Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[Stavros]

If Jared Kushner has nothing to hide why did he appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in closed session, when he was not even under oath?

He has declared there was no collusion with Russia between him or the campaign, and that I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.

Collusion in the sense of a deliberate and determined attempt to act with the Russian government to influence the US election is not yet proven, but the President, his family and campaign team's claims ring hollow when denials about any meetings with Russians later became confirmations, with a lack of clarity on what was said and when to whom. The mere fact that the President's campaign team had contact with Russians is in itself worthy of explanation. The President has business interests in India, and rich Indians might see opportunities to invest in the US, and the US might want to cultivate relations with India because of China, Afghanistan, Russia and so on and the Family Business has interests in Turkey and Scotland yet none of these countries were involved in the Presidential campaign, or attempted to become involved during the transition.

The Logan Act makes it clear the transition team should respect the authority of the existing President and not engage in foreign policy initiatives before Inauguration Day, on that there appears to be clear violations if Kushner discussed Syrian policy with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in December 2016, assuming he knew who Kislyak was, sometimes you wonder about Kushner's intelligence.

Kushner may not have received financial backing for his real estate business from the Russians, but he has had dealings with them, specifically the sale of the old New York Times building in Manhattan to Prevezon Holdings and a partner called Lev Leviev who is a billionaire from Russia who lives now in Israel where he keeps a photo of Vladimir Putin on his desk. The concern over the sale was based on the claims made some years ago by a Russian called Sergei Magnitsky who claimed in 2009 that Russian state money was being stolen by certain people and laundered in the US though property deals, of which it was believed the old New York Times deal was an example. The truth may not be known because the case, prosecuted by Preet Bhara (fired by the President earlier this year) was settled out of court, but Kushner also did other deals with the Russian Leviev and a company called Africa Israel Investments which are also or were under investigation over claims of money laundering.

Magnitsky after blowing the whistle on corruption in high places in Russia was arrested, charged and sent to prison where he died in mysterious circumstances. As a result the US imposed sanctions on Russia, the very sanctions that it is alleged the President's campaign/family have discussed lifting with Russians in those meetings they once said never happened but late said they did.

Whatever the truth of this, it is clear that Russian money became important to the President and his family, if not directly in Kushner's case. It became as important as Arab money because the President was a failed businessman on the verge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s and thus turned to Russian oligarchs and Arab billionaires to sell them property in New York and Florida, in the case of New York's residential sales, 'no questions asked' about who was taking ownership of the apartment or where the money came from. Thus no surprise the President has said he will not allow the Russia investigation to probe the family business.

There is also the other case of Kushner, desperate for funding for his gamble on 666 Fifth Avenue seeking financial backing from Qatar, and not getting it. Curious that Kushner and his friend, Yousef al-Otaiba, the Ambassador to the USA from the United Arab Emirates are believed by Rex Tillerson to have been instrumental in persuading daddy to support the Saudi Arabian led boycott of Qatar, surely Mr Kushner does bear a grudge against them? It is even believed Otaiba wrote some of the speech the President gave supporting the boycott of Qatar.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7834536.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/...-666-fifth-ave

There is also the curious case of Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater (the mercenary company famous for its Kill Arabs with Impunity campaign in Iraq after 2003) and supporter of the President meeting a buddy of Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles with the intention of creating a 'back channel' between DC and Moscow, the meeting allegedly arranged by someone in the United Arab Emirates...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.f2d33d9ff64b

And there is more on this to come, as it drips in day by day, and there is nothing the President can do at the moment.

Some background on Kushner and Lev Leviev here-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ney-laundering

[Stavros]

Curious that 45 decided to turn the national Jambooree of the Boy Scouts of America into a political rally to glorify himself rather than celebrate the scouting movement and its values, and as if prepared, they all booed when Obama's name was mentioned and as 45 said:

By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a jamboree? And we’ll be back. We’ll be back. The answer is no, but we’ll be back.

Maybe someone should tell 45 that President Obama addressed the centenary Jamboree of the Boy Scouts and was himself a scout in his youth, which 45 was not. However, we do know that the rich New Yorker did make a handsome contribution to the Boy Scouts in 1989 when his charitable foundation gave them $7. Seven dollars is a generous gift on any level, and worthy of praise...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...mboree/534774/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...couts-jamboree

[broncofan]

Today Trump said on twitter "Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!". Yesterday he called him our "beleaguered attorney general", something which someone obviously wrote for him.

The speculation is that this pressure campaign is designed to encourage Sessions to resign because he will not fire special prosecutor Mueller. Even if it means only what it says it does, it's hard to believe we have a President stating that the independent justice department should prosecute his former opponent for crimes which she has been exonerated for.

