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Month: June 2017

Trump sure seemed to understand tarmac protocols

Trump sure seemed to understand tarmac protocols
by digby
Paul Ryan covering for Trump today by saying he’s just too stupid to know what inappropriate contact is:

“The president is new at this,” Ryan said. “He’s new to government. And so he probably wasn’t steeped into the long going protocols that established the relationships between DOJ, FBI, and White Houses.”

When a reporter questioned why that’s an “acceptable excuse,” given that Trump has a staff and counsel that should have been informed, Ryan reiterated that Trump did not know what he was doing.

“He’s new at government,” Ryan said. “Therefore I think he is learning as he goes.”

Here’s a random smattering of quotes from Donald Trump during the campaign about Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac for 30 minutes. He seemed to understand the protocols quite well and had no trouble making all kinds of accusations about it:

“…Because of this highly-inappropriate meeting at best, the Attorney General took herself essentially out of the case and put Director Comey in charge of making decisions, you saw that decision-making process. So why is she now allowed to fight so hard to get someone who is so obviously guilty on so many different fronts off the hook? In fact, it was publicly reported that sources close to Hillary Clinton said, and she actually I think said it to the papers, that she was thinking of reappointing Attorney General Lynch. She was thinking, she said it; I mean it was a statement she made. And effectively, I guess you’d call that a bribe, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that be called a bribe? How could she say they’re going to make a decision on her and you’re talking about you’re going to reappoint? She said it publicly, I believe….” Nov ’16

 
“…I would think he probably talked about appointing her as the Attorney General if Hillary wins this election, and you’re not allowed to do that. And they were very embarrassed. And they thought it would be something where they could sneak on and sneak off. And I’ve had a plane for a long time, I’ve never had anybody stop it, get on, come off, on the tarmac. Doesn’t happen.” Oct ’16
 
“…So went onto the plane on the tarmac, and right on the tarmac, and they had a meeting for 45 minutes, right before she was supposed to issue her judgment on Hillary and maybe Bill. Bill could be a target, who knows? Because of what’s going on….” Oct ’16
 
“…Americans have had it with the years and decades of Clinton corruption. And I will tell you, what happened with the Attorney General of the United States [Inaudible] airplane in Arizona. When he was going to be playing golf, very hot. I don’t think he was going to be playing golf. Just happened to meet her, happened to be on the tarmac, said, let’s say hello. Stayed for 39 minutes and talked about golf and his grandchildren. He didn’t talk about golf and he didn’t talk about his grandchildren, unless it was a minute of two….”Oct ’16
 
 How can the Attorney General be involved in this case or tell the FBI what to do when the Attorney General violated sanctity of law by secretly meeting with Bill Clinton, the husband of the possible target of the investigation and a possible target himself, in an airplane on the tarmac in Arizona? Remember, he was going to play golf, remember? But he just happened to be at the airport hanging around and the Attorney General’s plane drove by, right, and he said oh isn’t that their plane, oh yes, gee let’s say hello, let’s say hello. It was a chance meeting they said, right….”Oct ’16

Comey’s story

Comey’s story

by digby

Jeffrey Toobin thinks there is little doubt the president is liable for obstruction of justice. He explains why:

In this tale, the President knows how much power he possesses and dangles it before those who serve him. The F.B.I. director was in the middle of a ten-year term, which was designed to give him some insulation from political pressure, but there was a catch: Trump could still fire him. And Trump clearly knew it, as he repeatedly demanded Comey’s personal loyalty. An early conversation, on January 27th, over dinner in the Green Room of the White House, set the tone: Comey was to answer to Trump, or the F.B.I. director would be gone. As Comey put it, he saw that Trump was trying to set up a “patronage relationship.”

Soon enough, Trump called on Comey’s loyalty. The President was worried about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, and he wanted a premature exoneration from Comey. The director hedged, clearly uncomfortable with the demand, but finally told Trump, in rather convoluted ways, that he was not a subject of the investigation—at least not yet.

But the Russia probe continued to worry the President, and soon he had more demands. The climax of Comey’s statement is his cinematic recounting of a meeting with the President in the Oval Office on February 14, 2017. The drama begins after the meeting, when the President instructs the other officials present, including Vice-President Mike Pence, to leave the room. Trump even takes the extraordinary step of asking the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who was Comey’s boss, to go, in order to allow the President to speak with the director alone. Trump then shoos Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, out of the Oval Office, too. (When Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, looks in, a while later, Trump also asks him to stay out of the conversation.) This insistence on a one-on-one meeting suggests what prosecutors like to call “consciousness of guilt.” All these high-ranking officials had clearance to hear anything that Trump might want to say to the director, so the fact that the President wanted them out of earshot would seem to indicate that he knew that what he was telling Comey was wrong—that it was, indeed, an obstruction of justice.

