Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

I think nothing new has been revealed to the public about the Trump Russia investigation for some time. That doesn't mean the FBI does not have something.

Comey just released a statement saying he believes the FBI director can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. It's a funny statement, because in at-will employment dismissal for no reason (assuming that's a coherent concept) is legitimate, but there are some illegitimate reasons. It would probably be illegitimate if he was fired because the President asked him to make public statements exonerating him and he refused or because he wanted to expand an investigation into matters that directly impact the president. In short, it should be illegal to fire someone because you expect loyalty when they are supposed to be independent.

His statement, which I don't have a link to yet but read on twitter, is gracious but confirms that he is probably an honest but not very intelligent man. If he believes he was fired for doing his job and not for inchoate concerns about his competence, then he should at some point tell us what sorts of actions the president demanded or pushed back against that may have led to his firing.

One thing to consider is that the longer there is scrutiny the greater chance there is that the fbi comes upon scandal that was not what anyone had in mind. Maybe Trump's personal businesses are financed with a lot of dirty money. It's possible he thinks he can exert more influence over someone else for cheap pr victories. Trump is a very vain person as I'm sure we've all noticed. The range of improper bases for the decision is broad.

There's also the possibility of explosive things like the fisa warrants into Alfa Bank showing direct trails of money between Trump campaign and the Russian government, but I actually think if something big had materialized already, firing the director would not keep it buried. As improper as Trump's actions have been and as feckless as the person he plans to hire ends up being, if there were strong evidence of collusion, more people than just the director would probably know about it, and cutting off the head would not quash it.

On the one hand, alarm bells may have been ringing when subpoenas were issued to associates of Mike Flynn to appear before a Grand Jury; and the Bells were ringing when James Comey asked for more funding to maintain the investigations into the potential collusion between the Russians and the Republican Presidential campaign;
On the other hand, according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mr Comey was sacked because he had committed 'atrocities' -a flamboyant word for the Director of the FBI making decisions she believes should have been made by the Attorney General-, even though the letter from Deputy AG Rosenstein criticized Comey but did not recommend removing him from office.

It could come down to the simple fact that for months the Commandante has been fuming over the high profile of James Comey and could not bear to think of someone receiving more media attention than himself, the peril of spending your late night hours flipping through multiple cable channels and shouting at the TV.

As for the links, there is some confusion over the ownership of Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Russians via Vincent Tchenguiz and others associated with him, such as Dmitry Firtash, who in turn is linked to Paul Manafort while the SCL connection gives you Mike Flynn, and so on. A tangled web if ever there was one, and the difference being the legal right to mine, launder and manipulate personal data, and the actual effectiveness of it, given that 'Lyin' Ted Cruz' was the Republican darling when this started. If you want to, you can try and work it out from these profiles, but in the end, we are back to the 'Ayn Rand'-based free market agenda being promoted by Nigel Farage, Steven Bannon, and people like that and their determination to break the mould of politics to create their Brave New World.

http://www.bluedotdaily.com/cambridg...ever-heard-of/
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news...russian-access
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...p-nigel-farage

We have now heard a little bit more about Trump's claim that he was given assurances by Comey that he was not under investigation. He said that at a dinner he had with Comey where Comey was basically vying to retain his position as director of the FBI, he asked Comey whether he was under investigation. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that she doesn't believe this is a conflict of interest but one doesn't have to know DOJ protocol to know that the question is highly improper.

Comey may think it is noble to fall on his sword but it is inconsistent with his demand that rank and file continue to uphold rule of law. If Trump is being dishonest about conversations they had then Comey should correct the record. Any other undue pressure Trump put on Comey should also be revealed if he cares about upholding the rule of law. One gets a sense that there is a group of people who hold Comey in high regard but I wonder what they see that is never evident in his public appearances.

The President now claims that he did not fire Comey because of the Rosenstein memo but because Comey is a grandstander. Apparently Rosenstein did not like being blamed for Comey's firing and that explains the backtracking. But Rosenstein's pressure on Trump to provide another explanation for why he fired Comey will not save his reputation as he must have known when he wrote that memo that it was being used to hide Trump's real reasons for dismissing Comey. If he does not resign or appoint a special prosecutor, he has disgraced himself. But I expect he will be as spineless as everyone else has been here.

