So is any of this new info good for getting rid of the orange turd? At least a congressional hearing?
He sold out the country so he could get a hotel built in Moscow? If that turns out to be the main reason for all this, I shall be most wroth.
Pretty much. Shitty as hell deal, too. He assisted to compromise our elections, indicated he would work to lift the Magnitsky Act sanctions, would work at the UN level to overlook the Russian takeover of Crimea as well as Putin’s movements to invade Ukraine.
Sberbank is 60% owned by the Russian government, meaning under Putin control. That bank was meant to finance the Moscow Tower deal.
Trump signed a letter of intent to proceed with the project on the same day in October 2015 that he participated in a Republican primary debate.
He also made sure to renew the trademark on the Moscow Tower. Yesterday.
Well, I really hope that this revelation proves to be his doom! Dunno how it is gonna play out in real life, though…
You know, if Mr. Trump truly intends to “drain the swamp”, as he keeps saying, he could come back to Houston and man a shovel. We’ve got quite a lot of swamp here that needs drainin’.
Well the good news is that Mueller is working with the New York AG, which means potential state level charges against Trump, for which he cannot issue any pardons.
Like they say elsewhere, not a backup plan, a force multiplier.
You’ve seen how he thinks shovels are used.
He’d be better off as a sandbag.
By itself this revelation, if true, should be enough to make Congress want Trump out, and should make any reasonable person suspicious of Trump’s loyalty to his own country.
To my total non surprise, Trumpists are ignoring this news, and Paul Ryan et al. are doing nothing.
And also to threaten Manafort with enough to make him talk. “You know he can’t pardon you here, so let’s hear everything and maybe we’ll work with you.”
Don’t forget, his “properties” have been very nice money laundering tools for decades.
It looks like in addition to Meuller’s work, things may get interesting at the state level too.
Mueller and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have teamed up in the investigation into Paul Manafort’s financial transactions. MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” discussed the development last night:
“What Schneiderman and Mueller are gaming out is how to apply pressure on Manafort in a way that would be essentially immune to the dangle of presidential pardon,” “All In” host Chris Hayes explained. “But watching this story, that has to be figuring in the thinking of everyone right now, as a former Watergate prosecutor, I imagine you thought of that as well.”
“I think it’s a brilliant idea, I think it absolutely could work because I believe that the abuse of the pardon power could actually amount to an obstruction of justice,” former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks explained.
“I think the promise of a future pardon for anyone who has been involved in any wrongdoing, and then the pardon of Joe Arpaio, which sends the message to them, ‘don’t worry…you don’t have to cooperate,” Wine-Banks explained.
“You can be in contempt of court and I’ll pardon that too,” she concluded. “So I think the only way to avoid the abuse of his pardon power is to bring state charges.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/30/manafort-mueller-probe-attorney-general-242191
“One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering,” Josh Dawsey reports for Politico.
New York is not the only state jurisdiction where charges could be filed, NBC reports. Virginia and Illinois might also come into play, but not only them. Presidential pardons issued in an attempt to shut down federal investigations might open the flood gates on state cases:
Beyond the three main states, the legal arguments for potential criminal jurisdiction are even broader, extending to many of the 39 states that were subject to Russian hacking.
According to U.S. intelligence and public accounts, Russian efforts included criminal hacking into Democratic National Committee emails, a conspiracy to distribute that stolen material, and separate computer intrusions into state election systems. That activity could form the basis of felony cases in several states, and conspiracy charges if any Americans were found to be involved.
[…]
According to legal scholars and former prosecutors surveyed by MSNBC, the case for local Russia prosecutions would be stronger if the federal case is prematurely shut down.
Oh, well aware.
I’ve always said that when the extent of Trump’s corruption became known in the public sphere, only the most willfully ignorant would be able to pretend there’s no fire where all this smoke has been blowing up their asses.
What galls me is how willing people are to defend and excuse the behavior of this revolting man, who isn’t fit to lick the bottoms of anyone’s shoes. He has literally compromised our democracy in fundamental ways, and only for sake of his own base self-enrichment and petty spite against All Things Obama. How anyone can find a defense to it is disgusting.
Trump is a traitor in the truest sense of the word. I look forward to him and all who enabled his behavior being dealt with accordingly.
“…but tax cuts…”
sums it up.
Oprah Winfrey voice:
*You go to prison! You go to prison! You go to prison! You go to prison! *
<Wild cheers>
Meanwhile, Hurricane Harvey.
The Orange Anus uses it to hawk his fucking hats and to pose. Then he runs off to “sell” tax cuts for the super rich.
ANNNNNDDD
His Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the border wall.
The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account is part of a spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when Congress returns from its August recess. The $876 million cut, part of the 1,305-page measure’s homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump’s down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
I’ll say this much for John Kelly: Since coming on board, the sheer intensity of the clusterfuck has dulled considerably. It’s been more than 24 hours since anyone’s posted in this thread for pete’s sake.
Although with Congress returning soon, it’s only a matter of time before the shine is off the turd.
He will be missed.
For me, it’s not because the clusterfucking has slowed down; it’s more a question of overload. Like Lucy and Ethel and the chocolate conveyor belt.
Trump tweeted this morning, “General John Kelly is doing a great job as Chief of Staff. I could not be happier or more impressed”. Kelly will be out on his ass soon.
The afternoon is young. We still have time for another Friday Tweetdump that will keep the news channels busy over the weekend.