Skip to content

Month: October 2019

Trump threatens whistleblowers and witnesses, isn’t that a crime? #AskPreet Bharara @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on October 16, 2019

Trump threatens whistleblowers and witnesses, isn’t that a crime? #AskPreet Bharara

By Spocko

“He should not have to worry that the leader of the free world, the commander in chief goes on television and suggests maybe execution is the right consequence for his playing by the rules and doing the right thing as an exercise of conscience. It’s extraordinary and it’s an abomination really.” – Preet Bharara 

Back in September I asked Former US Attorney, SDNY Preet Bharara this question here on Hullabaloo, How will the WH mob avoid prosecution for witness tampering?

He and Anne talked about it in the October 1 Cafe Insider episode. Preet, calling Trump’s threat to the whistle blower “an abomination.” Anne was disgusted by it, saying, that is what dictators do. ( Here’s a longer audio link on whistle blower from the show, 2 minutes 23 seconds.)

But what I really want to know, from former US Attorneys who know politics is, “Will Trump be charged for threatening the whistle blower and witnesses?”

I want someone to answer questions like:
Does the witness tampering statue apply to whistleblowers?  What about the others in government who gave the whistle blower information?

I sent Preet this letter below and I even left a voicemail message asking the question. I’m not looking for just a legal response.  I see how Trump works. Threatening people is what he does. And I think he’ll get away with it using all his tricks and legal dodges.

I want someone to look at Trump’s methods as a whole and say, “Yes, this is a crime. Here is what it will take to prosecute him on this crime, in a world where Bill Barr is in charge of the Department of Justice. Here is what it would take politically to charge him. Here is what it would take to educate the public that even though the threatening of the witnesses happens publicly on TV and Twitter, it is still a crime.”

Below I point out HOW Trump will try to do it, how he will try to normalize what he does and ask what we can do about it.

I’m very much interested in how powerful people intimidate others and what it takes to withstand them. I want to know methods the less powerful can use to fight the effectively. Then I want to see examples of the people making those threats suffering negative consequences for using them.

Anne Milgram  @AnneMilgram and Preet Bharara @PreetBharara 

NOW the detailed questions. Because you are lawyers I threw some links to the statute, but since you talk about politics I have some questions about the realities of making charges. I’ve heard former US Attorney Barbara McQuade @BarbMcQuade answer some of these on Rachael Maddow, but I want to hear your thoughts.


I’ve seen the right wing media spin the President’s threats as no big deal, just “tough talk” I have a few questions:

  • Are threats to witnesses from elected officials protected under the 1st Amendment?
  • If the threat is public and didn’t work, because the person testified, does that mean that the treat was legal?
  • Can the person who did the threatening be charged with breaking the law?
  • Can the person who was threatened sue the person(s) who threatened them in a civil case for damages?
(It looks like witnesses can sue for being harassed. Would this apply to the President after he was out of office? Does it apply to Senators and Congress people? (1737. 18 U.S.C.1514, (CIVIL ACTION TO ENJOIN THE OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE ) Link to Justice Dept.)
  • If a witness or whistle blower WANTED to charge Trump and others for witness tampering, which department would they take it to? Specifically, where would the whistleblowers’ lawyer,@AndrewBakaj report threats to?
  • Who decides to prosecute?
  • What kind of evidence do prosecutors need to make the charges stick?
I looked at the Justice Department statues on tampering with witnesses and informants and it seems to cover a number of proceedings.
1729. PROTECTION OF GOVERNMENT PROCESSES — TAMPERING WITH VICTIMS, WITNESSES, OR INFORMANTS — 18 U.S.C. 1512  (Link to Justice Dept statue.)

It applies to proceedings before Congress, executive departments, and administrative agencies, and to civil and criminal judicial proceedings, including grand jury proceedings.

I  also looked at who it applies to:

Section 1512 protects potential as well as actual witnesses. With the addition of the words “any person,” it is clear that a witness is “one who knew or was expected to know material facts and was expected to testify to them before pending judicial proceedings.”

I’ve seen that lawyers try to dismiss or invalidate charges of threatening witnesses.Based on what we know about Trump and his defenses, I count at least eight ways he will avoid the charge and run out the clock. Here’s my list, are there others? How do prosecutors get around these?