“He’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander"

-Hard to believe the person being referred to is the ex-Director of the FBI. There are times when you want a President to sound graceful, to sound, dare one say it, 'Presidential'. The current occupant of the White House is a cheap showman incapable of grace, unable to even pretend he believes his fellow citizens are his equals, incapable of a simple statement of modest regret at 'having' to sack one of the most senior law enforcement officers in the country.

Every time you think this vulgar ignoramus can't go lower, he finds new depths to sink to, taking the Presidency and the USA with him.

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian argues there is now a clear case for impeachment, based on the fact that the President has broken the law. We now wait for Congress to do its duty.

What, then, of those actions by Trump that don’t simply violate an unspoken norm, or rely on a self-censoring sense of shame, but break the law? Surely Trump can be brought to account over those?

There is no shortage of such deeds. In the last 24 hours or so, he has provided evidence of two more. First, he told an NBC interviewer that, despite the version spun by his aides, his motive for firing Comey related to the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russia. That is a clear admission of obstruction of justice. On Friday morning, he tweeted a threat to Comey who, he suggested, had “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”. That’s intimidation of a witness. Both would surely count as what the constitution calls “high crimes” and therefore grounds for impeachment.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-him-dangerous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBFzd6q6kHI

Laurence Tribe, leading constitutional scholar discusses the various bases on which Trump could be impeached. We don't know if there was anything impeachable in the underlying conduct being investigated, but there are at least two bases for impeachment. 1. the admission with Lester Holt that he was at least thinking about Russia when he fired Comey. He did not have to think Comey would find anything, just that he based the dismissal on his annoyance at being investigated (something I said in my first and second post on the subject...) 2. His question to Comey about whether he was being investigated at a dinner with Comey, in addition to his request for loyalty.

Although his tweet about Comey was highly inappropriate, I doubt even a Democratic Congress would impeach him for that alone because it ostensibly just demanded the truth about their conversations by threatening that he could prove what he said. It's not as though he was threatening blackmail with a tape about some unrelated matter to coerce Comey to speak a falsehood.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

It's not as though he was threatening blackmail with a tape about some unrelated matter to coerce Comey to speak a falsehood.

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Although few will want to admit it, the essence of witness intimidation is, "if you tell the truth, there will be consequences" not "if you tell a lie, I can prove it" as indecorous as Trump's tweet was.

DC also allows the recording of conversations without the consent of the party being recorded, something that many localities do not, so I don't think Trump was restricted from recording the call. But if he did record Comey, those tapes might end up getting subpoenaed and we will know what was asked and agreed to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Although few will want to admit it, the essence of witness intimidation is, "if you tell the truth, there will be consequences" not "if you tell a lie, I can prove it" as indecorous as Trump's tweet was.

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Slight contradiction though. If there are no tapes I think it's witness intimidation, because he would be playing off a person's natural infirmities of memory to suppress their testimony by pretending there's a recording that contradicts them. The purpose in that case would be to bluff them into thinking their recollection is contradicted by recording when it's not and to prevent them from speaking the truth. But if there is a recording I don't think a warning about it, however unseemly is witness intimidation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Slight contradiction though. If there are no tapes I think it's witness intimidation, because he would be playing off a person's natural infirmities of memory to suppress their testimony by pretending there's a recording that contradicts them. The purpose in that case would be to bluff them into thinking their recollection is contradicted by recording when it's not and to prevent them from speaking the truth. But if there is a recording I don't think a warning about it, however unseemly is witness intimidation.

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Thank for altering me to the legal situation on tapes in Washington DC, but as Freedland points out in his article, it is often not the question of legality that applies, but the indifference to established modes of conduct, of which taping people without their knowledge is one, not least in a White House where it helped destroy a previous President.

