Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "CBS Evening News"
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Trump is terrified that Flynn and Roger Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks..
In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.
"It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 dinner, was attended by a healthy serving of ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
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boopsynana
Trump's white house is operating the same as Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.. It's nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, buffoonery, thievery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, cronyism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness. And they are all swimming in a sea of moral turpitude.
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"Ignorance is Strength." This is the official moto of the cult known as Trumpism. We know this because of Trump sycophants like Kellyanne, who promotes the idea of "alternative facts." And Rudy Giuliani, who famously declared that " truth isn't truth."
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right.”
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that oppose or question the Party. Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deem is illegal. Doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message.
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and calling out his lies, Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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Only a criminally incompetent fraud like Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “profit, gain or advantage.” This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials profiteering from new federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decisionmaking to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or from the new federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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S Tho
Or maybe, just maybe, he's just a con-man, like he's been his entire adult life.
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲 Anyone who gets close to a disease like Trump will end up getting pushed off a curb by him, and into an oncoming bus.
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued level.
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB.
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
Will we keep are constitutional republic, or will we lose it, and see it replaced with a monarchy? Will we still have a democracy, or will we be ruled by a tyrant without boundaries? These are the questions that will be on the ballot box in 2020. This election will be the most important election in our nation's history.
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If Trump and republicans withhold witnesses and evidence that are directly connected to what Trump is being accused of, it will be clear to the world that the Senate trial is an egregious sham. It will go down as the biggest cover-up in American history..
The evidence is clear.
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump decided to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently elected Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.
According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” before he complains that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelensky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelensky to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the DNC during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-VP Biden, his potential reelection opponent.
Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and AG Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own reelection campaign. There can be no misunderstanding that Traitor Trump was abusing his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
What Trump did, is the equivalent of a Mayor of a city, taking funds that have been allocated for the city's local Police Department, and withholding it until they launch a bogus investigation on one of his political opponents in the upcoming elections.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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