  1. He did not “knowingly” and “intentionally” mean to intimidate any person with his tweets and comment. They will say he was just commenting on history and how we dealt with spies in the old days.
  2. He was joking. He has a history of making hyperbolic threats. 
  3. He has no obligation to be honest to the public or the press (The Corey Lewandowski defense)  
  4. He did not make this statement while under oath.
  5. He was actually fulfilling his oath of office, “defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” because he believes the whistle blower and certain witnesses are enemies of the United States of which he is the duly elected leader
  6. His “general state of mind, commonly referred to as “general intent” was not corrupt.
  7. His comments did not rise to the level of a “true threat”  Elonis v. United States, 575 U.S. (2015).
  8. People in business use comments like this to others as part of normal “deal making” and “negotiations” the whistler blower and witnesses are over reacting.

 BTW I like this comment from an analysis of the case: “The more imaginative types of witness tampering as well as forms of tampering defying enumeration were still prohibited by the omnibus provision of § 1503. United States v. Lester, 749 F.2d 1288 (9th Cir. 1984).”

I would like you and Anne to discuss the legal tricks, word choices and questions about intent that will be used by Trump to avoid being charged with witness tampering. Avoiding being charged with crimes is one way the President wins politically. Delaying testimony by threatening witnesses is another.

Trump has gotten away with threatening people his entire life, with Bill Barr, his Attorney General on his side, will he get away with it this time too? 

Live Long And Prosper

Spocko

Cross Posted to Spocko’s Brain 

Huckleberry’s profile in courage

Published by digby on October 16, 2019

Huckleberry’s profile in courage

by digby

John McCain is so proud of the son he never had …

Update

And more:

And more:

He also said today that Trump will have blood on his hands if an American is killed by ISIS.

He already has lots of Kurdish blood on his hands but I guess that doesn’t matter. I do wonder if Trump’s cult will give a damn about American soldiers being killed.

Frankly, I doubt it. Everything they ever said they cared about has been refuted by their support of this monster. They literally don’t care about anything but owning the libs, keeping women in their places and hating on foreigners and black and brown Americans. As long as Trump keeps doing that they will love him. Everything else is just collateral damage and of no concern to them.

.

The Trump spawn are even more shameless than their daddy

Published by digby on October 16, 2019

The Trump spawn are even more shameless than their daddy


by digby





My Salon column this morning:

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter appeared on Good Morning America yesterday and when asked if he thought foreign companies and investment banks would have hired him if his name wasn’t Biden he said “probably not.” He is correct. The younger Biden had little to no experience in the businesses for which he was paid big salaries. He was hired because he is the son of a powerful person, clearly in hopes that they would have some influence with the father and impress their customers with the fact that they were so close to someone with influence.

That reeks of class privilege and it is incredibly common in American business and politics. I don’t think I have ever worked anywhere in my life where cronyism/nepotism and influence-peddling wasn’t present in some form or another. Hiring some neer-do-well relative is one of the ways rich and powerful people scratch each other’s backs — and, not incidentally, insure that this quasi-aristocracy of the one percent is perpetuated. If anything, what’s uncommon is for some scion of the powerful to openly admit that the reason he got the job was because of his name. Usually, they fatuously insist their “success” is due to their own unique genius and talent. (I’m looking at you Donald Trump.)

It was interesting to see the reactions of some of the famous scions of right-wing politicians weigh in on Hunter Biden’s appearance. For instance, Rand Paul, the son of Ron Paul, GOP congressman from Texas and two-time presidential candidate, told MSNBC that Hunter Biden should be officially investigated. When anchor Stephanie Ruhle pointed out that there are numerous offspring of powerful people working in the administration, Paul, the great libertarian, excused this nepotism because the children weren’t getting rich. When Ruhle pressed him about the Trump family Paul suddenly reversed course saying, “If we want to go down the road of the politics of self-destruction of everybody, criminalize all politicians on both sides of the aisle and go after their family, we can do that.” He then suggested it was “holier-than-thou” to even ask the question, since both sides do it.

Hunter Biden will be sure to call him as a character witness if the Trump DOJ follows through on an investigation, as has been rumored.

The late Senator John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain, of “The View” thought Hunter Biden didn’t come off too well and was foolish to have admitted that his last name had landed him his well-paid employment. No word on what her husband Ben Domenech, founder of the conservative political web site “The Federalist” and son of the Trump administration’s Undersecretary of the Interior, Douglas Domenech, had to say about it.