The irony is that he may well have tapes, thereby taking one criminal allegation away that could be used in impeachment.
The man is obsessed, mostly with himself and how he appears on tv and in the media. One thing that probably keeps him awake at night is the simple fact that when they are seen together, John Comey towers over him at 6'-6". Nobody should ever make the Commandante look small.

And, according to Buzzfeed (health warning?) he also eavesdrops on his own staff in Florida:
In 2016, BuzzFeed News reported that at Mar-a-Lago, Trump frequently eavesdropped on his staff members’ phone calls.
“At Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach resort he runs as a club for paying guests and celebrities, Donald Trump had a telephone console installed in his bedroom that acted like a switchboard, connecting to every phone extension on the estate, according to six former workers,” BuzzFeed reported. “Several of them said he used that console to eavesdrop on calls involving staff.”
http://heavy.com/news/2017/05/is-it-...washington-dc/

Another simple fact: the job is too big for the man. Some people are natural leaders, some grow in the office, but on this occasion you have a man with no knowledge of US history; who has not read, and does not even understand the Constitution he has sworn to protect, preserve and defend; has no known diplomatic skills, but who does brag about himself as a winner and can't move on from the election he won in the College but not in the street, which is why he is prepared to spend millions of tax payer dollars 'proving' that the popular vote was fixed through voter fraud.

Never mind, with US investors and firms (and the Commandante himself) being given more access to markets in China, and a $100 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in the bag the Commandante will soon be drinking tea with an unelected nutcase and mass murderer, perhaps to work out how they can start a war against Iran, because there aren't enough wars right now, and for a man with no empathy, you might as well spend millions of dollars on bombs, send US troops to Afghanistan for another 16 years, and get stuck in to Somalia, rather than spend a dime of that money on education.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a7732861.html

This week's crisis:
The White House has insisted that reports about Donald Trump's meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador are false - but has not denied he leaked classified information.

According to the Washington Post, Mr Trump revealed highly classified information about Isis to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during a White House meeting last week.
In a brief appearance outside the White House, HR McMaster, the President's national security advisor, said “the story that came out tonight, as reported, is false."

But the article concludes:
However, the Washington Post did not report that Mr Trump disclosed sources and intelligence-gathering methods. Instead, the article explained that Mr Trump revealed classified information from which sources and methods could be inferred. Conspicuously, none of of the President's spokespeople denied he had leaked classified information.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7737786.html

And the killer line from another article -
US law permits the president to de-classify information at his or her own discretion
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7737781.html

https://www.lawfareblog.com/bombshel...changing-story

This article does a nice job of summarizing the implications of the leak to the Lavrov and Kislyak. The important aspects of this story are that it is code word information, which includes the most protected of state secrets, that he revealed that ISIS planned attacks in the U.S. and how we plan to thwart them, and most significantly the city that our source is from. The city our source is from could get that person killed.

Finally, the information we received was pursuant to an intelligence sharing agreement with another state, the identity of which the post is not reporting on, but the other state did not give us permission to share this intelligence with Russia.

It's hard for someone not familiar with this kind of protected information (myself) to know how significant this leak was but one can judge from everyone's reactions. Even Republicans are showing extreme concern which gives us some sense of how serious the matter is since they have not responded to previous scandals.

Stavros, this is also the information I am hearing, which is that Mcmaster's statement was a carefully worded non-denial. He denied that Trump revealed sources and methods but not information that could reveal those. As you indicate, the President's ability to de-classify info is being used as a defense of the legality of his actions but it doesn't wash since he didn't have a reason to de-classify. Nor does the strict legality of his actions protect him against the claim that he has violated the oath of his office.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

And the killer line from another article -
US law permits the president to de-classify information at his or her own discretion
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7737781.html

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What's especially comical about this defense is that it is effective even if you don't know you're de-classifying state secrets in the form of a boast:). According to national security lawyers, if any other person had revealed this information to a non-ally state they would be facing a long jail sentence, but since the President can use his discretion and wisdom to de-classify, his actions did not violate a statute (again, the President's obligations extend beyond not violating statutes). The information he shared is apparently not even known to our allies.

