Content of Comey memos released to Fox News less than an hour after they were given to Congress
FBI Director James Comey in the Oval Office on September 17, 2013. Photo by Pete Souza
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Soon after the Department of Justice released redacted version of former FBI Director James Comey’s memos about his interactions with President some rich asshole to Congress, reports began to emerge about their content.
Around 8:00 PM EST, Fox News’ Congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reported that the network had learned House committees were in possession of the memos.
Roughly 30 minutes later, Pergram began tweeting about the content of the memos detailing conversations between the then-FBI director and the president.
According to Pergram, a memo from January 7, 2017 reveals that the rich asshole asked Comey “if he ‘hoped I planned to stay on. I assures him I intended to stay. He said good.'”
After Comey told the president that the Russians “‘allegedly had tapes involving him and prostitutes’ in Moscow, circa 2013,” Pergram tweeted. “Comey says the rich asshole replied ‘there were no prostitutes; there were never prostitutes,'” and that the memo later noted that “the rich asshole presumed hotels he stayed in were ‘wired.'”
In another memo detailed by the Fox News reporter, Comey wrote that the president “discussed women ‘who falsely accused him of grabbing them or touching them,'” including a “stripper.” The former FBI director noted in the memo that the rich asshole appeared to be “defending himself.”
Shortly after Pergram began tweeting about the memos, the Associated Press also announced on Twitter that they were in possession of them. It remains unclear if the Fox News reporter had the memos physically or had them described to him.
Comey memo: the rich asshole said Flynn had 'serious judgment issues'
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/19/18 09:35 PM EDT
President the rich asshole told ex-FBI Director James Comey that he had “serious reservations” about his former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s judgment, Comey wrote in a memo.
The Hill obtained copies of the memos, which Comey wrote following meetings with the rich asshole early in his presidency, after they were shared with members of Congress on Thursday night.
In a memo dated Jan. 28, 2017, Comey recounted a dinner he had with the rich asshole at the White House shortly after the president's inauguration. the rich asshole asked Comey who he thought he should be in contact with in the administration, and Comey mentioned the national security adviser.
the rich asshole then explained to Comey that when the president had complimented British Prime Minister Theresa May on being the first to congratulate him on his election, Flynn interjected that another leader had called first.
That was the first time the rich asshole learned of the other leader’s call, Comey wrote.
“I did not comment at any point during this topic and there was no mention or acknowledgement of any FBI interest in or contact with General Flynn,” Comey wrote.
Comey, who was fired by the rich asshole last May, testified to Congress last summer that the rich asshole had asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn when the two met in the Oval Office on Feb. 14, 2017.
the rich asshole’s lawyers have disputed that account.
the rich asshole fired Flynn as his national security adviser after just a couple weeks on the job. His reasoning for that firing has also faced scrutiny.
The president said in February 2017 that he fired Flynn because he had lied to the vice president about his contact with a Russian official.
A couple days after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the president tweeted that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.” The tweet was reportedly written by his personal lawyer at the time, John Dowd.
Legal experts speculated that if the rich asshole knew Flynn had lied to the FBI and then asked Comey to drop the investigation, it could constitute obstruction of justice.
The release of Comey’s memos coincided with his national media tour to promote his new book. During the media blitz, he has blasted the president as “morally unfit” and “untethered to truth.”
The president has responded by calling Comey a "slime ball" and the "worst FBI director in history."
‘Michael Cohen knows where the bodies are buried’: Ex-Watergate prosecutor warns the rich asshole has ‘a lot to be worried about’
the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen (IowaPolitics.com/Flickr)
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A onetime member of the Watergate prosecutorial team on Thursday night said that President some rich asshole has reason to be worried about the prospect of his longtime personality attorney Michael Cohen “flipping” on him.
After another the rich asshole lawyer, Jay Goldberg, claimed Cohen will “flip” if faced with criminal charges, Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Bank said it’s possible the fellow attorney knows something the public does not.
“This is a person who knows [Cohen], and I would possibly think that he has a reason to say that and that some rich asshole has a reason to be really worried because Michael Cohen knows a lot of the places where the bodies are buried,” Wine-Bank told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “He did deals for him, he’s been with him a long time.”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” she concluded, “whether he talks or doesn’t talk.”
Watch below, via MSNBC:
By
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April 19, 2018
Less than 24 hours after the rich asshole called the Russia probe a 'hoax,' his own DOJ made clear just how real it is.
Former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort is suspected of serving as a “back channel” between the presidential campaign and Russians seeking to interfere in the 2016 election, a lawyer for the Department of Justice revealed Thursday.
The revelation by U.S. prosecutors came during a hearing on whether special counsel Robert Mueller was within the scope of his mandate when he made the decision to indict Manafort on charges of money laundering and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
Manafort’s lawyers are trying to get the charges dismissed, arguing that they fall outside of Mueller’s mandate to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
But Manafort’s quest to have the charges against him dropped ended up backfiring in a big way.
In the process of defending Mueller’s investigation, a lawyer for the rich asshole’s DOJ revealed that part of the probe into Manafort is focused specifically on whether he acted as a “back channel” to Russia, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
“He had long-standing ties to Russia-backed politicians,” DOJ lawyer Michael Dreeben told U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson. “Did they provide back channels to Russia? Investigators will naturally look at those things.”
Mueller’s team has previously cited Manafort’s business ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, saying that an investigation of connections between the rich asshole campaign and Russia would “naturally cover ties that a former the rich asshole campaign manager had to Russian-associated political operatives, Russian-backed politicians, and Russian oligarchs.”
But until now, federal prosecutors hadn’t explicitly stated that they suspect Manafort of serving as a back channel for collusion with the Russian government.
Manafort is one of four the rich asshole campaign advisers who have been indicted or pleaded guilty in the ongoing investigation into Russian interference and potential coordination with the rich asshole campaign.
He was first indicted in October on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, false statements, and failure to disclose foreign assets in relation to his work for pro-Putin Ukrainian politicians. In February, Mueller filed a new case against him, hitting him with charges for tax, financial, and bank fraud.
Meanwhile, the rich asshole’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign aide George Papadopoulos both pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russian officials, and former campaign aide Rick Gates pleaded guilty to one charge of making false statements to the FBI and one charge of conspiracy against the United States.
All three struck plea deals with Mueller’s team, agreeing to cooperate and provide information to investigators.
In total, Mueller’s investigation has resulted in over 100 charges against 19 people and three companies.
On Wednesday, the rich asshole once again called the Russia probe a “hoax” and repeated his frequent cry of “no collusion.” Less than 24 hours later, the rich asshole’s own DOJ shot down those claims, confirming that the investigation is very, very real — and the issue of collusion is smack in the middle of it.
POLITICS
Justice Department Releases Comey Memos To Congress
Top GOP lawmakers have been putting pressure on the DOJ to release the documents.
The Department of Justice has shared copies of the so-called Comey memos with congressional leaders.
In a letter addressed to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Thursday, the agency said it was releasing both redacted and unredacted versions of the documents to lawmakers.
The unredacted documents are “classified,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd, and would be available for viewing in the House Security office by members of the three congressional committees starting Friday.
News of the release comes just a day after Goodlatte suggested he’d subpoena the DOJ to obtain the seven memos, in which former FBI chief James Comey detailed his interactions with President some rich asshole.
Goodlatte, Nunes and Gowdy have been putting pressure on the agency to release the memos. Last Friday, they demanded that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein provide access to unredacted copies of the documents.
The three Republican leaders have also sought the release of other sensitive documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling and the FBI investigation into former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server.
In a Monday letter, Rosenstein had asked for more time to “evaluate the consequences” of providing such access, noting that “one or more of the memos may relate to an ongoing investigation, may contain classified information, and may report confidential Presidential communications.”
In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, Comey said the memos contained his personal recollections of his conversations with the rich asshole. He admitted at the time to having leaked details from the documents, including an encounter during which the president allegedly urged him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The memos’ content, however, is mostly unknown — and may contain useful evidence for Mueller’s Russia probe, particularly in relation to whether the rich asshole obstructed justice. Questions have thus been raised as to whether releasing the memos to Congress could interfere with the investigation.
Democrats have suggested that GOP demands for the memos are a ploy to undermine Rosenstein and Mueller.
“The Deputy Attorney General should be aware that no matter what he gives to these members of Congress, it will never be enough,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent on Wednesday. “The point is to create a conflict with the Justice Department that would give the president grounds to get rid of Mueller or Rosenstein. They don’t care what damage they do to our institutions to protect the president.”
In his letter to lawmakers on Thursday, Boyd said recent “unusual events” had prompted a discussion about releasing the memos, but stressed that the DOJ had “consulted the relevant parties and concluded that the release of the memoranda to Congress at this time would not adversely impact any ongoing investigation.”
The battle over the Comey memos comes as the fired FBI chief’s tell-all memoir hit shelves. In the book, Comey accuses the rich asshole of being “unethical” and “untethered to truth and institutional values.”
the rich asshole lashed out at Comey following the memoir’s release, calling him “the worst FBI Director in history.”
This story has been updated with information about the memos’ release on Thursday.
By
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April 19, 2018
The National Enquirer and its parent company have lost millions of dollars in revenue while promoting the rich asshole and spending thousands to hide his secrets.
The National Enquirer has spent the last three years going all-in for the rich asshole and trying to protect his dirty secrets — but that hasn’t paid off for the tabloid.
The Wall Street Journal reports that American Media Inc. (AMI), which owns the Enquirer, has seen revenue down 9 percent in the most recent period that was available (2016-2017). Revenue nosedived even further from 2014 to 2017 and was down 29 percent. Those losses represent millions of dollars.
In that same time frame, the Enquirer became one of the rich asshole’s biggest boosters in the media as he launched his presidential campaign. Almost one-third of the magazine’s covers since 2016 have featured the rich asshole on the cover, promoting him, or attacks on his political rivals.
AMI’s tabloid Globe Magazine also featured an attack on Malia Obama on its cover, citing a completely fabricated story about President Barack Obama’s eldest daughter. Chelsea Clinton called the story “loathsome,” saying, “Please leave Malia alone to lead her own life & keep her out of your (shameful) agenda!”
During the Republican presidential primary, the Enquirer was the only publication, other than the paper owned by the rich asshole’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that endorsed him.
the rich asshole and AMI CEO David Pecker have been friends for years, with the rich asshole ferrying Pecker around on his private jet as a perk of their relationship.
An even bigger perk of their relationship? The company’s “catch and kill” practice: buying the rights to an embarrassing the rich asshole story and then burying it instead of publishing it.
For example, the company paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story alleging an affair with the rich asshole, then never published it. McDougal recently reached a settlement with the company, which will allow her to speak out without concern for repercussions.
Those payments were reportedly discussed with Michael Cohen, the rich asshole’s personal fixer and lawyer. The communications between the rich asshole’s representative and the tabloid publisher were allegedly a part of the recent FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office.
AMI also paid a rich asshole Tower doorman $30,000 for his story about the rich asshole fathering a child out of wedlock, and then did not publish it.