So why hasn't Trump fired Sessions when it is already obvious that if Sessions resigns, it will have been at the behest of Trump? My theory is that he's asked Sessions to fire Mueller (not sure if Sessions can since Mueller was appointed by Sessions' deputy after Sessions recused himself), Sessions said no, and now Trump is nervous about firing him. If he fires him then he may have a second Justice Department official accusing him of obstruction. Just a theory...but it's obvious now Trump is working to get Mueller fired, first through Sessions and then by a replacement A.G if he can push Sessions out without firing him.

[broncofan]

My theory is apparently obvious as everyone else on twitter has the same "theory". Oh well. Who here thinks the maneuvering by Trump this time definitely indicates underlying guilt? I was sort of on the fence the first time, but this is too strange. He's going way too far out on a limb just to avoid the hassle and dark cloud of being investigated.

[Stavros]

My theory is apparently obvious as everyone else on twitter has the same "theory". Oh well. Who here thinks the maneuvering by Trump this time definitely indicates underlying guilt? I was sort of on the fence the first time, but this is too strange. He's going way too far out on a limb just to avoid the hassle and dark cloud of being investigated.

Guilt by association, with the potential to be regarded as treason, or misprision of treason.

Consider:
-Russia attacked the US during the election campaign, it did so through non-military means such as 'cyber-warfare' including the hacking of the DNC email servers, the use of Cambridge Analytica to glean personal information on US voters with social media accounts flooding them and the mainstream media with 'bots' all designed to weaken the case for Hillary Clinton; and the possibility they hacked into election machines in polling stations.

-Why? Because Hillary Clinton represented a hostile coalition of states opposed to Russia's annexation of the Crimea, and Russia's attempt to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, opposing the invasion of the eastern borders and fomenting civil war, indeed there are now two self-proclaimed 'independent republics' in the East.

-Why was the Republican candidate so favourable to the Russians?
A) because he became the primary opponent of Hillary Clinton in the USA, and thus by default an ally of Russian preference in the election;
B) he made it known he disagreed with the position taken by the Obama administration on sanctions and to some extent on Russia's position regarding the Crimea and Ukraine, and because he believed Russia was taking a more aggressive stand on Daesh in Syria than Obama, again offering Russia more support than the Obama administration of which Hillary Clinton had been a major figure.

-How did the Republican candidate express his political preference?
-A) He asked Russia, in public, twice -once in a speech then later that day in a 'tweet'- to intervene directly in the US election to provide illegally obtained information to smear the reputation of a fellow American and 'enemy of the Russians', Hillary Clinton, knowing or not knowing that they were already involved.
B) There is now clear evidence that when the Russians offered 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton, the response of the President's campaign team was positive, even though this clearly showed them agreeing to meet with a representative of the Russian government intervening in the US election.
Does this amount to treason?
Had it happened in the Cold War, say, in the 1970s when Brezhnev was General Secretary of the Communist Party, how would Americans have reacted if one of the two main candidates for the Presidency had openly asked Brezhnev to help him smear his opponent?

-Is there more to this than dirty tricks in politics? Yes, because it is no secret that Russian money poured into the USA in the 1990s and the 2000s, that it was used to buy real estate, from Florida to New York, and that apartments in Manhattan and other real estates were sold to people who had been involved in criminal activities, Sergei Magnistsky claimed it was embezzled from the Russia treasury.

-Bear in mind that Vladimir Putin climbed the greasy pole of influence in Moscow when a middle ranking official of the KGB/FSB having realised that while Yeltsin had no control over the 'sale of the century' when a few ambitious men helped themselves to the most lucrative sectors of the Russian economy -to some extent Yeltsin encouraged it to enrich himself- the racket could not continue without damaging the state, society and economy. He positioned himself as a trusted adviser to Yeltsin, but in doing so acquired all the information he needed on who had benefited from the chaos of the 1990s. Once in Power, Putin moved first against the foreign companies that had entered the Russian economy, notably the three oil companies, Shell, BP and Exxon. On the one hand they were forced to sell many of their assets, but not so much to prejudice their investments, and in order to retain their capital investment and technological expertise.
-Putin also had access to information on Americans who made early moves in Russia to enrich themselves and while the current President at that time failed to establish hotels and other businesses in Russia, he did make enough contacts to acquire Russian money for his own investments in the USA which American banks would not lend to him at a time when he was considered a flop and a risk too far.

-If there is one thing this President wants to cover up and protect, it is the truth about his money, his assets, his tax returns, his loans and favours, and the two who he has benefited most from are the Russians and the Arabs.