Call it irony or a paradox, but the one person who doesn't need security clearance before having access to raw intel is the President of the USA. If they had to have security clearance, how would multiple bankruptcies and associations with figures who have been in and out of gaol get past the vetting process when running for the the White House -and would Hillary Clinton not have been challenged on that damn email server?
This was published online last July=
https://news.clearancejobs.com/2016/...president-get/

Yet again we are faced with the simple fact that this President doesn't know how to do the job, and his infantile need to brag to people about his inside knowledge and receive praise and adulation in return. If it is the case that Mossad was the source of the intel, this raises questions which many would not like to answer. Mossad has close connections to one Arab monarchy, no prizes for guessing which one not least because it has been bankrolled by the Americans since some time around 1958, and Mossad has been a covert partner of intelligence with Saudi Arabia, and in the war between that revolting Kingdom and Egypt in the Yemen in the 1960s US supplies of arms to the Kingdom were shipped through Israel to the Gulf of Aqaba and on to the Yemen to avoid the Suez Canal.

More worrying is that the Russians could share this intelligence with both the Syrian and the Turkish government, the latter deeply concerned at the thousands of US troops embedded with the Kurds in northern Syria. The opportunity for someone to make mischief out of the President's blunder is very real, and one hopes that people are not killed as a result.
And while Russia is the achilles heel of the Commandante, the Middle East, as usual, beckons all to its graveyards, and there are plenty of them, official and unofficial.

https://takecareblog.com/blog/a-few-...pecial-counsel

So Rosenstein appointed Special Counsel. The appointee is Robert Mueller, former FBI director who at first glance seems to be well respected. This article discusses his remit, and how he is expected to carry out his duties. He can be fired by Rosenstein for cause, and Rosenstein can be fired by Trump and replaced with someone more willing to fire the special prosecutor but we'll have to see whether Trump would dare. I mean he would dare, but we'll see how this plays.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.e7cf211c0a80

Kushner tried to set up a secret communications channel with the Russians in December during the transition. This information came to light through intercepts of Kislyak reporting this revelation to his superiors. According to the Post it's possible though unlikely that Kislyak revealed misinformation knowing he was being listened to.

Apparently Jared wanted to be able to use secure Russian facilities to communicate. This is the most eye-opening information I've seen in a while. What possible legitimate purpose would Jared have of setting up a secret line of communication between the administration and the Russian government, even going so far as to request access to Russian communications gear at its embassy?

I'm not going to speculate any further about this, but it's a very good starting point.

Edit: I like some of the quotes from intelligence officials in this article http://www.businessinsider.com/jared...a-trump-2017-5

I didn't have the perspective of seeing the response to this revelation, but is this the end of the line for Jared? His security clearance would have to be revoked if they can confirm this information, right?

Hell, I think Donald's security clearance should be revoked!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Kushner tried to set up a secret communications channel with the Russians in December during the transition. This information came to light through intercepts of Kislyak reporting this revelation to his superiors. According to the Post it's possible though unlikely that Kislyak revealed misinformation knowing he was being listened to.
Apparently Jared wanted to be able to use secure Russian facilities to communicate. This is the most eye-opening information I've seen in a while. What possible legitimate purpose would Jared have of setting up a secret line of communication between the administration and the Russian government, even going so far as to request access to Russian communications gear at its embassy?
I'm not going to speculate any further about this, but it's a very good starting point.
Edit: I like some of the quotes from intelligence officials in this article

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Broncofan, ask yourself the one most obvious question: Why Russia? It is not an enquiry into secret channels of communication with Suriname, or Cyprus, or Scotland. An answer to the question is also obvious:money, how to get it, and where to get it from, particularly if you boast about being rich after being made bankrupt as the presenter of the US version of The Apprentice tv programme has done. Or you could search for information on names such as Paul Manafort, and Felix Sater. In the case of the latter, you may get a taste of the criminal elements that directly or indirectly link the President and his son-in-law to organized crime in the US and Russia, with a still obscure roster of tenants in the Soho Tower where it is alleged apartments may have been purchased as part of a money-laundering operation based in Kazakhstan. I don't know if Jared Kushner is squeaky clean, his father was not, but it may just be that he sees himself as a powerful man who needs to protect the President and Father-in-Law as well as their investments in a wide range of countries where democracy is neither a thing of the past nor probably the future. Curiously, John Boehner has pointed out that Impeachment is a political, not a legal act, and we have yet to see the full FBI allegations to get to the 'what did he know, and when did he know it' phase, whereupon we will probably be told the President had no idea any of these things were going on....not even for a control freak who spies of on his own employees...again and again one asks the other question --why did the Republican Party allow this man to run for office on their ticket when they could have done due diligence and told him to go far, far away?