One of the most aggressive critics of the Biden family nepotism was Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel who tweeted: “Hunter Biden got $50K a month from a Ukrainian energy company, despite having ZERO experience in energy. His justification? That he was also on the board of Amtrak–more obvious nepotism. If that’s not the swamp, I don’t know what is!”

You may recall that Ronna McDaniel changed her name when she took this big job at the RNC after Trump’s inauguration. Before that she was better known as Ronna Romney McDaniel, the niece of Senator Mitt Romney and granddaughter of former Michigan Governor George Romney. When it comes to nepotism, she knows whereof she speaks.

Naturally,  it was the Trump spawn that really hit the ball out of the park.

Big brother Don Junior couldn’t resist tweeting about Hunter Biden’s interview:

Apparently, he believes that like his father (also the scion of a wealthy man) he is a very stable genius who got where he is purely by dint of his enormous talent.

A few days ago he told Sean Hannity  “if I went to China and I did that… and I came back with $1.50—not $1.5 billion—$1.50, we would solve the media problem because their heads would explode, there’d be no fake news media left.”

Eric was on with Laura Ingraham recently and also had some strong opinions on the matter:

He even wrote a whiny op-ed for The Hill in which he declared that Hunter Biden was being let off easy:

If the situation were reversed, I would have been front page news in every newspaper, online publication, and cable news outlet for the rest of my life. Reporters would be camping outside of my door, my family would have been picked apart, my name would have been smeared in the news every single week, and my father arguably would not even be president of the United States today

As former Bush administration official David Frum said on MSNBC’s AM Joy last weekend, ”When you see poor Eric and poor Don Jr., you realize there are bivalves with more self-awareness than the Trump children.”

It’s been nearly impossible to get the House to take up the president’s criminality and abuse of power so it’s highly unlikely that anyone will ever officially investigate the influence peddling, bribery, nepotism and overall corruption of the Trump family during this presidency. But it is unprecedented.

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner take no salaries, mainly because it was the only way they could get around the nepotism rules for White House staff. But they are both still raking in tens of millions of dollars every year from their businesses, many of which are clear conflicts of interest with the work they are doing for the White House. Kushner, in particular, has huge financial conflicts in countries he deals with for the White House. Ivanka shuttered the fashion business but continues to get trademarks from China for some reason and works on issues that impact the Trump Organization from which she still profits.

The boys, who were to run the business while Dad and Ivanka did the politics, were supposed to eschew any “new deals” but of course they’ve done plenty. They’ve sold a lot of real estate to people with good reason to curry favor with their father. They’ve been feted and pampered by rich sheiks and government leaders and shady businessmen all over the world, many of whom are quite open about their desire to gain access and influence with the president — who is also benefitting financially from all of this.

Here’s one from just last month:

Only a first family that would openly engage in this level of nepotism, cronyism, influence-peddling and corruption would have the chutzpah to rail against Hunter Biden and whine that he’s being treated with kid gloves. In other words, only the Trumps would do that.

.

The Evangelical Cult

Published by digby on October 16, 2019

The Evangelical Cult

by digby

These quotes from the Values Voters Summit over the weekend say everything about Trump’s following.
Bless their hearts:

While Donald Trump is the target of an impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill, evangelical Christians who gathered across town were unfazed by his request of Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

On Friday, a succession of speakers delivered paeans to Trump at the annual Values Voter Summit, which the president is set to headline on Saturday. Trump’s allies have drawn a warm embrace from a core Republican constituency that feels under siege from modern social changes such as same-sex marriage and mass immigration.

To these voters, Trump is a protector. Some of them are uncomfortable with his soliciting political help from Ukraine, but they’re willing to overlook it. The attacks on him are perceived as an indictment of their values, and they identify with him for lashing out at progressives.

“I see it as harassment, quite frankly,” Gail Sonatore of Middletown, New Jersey, said of the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. “I don’t think he’s done anything. I understand his tone — nobody likes that tone. But when you’re dealing with Marxists, what are you supposed to do? Just take it?”

She added: “Republicans have for a long time been called racist, fascist, sexist and greedy. And I think that’s why they support Donald Trump.”

