Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[Stavros]

T But he has said he will be tweeting responses to Comey's testimony as it happens. You can't make this shit up....we're living in a nightmare.
Edit: As Thursday is also the date of the election in the UK some of you may have other things on your mind!

We can still multi-task in the UK and anyway after Sunderland which tends to announce its vote before midnight, the real action doesn't get going until 3am. We will need something to fill he gap while politicians relentless repeat their arguments designed to prove they have won.

As for tweets, last night an adviser (not really sure what he does) in the White House, Sebastian Gorka appeard yet again on the BBC-2 Newsnight programme to dismiss tweets as irrelevant. Curiously, he tweets like a zombie himself, yet the line, echoed by KellyAnne Conway appears to be that real policy is what matters and the President's tweets are a trivial sideshow, which doesn't really explain why they keep flooding out like diarreoah. Gorka was born in the UK to Hungarians who fled the Soviet invasion in 1956 but ended, via a stint as an advisor to Viktor Orban, in Cornell and became a US citizen. He can't believe there are real people who don't accept that the current incumbent of the White House is the saviour of mankind.

[broncofan]

I learned about Gorka a few months ago. Some national security analysts I follow on Twitter call him a "fake terrorism doctor" because he believes he's an expert on Middle Eastern culture yet doesn't know Arabic, he has not published much of note in respectable outlets, but is trying to convince people that Islamic fundamentalists are the great threat to western civilization while downplaying the threat of authoritarianism. The only linchpin for his views is animus towards Muslims and his style is comically bombastic.

Conway may say that about his tweets but I'm not sure what policies Trump has to be proud of. He has not passed his disaster of a health care bill, has not passed tax reform, his executive order on Muslim travel has been repeatedly struck down as unconstitutional, he has not built his wall, and he has no foreign policy doctrine. He said he was going to be an america first isolationist and then got into a game of nuclear chicken with North Korea, bombed Syria, but is not sure to what end, other than his crocodile tears over chemical weapons.

Meanwhile, I think his tweets are extremely relevant because as he says it's how he communicates with his constituents and how he conducts diplomacy termed loosely. He insulted Sadiq Khan right after a horrific attack, has indirectly insulted both Trudeau and Merkel on his account. So he is using his twitter account to alienate, to embarrass, and to sow anger against us even among our allies.

If he tweets about Comey during his hearing, he may well incriminate himself. I cannot imagine that the counsel he has hired (apparently four different firms turned him down) would be in favor of allowing him to comment. I will be following both the UK election and a repeat of the Comey hearings later Thursday so it's an exciting day.

[Stavros]

I think the point was that Gorka did not want to respond to the President's tweets because they were so clearly distorting what Sadiq Khan actually said, and Gorka will always defend the Commandante regardless as to if he is right or wrong, just as Skittles and his brother have also joined in to insult the Mayor of London on daddy's behalf. In any case the key point is that if Gorka wants an in depth discussion of policy, he will struggle to get his boss to do it because tweets and rambling speeches to his fans are the only time he seems to talk about policy. In addition, in that BBC interview, Gorka made it clear that Human Rights is now to be dismissed as 'political correctness', some sort of left-wing gimmick that gets in the way of uncompromising action when action, not talking -or the law- is required to defeat one's enemies.

Then there is the argument being put by the Knight First Amendment Institute in which the
Institute argues that the law requires Trump make his [Twitter] account available to everyone regardless of whether they criticize him. It has said it is considering pursuing a case against the president on behalf of two users who were blocked by him.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/06/trump-...rst-amendment/

Defending Daddy
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7776721.html

[broncofan]

I think the point was that Gorka did not want to respond to the President's tweets because they were so clearly distorting what Sadiq Khan actually said,l

I gotcha.

[broncofan]

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/07/531643...ring-annotated

This is Comey's opening statement about his interactions with Trump. It confirms what Donald Trump said about Comey assuring him on three occasions that he personally was not being investigated. It also asserts that Trump asked for his loyalty, asked him to drop the Flynn investigation, and asked him to release a statement saying that he (Trump) was not being investigated. Although it demonstrates extremely improper behavior in my view, because he is using his authority to compromise the integrity of an FBI investigation and was likely fired him for not being Trump's personal pr person, it probably will not be enough for Congress to act. In fact, the Republicans will probably treat it as exculpatory in that it indicates that Trump himself was not being investigated so could not obstruct an investigation into himself.

Apparently the FBI has a policy about a "duty to correct". If they make a statement about whether there is an investigation under way, they then have a duty to correct if that changes, which is why Comey did not want to say Trump was not being investigated. This indicates he may have thought the investigation could lead to Trump and did not then want to have to make a public statement saying Trump was being investigated. We'll see if there is anything more specific we get tomorrow, but this is what we have so far. Inappropriate conduct, misunderstanding of the appropriate relationship between fbi and President even after explained to him, and an attempt to exert improper influence over an independent law enforcement agency. Not sure what I expected. It's enough for me to conclude he fired Comey for not being his puppet.