When the two men were alone, Comey writes, Trump asked him to help out the just-fired national-security adviser, Michael Flynn. In Trump’s typical scattershot fashion, he started talking about Flynn, but segued to the subject of leaks, before getting back on topic. In the key passage of Comey’s statement, he writes:

The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice-President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that “he is a good guy.”

This part of Comey’s testimony, if it’s accurate, is a smoking gun. The President is instructing his subordinate to stop an F.B.I. investigation of Trump’s close associate.

Comey told the F.B.I. leadership team about Trump’s outrageously improper request, but he did something more, too. When Comey went to see his direct boss, Sessions, he made an urgent request:

I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened—him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind—was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply.

The language is uncharacteristic for the lawyerly F.B.I. director: he implored his boss to put a stop to the President’s meddling. But Sessions, a more loyal soldier, said nothing.

The most important piece of evidence in the obstruction case against Trump is actually never mentioned in Comey’s opening statement. That evidence is what occurred on May 9th. Comey had not acceded to the President’s request that he cease the investigation of Flynn and the connection to Russia, and he paid the price with his job. Later, Trump all but confessed that he had rid himself of this meddlesome director because of Russia. He told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I decided to just do it”—to fire Comey—“I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.’ “ The day after the firing, the President boasted to the visiting Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, saying, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

It’s pretty straightforward.

And it looks more and more like Sessions has a problem.

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Trump undermined his own legitimacy by what he said during the campaign

Trump undermined his own legitimacy by what he said during the campaign


by digby
I wrote about some obscure Russian stuff for Salon this morning:
On Wednesday Vox’s Ezra Klein published a long piece about the current crisis in our government. He wrote that “our president lacks legitimacy, our government is paralyzed, our problems are going unsolved.” I would say that legitimacy, the first of those issues, is the source of all the others.

Donald Trump’s legitimacy problem is not just a matter of losing the popular vote. Other presidents have assumed office after such an outcome. In 1824 John Quincy Adams became president after the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes became president after losing the popular vote to Samuel Tilden by more than 250,000 — although corruption was so rife in that election it’s fair to say no one will ever know for sure who got the most votes. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison won 233 electoral votes to Grover Cleveland’s 168, but lost the national count by about 90,000 votes. It didn’t happen again for 112 years when George W. Bush was installed by the Supreme Court after a virtual tie in Florida and a dubious vote count. And then just 16 years later, it happened again.

Throughout that last 16 years questions have been raised about our democracy, including the workings of the anachronistic Electoral College, the fact that every locality and state seems to have a different system and the way Republicans have systematically disenfranchised voters they believe would be likely to vote for their opponents. There has been underlying doubt about the integrity of America’s electoral system simmering for a long time. This year it has come to a boil.

For at least a year we’ve been aware of social-media propaganda and foreign actors hacking the systems of various arms of the Democratic Party in order to influence the presidential campaign. The experts tell us that the Russian government has directed a number of similar cyber operations around the world and that this one was their most sophisticated. Evidently, the idea was to sow chaos and undermine Americans’ already sorely tested faith in our electoral system.

According to a highly detailed investigative report by Massimo Calabresi of Time, the evidence suggests that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a particular ax to grind against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he termed a “signal” she sent in 2011, which he claimed sparked protests against him. The extent to which Putin truly favored Donald Trump is still unknown, and the question of whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government is now the focus of various investigations of Congress and a Justice Department special counsel. The odd behavior of Trump’s close associates as well as his obsession with shutting down the investigation certainly raise suspicions. But at this point it is pure speculation to think about what kind of “deal” might have been made.

This week’s story by The Intercept, reporting on an National Security Agency document that showed evidence the Russian military had made serious attempts to infiltrate voter information rolls around the country, suggests, however, yet another way the goals of Donald Trump and the Russian government were the same. Former FBI counterterrorism officer and cybersecurity expert Clinton Watts (best known for his quip “follow the bodies of dead Russians” in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee) raised some additional questions in a piece for the Daily Beast this week. He believes that the main objective of this operation was not to alter the vote count but rather to instill more doubt about the process.

Watts wrote, “I noticed a shift in Kremlin messaging last October, when its overt news outlets, conspiratorial partner websites, and covert social-media personas pushed theories of widespread voter fraud and hacking.” He cited a Reuters article indicating that a Kremlin-backed think tank report “drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election.” So it would be “better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency.”

It’s interesting to note that at the same moment the operation shifted in that direction, Trump himself was relentlessly flogging exactly the same accusation, saying in every rally from October on that Clinton and her campaign had “rigged the system” in her favor. Over and over again he would suggest that the outcome was predetermined:

When the outcome is fixed, when the system is rigged, people lose hope — they stop dreaming, they stop trying

He routinely told his followers stories like this:

One of the reasons I’ve been saying that the system is so corrupt and is so rigged, is not only what happens at the voters’ booth — and you know things happen, folks.