Like many others at the conference, Sonatore said she has no problem with Trump asking Ukraine’s president to look into Biden. She said the former vice president should be investigated in the U.S., but was certain any inquiry would be thwarted because “the deep state is deep, and it is corrupt,” echoing a conspiracy theory common among Trump supporters that unelected career government employees are abusing their power to subvert the will of voters.

It’s hopeless people. These folks have attached themselves to acon man and there is no dissuading them.

“Nobody likes the tone” she says, probably talking about his crudeness. But they actually like it because he deploys it against people they see as their enemies. People like you.

They pretend it’s about “issues” but it’s clear from the interview that they are clueless. Yes, they like their Supreme Court but it’s obvious that that is just another “own the libs” symbol, a scalp they tack to their mantle of hate.

Bill Chimiak of Signal Mountain, Tennessee, said it was “problematic” for Trump to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival, but that it doesn’t affect his support for the president because “I didn’t hire an angel — I hired someone that would represent the United States.”

He scoffed when asked about the impeachment inquiry, suggesting that the U.S. government should put former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in prison instead.

“Go after the easy criminals first,” he said. “Go after them, and then let’s talk about that.”
[…]

Valerie Marken of Monument, Colorado, said the impeachment inquiry was “crazy” and that her support for Trump wouldn’t be affected by his request to ask Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

“I think it’s fair game,” she said. “He’s the president.”

These are the supposed moral arbiters of our culture.

In my view, any Democrat who panders to these people at this point is committing political malpractice. It’s clear that it will never matter to them what any Democrat says. They are voting on the basis of something very primal and very very tribal. And it’s not about morals or principles, biblical or otherwise.

.

.

He’s not bringing troops home, people. It’s another lie.

Published by digby on October 16, 2019

He’s not bringing troops home, people. It’s another lie.

by digby

Why anyone believes a word he says is beyond me but apparently tens of millions of them do. Believing that he’s actually an isolationist takes some real self-delusion:

Some people want the United States to protect the 7,000 mile away Border of Syria, presided over by Bashar al-Assad, our enemy,” [Trump] tweeted. “I would much rather focus on our Southern Border which abuts and is part of the United States of America.”

He’d have us believe that this is a campaign promise kept: an America First foreign policy that refuses to risk American blood or waste U.S. dollars in the Middle East.

“Now,” he claims, “we are slowly & carefully bringing our great soldiers & military home.”

But it isn’t so.

Take it from the Pentagon reporter at Fox News, who reports, “Since May, U.S. forces have increased in Middle East by ~14,000 … There are currently more than 60,000 U.S. troops deployed to various countries and aboard warships.”

In another tweet, Trump declared, “The Endless Wars Must End!” To which a noninterventionist congressman, Justin Amash, retorted, “Then we’ll need a new president who will end them. President Trump has had nearly three years to end them and has done zero. He keeps sending more troops to the Middle East … He vetoed legislation that would have limited U.S. involvement in the Yemen war.”

In fact, even as Trump ordered those U.S. troops stationed beside the Kurds to move elsewhere in Syria or the Middle East––not back to the United States––he ordered other Americans to risk their lives thousands of miles from their families: He sent almost 2,000 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia, a rich country with its own military, controlled by a regime that perpetrates brutal human-rights abuses.

The presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was cited by Osama bin Laden to help convert men to al-Qaeda.

He points out that Saudi Arabia is stiffing the US already. They have almost certainly figured out that all Trump wants is a photo op — everything else he can just lie about with impunity.No need to actually pay any money. He doesn’t care about reality anyway.
He just does what he wants in the moment and says “waddaya gonna do about it” just as he did in business.

Trump’s interventionism on Saudi Arabia’s behalf is certainly unacceptable to Congress, the body that the Constitution vests with the power to declare war. Earlier this year, the House approved a resolution, 247 to 175, directing the president to withdraw the U.S. from the Saudi war on Yemen. A bipartisan Senate majority had already approved the same resolution. But Trump defied those majorities. And he defied the will of Congress again to sell the Saudis arms.

In his former life he succeeded in slithering out from under most of his debts and those that he couldn’t he just turned to daddy or some criminal organization to bail him out. How that works in politics is still to be seen but so far the GOP establishment is stepping nicely into daddy’s shoes.

.