Our investigation also may explain why the FBI, which was very public about its probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails, never disclosed its investigation of the Trump campaign prior to the election, even though we now know that it commenced last July.

Such publicity could have exposed a high-value, long-running FBI operation against an organized crime network headquartered in the former Soviet Union. That operation depended on a convicted criminal who for years was closely connected with Trump, working with him in Trump Tower — while constantly informing for the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ), and being legally protected by them.

Some federal officials were so involved in protecting this source — despite his massive fraud and deep connections to organized crime — that they became his defense counsel after they left the government.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/03/27/fb...-trump-russia/


http://www.salon.com/2017/04/23/trum...e-white-house/

http://www.nationalmemo.com/felix-sa...uclear-plants/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Broncofan, ask yourself the one most obvious question: Why Russia?. I don't know if Jared Kushner is squeaky clean, his father was not, but it may just be that he sees himself as a powerful man who needs to protect the President and Father-in-Law as well as their investments in a wide range of countries where democracy is neither a thing of the past nor probably the future.

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http://nymag.com/nymag/features/57891/index1.html

Thank you for those links. Very useful to know what kind of people Trump works with. I'm including a link that I think provides a bit of insight on Kushner. Though written back in 2009, it's the best description of Jared I've seen for anyone curious.

It's a well-written article in that its aim is not singularly to make one dislike Charlie Kushner or Jared, but that is the inevitable result of learning more about them, including their family feuds, their sense of entitlement, their vanity, and audacity. It's a long article but if you get to the end, I think it's important to look back to Jared's initial reaction to his father being sent away. We all have blind spots when it comes to family, but if this is your response to the sequence of events described herein, something is very wrong. I like looking back at this quote at the end, because it is such a delusional response to the abusive way Charlie treated his siblings and the blackmail of his brother in law which was really designed to destroy his sister's marriage.

And, the crimes notwithstanding, he sees his father as a victim. “His siblings stole every piece of paper from his office, and they took it to the government,” Jared maintained. “Siblings that he literally made wealthy for doing nothing. He gave them interests in the business for nothing. All he did was put the tape together and send it. Was it the right thing to do? At the end of the day, it was a function of saying ‘You’re trying to make my life miserable? Well, I’m doing the same.’ ” (Charlie’s brother Murray and sister Esther wouldn’t return calls.)

The article also does a good job of describing Jared's strengths and weaknesses as a businessman. The purchase of the Observer, though probably a vanity purchase, may have been smart in that it got him access to powerful circles but his purchase of 666 is an albatross. He overpaid by hundreds of millions of dollars. His admission to both Harvard and NYU law were based on corruption which is described here. It's depressingly common but given how hard other students work to get accepted to those schools, despicable.

In the end, I get the sense that Jared is not that different from his father in law Donald Trump, except without the bombast. He's vindictive, not as bright as he thinks he is, doesn't mind taking on projects he's not qualified for (look at how he treated seasoned media ppl at the observer), and unbelievably vain. Maybe the financial travails of Trump and Kushner, their similar vanity and tolerance for dealing with underworld types led them to the same place.

Thanks for the link, I read the whole article, never having heard of the Observer before. I don't see any criminal intent in Kushner's behaviour based on what we know so far, but there may be an ignorance of politics as a day-to-day activity at the highest level, because governing the USA is not like running a business, I do think these people are oblivious to the concept of accountability, as if they had never heard anyone use the expression 'the Buck stops here' with regard to the Presidency.