Campaign watchdog Common Cause has filed complaints with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission over the protection payments.
Paul S. Ryan, Common Cause’s vice president for policy and litigation, described the exchange of money as “violations of campaign finance laws by agents of some rich asshole to bury embarrassing stories during the presidential race.”
Shilling for the rich asshole, both on its front pages and in the back room, hasn’t helped the Enquirer or its parent company. The company faces financial peril, and like the rich asshole has filed for bankruptcy protection before.
As America has learned, getting in bed with the rich asshole is bad for business and worse for your reputation — even if you’re a trashy supermarket tabloid.
‘We will never settle this case’: Stormy Daniels’ attorney has no interest in letting go of Cohen and the rich asshole
Michael Avenatti is the attorney representing Stephanie Clifford, better known by her stage name, Stormy Daniels.
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President some rich asshole’s attorney/fixer Michael Cohen announced Thursday that he is giving up his lawsuits against BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS, but the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels has no intention of following suite.
In an interview Thursday evening with CNN’s Erin Burnett, lawyer Michael Avenatti said that he and his client “will never settle this case,” unless the rich asshole and Cohen agree to full disclosure about what transpired between them and the coverup.
“Who knew what when? What the president knew, right? You’re talking about the full monty?” Burnett asked.
“The full full monty,” Avenatti replied. “Without that, there will be no settlement. I will say this, though, today, it appears as though Michael Cohen is smarter than the president because Michael Cohen is cutting his losses on these other cases [and] appears to be focussing on our case and the criminal matter. It appears that he’s focused where he needs to be.”
Meanwhile, Avenatti said that the rich asshole is focused on his crowd size in Key West, Florida.
When it came to criticism lodged at Avenatti and Daniels from the president’s allies, the attorney said that people on the right are getting “very concerned.” As such, he believes that they are attempting to distract from the case and attack her personally, claiming this is nothing more than a publicity stunt.
“They don’t like it,” he said. “They are worried and they should be worried.”
Watch the full conversation below:
POLITICS
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani Is Joining the rich asshole’s Legal Team
The former prosecutor said he hopes to negotiate an end to the special counsel investigation.
President some rich asshole’s legal team has a new member: Rudy Giuliani.
The former prosecutor and New York City mayor told The Washington Post that he plans to help the president navigate Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation.
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani told the Post.
In addition to his status as a personal friend of the rich asshole’s and a former campaign advisor, Giuliani may add value in another key area: He served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where the rich asshole’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen is currently the subject of a far-reaching investigation. the rich asshole allies fear Cohen might flip on the president.
Giuliani reportedly angled to be appointed attorney general in the rich asshole administration but withdrew himself from consideration for both that position and secretary of state as the rich asshole made it clear he’d look elsewhere.
Giuliani’s decision was confirmed to multiple news outlets by Jay Sekulow, another of the rich asshole’s lawyers dealing with the Mueller probe. the rich asshole’s previous lead attorney on the case, John Dowd, resigned in March.
Sekulow added that two more lawyers, Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin, have also joined the team.
the rich asshole has struggled to attract attorneys willing to handle the matter following Dowd’s departure. Late last month, Ted Olson, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush, told news outlets that many Washington lawyers are intentionally steering clear of the “turmoil” and “chaos” in the White House.
The president hit back at the claim in a series of tweets, saying numerous lawyers wanted to represent him, but he didn’t want to add to his legal team because it would take them too long to familiarize themselves with the case:
This article has been updated with more information on Giuliani’s background.
the rich asshole treats his newest aides like ‘mini executives’ in the West Wing — and they’re bypassing John Kelly
President some rich asshole (left) and White House chief of staff John Kelly (right). Image via Saul Loeb/AFP.
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Two of President some rich asshole’s newest additions to the West Wing are now bypassing White House chief of staff John Kelly and are being treated like “mini-executives” by the president.
CNN reported Thursday that the rich asshole’s new national security adviser John Bolton and economics czar Larry Kudlow report directly to the president and have “wide unilateral prerogative for their own areas of focus,” two senior sources within the administration said. Their wide berth is reportedly reminiscent of the president’s leadership style at the rich asshole Organization.
According to the report, one of the first instances of Bolton’s leeway to run the national security council as he pleases came just days after he began in the West Wing “when he informed homeland security adviser Tom Bossert that he was giving him the boot.”
“A stunned Bossert asked to speak to Kelly immediately,” one of CNN’s sources said, noting that Bolton, in response, “made clear that this was not Kelly’s decision to make.”
Though Kelly reportedly let that initial firing slide, the chief of staff was “frustrated” after Bolton moved to fire deputy national security adviser Ricky Waddell, who was handpicked by former national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Kelly “fervently advocated” to keep the deputy adviser on, but was overruled by Bolton, “who said he wanted his own person in that position.”
“Bolton,” one of CNN’s sources mused, “is reasserting the authority of the national security adviser over the chief of staff.”
POLITICS
the rich asshole: ‘Human Trafficking Is Worse Than It’s Ever Been In The History Of The World’
The president is using the specter of human trafficking to push his U.S.-Mexico border wall.
In comments advocating a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, President some rich asshole said, “Human trafficking is worse than it’s ever been in the history of the world.”
“Drugs are flowing into our country,” he told reporters while visiting the Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West, Florida. “We need border protection. We need the wall. We have to have the wall. The Democrats don’t want to approve the wall because they think it’s good politically, but it’s not.”
He continued: “If you look at what’s happening in California with sanctuary cities — people are really going the opposite way. They don’t want sanctuary cities. There’s a little bit of a revolution going on in California. Human trafficking is worse than it’s ever been in the history of the world.”
Though the rich asshole did not clarify what metric he was using or whether he had accounted for world population growth, human trafficking is a critical issue today. According to the International Labor Organization, there are an estimated 24.9 million people around the world who are “trapped in modern-day slavery.” Of those, 16 million are exploited for labor, 4.8 million are sexually exploited, and 4.1 million forced into state-imposed labor.
Most victims of forced labor or sexual exploitation are in the Asia and Pacific regions. More relevant to the rich asshole’s border wall, though, is human trafficking in the Americas, which accounts for roughly 1 percent of forced labor and 4 percent of sexual exploitation in the world, according to the ILO.
But the president’s conflation of immigration with human trafficking serves an agenda. He has warned of “caravans” threatening to shuttle waves of dangerous immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border ― a fear-mongering tactic that echoes racist and derogatory comments he made on the campaign trail and in the first year of his presidency.
His comment also did not appear to address one of the most glaring historical examples of human trafficking: the centuries-long trans-Atlantic slave trade, during which over 10 million people were forcibly shipped from parts of Africa to North America, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
The president has previously emphasized his commitment to fighting human trafficking, including in comments he made to law enforcement officials in Long Island, New York, last year.
“Human traffickers. This is a term that’s been going on from the beginning of time, and they say it’s worse now than it ever was,” he said, according to CNN. “You go back 1,000 years, where you think of human trafficking, you go back 500 years, 200 years, 100 years, human trafficking, they say ― think of it, what they do ― human trafficking is worse now, maybe, than it’s ever been in the history of this world.”
Under the rich asshole administration, there were over 8,500 U.S. cases of human trafficking reported in 2017 ― an increase of almost 1,000 reported incidents from the previous year, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
‘His administration is the hoax’: Armed Service Dem calls BS on the rich asshole’s claim the Russia probe is a witch hunt
Rep. Ruben Gallego (Screen cap).
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House Armed Services Committee member Rep Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) couldn’t help but call out President some rich asshole’s recent claim that the investigation into possible Russian collusion by special counsel Robert Mueller was a hoax.
In an interview with SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah, Gallego blasted the president saying, “The only hoax is this whole administration.”
He went on to note that it was made obvious that the rich asshole fired former FBI director James Comey because of the Russia investigation. the rich asshole confessed to as much in his interview last year with NBC News’ Lestor Holt.
“He [the rich asshole] begged Russia to hack on live TV. This guy is delusional if he doesn’t understand what is in front of him,” Gallego continued.”
To make matters worse, the Arizona congressman said that the rich asshole has spent his life surrounded by people who confirm his own delusions.
“He’s used to lying and people believing it and not ever contesting it,” he continued. “That’s why he doesn’t take press conferences because if he takes a press conference he will be confronted by the truth.
Gallego thinks that the rich asshole is looking for respect from anyone and everyone.
“He has such a small personality for such a tall guy. He’s looking for respect he’s never going to find,” Gallego continued.
Listen to the interview below:
POLITICS
Senate Confirms Climate Change Denier To Lead NASA
Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) will take over control of the space agency after seven-month standoff.
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), a former Navy pilot with no scientific credentials and who doesn’t believe humans are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, to lead NASA.
Bridenstine will become the first elected official to hold the NASA administrator job. He joins a Cabinet already loaded with people who question the near-universal scientific consensus that climate change is real and that human activity is the primary cause.
The final vote ― which was 50-49 along party lines ― came one day after the Senate narrowly advanced Bridenstine’s nomination, thanks to an about-face from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and a key vote from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Rubio, who in September told Politico that he worried about Bridenstine’s nomination “could be devastating for the space program,” said in a statement Wednesday that he decided to support the nominee in order to avoid “a gaping leadership void” at NASA.
Much like the procedural vote on Wednesday, which was temporarily deadlocked at 49-49, Thursday’s confirmation ultimately hinged on Flake, who voted in favor only after a bit of drama that included a long discussion with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and stepping out for a phone call, as CNN’s Manu Raju reports.
Bridenstine will replace Robert Lightfoot Jr., who has been serving as acting administrator since previous NASA administrator, Charles Bolden Jr., resigned from his post in January.
In a statement following Thursday’s vote, Bridenstine said he is humbled by the opportunity. “I look forward to working with the outstanding team at NASA to achieve the President’s vision for American leadership in space,” he said.
The Senate confirmation comes more than seven months after President some rich asshole tapped Bridenstine for the post. Democrats skewered Bridenstine during the confirmation process, pegging him as “extreme” and unqualified to oversee a scientific agency with an annual budget of more than $18 billion.
Echoing previous statements, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said on the Senate floor Wednesday that he finds Bridenstine’s behavior in Congress “as divisive as any in Washington.” And he called Bridenstine’s previous comments about climate change “troubling.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said before Thursday’s vote that it is “downright dangerous” to put someone without the appropriate expertise in charge of NASA.
“And quite frankly it is even more frightening to have a leader who has made a career out of ignoring scientific expertise,” he said.
In a June 2013 speech, Bridenstine peddled a debunked argument made by climate change skeptics, claiming that global temperatures “stopped rising 10 years ago.” He said “the people of Oklahoma are ready to accept” an apology from then-President Barack Obama for what Bridenstine called a “gross misallocation” of funds for climate change research instead of weather forecasting.
Critics have also pointed to Bridenstine’s history of opposing equal rights for same-sex couples ― in 2013, he suggested LGBTQ people are sexually immoral ― and voiced concern about his ability to manage an agency of more than 17,000 employees. Bridenstine has no formal background in science or engineering.