All the Trump fraud news that isn’t by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 16, 2019

All the Trump fraud news that isn’t
by Tom Sullivan


Trump International Hotel and Tower on Columbus Circle, New York City. (via Google Earth)

Donald J. Trump, stable genius, told lenders two of his Manhattan buildings produced twice as much in rent as he reported to taxing authorities in 2017. Trump also gave conflicting occupancy rates for his building at 40 Wall Street according to documents obtained by ProPublica’s Heather Vogell through New York’s Freedom of Information Law.

Trump may call padding figures given to lenders “truthful hyperbole … an innocent form of exaggeration,” but law enforcement may see that and falsifying tax returns as anything but innocent.

Real estate professionals told ProPublica they saw no explanation for the multiple inconsistencies:

The discrepancies are “versions of fraud,” said Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. “This kind of stuff is not OK.”

Former Trump associates Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort are in prison convicted of, among other things, falsifying tax and bank records related to real estate.

Cohen told Congress in February, “It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes … and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.” ProPublica found documentary evidence to support that. Eight years of figures on his Trump International Hotel and Tower show the company reported gross income “only about 81% of what it reported to the lender.”

Because Trump challenged his tax bill for the buildings for nine years in a row, these financial records from the notoriously opaque family business became public. ProPublica then compared them — four building in all — to tax and loan records made public when Trump’s lender, Ladder Capital, sold the debt it held in a package of mortgage-backed securities. Reporting discrepancies in two stood out:

There can be legitimate reasons for numbers to diverge between tax and loan documents, the experts noted, but some of the gaps seemed to have no reasonable justification. “It really feels like there’s two sets of books — it feels like a set of books for the tax guy and a set for the lender,” said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert and real estate professor at Montclair State University who reviewed the records. “It’s hard to argue numbers. That’s black and white.”

There’s more, of course, including nine years’ worth of omissions of revenues from leasing roof space for television antennas for which there is a specific line on tax forms.

Trump has an easement to lease the roof space; he doesn’t own it. But three tax experts, including Melanie Brock, an appraiser and paralegal who has worked on hundreds of New York City tax cases, told ProPublica that the income should still be reported on the tax appeals forms.

It’s hard to guess what might explain every inconsistency, said David Wilkes, a New York City tax lawyer who is chair of the National Association of Property Tax Attorneys. But, he added, “My gut reaction is it seems like there’s something amiss there.”

This time last year, a New York Times investigation concluded the Trump family’s tax schemes showed a systematic pattern of “outright fraud.” Trump’s sister, federal appellate Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, subsequently retired in an apparent effort to head off an ethics inquiry into her conduct. The statute of limitations had run out on bringing criminal tax fraud charges for the years in question.

The same is not true for civil and criminal cases brought under city, state, and federal returns for some of the years covered by the ProPublica investigation.

Trump is fighting tooth-and-nail to keep his taxes from public view — taxes he promised to release during his campaign and never did. He’s hiding something. Maybe a lot of somethings.

“Golly, shouldn’t I have insulted in front of the whole world knowing that he has the goods on me?”

Published by digby on October 16, 2019

“Golly, should I have insulted him in front of the whole world knowing that he has the goods on me?”

by digby


John Bolton is a world class asshole. Insulting him was not the work of a very stable genius.

At a critical juncture in his presidency, facing a rapidly unfolding impeachment inquiry by House Democrats, Donald Trump is feeling besieged by snitches.

In recent weeks, numerous leaks have appeared in the pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other major papers and news outlets detailing the president’s attempts to enlist foreign leaders to help dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and also aid Trump’s quest to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s concluded investigation. And as is his MO, the media-obsessed president has been fixated on not just the identity of the whistleblower behind the internal complaint that brought this scandal to the fore, but also on who, exactly, has been namelessly feeding intel to the press.

In the course of casual conversations with advisers and friends, President Trump has privately raised suspicions that a spiteful John Bolton, his notoriously hawkish former national security adviser, could be one of the sources behind the flood of leaks against him, three people familiar with the comments said. At one point, one of those sources recalled, Trump guessed that Bolton was behind one of the anonymous accounts that listed the former national security adviser as one of the top officials most disturbed by the Ukraine-related efforts of Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney who remains at the center of activities that spurred the impeachment inquiry.

“[Trump] was clearly implying [it, saying] something to the effect of, ‘Oh, gee, I wonder who the source on that could be,’” this source said, referring to the president’s speculation. Bolton, for his part, told The Daily Beast last month that allegations that he was a leaker in Trump’s midst are “flatly incorrect.”