-So, you have the money trail that links Manhattan to Moscow, and you have the treason trail that links Russian government intervention in a US election with one of the candidates for office. But, for any of this to produce the result that his opponents want, the President must lose the loyalty of his party in Congress and above all, the voters.

[blackchubby38]

Today Trump said on twitter "Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!". Yesterday he called him our "beleaguered attorney general", something which someone obviously wrote for him.

The speculation is that this pressure campaign is designed to encourage Sessions to resign because he will not fire special prosecutor Mueller. Even if it means only what it says it does, it's hard to believe we have a President stating that the independent justice department should prosecute his former opponent for crimes which she has been exonerated for.

So why hasn't Trump fired Sessions when it is already obvious that if Sessions resigns, it will have been at the behest of Trump? My theory is that he's asked Sessions to fire Mueller (not sure if Sessions can since Mueller was appointed by Sessions' deputy after Sessions recused himself), Sessions said no, and now Trump is nervous about firing him. If he fires him then he may have a second Justice Department official accusing him of obstruction. Just a theory...but it's obvious now Trump is working to get Mueller fired, first through Sessions and then by a replacement A.G if he can push Sessions out without firing him.

I'm conflicted over this whole thing.

One of the reasons why I voted against Trump was because I had a funny feeling that he was going to appoint Sessions as A.G. As a person who believes the war on drugs is failure, he was the last person that I wanted to see get that job So I wouldn't mind Sessions being fired or him resigning.

On the other hand, I don't like the fact that Sessions is being attacked for basically doing the right thing, by an individual who feels that he wasn't loyal to him. So I almost want to see Sessions tell Trump to go hell and say if you're going fire me, then do it already. Instead of acting like a teenage girl and gossiping about me behind my back and on Twitter.

[trish]

If a candidate publicly asks a foreign state to intervene in a Federal election by hacking into his opponent’s servers and if subsequently seventeen U.S. security agencies (including the FBI, CIA and NSA) demonstrate to the satisfaction of the security community that that same foreign state complied with that request, then that request was a treasonous bid illegally gain power over the executive branch of government.

Certainly 45’s supporters (most of whom are old enough to remember the Cold War) are of a different opinion. But how about Donald himself? If he thought it was a treasonous act, would he have been so blatant about it?

Mostly through his real estate dealings here and abroad, but also through his association with the Miss Universe contest, Trump had developed close ties with many wealthy oligarchs. I think he envied them: the way they make money, wield influence and power. I think he wishes to emulate them and Putin. I wonder what they make of Donald. I imagine he’s something of a joke.

Even if Donald knowingly colluded, offering say to dropped certain sanctions against Russia for their assistance (via computer hacks into voting machine networks and Democratic email servers) in the election, I’m not sure Donald himself views that a treason. It’s just opposition research!

What scares Donald is that supporter’s will eventually come to see that he’s not all that. That he’s a little rich boy starving for love and attention. His life is nothing without an audience.

On some level Donald knows he’s failure. I believe he’s less concerned about treason than he is about people seeing him for what he is. Mueller’s investigation into his finances will uncover just how much he’s really worth, how much cheated and connived to accumulate his money, achieve his notoriety and gain the White House.

[Ben in LA]

Discuss.

[Stavros]

So look at the costs:
-A Rand Corporation study commissioned by the military and published in 2016 concluded:
Considering the prevalence of transgender service members among the active duty military and the typical health-care costs for gender-transition-related medical treatment, the Rand study estimated that these treatments would cost the military between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually.
-Cost of providing erectile dysfunction medicines to the military: $84 miilon a year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.00797f5c569b

In 2011 it was estimated that the cost of air conditioning for US troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan was
$20 Billion a year...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ghanistan.html

Dwarfed by the billions wasted in failed procurement projects by the army and air force -
The Army's biggest budgetary mis-step was a family of networked air and ground vehicles collectively called the Future Combat System. Although prime contractor Boeing managed to keep the program on schedule and on budget through a series of restructures, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decided in 2009 that the project wasn't ready for prime-time and canceled it after a staggering $19 billion had already been spent. Bloomberg Business News subsequently reported that the service had wasted $32 billion on doomed weapons projects since 1995.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenth.../#b555f311cb53

[filghy2]

I think we can expect to see more of this kind of thing from Trump. It's pretty clear that he's planning to sack Mueller and try to shut down further investigations into Russian links - it only awaits manufacturing the right pretext. His strategy to discourage the Republicans in congress from taking any meaningful action is likely to be to double down on appealing to the prejudices of the Republican base. I'd like to think this won't work, but unfortunately I can't entirely dismiss to possibility that it will.