The former Navy Reserve pilot previously served as executive director of the Air and Space Museum & Planetarium in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During his tenure, the nonprofit suffered financial losses, and an investigation by the Project On Government Oversight found that Bridenstine used the nonprofit’s resources to benefit a company he co-owned, according to a report from The Daily Beast this week.
Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and James Inhofe (Okla.), have flocked to Bridenstine’s defense.
On Wednesday, Cruz called Bridenstine a “strong leader” and said he could think of few people more inspirational or qualified. And he blasted “cynical politicians” for “attempting to malign his character.”
.@NASA will have that strong leader in Jim Bridenstine. Having spent his entire adult life in public service, first in combat as a fighter pilot, then in the House of Representatives, he is a principled and effective leader who I count as a dear friend.
In a Twitter post, Inhofe said Bridenstine “has the experience to take our space program to new heights b/c of his background as an aviator, passion for space & work to modernize our nation’s space program.”
At his confirmation hearing in November, Bridenstine said NASA was “at a critical time in its history” and that he would build off the hard work of the previous administration.
“Humanity is ready to go to deep space for the first time in 45 years,” he said.
This article has been updated to include Bridenstine’s statement and additional details about the final vote.
Rudy Giuliani joins the rich asshole’s legal team to help end the Mueller probe: report
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (left) and President some rich asshole (right). Image via Don Emmert/AFP.
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the Washington Post that he has joined President some rich asshole’s legal team to help bring an end to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” the former mayor and prosecutor said of his decision to join the rich asshole’s Russia defense team.
Giuliani, who will soon join the rich asshole’s lawyers Jay Sekulow and Ty Cobb to work on the Russia matter, said he finalized the decision when visiting Mar-a-Lago last month. He told the Post he plans on taking leave soon from his firm, Greenberg Traurig.
Judge blocks the rich asshole administration from transferring unnamed enemy combatant
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 04/19/18 08:08 PM EDT
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the rich asshole administration from transferring a U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant to Saudi Arabia, in an under-the-wire decision that came just minutes before the government would have had the authority to move the prisoner against his will.
The ruling is the latest twist in a dramatic case that has reignited debate in an extremely unsettled area of U.S. law: how to handle U.S. citizens suspected of fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who are captured in active combat zones.
Because of a previous ruling from the same judge, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, the government was required to provide the detainee with 72 hours notice if it intended to transfer him.
The administration noticed the transfer on Monday night and the 72 hours was set to run out at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday.
The government is expected to appeal the decision. It is already challenging Chutkan’s previous ruling and if it appeals this decision, legal analysts say the two cases will likely be consolidated, thanks to the similarities of the legal debate.
Chutkan’s brief, one-page order does not provide a rationale, but states that the court will provide a redacted version of her opinion after consultation with the two parties.
The detainee, known only as John Doe, was captured by Syrian forces in mid-September and transferred to U.S. military custody in Iraq, where he has remained since.
There is no exact legal precedent for his case and the rich asshole administration has struggled with how to handle him. It reportedly lacks sufficient evidence to charge him in federal court as it has done with other U.S. citizens captured working for ISIS—but for security reasons, it is loathe to simply release him.
The government recently struck a deal with a third country — confirmed to The Hill by a U.S. official to be Saudi Arabia, where Doe also holds citizenship — to take Doe off of the U.S.’s hands.
But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing Doe, argued in court Thursday morning that forcibly transferring him to foreign custody would trample on his rights as an American citizen — a position Chutkan appeared to endorse.
“It may be in the U.S. interest to transfer him… but that does not necessarily overcome John Doe’s legal rights as a citizen,” she said in court.
Doe is challenging his status as an enemy combatant, arguing that the government must either charge him with a crime or release him. He has claimed to have traveled to Syria in order to report on the conflict there and said that he was kidnapped by ISIS. The U.S. government says that he joined the terror group.
Both issues — whether the government can transfer Doe and whether Doe is being lawfully held as an enemy combatant — hinge on his right to habeas corpus, which requires the government to provide a legal basis for detention.
The government argued Thursday that transferring Doe to another country constitutes relief under habeas, because he will be released from U.S. custody. It claims that it has the authority to transfer Doe, as a battlefield capture, to the custody of another country with a “legitimate sovereign interest” in him—in other words, to a regional partner in the fight against ISIS.
Saudi Arabia, which was not named in court, “would initially take him into custody and then it would be completely up to them” what to do with him, Justice Department lawyer James Burnham said in court Thursday. “Custody could be one day or 10 years and that’s completely up to them.”
Chutkan on Thursday characterized that rationale as an “end-run” around habeas corpus, seen as a bedrock right.
“You’re asking me to step aside and end his rights and his challenge to detention” based solely on the concern that halting the transfer would be a ding on diplomatic relations between the two nations, Chutkan said Thursday. “I don’t see the rush.”
She noted that the government had disclosed that Saudi Arabia had agreed to take Doe in full knowledge of the fact that court proceedings might delay the transfer.
Chutkan, in her bare-bones ruling on Thursday, addressed only the issue of Doe’s transfer — not the lawfulness of his detention, which remains an open question.
But it is that question that could reshape the delicate legal framework that both the rich asshole and Obama administrations have used to frame the war on ISIS.
In order to classify a person as an enemy combatant, the government must be able to prove that the detainee is a fighter for an enemy force with whom the U.S. is in a state of armed conflict. Both administrations have claimed that ISIS is an “associated force” covered by the military authorization that Congress passed in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks.
But the courts have not yet weighed in on that rationale, and both conservative and liberal legal analysts say the government is on risky legal footing if challenged.
Hinting at a tense awareness of that risk within government, the Justice Department has carefully avoided basing any of its legal arguments on the AUMF.
The issue has sparked a perennial debate on Capitol Hill, although lawmakers have so far failed to coalesce around a single piece of legislation.
Most recently, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker(R-Tenn.) on Monday introduced legislation updating the authorization for use of military force (AUMF) that would resolve the discrepancy, but its prospects are seen as dim on Capitol Hill.
‘I don’t think he’s going to serve out his term’: Watch Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti explain his bold new prediction
Nicolle Wallace and Michael Avenatti on MSNBC/Screenshot
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Michael Avenatti was back on Nicolle Wallace’s MSNBC show this afternoon, and dropped another bombshell.
That matters because, as Wallace noted, Avenatti has been prescient.
“Your predictions have pretty much all come true,” she said.
“I don’t think the president will serve out his term,” he said. “That’s how serious I think this is.”
Avenatti’s prediction is that Cohen will be indicted in the next few months and roll on the rich asshole.
“Panic has began to set in, and for good reason,” he said. “If I was the President I’ve be very worried.”
And Avenatti warned Cohen and the rich asshole that no life line is coming from him. Daniels will not settle the case, he said, unless she gets everything she wants.
“We are not going to settle this case under any circumstances that do not involve Mr. Cohen and the president coming 100 percent clean,” he said. “It’s never going to happen.”
“Do you really think you’re going to take the president’s deposition?” Wallace said. “No offense, but you’re no Bob Mueller.”
The supremely confident Avenatti didn’t back down.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll put my skill set up against anybody.”
Giuliani joins the rich asshole legal team
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/19/18 05:10 PM EDT
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is joining the legal team representing President the rich asshole in the Russia investigation.
Jay Sekulow, an attorney on the rich asshole’s team, confirmed the hire and said Giuliani would be accompanied by former federal prosecutors Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin.
“Rudy is great. He has been my friend for a long time and wants to get this matter quickly resolved for the good of the country,” the rich asshole said in a statement provided by Sekulow.
Giuliani joins Sekulow and White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who have been dealing with the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — and whether the president’s campaign was involved.
“It is an honor to be a part of such an important legal team, and I look forward to not only working with the president but with Jay, Ty, and their colleagues,” Giuliani said in a statement.
The moves bolster the rich asshole’s legal team, which has been shorthanded since the departure of lead attorney John Dowd last month.
The additions come as the Russia probe has moved in on the rich asshole’s inner circle. His longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen was raided by the FBI last week, in part the result of a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who leads the Russia probe.
the rich asshole’s lawyers have also been engaged in negotiations over a possible the rich asshole interview with Mueller.
The president previously expressed a desire to sit for an interview, against the advice of his lawyers, but he was said to have soured on the idea following the Cohen raid.
The president previously expressed a desire to sit for an interview, against the advice of his lawyers, but he was said to have soured on the idea following the Cohen raid.
the rich asshole had struggled to fill out his group of attorneys. Many high-profile defense lawyers have turned down the opportunity to work for the president, who is known to be a difficult client.
The president last month was set to hire the husband-and-wife pairing of Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing to represent him in the Russia probe, but eventually reneged after it was revealed they had conflicts.
the rich asshole’s overtures toward diGenova, a fierce critic of Mueller, reportedly was a factor in Dowd’s decision to quit the team.
Giuliani told The Washington Post on Thursday that he finalized the decision in recent days, and wants to help the president "negotiate an end" to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which the rich asshole has referred to as a "hoax."
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani is a former federal prosecutor and a vocal defender of the rich asshole. The president reportedly weighed the possibility of replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with the former New York mayor last summer, but the move never occurred.
The Raskins, who are married, have a private practice based in Florida. Both are former Justice Department attorneys with backgrounds fighting organized crime and racketeering, among other issues.
—Avery Anapol contributed.
GOP Gov. Scott Walker: the rich asshole’s obsession with the press is a ‘constant motivator’ for people who don’t like him
Scott Walker speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention
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Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker, who’s up for re-election in 2018, knocked the president on Thursday for his well-documented media obsession, telling a reporter for Journal Sentinel it serves as a “constant reminder and motivator” for people who don’t like him.
“He’s in the press so often—every day, almost every minute he’s in there—so for someone who doesn’t like him, it’s like a constant reminder and motivator,” Walker said.
Walker added that Democrats are “more motivated than any time I’ve seen in the last 25 years,” and are motivated largely by a dissatisfaction with the rich asshole and his policies.
“The left is angry and their rhetoric is filled with hatred and they are motivated,” Walker told supporters in Boscobel, as the Journal Sentinel reports. “They’re angry at me, they’re angry at the president, they’re angry at all of you, they’re angry at anybody who even thinks about voting Republican.”
“The wind’s not at our back,” Walker said. “It’s not at our side. It is firmly in our face.”
“This election is going to be tougher than anyone I have been involved with, including the recall,” Walker insisted.
Justice to provide access to Comey memos to GOP lawmakers
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 04/19/18 03:55 PM EDT
The Justice Department is expected to provide a group of House GOP members access to former FBI Director James Comey's memos documenting his interactions with President the rich asshole on Thursday, according to a department official.
It is unclear whether copies of the documents will be sent to Capitol Hill or whether lawmakers will be required to travel to the Justice Department to view them. Four of the memos are classified.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was poised to subpoena the department over access to the documents. The seven memos have been a flashpoint in the debate over Comey's handling of the investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and into the rich asshole campaign's possible ties to Russia.