The former national security adviser—who departed the administration last month on awful, mutually bitter terms—is working on a book about his time serving Trump, and has “a lot to dish,” one knowledgeable source noted.

Neither Bolton nor White House spokespeople provided comment for this story. Matt Schlapp, an influential conservative activist with close ties to the White House, said his assumption was that the leaks were coming from “career folks inside who hate Trump” and that the president and his campaign had “14 months of this” to come. As for Bolton, Schlapp said, “He’s smarter than that, although he does aggressively defend himself.”

Indeed, Bolton’s name surfaced Monday before House impeachment inquiry committees, when Hill reportedly testified that he told her to alert the chief lawyer for the National Security Council that Giuliani was working with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on an operation with legal implications, the Times reported late Monday. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to sources familiar with the testimony.

“I have not spoken to John about [his comments, as conveyed by Hill],” Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning. “John is a longtime friend. I have no idea why John is doing this. My best guess is that he’s confused and bought into a false media narrative without bothering to call me about it.”

Tillerson is talking too…

.

Remember what Trump said about the First Gulf War?

Published by digby on October 15, 2019

Remember what Trump said about the First Gulf War?

by digby

I had forgotten this gobbledygook statement during the campaign. It’s so bad it makes your head hurt. This is the man making life and death decisions in the Middle East today. And he isn’t even the slightest bit smarter than he was then:

Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he wasn’t precisely sure what he meant in 2002 when he told the radio host Howard Stern that he wished the Persian Gulf war in 1991 had been “done correctly.”

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as part of a round of interviews after his South Carolina primary victory on Saturday, Mr. Trump was pressed by the host, Chuck Todd, about the discussion with Mr. Stern, who asked him if he supported an invasion of Iraq a year after the Sept. 11 attacks. “Yes, I guess so,” Mr. Trump, who has spent his campaign saying he was an early and firm opponent of the Iraq war in 2003, told Mr. Stern.

In the Stern interview, unearthed by BuzzFeed, Mr. Trump added: “You know, I wish it was — I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Mr. Trump, as Mr. Todd noted, did not sound as if he was strongly endorsing the 2003 war. But Mr. Todd pressed him as to what his second point meant.

“Well, what I mean by that,” Mr. Trump said, “is it almost shouldn’t have been done and, you know, I really don’t even know what I mean, because that was a long time ago and who knows what was in my head? I think that it wasn’t done correctly.”

Mr. Trump then offered a different thought.

“In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been done at all. It was sort of, you know, it was just done. It was just — we dropped bombs,” he said. “Now, if you look back, actually, that was probably the correct way of doing it, not going in and not upsetting, giving them a lesson or not.”

In the Persian Gulf war, Mr. Trump said, President George H.W. Bush “taught them a lesson,” adding, “What happened is he was taunted, because Saddam Hussein was saying we drove back the Americans, the ugly Americans were driven back, the power of Iraq, the power.”

He continued: “Well, we didn’t — weren’t driven back, he just decided not — General Schwarzkopf and others said, maybe let’s not go in, I’m not sure — although I think Schwarzkopf actually maybe wanted to go in. I think he made — maybe did the right thing.”

Seriously, why didn’t we just randomly pluck some High School drop-out off the street to run the most powerful nation on earth. It couldn’t have been any worse.

.

Don’t make the toddler mad. He might set the house on fire.

Published by digby on October 15, 2019

Don’t make the toddler mad. He might set the house on fire.

by digby

Liz sez “leave Trumpie aloooone!!!!”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this: if you don’t want Trump to blow up the world, you’d better lick his boots.

Update

You don’t want to mention the toddler’s spawn either apparently:

Oooh. I guess we’d better not look at the Trumps or we’ll be on the “road to self-destruction.” What, is Trump going to start nuclear war if anyone asks about his corrupt offspring and their equally corrupt spouses?

.

The safe full of kompromat on the president of the United State of America

Published by digby on October 15, 2019

The safe full of kompromat on the president of the United State of America

by digby

Was there a *Greg somewhere in the woodwork who kept some copies?

American Media, Inc. and the National Enquirer shredded sensitive Donald Trump-related documents that had been held in a top-secret safe right before Trump was elected in 2016, according to fresh allegations made in a new book by journalist Ronan Farrow.

