Somehow, even though I was looking at the court page, I missed the stipulation itself. Not sure how that happened.
There are definitely admissions of wrongdoing, like where the board was supposed to meet at least once a year and they admitted that hadn’t happened for multiple years. The admission you mention is for self-dealing; as I understand it, buying the portrait was fine (it was sold to the Trump Foundation during a charity auction), but renting it to his private hotel was a breach of fiduciary duty. He also breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his political campaign to run a fundraiser event for the Foundation, which is political self-dealing (even if the money did all go to charities as advertised). Mr. Trump also used Foundation funds to make a $100,000 charitable contribution that a Florida court ordered him to make personally, although ten years later he reimbursed the Foundation with interest. (Effectively that’s a self-dealing loan, I guess).
So yeah, totally wrong there, lots of admissions of wrongdoing.
There’s a letter from Bolton and Kupperman’s solicitor to the General Counsel of the House of Representatives attached to this tweet from Yamiche Alcindor, PBS:
It says that the House Chairs consider that potential testimonies of Kupperman and Bolton should be “guided by the decision in [the] McGahn [case]”. However, “the House Chairs are mistaken”, the Bolton/Kupperman solicitor argues.
Despite House Democrats withdrawing the subpoena for Kupperman, the case is continuing:
As Aspenglow mentioned, it looks like the House wants to consolidate everything into McGahn’s case. From the WaPo article you mentioned,
“Instead, the House said that in the interest of speed, it would look to the outcome of another case that is further along in judicial proceedings — that involving a subpoena to former White House counsel Donald McGahn.”
I am surprised the House didn’t ask for a stay pending resolution of the McGahn case, instead of withdrawing all the subpoenas.
Even I think absolute immunity as advocated by Burnham (DOJ lawyer in McGahn case) is too strong. How can he square that theory with U.S. v Nixon? I hope he has a backup defense, but I can’t think of one.
It’s hard not to read between the lines of what you have shared.
Leon may intend to rule in a different way than Brown Jackson. Which is scary, because his ruling would be the first one to attach some authority to the absolute immunity bullshit – in complete contrast to the checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution. Such a disagreement would surely be taken up by SCOTUS.
I hope I’m wrong and Leon chooses only to buttress Brown Jackson’s ruling.
And I hope impeachment proceedings go ahead either way without testimony of either Kupperman or Bolton. Neither is needed.
Anyone have any idea when we’ll get a ruling on whatever case will get Bolton yapping? Is the law clear on this or is there a good chance Bolton et al will be gagged?
I hope the Dems are smart enough to not put Bolton in the public eye. He’s a hawk, hawk, hawk, and he will find a way to fuck the Dems’ impeachment efforts. The fact that he’s doing a public strip tease to get them to bring him in makes me even more leery of his testimony.
Say December comes and the House has the articles of impeachment drafted and scheduled for a vote. One article is for obstruction of justice based in part on the administration’s refusal to comply with subpoenas. Two contradictory opinions come out of the courts regarding the executive privilege / absolute immunity. Do we have any precedents where the Supreme Court will expedite something before the election season officially begins?
I really don’t want the impeachment stalling over this until just before election day next year, and then suddenly the Supreme Court hands down a ruling. You thought Jim Comey’s last minute “announcement” was something, a court ruling on an impeachment-related case in the weeks/months before election day would be 1000x worse.
In fairness to Bolton, he’s also doing that public strip tease in order to sell more books:
But, yes. House Democrats should not let Bolton testify publicly. Mindful of those book sales, again, he is highly likely to throw bombs that would enhance the Trump-defense strategy of chaos creation.
I think Bolton will produce (like his lawyers are hinting). He’s supposedly one to hold a grudge and also supposedly has a high degree of integrity (I’m sure I’ll get shit for that - just read it a couple times from decent sources). Republicans will still be in power if Trump gets ousted.
I think the House is playing this one perfectly as far as Bolton is concerned. They strung him out as long as it took to get others to testify to what Bolton was going to testify, dumped him, and now Bolton is jumping up and down, nearly demanding to be heard. “I got something you wanna kno-o-ow, nyah nyah”, indeed. Schiff’s response ought to be “save it for the book tour” and I, for one, am glad it is.
We are using the fact that the president has now admitted to illegally taking funds that he had claimed would go to veterans and using it for himself as evidence that the man is likely to have lied about impeachable stuff. How about we discuss that a president who admits to illegally taking funds that he had claimed would to to veterans and using it for himself should, in and of itself, should get impeached?