Comey drew fire from Republicans after he revealed that he provided one unclassified memo to a personal friend to reveal to The New York Times. Comey did so in order to spark the appointment of a special counsel in the Russia probe following his dismissal as FBI director last year.
Three powerful House lawmakers — Goodlatte, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — have been investigating what they say is evidence of bias and potential wrongdoing at the Justice Department and the FBI in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Democrats have described the probe as a partisan exercise designed to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller. Comey's memos are seen as key to a potential obstruction of justice case against the president.
Comey said Thursday he’s doesn't mind if the memos are made available, and added that he supports transparency.
“I think what folks will see if they get to see the memos, is I’ve been consistent since the very beginning right after my encounters with President the rich asshole,” he said during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN.
“I think what folks will see if they get to see the memos, is I’ve been consistent since the very beginning right after my encounters with President the rich asshole,” he said during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had asked the three lawmakers to give him extra time to consult with the "relevant parties" on whether he can make the memos available to them.
Rosenstein told lawmakers on Monday that the Comey memos may relate to an “ongoing investigation,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Hill.
—Updated at 5:11 p.m.
the rich asshole spending bill leads to stark IMF warning
April 19, 2018
Nicole Goodkind
Posted with permission from Newsweek
The United States is the only country with an advanced economy that will see its public debt ratio increase over the next three to five years, according to a new report issued by the International Monetary Fund. As the ratio rises, so will tax rates and America's inability to stabilize the economy during recessionary periods, experts say.
Because of the increased government spending and borrowing required by President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and two-year budget deal, the U.S. will take on deficits above $1 trillion over the next three years, according to the IMF. That’s more than 5 percent of gross domestic product, which measures economic growth. The IMF’s projections were in line with the Congressional Budget Office's, which were released last week. The CBO predicted that the U.S. would increase its national debt by $1.9 trillion between 2018 and 2028, the IMF predicts that debt will be 117 percent of GDP by 2023.
Meanwhile, other advanced economies like Germany, Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Spain and Greece will likely lower their debt-to-GDP ratios over the same period.
“We urge policymakers to avoid fiscal policies that provide unnecessary stimulus when economic activity is already picking up. Instead, most advanced, emerging market, and low income developing countries should deliver on their fiscal plans, and put deficits and debt firmly on a downward path,” said Vitor Gaspar and Laura Jaramillo director and assistant director of the IMF's fiscal affairs department.
The IMF predicts that by 2023, the U.S. will have a larger debt-to-GDP ratio than Italy, a country with such high debt that it’s often referred to as a “ systemic threat,” to Europe.
The actions taken by the U.S. right now are "unusual since most countries normally increase the deficit to stimulate the economy during period of recession, but reduce the deficit during good times," said Barry Bosworth, senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, a bipartisan policy center.
"The U.S. had already recovered from the recession by 2017, but the government enacted a large tax cut and expenditure increases at the beginning of this year. Since we are near full employment, the deficit will be offset by interest rate increases in the future," he said. The rising debt-to-GDP ratio, he added, will, "inhibit the ability to increase the deficit in the event of a future recession."
Meanwhile, the rising ratio will actually increase taxes in the future, said Bosworth. "A large debt and rising interest rates imply that interest payments on the debt will rise sharply in future years. That will increase the tax burden with no increase in benefits to future taxpayers."
As debt in the U.S. grows, interest payments accumulate and take up a larger part of the budget that would be otherwise be spent on programs and initiatives to benefit Americans. The amount spent on interest payments is expected to grow from $316 billion in 2018 to $915 billion in 2028, according to the CBO. Furthermore, the CBO predicts that on average over the next 10 years more than 40 percent of all the economic growth triggered by the tax cuts will go abroad because of foreign investment and interest payments.
Last week, Republican Senator Bob Corker said that voting for the GOP tax law was one of the worst mistakes he had made in office, because of the growing deficits that came with it. “This president, obviously, is not a president that’s interested in fiscal issues,” he said at a breakfast in Washington Wednesday. “This issue is not going to be dealt with without a strong charismatic president who really wants to take it on. This is not going to be dealt with until we have a crisis. It’s not going to happen and that’s sad. It makes me despondent."
Senate confirms the rich asshole’s pick to lead NASA
BY TIMOTHY CAMA - 04/19/18 02:41 PM EDT
The Senate on Thursday voted along party lines to confirm Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine (Okla.), President the rich asshole’s choice to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The 50-49 vote came after months of Democratic attempts to stop Bridenstine's confirmation and a day after a procedural vote that nearly failed.
The vote came after a dramatic nearly hourlong vote period on the Senate floor. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) cast the final "yes" vote after holding out for about 15 minutes longer than his fellow Senators.
Flake was seen speaking to Senate leaders and their staff, including Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). It wasn’t immediately clear why Flake waited so long.
He similarly withheld his vote Wednesday on a procedural motion to move forward on Bridenstine’s confirmation. Cornyn said at the time that Flake wanted more time to meet with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, the rich asshole’s nominee for secretary of State, before the Senate moved forward on that nomination.
All Republicans voted to confirm and all Democrats and independents voted against.
Bridenstine, who has represented Tulsa, Okla., since 2013, is a former Navy pilot, and previously led the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium.
He’ll be responsible for a 17,000-person agency whose far-reaching duties include space exploration, overseeing commercial space activities, studying aeronautics and researching the Earth’s atmosphere, among other tasks.
While Republicans hailed Bridenstine as a top-notch candidate to lead NASA, Democrats argued that he was unqualified for the high-profile scientific spot and too divisive of a politician. They also argued that his views, such as doubting climate change science and opposition to LGBT rights, ought to disqualify him.
A key vote for Bridenstine came from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
Rubio, whose state hosts NASA’s primary space launch facility, had bemoaned the nomination of a “politician” to lead the agency instead of a scientist.
Bridenstine notably spoke in advertisements for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) 2016 presidential campaign, frequently criticizing Rubio as weak on security and immigration.
Rubio said earlier Thursday that though he still had misgivings about Bridenstine, the impending retirement of acting NASA Director Robert Lightfoot meant the organization needs a leader.
“I was not enthused about the nomination,” he said on the Senate floor. “Nothing personal about Mr. Bridenstine. NASA is an organization that needs to be led by a space professional.”
Lightfoot’s departure, Rubio said, “leaves us with the prospect of this incredible agency with a vacancy in its top job.”
Rubio’s GOP colleagues had no reservations about supporting Bridenstine.
“Claiming our rightful place in the stars will require an effort spanning many years and several presidential administrations,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said. “We can begin that undertaking today by confirming a leader with a remarkable record of service to our country, a vision for the American space program that is big, not small, and a genuine faith in his country that is as boundless as the heavens. That man is Jim Bridenstine.”
Democrats argued that Bridenstine is the wrong man for the job.
“Jim Bridenstine, the nominee that we are considering, served as a Navy pilot, and I thank him for his service. But that does not qualify him to run NASA,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
“Just because you know how to fly a plane does not mean that you have the skills and experience to lead the federal government's space agency,” he continued.
“James Bridenstine is a climate denier with no scientific background who has made a career out of ignoring science,” Schatz said.
NASA is one of the leading federal agencies responsible for studying climate change, including tracking temperature changes throughout history.
“I am deeply concerned about this nomination because it is further evidence of a much deeper problem. I am concerned this administration does not respect science, especially science in government institutions,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). “NASA’s science and research needs a champion who understands and promotes the nuances of work being done by their team. In short, NASA needs an administrator who will be driven by science and not politics.”
The vote was also notable for the final vote cast.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) briefly returned from her maternity leave, with her baby in her arms, to cast a vote against Bridenstine. Senators applauded her when she came in, and a handful crowded around her to see the child.
Duckworth gave birth to her daughter, Maile, on April 9, becoming the first woman to give birth to a baby while in the Senate.
The Senate passed a resolution Wednesday evening to allow her to bring her baby onto the floor during votes.
Here’s how Rod Rosenstein convinced the rich asshole not to fire Mueller — for now
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. (Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals)
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In conversations with President some rich asshole, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein volunteered that the president is not a target of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — and helped prevent his own firing or that of the special counsel.
Bloomberg News reported that two sources familiar with the conversation said Rosenstein “brought up the Mueller probe himself” during a White House conversation last Thursday.
“After the meeting,” the report continued, “the rich asshole told some of his closest advisers that it’s not the right time to remove either man since he’s not a target of the probe. One person said the rich asshole doesn’t want to take any action that would drag out the investigation.”
Justice Dept inspector asks US attorney to consider criminal charges for McCabe: reports
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 04/19/18 02:27 PM EDT
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has issued a criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. related to fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a lawyer for McCabe confirmed on Thursday.
McCabe was informed of the referral "within the past few weeks," according to the lawyer, Michael Bromwich, who called it "unjustified" and noted that "the standard for an IG referral is very low."
It is not clear whether the U.S. attorney's office has acted on the referral, which came after the inspector general concluded that McCabe had lied to internal investigators and former FBI Director James Comey over his contacts with the media during the 2016 election.
Referrals don't guarantee charges will be brought or require prosecutors to act in any way. McCabe and his lawyers have met with staff members from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Bromwich said.
Spokesmen for Horowitz's office, the U.S. attorney's office and the Justice Department all declined to comment.
Horowitz last week issued a scathing report of McCabe's conduct at the FBI, alleging that he authorized a leak to the media in order to "advance his personal interests" and then misled internal investigators and Comey about the matter.
Lying to federal investigators is a federal crime and the report was seen by some analysts as a roadmap for federal charges against McCabe.
McCabe has disputed the charges as politically motivated and said he did not intentionally mislead anyone. His attorney responded immediately on Friday, saying the report “utterly failed to support the decision to terminate Mr. McCabe."
According to the report, McCabe led Comey to believe that he had not authorized the disclosures that lead to the media story in question and did not know who did. He allegedly made the same statement to internal investigators when questioned under oath months later — only to later correct his statement to the inspector general's investigators.
“We found it extremely unlikely, as McCabe now claims, that he not only told Comey about his decision to authorize the disclosure, but that Comey thought it was a ‘good’ idea for McCabe to have taken that action,” the report states.
The report was met with glee by conservatives as well as President the rich asshole, who tweeted that the report was a "disaster" that showed McCabe"lied! lied! lied!" and that "McCabe is Comey!"
A group of 11 House conservatives recently issued their own referral on McCabe — and a large group of other Obama-era officials — asking for an investigation into whether he committed perjury and other crimes.That referral was made to AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber.
McCabe has been a target on the right following the revelation that his wife, Jill, received political donations from Hillary Clinton ally and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in a failed state Senate campaign.
The campaign predated McCabe's stint as deputy director of the FBI, when he had a leadership role in the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server and the Clinton Foundation.
The inspector general report reveals that he recused himself from the two investigations just days before the election.
Updated at 4:42 p.m.
the rich asshole considers Cold War-era law to save nation from ‘manufactured’ energy crisis
Pro-coal politicians proclaim taxpayer bailout is need to protect the homeland.