During the first week of November 2016, the book alleges that Dylan Howard, who was then editor in chief of the National Enquirer, ordered a staff member to “get everything out of the safe” and that “we need to get a shredder down there.”

His order came the same day a reporter for the Wall Street Journal had called the Enquirer to ask for comment on a story about how AMI, which owns the supermarket tabloid, had paid $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal who said she had had an affair with Trump to keep her quiet right before the election. The Enquirer never published her story.

“The staffer opened the safe, removed a set of documents, and tried to wrest it shut,” Farrow writes. “Later, reporters would discuss the safe like it was the warehouse where they stored the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones, but it was small and cheap and old.”

The safe, which often got jammed, had sat for years in an office that belonged to the Enquirer’s then-longtime executive editor, Barry Levine.

Farrow also quotes an Enquirer employee as saying that later that day a trash disposal crew collected “a larger than customary volume of refuse.”

That June, according to Farrow, Howard had put together a full list of Trump-related “dirt” that was in AMI’s archives, some dating back decades. After Trump was elected, Trump fixer Michael Cohen asked for all of AMI’s materials about Trump.

“There was an internal debate: some were starting to realize that surrendering it all would create a legally problematic paper trail, and resisted,” Farrow writes in “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators” which will be published on Tuesday. “Nevertheless, Howard and senior staff ordered the reporting material that wasn’t already in the small safe exhumed from storage bins in Florida and sent to AMI headquarters.”

When the material came to the AMI headquarters, it was first put into the small safe. Then, as the scandal around the magazine’s close relationship with Trump deepened, it was placed into a bigger safe in the office of AMI’s head of human resources, Daniel Rotstein.

“It was only later, when one of the employees who had been skeptical started getting jumpy and went to check, that they found something amiss: the list of Trump dirt didn’t match up with the physical files,” Farrow writes. “Some of the material had gone missing.”

Howard told colleagues that none of the material was destroyed, but Farrow’s sources expressed skepticism.

“We are always at the edge of what’s legally permissible,” one senior AMI employee told Farrow. “It’s very exciting.”

Asked for comment, Howard attorney Paul Tweed said: “We have advised Mr. Howard to make no further comment at this stage, while all legal options and jurisdictions are being considered.”

The Daily Beast reported in early October that the Tweed law firm sent threatening letters to a number of U.K. booksellers as well as Farrow’s British publisher saying there were “false and defamatory allegations” in his book.

An American Media spokesperson said: “Mr. Farrow’s narrative is driven by unsubstantiated allegations from questionable sources and while these stories may be dramatic, they are completely untrue.”

A spokesman for the Trump Organization didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Hatchette, which is publishing a book by Levine about Trump and women, declined to comment. Rotstein, who no longer works at AMI, could not be reached for comment.

Trump had a decades-long close relationship with AMI CEO David Pecker and in turn, Pecker and the Enquirer protected Trump from his own misdeeds with a tabloid practice called “catch and kill” in which the Enquirer bought up embarrassing stories involving Trump and then wouldn’t publish them.

Farrow quotes one former Enquirer journalist, Jerry George, who estimates that Pecker “killed perhaps ten fully reported stories about Trump, and nixed many more potential leads during George’s twenty-eight years at the Enquirer.”

Late last year, AMI admitted its hush money payment to McDougal, which it said it had done to prevent her story from “influencing the election.” In an agreement with federal prosecutors that said AMI would not get charged for its role in the scheme, the company said it would cooperate with authorities.

The agreement showed that Pecker held a meeting with Cohen and at least one other member of the campaign in August 2015, during which Pecker “offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate’s relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.” He also agreed to keep Cohen updated on any negative stories.

A month before the 2016 election, an agent for pornographic actress Stormy Daniels told Howard that she was threatening to speak publicly about her alleged affair with Trump. That led Pecker and Howard to tell Cohen about Daniels; he then negotiated a deal to pay her $130,000 in exchange for her silence. Cohen is serving a three-year jail sentence for campaign finance violations related to his role in the scheme.

AMI had previously denied engaging in such a practice, telling the Wall Street Journal in November 2016, “AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr. Trump.”

This is the president of the United States we are talking about here.

America’s most lurid tabloid had a safe full of dirt on Donald Trump that they supposedly destroyed when he got elected.

Sure, that’s perfectly normal. Perfectly fine.

* For those who don’t know what I’m talking about — you need to watch “Succession!”