As to whether or not having experience in business prepares one for the Presidency, there have been six with a business background before-Harding, Hoover, Truman, Bush 1 & 2, and Jimmy Carter. Harding may be the closest analogy, being a newspaper man in Ohio, and known in the beltway during his time in the White House as 'Warren Hardon' because of his uncontrollable sexual urges. Thereagain, Citizen Kane springs to mind, and we know how that ended.

A curious fact about 666 Fifth Avenue, the property owned by Mr Kushner -purchased with money borrowed from Barclay's and USB (do these people ever buy property with their own money?)- is that the restaurant on the top floor used to be called Top of the Six and is where Martin Scorsese filmed the lunch scene between Leonardo di Caprio and Matthew McConaughey near the opening of The Wolf of Wall Street.

Donald Trump has clearly heard of the phrase "the buck stops here", but he (and Ivanka) obviously believe it refers to the $$$'s rolling into the White house for them...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.e3b3593ee466

About two weeks after Kushner requested a secret line between himself and the Kremlin, he met with the head of a bank called VEB, a man named Sergey Gorkov. While VEB claims that it met with Kushner as the head of his family's real estate business, the White House has claimed that Kushner met with him as a member of the transition team to coordinate with various business leaders worldwide.

VEB bank was directly affected by the sanctions Obama placed on the Russian economy following its incursion into Crimea into 2014. Kushner needs a source of funds for his building on 666 5th ave. which is financially distressed. Their meeting could have involved a quid pro quo of financing for Kushner and sanctions relief for VEB, which is restricted from selling equity to Americans or borrowing from American institutions. Gorkov flew to Japan to meet with Putin immediately after meeting with Kushner.

According to experts, VEB is used as a slush fund for the Russian government, helping it finance projects the government does not want on its official books. One of its employees in the Manhattan office was convicted for espionage in the U.S. and recently released so there is the connection between Russian intelligence and this bank.

Kushner has indicated he will cooperate with authorities, but I'm afraid if there is not corroborating evidence somewhere recorded and Kushner did not actually borrow money (which in itself is not even prohibited by the sanctions) Kushner will be able to lie about what was said. But there continues to be an increasing number of contacts and coincidences for the administration to explain away. The more they talk on the record, the greater is their chance to contradict themselves or the record.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laphroaig

Donald Trump has clearly heard of the phrase "the buck stops here", but he (and Ivanka) obviously believe it refers to the $$$'s rolling into the White house for them...

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i was on a plane just a couple of hours ago with a girl- and we're sitting next to each other- and i look to her and i ask her "drink?" she goes "sure" so i order us a bottle of wine. next she asks what i do and i tell and her and she tells me what she does (real estate) and we laugh and yap yap. "so, what do you think of trump?" i ask?
"oh fuck trump. but fuck trump" hahahaha!

if you don't get it, maybe you should be got.

it wasn't the best bottle of wine, but we polished it together. great flight.

are we home yet?

[QUOTE=broncofan;1770593
Kushner has indicated he will cooperate with authorities, but I'm afraid if there is not corroborating evidence somewhere recorded and Kushner did not actually borrow money (which in itself is not even prohibited by the sanctions) Kushner will be able to lie about what was said. But there continues to be an increasing number of contacts and coincidences for the administration to explain away. The more they talk on the record, the greater is their chance to contradict themselves or the record.[/QUOTE]

Isn't the interest here related to the Logan Act and the contacts a Presidential-Elect team can have and do with foreign governments? From today's Guardian:

There’s one other example of Kushner’s Trump-like qualities that now seems pertinent: the boldness of a private citizen not yet in public office who allegedly discussed with a foreign banker the creation of a back-channel to the ruthless leader of a US adversary. “That makes no sense in terms of normal White House protocol and procedure,” said professor Jeffrey Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University.