During President Barack Obama’s presidency, the coal industry and its boosters in Congress often invoked the term “war on coal” to criticize the administration’s energy and environmental policies. Even though some rich asshole now occupies the White House, these same people still believe an enemy — an unnamed villain now that Obama is gone — is waging a war not only against the coal industry but nuclear plants as well.
As a result, the rich asshole administration is exploring whether a Korean War-era law could be used to prop up the nation’s coal and nuclear plants, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
The Defense Production Act of 1950 allows a president to nationalize private industry to ensure the U.S. has resources that could be needed in time of a war or after a disaster — two situations that are not happening right now. President Harry Truman used the law in late 1950 to cap the price of steel as part of a war mobilization effort against Korea.
The statute classifies energy as a “strategic and critical material,” allowing the president to order businesses to accept contracts for materials and services.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) sent a letter to President the rich asshole on Wednesday suggesting he “consider using the tools embodied in the Defense Production Act of 1950” to prevent the closure of coal-fired and nuclear power plants.
Using terms typically reserved for times of war — and not to describe unprofitable industries — Manchin, who is seeking reelection this fall, emphasized the rich asshole needs to invoke the statute to preserve the “security of our nation.”
“The security of our homeland is inextricably tied to the security of our energy supply,” the senator wrote. The 1950 statute grants the president the authority “to ensure that the nation’s domestic industrial base is capable of providing the essential materials needed to defend our nation and protect our sovereignty,” Manchin said.
The West Virginia lawmaker is hoping to appeal to a president who often manufactures crises where none exist — securing the U.S. border with Mexico, for example — as a way to stoke fear among the American public.
From an energy perspective, the law was previously invoked in 2001, according to Bloomberg, to keep natural gas flowing to California when the state was facing a real crisis — rolling power blackouts, mostly caused by manipulation of energy markets in the western United States.
Invoking the 1950 statute would represent yet another attempt by pro-coal politicians to make customers stabilize the profits and shareholder value of failing coal companies and owners of nuclear fleets, rather than avert any immediate threat facing the American public.
“It’s as if each week, the rich asshole Administration comes up with a new ploy to saddle electricity customers and taxpayers with uneconomic coal and nuclear plants that are heading for retirement — this time it’s using a Cold War era law meant for wartime,” Mary Anne Hitt, senior director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a statement. “Using the Defense Production Act to prop up uneconomic plants when there is ample capacity is a clear abuse of presidential power.”
So far, the rich asshole and his industry partners have failed in their attempts to get customers to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. In January, federal regulators rejected a proposal submitted by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to offer special payments to these plants to ensure they stay open. The proposal would have provided guaranteed profits to the coal and nuclear industries.
More recently, FirstEnergy Corp. asked Perry to rescue its coal and nuclear plants, along with other companies’ plants located in the eastern United States, by declaring an “emergency” in the power industry. The request was widely panned by industry officials and experts, with one company describing the scenario as a “manufactured crisis.”
Oh boy. Trump May Invoke Cold War Era Defense Act to Boost Coal Plants - bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
FirstEnergy has already asked DOE to use Federal Power Act 202(c) - a provision enacted in 1935 with the goal of ensuring no electricity shortages during war, as apparently happened during WWI pic.twitter.com/66NkQDMqu2
Earlier this week, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), who has received huge amounts of cash for his campaigns from the coal industry, pleaded with federal regulators to provide taxpayer relief to the coal industry in his state.
“We keep having hearings, keep discussing it, but I want to move from the abstract to something concrete,” McKinley said, calling for action to help the industry on Tuesday at a House hearing where all five members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) testified.
Give them credit: Despite objections by grid operators, consumer advocates, and business interests, the coal and nuclear industries are trying their best to find a statute that might help them survive in a market where they’re failing to compete.
FirstEnergy is asking Perry to issue an emergency order under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. FERC refused Perry’s plan to bail out coal plants under section 403 of the Federal Power Act. And now a West Virginia senator wants the rich asshole to use a law passed in wartime — Defense Production Act of 1950 — to keep revenue flowing to the same companies that fill his campaign coffers.
Grassley: McConnell doesn't control my committee
BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 04/19/18 11:15 AM EDT
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Thursday defended his decision to move legislation protecting special counsel Robert Mueller despite Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) opposition.
"Obviously, the majority leader's views are important to consider, but they do not govern what happens here in the Judiciary Committee," he said during a committee meeting.
He's explained his decision to bring up the compromise bill, which limits President the rich asshole's ability to fire Mueller, as keeping his word to the bipartisan group of senators.
But that pits him against McConnell, who has said the bill will not be brought up on the Senate floor.
"I'm the one who decides what we take to the floor, that's my responsibility as the majority leader, and we will not be having this on the floor of the Senate," McConnell told Fox News.
McConnell has argued for months that he does not believe a bill is necessary.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation last week that would codify that only a senior Justice Department official can fire a special counsel and give Mueller or any other special counsel an "expedited review" of any firing.
Under the bill, if a court determined a special counsel wasn't fired for "good cause," the person would be reinstated.
DOJ will hand over Comey memos to Republican-led Congress ‘as early as today or tomorrow’
Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein (left) and AG Jeff Sessions (right). Image via screengrab.
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The Department of Justice will share memos from former FBI director James Comey with Congress, the Daily Beast reports.
The decision comes less than a week after three House Republican leaders asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to hand over copies of the seven memos, written by Comey to document his interactions with some rich asshole during his time as FBI director.
Wednesday, it was reported House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) is drafting a subpoena for the Department of Justice to demand the Comey memos.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly probing whether the rich asshole obstructed justice with his decision to fire Comey, meaning the memos being shared with Congress could be evidence in an active investigation of the president.
the rich asshole has said he dismissed Comey, in part, to relieve “pressure” from the Russia investigation.
“When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with the rich asshole and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won,’ ” the rich asshole told NBC’s Lester Holt in an interview.
National Enquirer reportedly paid hush money to protect the rich asshole while facing financial hardship
The tabloid's parent company has been suffering from falling revenue, ballooning debt and low sales, according to financial documents.
American Media Inc. (AMI), The National Enquirer’s parent company, has been suffering “ballooning debt, falling revenue and shrinking newsstand sales at its print magazines,” a Wall Street Journal report revealed on Thursday. However, that financial hardship didn’t affect its ability to pay alleged hush-money to individuals who reportedly had damaging information about President the rich asshole.
According to the report, which cited “nonpublic AMI financial reports,” AMI experienced a decline of 9 percent from fiscal year 2016 to 2017, and a drop of 29 percent from 2014.
“Acquisitions of Us Weekly and Men’s Journal in 2017 helped increase revenue in the first three quarters of fiscal 2018 to $195.5 million, from $154 million in the year-earlier period, but they also added over $100 million in debt,” the report stated.
None of that has stopped AMI or The National Enquirer from making payments that effectively amounted to hush money, to keep at least two separate individuals from going public with information damaging to the rich asshole, who is close friends with AMI CEO David Pecker and received the Enquirer’s endorsement during the 2016 election.
In August 2016, former Playboy model Karen McDougal received $150,000 from AMI for exclusive rights to her story about an affair she claims to have had with the rich asshole from 2006 to 2007. The contract also prevented McDougal from speaking publicly about the alleged affair. The media company later claimed it had paid McDougal for a series of “fitness columns and magazine covers” and not for her account of the alleged affair.
AMI eventually spiked McDougal’s story, employing what is referred to in the publishing industry as “catch and kill,” a practice in which a publication purchases exclusive rights to a story and then buries it intentionally. AMI has routinely denied engaging in such practices.
The former model later claimed that she was misled about the nature of her contract with AMI and sued the company, arguing that her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, was more interested in serving the needs of the rich asshole and his longtime attorney Michael Cohen — who was kept in the loop throughout AMI’s negotiations with McDougal — than her own. (Davidson also represented another woman who claims to have had a sexual relationship with the rich asshole in 2006, adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and helped broker a deal between Cohen and Daniels for $130,000, weeks before the 2016 election. It prevented Daniels from speaking publicly about her alleged affair with the rich asshole.)
On Wednesday, AMI settled with McDougal, allowing her to speak freely about her alleged 10-month long affair with the rich asshole.
“[This settlement] restores to me the rights to my life story and frees me from this contract that I was misled into signing nearly two years ago,” McDougal said in a statement this week.
The settlement reportedly allows McDougal to retain the $150,000 she was paid in 2016. However, it also gives AMI “the rights to up to $75,000 for any future profits from her story about the relationship,” as well as “the rights to photographs of McDougal that it already has,” the Associated Press reported, meaning it may end up making money off of the former model’s account in the future, despite allegedly canning the story.
On April 12, the Associated Press also reported that a former doorman at one of the rich asshole’s New York properties had signed a contract with the Enquirer at the end of 2015 — the height of the Republican presidential primary — to sell a story about an alleged affair between the rich asshole and his former housekeeper at the rich asshole World Tower, which produced a child. The doorman, Dino Sajudin, received $30,000 to sign over the rights, “in perpetuity,” to his story, which, like McDougal’s, never ran.
Sajudin was finally released from his contract with AMI in 2016 — after the rich asshole had already won the presidential election.
AMI executive Dylan Howard, who currently serves as the chief content officer at the Enquirer, later claimed in an interview with Radar Online — which is also owned by AMI — that the Enquirer had decided not to move forward with Sajudin’s story because it lacked merit.
“Dino Sajudin is one fish that swam away,” Howard claimed, insisting the story would have sold “hundreds of thousands” of magazines.
Here are the 7 dumbest excuses Republicans have given for the rich asshole’s Stormy Daniels affair
Tomi Lahren, Paul Ryan and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have all been forced to say dumb things in reply to the Stormy Daniels affair/Screenshot
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some rich asshole still denies having sex with Stormy Daniels.
Almost everyone in the country has accepted that the “baby Christian” president had an affair with a porn star while his new wife was home caring for their infant son—but not the president.
This has put the president’s defenders in a difficult position. They have to begin any discussion of the situation by stipulating that President the rich asshole is lying about immoral behavior and a potentially illegal effort to cover it up lest they be dismissed as fools, and yet they then have to defend his continual lying about it.
This cognitive dissonance has been hard on them. And, as a result, they’ve been forced to say some very, very stupid things.
Here are seven of the dumbest things we’ve heard from the mouths of Republicans defending the rich asshole from the allegations.
There was no affair!
Few Republicans say they believe this. A poll conducted after Daniels’ bombshell interview with 60 Minutes found that 9 percent of Americans still believed the President’s account, that he did not have an affair. (About 2% of Americans believe the world is flat.)
But among the deniers is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has been forced to deny the affair almost every day during her press briefing.
“Did the president approve of the payment?” reporters ask.
“Look, the president has addressed these directly and made it very well clear that none of these allegations are true,” Sanders said, her voice quivering, on March 7.
This has become Sanders’ own “largest crowd” moment—except it keeps happening, over and over again.
some rich asshole isn’t a hypocrite because everyone knows he’s a creep!
This is the position of people like Yahoo’s Matt Bai and of former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan.
Bai told Meet The Press that the rich asshole is not guilty of hypocrisy in his sex scandal because he is, essentially, a hound. And Noonan completely agreed.