Edit: here's a decent article by CNN discussing what the legal outcome should be. You have experts on both sides of the fence, discussing whether he had "corrupt intent" when he suggested Comey should end the Flynn investigation. I agree with the last expert, Vladeck, who said that while that may be a more difficult question, Trump's firing of Comey is more unambiguous. Comey was fired for not acceding to a series of requests about an investigation that touched Trump personally.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/politi...ony/index.html

[broncofan]

In summary I think Trump committed obstruction, both in his request about Flynn and in his firing of Comey. I also am not sure whether I'm reading too much between the lines, but I think Comey's reluctance to publicly announce Trump was not under investigation was based on him thinking there was a real prospect that he eventually would be. I know the Republicans will see this as a victory because there's nothing here about the underlying conduct of Trump or his associates, but I think it paints the picture of a corrupt politician exerting improper influence over a subordinate and firing him for not succumbing to it.

I want to point out that all of this comes on the heels of the NSA director Rogers and the director of national intelligence Coats refusing to answer a question in front of Congress about whether Trump asked them to interfere in the Russia investigation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.101d0b12e7b7

[Stavros]

Some useful talking points in the post above.

On the one hand, was the campaign run by arrogant 'business people' who either did not know election law or stretched it to its limits, and used Russian money sent for a non-political purpose which was then -illegally- used in the campaign? Would the legal case then need to prove intent to deceive with regard to the use of those funds? And suppose the candidate did not know what his subs were doing with the cash -and didn't ask? After all, Nixon did not know all the details of the Watergate burglary and its cover-up.

On the other hand, moneybags is famously ignorant about most things, but not money, not least because a lot of it is not his own. With a mind that seems to delight in complex financial calculations and an allegedly breathtaking knowledge of the tax code, and a business that is a labyrinth of companies where money flows in and out and though eluding scrutiny, I can imagine an investigation being bewildered to the point of being unable to conclude what is legal and what is not, who owns this, and who owns that, quite apart from who owes how much and to whom.

As for the obstruction of justice, the Guardian and Independent seem to think the case is clear, a BBC journalist in Washington DC on the radio this morning said it is not. Morally, it all stinks, but has any of it been illegal? And what, ultimately, will Congress to about it? Looks like we are in for a hot night in the UK, which would make a change from the miserable weather outside.

[Stavros]

I cannot recall a senior figure in the American political system delivering a judgement of a sitting President as devastating as this:

Comey said of his own dismissal: “The administration chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI by saying that the organisation was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader.

“Those were lies, plain and simple, and I’m so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them, and I’m so sorry the American people.
He told the panel: “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted. That is a very big deal.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...nate-testimony

Will the evidence Mr Comey made in secret session be made public?

[broncofan]

Will the evidence Mr Comey made in secret session be made public?

I wish I knew. I think they do not make it public until they have concluded their investigation. The question of whether Trump's acts were illegal is strangely mooted by the fact that impeachment is a political and not legal act. But illegality is probably a decent test for the political question since Trump cannot be tried for a crime while President.

Here are the statutory terms of obstruction of justice: "whoever corruptly or by threatening communications endeavors to influence or impede the due administration of justice" is guilty of obstruction of justice. Digging into the operative words we can throw away threatening and focus on corruptly and then focus on influence.

Republicans made much of the fact that Trump said he "hoped" Comey could drop the Flynn case. They suggest that if he did not order Comey and then directly threaten him with dismissal it is not obstruction. But the statute only requires him to attempt to influence the investigation and therefore the question is whether this attempt was made "corruptly".

I would be interested to see how this is defined in cases but I assume the difference between corrupt and non-corrupt intent hinges on whether he made the request based on a bonafide belief that Flynn is innocent or because he prefers that outcome regardless of whether it is true. His words "Flynn is a good guy" speak less to the issue of whether Flynn committed a specific illegal act than what Trump thinks of him as a person. He is saying I know this man and can vouch for him, you should let him go even if he did cross the letter of the law. The entire manner of the conversation, the fact that he ordered others out of the room, sounded like he was asking a special favor.

You combine this with the request for loyalty, the threats about having tapes, and the dismissal of Comey, and to me it's clear that he did corruptly attempt to influence an investigation, not out of propriety but self-interest. So I suppose I agree with the Guardian and Independent...the truth is that with impeachment being a political process the standard might now be flagrant illegality. The problem with him is systemic; a lack of humanity, of fairness, of appropriateness, of morality...it doesn't occur because on this day or that day he did something foolish or careless. He's a bad egg.

[broncofan]

The problem with Trump's actions are not just in the specific laws he breaks but in the general threat he poses to rule of law. Everything he does is with corrupt intent and it is a common thread through each controversy. The emoluments, the nepotism, the obstruction are all intended to lever government to provide favorable outcomes to himself and those he bestows his grace upon.

The way we all tend to think about these controversies is just too granular and specific as it is his entire approach to governance that threatens the integrity of institutions. Institutions exist independent of his needs or of their expedience to him.