He passed along tweets like this:


Follow

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

@THEREALMOGUL: 41% of American voters believe the election could be “stolen” from DonaldTrump due to widespread voter fraud. – Politico”
4:32 AM – 18 Oct 2016

13,69913,699 Retweets
32,27032,270 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

Trump even made bizarre accusations that “John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling” and notoriously refused to say whether he would abide by the results if Clinton won. It was obvious that Donald Trump was planning to challenge her legitimacy.

In fact, Trump did more to create mistrust and doubt in the U.S. electoral system than the Russian government’s highly developed hacking and misinformation campaign. Whether they were working together is still unknown but they were definitely rowing in the same direction. As much as the president likes to whine and complain about the Democrats being sore losers, the irony is that Trump himself played the greatest role in undermining the legitimacy of his win.

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The nub of the Comey hearing

The nub of the Comey hearing

by digby

Also this on Russia:

Tom Cotton: “Do you believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia?” 

James Comey: “It’s a question I don’t think I should answer in open setting.”

This too:

Former FBI Director James Comey wanted there to be “no fuzz” on the question of if the Russians hacked the 2016 presidential election. “They did it with purpose, they did it with sophistication, they did it with overwhelming technical efforts.

On Sessions:

James Comey: Our judgment, as I recall, is that he was very close to and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons. We also were aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic. So we were convinced — in fact, I think we’d already heard that the career people were recommending that he recuse himself, that he was not going to be in contact with Russia-related matters much longer. 

On Trump committing possible obstruction of justice:

Richard Burr: “Do you sense that the president was trying to obstruct justice or just seek for a way for Mike Flynn to save face given he had already been fired?”

James Comey: “I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct. I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to find out the intention and whether that’s an offense.”

In case you were wondering, here’s what Bizarroworld is covering:

Racist rant o’ the day

Racist rant o’ the day

by digby

The Root:

A white man at a downtown Chicago café was captured on camera launching into a rant, calling a black man a slave and comparing him to livestock after becoming angry that the man apparently spilled some coffee on his light-colored suit.

According to WLS, the incident occurred around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Chicago’s Loop.

The assailant, identified as 23-year-old William Boucher, can be heard on the video screaming at an unidentified black man, “Shut up slave! Do not talk to me!”

Boucher then goes on to compare the man to livestock and suggests that he should be tagged with a bar code with his Social Security number.

“Your children are disposable vermin!” Boucher continues to yell at a second man who is also videotaping him. He then spits on that 30-year-old man as well as a 34-year-old woman, according to police.

The man Boucher spits at, however, is not having any of it and rushes up to Boucher, but is held back by another bystander.

“Get on all fours right now!” Boucher screams. “Get on all fours! Do not walk off on two legs! You don’t deserve to walk on two legs, vermin.”

Boucher is also seen punching down to the ground an older man who was walking toward his direction.

It is at that point that bystanders take down Boucher and hold him down until the police come to arrest him.

The older man, identified as only a 59-year-old, had to be taken to a nearby hospital for an eye injury.

Starbucks employees told the news station that Boucher has been a problem customer in the past, although never violent.

WLS reports that Boucher was arrested and charged with three counts of misdemeanor battery and is expected to appear in court next month.

Just another day in post-racial America.

APPEARING LIVE: James Comey by @BloggersRUs

APPEARING LIVE: James Comey
by Tom Sullivan

The brew & view here in the Cesspool of Sin is opening at 10 a.m. EDT this morning for the James Comey Show. Local public radio sent out an email yesterday morning saying it would have live coverage on both its stations when the former FBI director testifies under oath about the Russia investigation before the United States Senate.

Shaw’s Tavern in Washington, D.C. is hosting the “Comey Hearing Covfefe” with $5 “Russian Vodka flavors” and a $10 “FBI” sandwich. Union Pub reportedly will buy drinks (vodka shots, I heard) every time President Trump fires off a tweet during the hearing. Elsewhere in the country, CBS reports, bars are following suit, even in California (7 a.m. PDT).

Comey’s prepared remarks were available online yesterday. For those following the controversy arising from Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and investigations into possible collusion with the Tump campaign, there was much already known. Comey describes a series of interactions with Trump that he found so uncomfortable he documented with contemporaneous notes. After one meeting, Comey transcribed the conversation in the car immediately afterwards. Trump wheedled Comey trying to extract a pledge of loyalty and to get him to drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He’s a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Trump repeatedly asked that Comey do something to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation over his presidency and to “find a way to get it out that we weren’t investigating him,” Comey wrote. Senators will be probing to uncover whether Trump’s actions amount to obstruction of justice.