“We have spent the last three decades as an industry saying we don’t care about your hypocrisy, we care about your hypocrisy,” he said. “You’re always telling is how moral you are and then we catch you being immoral.”
“the rich asshole never put himself forward as morally exemplary,” Noonan said. “Those who liked him never had the illusion that he was, in his personal life, an exemplary person.”
It’s perhaps worth remembering that the rich asshole continues to lie about this particular affair. He has not come clean and owned it, like Bai and Noonan said. He is still engaged in lying and hypocrisy.
God picked the rich asshole!
Very few Evangelical Christians talked about how Obama was ordained as the nation’s leader and deserving of total loyalty and support. And yet, God has now picked a president—a dirtbaggy one, according to Christian author Stephen Strang, the author of God and some rich asshole.
“God has always used imperfect people, from King David to the Apostle Paul. So we believe that God has raised up this unlikely person who is championing Christian values in a way no other president has,” he said. “Most people—and certainly most Christians—would consider a one-night stand different, especially as a private person.”
ACTUALLY, Stormy Daniels is bad for Democrats!
This Hail Mary is the position of people like National Review columnist Ronald Brownstein, who insists that the rich asshole having an affair with a porn star who his personal lawyer later illegally paid to cover up the affair is actually bad for Democrats.
In, “Why Stormy Daniels Poses a Problem for Democrats,” Brownstein argues that a situation in which Republicans are worried that the president’s personal lawyer is going to “flip” and spill two decades of dirt is a problem for liberals.
“The intense media attention on the rich asshole’s personal deficiencies might not actually move many more voters than they already have, and the economic message pushed by Democrats—one that’s rooted, in part, in the tax bill—is having a hard time breaking through,” he writes.
His argument basically boils down to Republicans in the suburbs being outraged but racially resentful working class whites not caring about Stormy Daniels and valuing the $1.50 “tax cut” that bought them new CostCo memberships.
This from @RonBrownstein is dead on: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
No one is confused about the nature of Trump's character. What Dems need to focus on is the nature of voters' economic anxiety.
No one cares!
This is the position of people like conservative pundit Tomi Lahren, who maintains that other more important things are going on. She said the media should be covering “wall prototypes” instead of an apparent plot to violate campaign finance laws to silence an accuser.
“Americans don’t have time for that,” Lahren told TMZ. “I’m so tired of hearing about this…. they’re covering this now, what, because their Russia story is falling apart?”
I don’t even care enough to think about it!
This is the position of outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who won’t talk about the Daniels affair.
“I haven’t put a second of thought into this. It’s just not on my radar screen,” Ryan said.
She’s a slut!
She’s a slut!
This is the actual position of some of the rich asshole’s actual real-life friends, such as conservative radio host Michael Savage who was invited to travel to France on an official state visit with the rich asshole.
“Irrespective of whether [Michael] Cohen paid off some low-life slut who may have slept with the president—that is not a crime by the way, as you’ll hear from my defense attorney,” savage said of the apparent illegal campaign contribution. “It’s not a crime to pay anyone hush money, I don’t know if you know that. There was no crime here.”
First-time judge appointed by the rich asshole issues his very first opinion. It’s a doozy.
This is not how judges are supposed to behave.
Judge James Ho has been a federal judge for only a few months. Until Wednesday, he had never handed down a judicial opinion in his life. But the rich asshole appointee’s very first opinion, a dissent calling for a sweeping assault on campaign contribution limits, is a doozy.
More than just an ideologically radical opinion, Judge Ho’s dissent from the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision not to rehear Zimmerman v. City of Austin is a monument to conservative political rhetoric and right-wing historical myths. It’s the sort of commentary one would expect to find in an especially strident political magazine — perhaps one of the publications one of Ho’s current law clerks used to write for. It is emphatically not the sort of writing one expects to find in a judicial opinion.
Newly confirmed judges — or, at least, newly confirmed judges who aren’t named “Neil Gorsuch” — are typically more careful than this. They don’t use their very first opinion to burn down the distinction between law and political myth-making.
The core issue in Zimmerman involves an Austin, Texas ordinance prohibiting candidates for mayor or city council from accepting campaign donations greater than $350. It is constitutional, even after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, to limit contributions directly to candidates — the federal contribution limit of $2,700, for example, is constitutional even under the Roberts Court’s reading of the Constitution.
There are also some Supreme Court decisions suggesting that an excessively low contribution limit might violate the Constitution. But a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit held that Austin’s $350 limit is not too low, and 12 of Ho’s 14 colleagues voted not to rehear this case. Judge Ho was one of only two judges who thought that the panel’s decision needed further review. As it happens, Ho spends much of his opinion arguing that the $350 limit is, in fact, too low.
But then he goes even farther. The newly minted judge suggests that all contribution limits “are simultaneously over- and underinclusive—defects that have been held fatal in other First Amendment contexts.” It appears that Judge Ho would even strike down the much higher federal limit.
The most striking part of Ho’s opinion, however, is his conclusion. There, he steps away from legal argument entirely to launch into a political rant against big government — complete with a gratuitous swipe at Obamacare.
To be sure, many Americans of good faith bemoan the amount of money spent on campaign contributions and political speech. But if you don’t like big money in politics, then you should oppose big government in our lives. Because the former is a necessary consequence of the latter. When government grows larger, when regulators pick more and more economic winners and losers, participation in the political process ceases to be merely a citizen’s prerogative—it becomes a human necessity. This is the inevitable result of a government that would be unrecognizable to our Founders. See, e.g., NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012).
There’s a lot to break down here, but let’s start with the citation. NFIB v. Sebeliuswas a mostly unsuccessful attempt to convince the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It has literally nothing to do with any of the legal issues present in Zimmerman. NFIB claimed that a health regulation exceeded Congress’ authority under Article I of the Constitution; Zimmerman is a First Amendment challenge to a campaign finance law.
The only reason to cite NFIB to support the proposition that our government “would be unrecognizable to our Founders” is to take a political swipe at Obamacare and at the Supreme Court that disagreed with Ho’s view of this law.
(Ho’s implication that the Affordable Care Act is inconsistent with the framers’ understanding of the Constitution is also dubious — to the extent that it is even possible to claim that a group of Eighteenth Century political leaders with divergent views shared a common understanding. The very first Supreme Court decision interpreting Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce provides a great deal of support for the Affordable Care Act.)
Ho’s suggestion that a modern regulatory and welfare state necessarily requires a lax campaign finance regime is also inaccurate. Canada, with its single-payer health care system, has both strict limits on donations to candidates and even stricter limits on campaign spending. In 2015, for example, the Canada Elections Act limited spending by candidates for the most expensive parliamentary race to about $210,000 US dollars. That’s not nothing, but it is far less than the $28 millionraised by competing candidates for a US House race last year.
Great Britain, with its socialized medicine, has a similar regime limiting spending by candidates and parties.
Judge Ho’s appeal to the Founders is James Madison fan fiction. It bears no more resemblance to the original understanding of the Constitution than a Harry Turtledove novel resembles the Civil War.
And then there’s Ho’s suggestion that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by Austin’s limit on campaign contributions. Judge Ho begins his opinion with a flourish. “The unfortunate trend in modern constitutional law is not only to create rights that appear nowhere in the Constitution, but also to disfavor rights expressly enumerated by our Founders,” he writes, adding that “this case reinforces this regrettable pattern.”
But Judge Ho’s appeal to the Founders is nothing more than James Madison fan fiction. It bears no more resemblance to the original understanding of the Constitution than a Harry Turtledove novel resembles the Civil War.
For one thing, attempting to figure out how the framers understood the First Amendment is a fool’s game. As Jud Campbell, a young conservative legal scholar, writes in the Yale Law Journal, “after a century of academic debate . . . the meanings of speech and press freedoms at the founding remain remarkably hazy.” First Amendment scholar Rod Smolla is even more pointed — “One can keep going round and round on the original meaning of the First Amendment, but no clear, consistent vision of what the framers meant by freedom of speech will ever emerge.”
Judge Ho, in other words, is claiming a level of certainty about the founding era understanding of the First Amendment that evaded scholars for generations. Ho is either a singular and transformative genius in the field of First Amendment history, or he is letting his political desires get ahead of what anyone actually knows.
But here’s something we actually do know about political campaigns at the time of the founding: Fans of the musical Hamilton may remember President Thomas Jefferson’s dismissive swipe at Vice President Aaron Burr near the end of the play — “Man openly campaigns against me, talkin’ bout ‘I look forward to our partnership.'” One reason this line is so biting is because, for much of American history, the idea that a presidential candidate would actively campaign for their own election was considered a vulgarity. Campaigns were typically conducted by surrogates.
As President Andrew Jackson once said to a friend, “I meddle not with elections. I leave the people to make their own President.”
And here’s something else we know about the founding era: they didn’t have television. Or the Internet. Or anything resembling modern political communications. The Founders and their contemporaries had no concept of what a modern political race would look like, or myriad of ways that contemporary technology allows big spenders to shape elections.
There is simply no way to know, in other words, whether modern campaign finance laws “disfavor rights” that the founding generation understood the Constitution to protect. As Doug Kendall and Jim Ryan once wrote of Justice Clarence Thomas’ originalism, asking how 18th Century figures would have reacted to such a transformed landscape is “as productive as asking an only child: Imagine you have a sister. Now, does she like cheese?”
CNN panel marvels that ‘even the rich asshole defenders’ assume the president is guilty of some sort of crime
Ryan Lizza and April Ryan talk about President some rich asshole's legal troubles on CNN (Screen cap).
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As legal troubles mount for President some rich asshole’s former campaign chairman, his former national security adviser, and even his own personal attorney, a CNN panel on Thursday marveled at just how many people — including many the rich asshole supporters — believe the president is in major legal jeopardy.
In particular, panelist Ryan Lizza was amazed that an attorney advising the rich asshole went on the record with the Wall Street Journal to admit that he told the president that attorney Michael Cohen was likely to flip on him if he found himself charged with a crime.
“I think the one thing about this Cohen conversation is so many the rich asshole supporters, anonymously and on the record in the last 48 hours, have been arguing, ‘Oh, he could flip on the president,” Lizza said. “And implicit in that is there’s something to flip on him! Why is it that so many the rich asshole people are worried about this? The understanding seems to be that there’s some ‘there’ there that Cohen knows.”
“If the president hasn’t done anything wrong, why should he worry, is that what you’re saying?” host Wolf Blitzer asked him.
“Exactly,” he said. “And I just think it’s amazing that the assumption, even by many the rich asshole defenders, is that there’s something to flip on the president for.”
“I mean, you’ve got tape recordings, possibly,” speculated panelist April Ryan. “And that could be incriminating evidence. And [Cohen] is under criminal investigation — there is ‘there’ there!”
Watch the video below.
Lawmakers might allow White House to pursue ‘permanent state of warfare’
Congress is considering a new Authorization for Military Force that further expands what's currently allowed.
Lawmakers are considering new guidelines on the Authorization for Military Force (AUMF), the 17-year-old law cutting all kinds of legal justification for actions taken in the name of the “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks.