At worst, Berry added, such a proposal could expose Kushner to prosecution under the Logan Act, the law that forbids anyone who is not in or authorized by government (in this case the Obama administration) from negotiating with a foreign power on behalf of the US. “There’s no reason for him to be talking to a Russian banker about US policy,” Berry said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mp-russian-web

It came as no surprise to many of us that not long after the attacks in London over the weekend (Saturday 4th June 2017) the natural instinct of the President of the USA was to insult and abuse the UK and its democratically elected representatives. He then followed that up with a typically inane tweet in which he pointed out the killers used a van and knives, but did not point out that many more would have died (as was the case in Paris) had they used guns, because in the UK it is exceedingly difficult to legally purchase the automatic weapons his Presidency has enabled any nutcase with the money to buy over the counter across the USA.

But look further and you discover that when a bomb murdered 80 and injured over 300 people in Kabul last Wednesday the event produced not a tweet from the President of the USA. The bomb was attributed to the 'Haqqani Network', a criminal organization allied to the Taliban based in North Waziristan in the 'Tribal areas' between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moreover, the Haqqani Network does not just fund its operations from extortion and drug rackets, it is funded from the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services-Intelligence).
https://www.counterextremism.com/threat/haqqani-network

There is a clear link here which raises the 'uncomfortable questions' about Terrorism that Theresa May says we now need in the UK, something Jeremy Corbyn has pursued with regard to an as yet unpublished report into the financing of terrorism commissioned by David Cameron when he was Prime Minister. As Corbyn put it (though his comment doesn't go far enough)

“Yes, we do need to have some difficult conversations, starting with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-jihadi-groups

The link is not just between arms sales from the UK to Saudi Arabia, a cause of devastation in its illegal war in the Yemen, but between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and thus the financial links between Saudi Arabia and terrorism in Pakistan, Afghanistan and also in Kashmir. And then there are the links between the President of the USA to this terror network through his personal financial ties to Saudi Arabia, and the USA's political alliance with the Kingdom in spite of multiple examples of the links between the Kingdom and terrorist atrocities across the world and, indeed, in the USA itself.

Consider remarks the Presidential candidate made at a rally in Alabama in 2015:
Saudi Arabia — and I get along great with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/u...ecede-him.html

At some point in the future, and as Jeremy Corbyn said in the article quoted above, democracies like the UK and the USA must ask themselves what they receive in return for their relationship with Saudi Arabia, not just because of the financial links between the Kingdom and terrorist groups across the world, but also because of the Wahabi ideology that has encouraged the very same violence we see on our streets.

But if you follow the money you will understand that some things are more important than individual liberty, freedom and human rights, at least for as long as our elected representatives hold hands and dance with dictators and mass murderers.
It doesn't have to be like this.

For an up to date if lengthy perusal of the President's men and their dodgy deals, see
https://www.theatlantic.com/business...erests/508382/

For those who've not seen the the Trumplets in question.

Attachment 1012687

The gossip from Westminster is that the government is reconsidering its invitation to the President for a state visit this year, and he may take the initiative and cancel/postpone the visit because he knows he is not popular here and it would not look good to his fan base to see him being treated badly, even if that is all he deserves. In any case we must still hope he will be thrown out of office before Christmas.

For those interested in Trump's personal grift, here is an article about a new chain of hotels his sons are opening up independently. He is entering the low to mid-priced hotel chain market with a hotel called American Idea, with various American themed branding to profit off of the nationalism of his campaign (reminiscent of America First etc.). It just keeps getting worse.

I watched his tweets about the attack on his twitter. Embarrassing and galling. I would love it if you guys would revoke his invitation, but as Stavros said the possiblity of a chilly reception is enough to keep him away probably.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/b...tel-chain.html

That article I posted is not that consequential in the sense that there's nothing illegal about his family making money off his political success. The manner in which it's done just doesn't seem right.

But what is interesting, for those who have time, James Comey will be testifying on Thursday of this week, 7 am pacific time, 10 am eastern time, 3 pm in London etc.

I won't be able to watch live but I will be catching a replay. Trump had apparently tried to use executive privilege to block Comey's testimony but was not able to, I believe because he's already written and spoken about the nature of his conversations with Comey, therefore he can't block the response. 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!

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Originally Posted by broncofan

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!

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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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by 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,l

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I gotcha.

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

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

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.

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?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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

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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.

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.