Former Watergate prosecutor Philip Allen Lacovara believes Comey has already laid out “evidence sufficient for a case of obstruction of justice.

Politico reports that the behavior Comey describes is classic Trump:

“I’ve known him for a long time and he’s no different in his job than when I knew him,” added George Arzt, who knew Trump while he was a reporter and a fundraiser and a spokesman for Mayor Ed Koch. “He never knew boundaries. He was tutored by Roy Cohn, the famous New York lawyer, who never knew boundaries.”

Trump has long sought to strike secret deals or end investigations when he grew exasperated with casino regulators in Atlantic City or city and federal officials, said Timothy O’Brien, a longtime biographer, and Arzt.

He threatened opponents — like he did with Comey, saying there could be “tapes” of their private conversation — with threats of lawsuits and public bullying.

“He has repeatedly throughout his career tried to intervene with law enforcement, regulators and take matters into his own hands that he knew other people didn’t do,” O’Brien said. “The difference between now and then is that he wasn’t president then. He has never been subjected to this broad of a variety of legal and ethical norms.”

And he may not be yet. Their tribal loyalties stronger than their oaths, Republicans in Congress exhibit little evidence they will make any moves towards either removing Trump from office or pressuring him to resign. All the hype regarding today’s hearing may not change that, even should Comey’s testimony actually live up to the hype.

As Trump’s fake signing ceremonies, fixation with crowd size, and demand for public credit for phony charities demonstrate, Trump’s behavior may stem more from his obsession with how the Russia investigation makes him look than any actual collusion with the Russians. But don’t discount the possibility of money laundering.

Comey’s 2007 testimony about a dramatic showdown in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room between Comey, then acting Attorney General, and White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr. was dramatic enough that today’s testimony is still must-see TV. For millennials who missed out on Watergate and Iran-Contra, this is their shot (no pun intended) at witnessing what could be generation-defining history.

The Royal We vs The Country I. Lewandowski’s Trump Spin @spockosbrain

The Royal We vs The Country I. Lewandowski’s Trump Spin
By Spocko


We all know about The Royal We. Today Cory Lewandowski described what I’m calling “The Country I.”

According to Lewandowski, when the President said to Comey “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” what he was REALLY talking about loyalty to the country.
That’s some 10,000 RPM spin non-people.

Tucker Carlson, in his role as TV host like substance, was totally was down with that.

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So, you just heard Congressman Swalwall bring up almost first thing this statement from the former FBI director that says President Trump asked for his quote, “loyalty.” Now assuming that’s true, why would the president ask for loyalty from an FBI director? What does that mean?

COREY LEWANDOWSKI: Look, what the president asked for was loyalty to the country, and loyalty to make sure that the American people have the justice system that they want. That’s not unheard of, that’s not uncalled for. What the president asked for as a president-elect, was to develop a rapport with the incoming FBI director. If you read the statement that the FBI director, what he said was in his entire tenure he had two conversations with Barack Obama when he was the president of the United States. One was to simply say goodbye. And in the time that President Trump has taken office, from the time he was the president-elect til the time Jim Comey was fired for not performing his job well he had nine separate conversations with the president and multiple meetings. The difference is this president is hands-on, wants to make sure the best Justice Department available, and he made the decision as the commander in chief to relieve a person from duty who was no longer capable of running the FBI. 

CARLSON: Well that’s for sure, and you’ll get no disagreement from me, by the way, privately from a lot of Democrats, that Comey was out of control because he was.

via Media Matters

From Comey’s statement.

‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.’ I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence.”

Shorter Lewandowski:

“The President identifies so strongly with the country that when he said “I” he also means The Country. It’s almost Arthurian.”

Trolling the victims

Trolling the victims

by digby

So the Trump White House sent condolences to the victims of today’s terrorist attack and then said they had it coming:

They never fail to do the wrong thing.

QOTD: Chuck Schumer

QOTD: Chuck Schumer

by digby

On Trump’s infrastructure “proposal”:

“The entire focus of the President’s infrastructure ‘proposal’ is on privatization, which sounds like a nice word but when you scratch beneath the surface it means much less construction and far fewer jobs, particularly in rural areas. It means Trump tolls from one end of America to the other, and huge profits for financiers who, when they put up the money want to be repaid by the average driver, worker and citizen.”

He was being nice. It’s a boondoggle of epic proportions virtually designed to line the pockets of big business, provide shoddy, environmentally disastrous projects that end up costing every one of us many times what it would have cost the government to do it right in the first place.

Schumer signaled that this will not be the bipartisan bill all these GOPers wanted. Thank goodness. Let them own the piece of garbage.

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