The bipartisan AUMF 2018 is intended to repeal and replace the 2001 AUMF, and would repeal the 2002 AUMF that allowed the United States to invade Iraq the following year. But the new proposal could lead to a “permanent state of warfare,” human rights advocates warn.
The resolution’s principal sponsor, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), released a draft of the proposed AUMF on Monday, and said lawmakers might take it up early next week, depending on whether backers can secure its passage by a wide margin.
“What matters on things like this is if they pass with a degree of support. If it’s a nail-biter… they [Republican leaders] think it’s not something that’s really successful; there’s less reason to bring it up,” he told Roll Call.
Co-sponsored by Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Todd Young (R-IN), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Bill Nelson (D-FL), the proposed AUMF “provides uninterrupted authority to use all necessary and appropriate force in the current and continuing armed conflict against the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS and associated forces.”
The new AUMF faces criticism from two different camps. In one camp, some lawmakers don’t want to see the present authorizations for military force reigned in. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), for instance, is in lock-step with the White House’s previous position against any revamp of the law, saying he won’t allow any bill that limits the president’s current powers to hit the House floor.
In the other, probably more logical camp, lawmakers like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) feel it would only expand the president’s powers rather than serve as any kind of check against it.
White House officials on Monday gave contradictory statements on the AUMF, saying that its position “hasn’t changed,” but that it has also yet to take an official position on the proposed revamp.
A ‘blank check’ for war
The 2018 AUMF does not repeal either the 2001 or 2002 authorization — if anything, it codifies, cements, and expands their scope. It includes neither a geographic focus nor a sunset clause on military operations.
“It doesn’t do anything to reign in the administration’s power to use lethal force against anyone it deems a terrorist,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of security with human rights, at Amnesty International USA.
“Unfortunately we already had a situation where we have the administration interpreting the current 2001 and 2002 AUMF very broadly, but this just gives a rubber stamp of approval for that…there’s no end,” she said.
Just what constitutes an “associated force” is unclear. What is clear, though, is that the 2018 AUMF could give the president expanded powers to wage war against non-state actors, without geographic restriction.
This is a nebulous, but crucial point: Under the 2018 AUMF, the U.S. government can keep finding new “associated forces” in any country. It can apply the international laws of war (which govern who can be attacked, the protection of civilians, the treatment of detainees, and more) to any armed conflict against an extremist groups.
This, said Eviatar, is a reading of international law that no other country would accept.
Furthermore, the targets do not have to be identified — so the country could wage war indefinitely against groups unknown to the U.S. public.
“It seems to hand a blank check to the president, saying, ‘you can name whoever you want to go after and you have this authorization from congress,’ — there are ways congress can pull back, but as a practical matter it is not likely to do that,” said Eviatar.
Supporters of the 2001 AUMF can’t say that the new AUMF ties the hands of U.S. forces in dealing with extremists overseas.
It would not permit attacks against sovereign states, which means missile strikes, like the ones the rich asshole ordered against Syria in April 2017 and earlier this month, would not be covered by the new AUMF.
Although the proposed revamp does include congressional review (with the ability to repeal), it’s every 4 years. If it fails to do so, then the president retains the powers outlined in the law.
“It’s disastrous. It’s terrifying. Especially when we’re talking about an administration that has no regard for the rule of law or diminishing civilian casualties,” Yasmine Taeb, senior policy counsel at The Center for Victims of Torture, told ThinkProgress.
“These are all issues we’re dealing with in this new administration and its lack of transparency,” she added.
For example, the death of four U.S. troops in Niger in 2017 brought up a lot of questions about what American troops were even doing there, who they were fighting, and how the mission was authorized.
“It’s going to be incredibly difficult [for us] to get behind a new war authority when we feel as though it would be worse than the status quo,” said Taeb.
But if the 2018 AUMF passes, Eviatar points out that it would set a precedent, telling other countries that they too can interpret international law to go after the “associated forces” of their stated enemies.
“And it becomes very dangerous. It’s hard to imagine that we wouldn’t be in a permanent state of warfare — not only the United States, but other countries against groups they’re concerned about,” she said.
the rich asshole assured Putin he’d stop sanctions before telling his own ambassador
By
Tommy Christopher
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April 19, 2018
the rich asshole's loyalty to Putin gets even more embarrassing.
the rich asshole’s decision not to sanction Russia over the chemical attack in Syria took another bizarre turn Thursday when it was reported that he broke the news to Russian before he told his own ambassador.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced a new round of sanctions against Russia on Sunday, only to have the White House contradict her less than a day later.
When a the rich asshole adviser tried to blame Haley for the “confusion,” she hit back.
“With all due respect,” she said, “I don’t get confused.”
Now, it turns out that not only did the rich asshole change his mind about sanctions after Haley had already been sent out to announce them, he also looped Russia in before he told Haley.
An administration official called the Russian embassy to assure them there would be no additional sanctions before Haley was told about the reversal, reports the UK Independent. CNN also reported that a State Department official called the embassy Sunday to assure Russia that Haley’s comments were “not correct.”
Haley is the latest in a succession of administration women who have been thrown under the bus, but Haley may be a special case because she is rumored to be garnering support for a 2020 ticket with Mike Pence.
the rich asshole has been consistently sucking up to Putin since long before Putin’s sham election victory, even boasting of his “chemistry” with the dictator. And the rich asshole has done the bare minimum possible to impose costs on Russia for its election interference and its support for Syria.
But rushing to reassure Putin before his own ambassador is servile even for the rich asshole, and yet another indication of what even some of his supporters seem to know: special counsel Robert Mueller is on to something with the Russia investigation.
Andrew McCabe could face charges as the rich asshole’s DOJ submits criminal referral to prosecutors
Andrew McCabe (Screen capure)
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The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General on Thursday sent the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia a criminal referral regarding former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, CNN’s Pamela Brown reports.
NEWS: The Justice Office of the Inspector General has sent a criminal referral regarding Andrew McCabe to the US attorney office in DC. per @PamelaBrownCNN
McCabe’s attorney has defended the former deputy director against an internal watchdog report that criticized him for misleading former FBI director James Comey about a leak to the Wall Street Journal.
“Neither Mr. Comey nor the OIG is infallible, and in this case neither of them has it right,” McCabe’s attorney Michael Bromwich said in a statement.
The decision to refer McCabe for criminal investigation comes amid an enduring drum beat from some rich asshole and his supporters. Wednesday, Republican members of Congress urged the DOJ to launch criminal investigations of McCabe, Comey, Hillary Clinton, and Loretta Lynch.
Sean Hannity slams CNN’s Anderson Cooper
April 19, 2018
Tim Marcin
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Fox News host Sean Hannity likely isn't having the best week of his life—having been revealed this as the secret client of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's lawyer who was in court after being raided by the FBI.
Despite his own struggles, Hannity Wednesday night attacked his competition at other networks. He insulted CNN's Anderson Cooper over the broadcaster's interview with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with Trump and was paid $130,000 by Cohen just ahead of the 2016 election to keep quiet about it.
"Maybe the dramatic collapse of CNN makes more sense when you consider their chief anchor, Anderson Cooper, is more like Jerry Springer than a newscaster," Hannity said on his Fox News show, via a clip posted by Mediaite.
Hannity then cut to clips of the 60 Minutes interview about the alleged affair between Trump and Daniels (whose given name is Stephanie Clifford) juxtaposed with clips from The Jerry Springer Show, a program famous for showing low-class drama. Hannity and his guests then launched into a segment slamming "liberal" CNN and Cooper.
"When you juxtapose his questions with Jerry Springer, I mean, what is happening?" Hannity said, via the Mediaite clip.
Hannity has come under fire for regularly covering and defending Cohen and Trump while never revealing he was a client of the lawyer. (Fox News, however, has shrugged it off and defended the host.)
Hannity's competition has taken some joy from the situation. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow chuckled on air this week at the absurdity of it all. "I still am struggling not to laugh," Maddow said on-air. "This has been a very weird day in the news. One of the anchors at the major pro-Trump news network has had an undisclosed relationship with the president’s lawyer all this time, while Fox has not told that to its audience and while Mr. Hannity and Mr. Cohen have apparently spent considerable effort trying to keep that relationship secret. What? That’s just lurid."
Cooper even got in a jab at Hannity on Thursday, joking that Fox acted like responsible network, before saying he was kidding and that the right-wing broadcaster didn't care that one of its hosts had an undisclosed personal connection to a story.
Fox host stunned Senate might disagree with the rich asshole: ‘How dare they!’
By
Tommy Christopher
-
April 19, 2018
A 'Fox & Friends' host is outraged that the Senate has a job to do, and it's not just giving the rich asshole whatever he wants.
the rich asshole’s pick to lead the State Department is being subjected to a basic function of our democracy, so “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade is naturally offended.
Mike Pompeo, the rich asshole’s nominee and current CIA director, is facing a difficult confirmation process to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was fired last month, by tweet.
Pompeo might not even get a majority of votes in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his nomination to move forward, in part because some Republicans on the committee aren’t willing to support him.
That fact doesn’t sit very well with Kilmeade, who insisted confirming Pompeo “should be a layup.”
“What is extraordinary is to say ‘I don’t want him agreeing with the president too much,'” Kilmeade said. “How dare they! What are they, the supervisor of the president?”
Kilmeade’s outrage at the Senate’s constitutionally mandated advice and consent function is apparently selective, since Senate Republicans refused to even hold hearings, much less a vote, on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
And his anger at Democrats is misplaced, since Kentucky Republican Rand is already a no vote on Pompeo, while Arizona’s Jeff Flake is still undecided.
But this is exactly the sort of reaction you would expect from the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” who seem to prefer a dictator to a president. They have called it “anti-American” for journalists to report on the rich asshole without praising him. When the rich asshole was named a threat to press freedoms, they praised him for not having killed any journalists. While special counsel Robert Mueller closes in on the rich asshole, “Fox & Friends” promotes absurd spin and false smears to protect the rich asshole.
A “Fox & Friends” host even suggested that bombing Syria would be a convenient distraction from former FBI Director James Comey’s devastating book, just before the rich asshole actually did launch airstrikes on Syria.
With complicit Republicans in charge, it can be easy to forget that Congress is, in fact, supposed to be a check on the rich asshole. But come November, the rich asshole and his fans at Fox News had better get used to it.
the rich asshole’s DOJ confirms: Robert Mueller suspects Paul Manafort of Russia collusion
Paul Manafort (abcnews.go)
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some rich asshole’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is believed to have served as a “back channel” between the presidential campaign and Russia, a lawyer for the rich asshole’s Department of Justice disclosed Thursday.
According to Bloomberg, U.S. prosecutors made the allegation while defending special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to indict Manafort on charges of money laundering and acting as an agent of a foreign government.
Manafort’s lawyers argued the charges are outside of Mueller’s mandate, which includes an obligation to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben told U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson that Manafort “had long-standing ties to Russia-backed politicians.”
“Did they provide back channels to Russia?” Dreeben asked. “Investigators will naturally look at those things.”
