toothbrushes in her order, which were not listed in the settlement, settlement compliance must be analyzed in terms of California contract law, under which the general terms in an agreement must be “reasonably interpreted.”

“The first thing you do is honor the plain meaning” of words like “safe” and “sanitary,” Schey said.

“Today we have a situation where once a month a child is dying in [federal] custody,” he added. “Certainly the Border Patrol facilities are secure, but they’re not safe and they’re not sanitary.”

On rebuttal, Fabian said the administration plans to file a motion for reconsideration with Gee upon a favorable ruling from the panel, eliciting a portentous reply from Berzon.

“Have you considered whether you might go back and consider whether you really want to continue this appeal?” Berzon said.

“There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot left of it, considering that life has so moved on now,”  she added, and noted that a government regulation codifying and extinguishing Flores is in the works.

“I just feel like we’re litigating ancient history at this point,” Berzon said.

Senior U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima was also on the panel, which did not indicate when it would rule.

President Bill Clinton appointed all three panelists.

#Resist

[Jed_]

Democrats and some Republicans question Trump’s vetting process after Shanahan withdrawal

Senators from both parties are asking why they did not have advance notice of the domestic violence incidents in Patrick Shanahan’s family that ended his bid to become President Trump’s permanent defense secretary, calling his nomination’s collapse the latest example of shoddy White House vetting.

“Look what happens when you don’t vet,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday. “This Shanahan fiasco shows . . . what a mess the administration’s national security and foreign policy is.”

With his withdrawal and resignation, Shanahan joins several other former candidates for prominent Cabinet and military leadership positions in the Trump administration who bowed out after compromising details came to light. That list includes Trump’s first picks to lead the Army and Navy, and previous nominees to head the departments of Labor and Veterans Affairs.

Most Democrats and Republicans said they were caught completely off guard by news of Shanahan’s withdrawal, which came amid reports that he was involved years ago in an altercation with his now former wife and then, following their divorce, rushed to defend their teenage son after he attacked his mother with a baseball bat. Shanahan denied his ex-wife’s claim that he himself struck her.

There was particular consternation among some senators that Congress was not apprised of the incidents by the administration, the FBI or Shanahan himself. As some lawmakers noted, a background check would have accompanied Shanahan’s nomination in 2017 to become the deputy defense secretary, a post he held until the departure of Trump’s first Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis, in December.

“I don’t understand it,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “These names, once they are out there, before they get made public, there has been a level of vetting that has gone on — so it does cause you to wonder.”

But while Democrats are calling for a reckoning over the administration’s vetting practices, it is clear that Republican leaders would prefer to simply move on.

“We need to do a better job. If they had the information they should share it,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a close ally of the president’s, said of the allegations surrounding Shanahan.

Graham quickly added: “That’s over. I appreciate his service, but it’s now time to find somebody else.”

Democrats have called for deeper investigation. Standing beside Schumer on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wondered whether Shanahan’s past “was deliberately concealed or mistakenly covered up.”

“I think there ought to be an investigation by the [inspector general] in the Department of Defense,” he said, contemplating whether Shanahan may have violated the law by failing to disclose to Congress the incidents that were documented in his divorce records.

President Trump has defended his administration’s procedures, telling reporters Tuesday that “we have a very good vetting process.”

Some Republican senators, such as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), also have defended the process, dismissing concerns about the omissions on Shanahan’s record.

“There’s so much you can do in a vetting process, and I think, as a general rule, on anything except the No. 1 position, they only go back historically ten years,” Inhofe said. “So I think the vetting process, the process is probably all right.”

Shanahan’s son’s assault on Shanahan’s ex-wife occurred in 2011 — eight years ago. Despite Republican leaders’ stance, some expressed surprise that Shanahan even sought the job, knowing that such an episode was part of his record.

“Frankly, I’m a little surprised he hung in there as long as he did or that he was interested,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Armed Services panel. “Seeking a position like that, that there was no way that the scrutiny wasn’t going to get to those issues.”

But others dismissed conjecture that the allegations reflect poorly on Shanahan.

“I don’t think that he was the instigator in any of these instances. It sounds like there was somebody else,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). “I believe he handled it appropriately. Whether that should have come up sooner, I don’t know, because we only know what we know now.”

Several Democrats pointed to a long line of episodes in which Trump’s nominees have withdrawn from consideration for Cabinet posts, assistant secretaryships and federal judgeships after compromising personal or professional details emerged. Notable examples include Mark Green, who withdrew from consideration to become Army secretary in 2017 over his past comments about Islam, evolution and LGBT issues; and Philip Bilden, Trump’s pick for Navy secretary in the same year, who withdrew over financial concerns. Last year, Ronny L. Jackson withdrew from consideration to become VA secretary over allegations of professional misconduct, while two nominees — Andrew Puzder for labor secretary and Heather Nauert for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — withdrew their bids over legal-documentation issues related to immigrant household employees since Trump took office.

“There ought to be a complete investigation of that whole process,” Blumenthal said, noting that lawmakers were concerned about the White House but also needed to have faith that the FBI vetting process was “not only credible but also effective and penetrating.”

Senators also have to be sure “that the FBI has no fear about asking for information that may reflect badly on a potential nominee,” Blumenthal said. “They can’t be intimidated from finding bad news.”

Shanahan’s withdrawal means that Mark Esper, the current Army secretary, takes over as acting defense secretary, and both Democrats and Republicans said Tuesday they hope he will become Trump’s nominee.

“When you have the word ‘acting’ after your name, you’re not it, and you’re perceived by other countries as not the person in charge, and that’s a problem,” said Inhofe, who spoke with Trump by phone Tuesday. Trump did not commit to nominating Esper during that conversation, he said.

“At a time when we face critical national security and budgetary challenges, it is imperative that we have a confirmed civilian leader atop the Pentagon who is accountable to the President, Congress, and the American people,” Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) also weighed in on Esper, saying in a statement that “the Department would benefit from his leadership.”

#Resist

[Jed_]

Well, this just in:  Trump has declaired himself to be "Winning everywhere" over a year before the next Election, despite the lowest entry polls, and approval ratings in American History.

"FAKE NEWS!"

Oh yeah, this is what "Winning" looks like.  So much "Winning" we're sick of it.  Maybe he's just spelling the word whining wrong?

Here's a catchphrase you might remember, from your day job:

"You're fired."

~D. Trump.

It’s not true that Trump’s internal pollsters have found he is losing in key states, not true at all.

So yep, those pollsters that never said that have been fired.

[staci]

Quoted from his meeting with Justin Trudeau this afternoon.

“I think probably Iran made a mistake,” he later continued. “I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down. Fortunately, that drone was unarmed. There was no man in it and there was no — it was just — it was over international waters, clearly over international waters, but we didn’t have a man or woman in the drone. We had nobody in the drone. It would have made a big difference, let me tell you. It would have made a big, big difference. But I have a feeling, and it may be wrong and I may be right, I’m right a lot. I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody that shouldn’t have been doing what they did. I think they made a mistake. I’m not just talking the country made a mistake. I think somebody under the command of that country made a big mistake.”


HELP

[Athos_131]

What kind of dressing do you like with your word salad?

#Resist