There are four very clear paths to the end of the rich asshole presidency
President some rich asshole (AFP / Mandel NGAN)
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The next time you walk out to your car, or head down the street to the subway, or cross the parking lot on your way to the grocery store, look up and squint your eyes, and you’ll be able to see the end of the rich asshole presidency. It’s still a moving target, kept out of reach and out of focus by the rich asshole’s chaotic daily delivery of distractions and dissembling, but it’s out there, and at this point it’s coming toward us, rather than headed in the other direction.
This article was originally published at Salon
The impending doom is all the rich asshole’s fault, of course. The first mistake he made was running for the office. The second was winning. The third was thinking that being president would be just like running his business in New York. (“I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this,” the rich asshole told The New York Times soon after he won the election.) The fourth was believing he could protect himself from the law because he thought as president, he would control the FBI and the Department of Justice.
The impending doom is all the rich asshole’s fault, of course. The first mistake he made was running for the office. The second was winning. The third was thinking that being president would be just like running his business in New York. (“I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this,” the rich asshole told The New York Times soon after he won the election.) The fourth was believing he could protect himself from the law because he thought as president, he would control the FBI and the Department of Justice.
If the rich asshole had not ridden that escalator down to the lobby of the rich asshole Tower and announced that he would seek the highest office in the land, if he had stayed up there on the 26th floor and continued to run the rich asshole Organization, none of this would be happening.
the rich asshole himself would not be under criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to steal the election of 2016.
His campaign would not be under a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI for conspiring with elements of Russian intelligence to subvert and violate the laws of the United States.
His former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, would not be under indictment for money laundering, bank fraud, and other crimes and be facing a sentence that would send him to federal prison for the rest of his life.
His former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, would not have pleaded guilty to perjury and conspiracy to defraud the United States and be looking at jail time.
His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, would not have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States.
His former campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, would not have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians in London and be facing jail time. Alex van der Zwann, a London-based lawyer for the Skadden, Arps, Meagher and Flom law firm, would not have pleaded guilty to lying about his meetings with Rick Gates and an email exchange with a Russian national by the name of Konstantin Kilimnik.
A citizen of California named Richard Pinedo would not have pleaded guilty to identity theft in a scheme to aid the Russians under indictment for engaging in a campaign of propaganda designed to interfere with and influence the 2016 election for president.
the rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, would not be under a months-long investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his office and hotel room would not have been broken into and all of the papers and electronic records of Cohen’s representation of some rich asshole would not have been seized by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney.
None of the people who have worked for some rich asshole on his campaign or in the White House, from Jared Kushner, to some rich asshole Jr., to Sean Spicer, to Reince Priebus, to Rob Porter, to Steve Bannon, to Hope Hicks, would have had to lawyer-up and be interrogated by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and by agents for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
None of that would have happened had not some rich asshole descended the escalator and ran for president and won. Now his White House is surrounded by criminal and counter-intelligence investigations and prosecutions, and increasingly, those investigations have focused on the rich asshole himself.
Last week, McClatchy reported that Mueller investigators have evidence that Michael Cohen traveled to Prague in 2016 in the late stages of the campaign, confirming one of the most explosive parts of the so-called Steele dossier, something that Cohen has repeatedly denied for months. () Mueller’s team is looking into reports that Cohen met with Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the Czech capital. The Steele dossier alleged that Cohen and the Russians and others discussed “how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers in Europe who had worked under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign.”
It has been reported that Mueller’s prosecutors are working on indictments of the Russian intelligence agents who hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair Leon Podesta. At the time he allegedly traveled to Prague, Cohen had only one client: some rich asshole. So Mueller is investigating a direct connection during the campaign between the rich asshole, through his lawyer, with Russians close to Putin. The evidence he is gathering is evidence of collusion, and the evidence leads straight to the rich asshole.
So how might the end game play itself out? There are at least four possible scenarios.
The first scenario is that Mueller will come up with enough evidence that the rich asshole has committed crimes, whether obstruction of justice or conspiracy with the Russians to steal the election, and will indict the president in office. This would lead to a constitutional showdown at the Supreme Court between Mueller and the rich asshole. While a previous Supreme Court decision, Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997) found unanimously that a president does not have immunity from a civil lawsuit, the court has not faced a decision as to whether a sitting president can be criminally indicted.
If the court took up the case, and found against the rich asshole, Mueller’s charges against him would be in force, and the rich asshole would face arrest and prosecution. It’s possible that the court could find that the rich asshole can be indicted but not face trial until after he leaves office. In that case, the rich asshole would be facing charges that could put him in prison sometime after he left office. The only way he could leave office and not face such criminal charges would be if he resigned and made a deal with the man who succeeds him for a pardon, similar to the way that Nixon resigned in 1974 and was pardoned by Gerald Ford for any and all crimes he committed against the United States while president.
The second scenario is that Mueller could issue a finding that the rich asshole had committed crimes while in office without indicting him. In this case, Mueller’s report would be forwarded to the United States Congress and the House of Representatives would be faced with the decision whether or not to impeach him. In this scenario, much would depend on the 2018 elections. Democrats may retake the House, and many are predicting they will. In that case, a vote to impeach the rich asshole would seem assured, although conviction in the Senate would be less than a sure thing. the rich asshole could tough it out and win his trial in the Senate, like Clinton did in 1998 and 1999. He would then be able to run for re-election in 2020. A win by the rich asshole would seem to be improbable, but then, strange things have happened before.
The third scenario is that Mueller’s investigation would lead to indictments of people close to the rich asshole, such as Michael Cohen, or even Jared Kushner and/or some rich asshole Jr. the rich asshole could preemptively pardon these individuals (or anyone else charged, for that matter) similar to the way President George H.W. Bush pardoned is former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, days before he was to stand trial for charges brought against him by an independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal. The president’s pardon power is broad. The Constitution grants to the president, in Article II, Section 2, “Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
A pardon of a man like Michael Cohen might save the rich asshole from the possibility that Cohen would flip and testify against him rather than face trial. But an argument could be made that having been granted a pardon would relieve Cohen of his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, and he could still be compelled to testify against the rich asshole. So the rich asshole may not be able to pardon his way out of trouble in a showdown with Mueller after all.
The president’s pardon power is for “Offences against the United States,” which is to say in the cases of federal crimes. If charges were brought by the State of New York against the rich asshole’s lawyer, or his son, or son-in-law, for example, the rich asshole would not have the power to grant them pardons. The only way he could possibly save them would be to make a deal with the State of New York, which is unlikely, especially if he had already pardoned them on federal charges.
Which brings us to scenario number four. This one is based on the belief among many long-time the rich asshole watchers that the only thing that really matters to the rich asshole is his personal fortune. In this scenario, the rich asshole will do anything to protect his business and his lifestyle once he leaves office. He may yet face charges that would follow him after he leaves the presidency. Federal and state charges could threaten not only to send him to prison, but lay siege to his empire.
His son and close associates may face state charges he can’t protect them from. If this were to come to pass, the only way out for the rich asshole would be the Nixon way: make a deal to resign and be pardoned on the federal charges, and have the deal be contingent on the state charges being dropped against himself or those close to him as well. Nixon resigned from office with his fortune intact, including his homes in Key Biscayne and San Clemente. the rich asshole may have to do the same if he wants to keep living at the rich asshole Tower and visiting Mar-a-Lago.
This is what the rich asshole faces every single day he remains in office. The Mueller investigation isn’t going away. Even if he fires Mueller, the convictions and indictments handed down already will stand, and the rich asshole will be unable to end FBI investigations and pending prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys by executive fiat. The control over the FBI and the Justice Department he lusts for just isn’t there. Nor does he have control over courts and judges for whom he has often expressed contempt.
History books have always talked about men being “elevated” to the presidency, but when descended that escalator in the rich asshole Tower in 2015, he dragged us into his pit of scandal, disgrace and criminality when he assumed office. But the end game is coming. Squint your eyes and tell me if you don’t see an escalator out there ahead of us. It’s going up.
Why the rich asshole should be worried about Karen McDougal’s stunning legal victory
On April 9, everything changed.
Karen McDougal, the former Playboy Playmate who says she had an affair with some rich asshole in 2006 and 2007, has scored a dramatic and abrupt legal victory over AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, which purchased exclusive rights to the story of her affair with the rich asshole and then buried it.
The news suggests that circumstances of McDougal’s contract were unseemly and possibly illegal — and the company was eager to find a way out of the morass. The deal, notably, does not provide any relief for Michael Cohen, the personal lawyer and “fixer” for the president. As a result, McDougal continues to pose a serious threat to the rich asshole.
AMI’s CEO, David Pecker, describes himself as a close friend of the rich asshole.
McDougal signed an agreement with AMI — which, in addition to the National Enquirer, is also the parent company for publications like Star, Men’s Fitness, and Shape — in August 2016, a few months before the presidential election. She was paid $150,000 for the rights to her story about “any relationship she has ever had with a then-married man.” She was also promised a fitness column in various AMI publications and a feature on the covers of AMI magazines.
McDougal alleges that she was pressured into signing the agreement, that she was never given the opportunity to write the columns she was promised, and that her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, was secretly colluding with Michael Cohen, the personal lawyer and “fixer” for the president.
McDougal sued on March 20, asking a court to nullify the contract.
Up until a few days ago, AMI seemed prepared to fight the lawsuit. On April 2, AMI’s lawyers filed a lengthy motion with the court to dismiss the case.
But then, on April 9, Michael Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI.
On Wednesday, McDougal and AMI announced they had reached a settlement. And the extremely favorable terms of the agreement suggest that AMI ultimately concluded that the suit presented considerable legal risks to the company.
Not only is McDougal fully released from the contract and regains ownership of her story, but she also gets to keep the $150,000. AMI could be entitled to some money if McDougal decides to resell her life rights within the next year, but only 10 percent of the proceeds up to a maximum of $75,000.
In other words, if McDougal sells her story for $750,000, only then would AMI be entitled to $75,000. Meanwhile, McDougal will have been paid $900,000.
What AMI did get was a legal release for its conduct in negotiating the contract. McDougal retains her ability to sue Michael Cohen and her former attorney, Keith Davidson, over the matter.
The company is essentially paying McDougal to go away.
Appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show last night, McDougal’s current attorney, Peter Stris, said that Davidson and Cohen were “working together to pursue a legal fraud.”
If AMI was part of that fraud, things could have gone south quickly. It appears it didn’t want to find out.
Significantly, Stris said that he believed Cohen and Davidson had perpetrated this fraud in other cases as well. Cohen and Davidson, remarkably, seem to end up involved in every sex scandal involving the rich asshole. Cohen has also reportedly referred business to Davidson. In response to the McDougal lawsuit, Davidson acknowledged he contacted Cohen about the AMI agreement, even though Cohen was not a party to it.
Communications between Cohen and Davidson were reportedly part of information targeted by the FBI raid on Cohen’s homes and office.
“I’m very confident that Michael Cohen and Keith Davidson and others will have to account for the things that they’ve done,” Stris told Maddow on Wednesday night.
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