While flipping around between the Sunday morning news shows, I saw several times a commercial urging viewers to contact their Senators and ask them to confirm Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. As I do switch channels frequently I can’t guess how many times the commercial aired, but clearly it must have cost quite a bit to put it on so many times on so many stations.
I had some distractions and regrettably didn’t catch the name of the shell group listed as sponsor, nor can I find the commercial online. But it was a doozy–one of the first claims made by the narrator is that ‘Jeff Sessions is a courageous champion of civil rights.’ (or words to that effect). Pretty jaw-dropping.
Now, I’m sure that the NRA would be willing to contribute a few bucks to efforts to get Sessions confirmed–but it’s not as though Sessions is the ONLY Republican pick that would have been friendly to NRA goals and interests. Basically, any GOP pick for Justice would have the NRA’s back.
So I’m wondering—is Trump himself paying to air these commercials? Is he that nervous about the possibility that some other Republican Attorney General— should Sessions be rejected and someone else drafted—might turn out to have some, well, integrity? Is Trump worried that some other GOP AG might direct the Justice Department to, you know, investigate him? Whereas he’s confident that ol’ Jefferson Beauregard won’t…?
There must be some explanation of the commercials (unless other Trump Cabinet picks have their own commercials, and I just haven’t caught them). Is potential action taken by the Justice Department figuring in Trump’s nightmares?
As far as the idea that Trump has to have Sessions because anyone else would get him indicted, no, there’s no indication that this is the case. Any Attorney General would probably appoint a special prosecutor to investigate a President, so it hardly matters.
If you want to think that Trump is teetering on the edge of impeachment for the duration, keep on dreaming. It might be better to recognize wishful thinking when it happens, but to each his own.
IMHO the chances are increasing by just acting as he has a lot to lose or get into legal problems if his taxes are released. They would very likely also show what he actually did with his troubled foundation.
Therefore, he has calculated that his best option is to not release them, but that also does lead now to more questions and endless scrutiny. This is bound to fester and to become a big ball and chain/self inflicted wound with legal implications.
Don’t you have to break the law before there are legal implications?
If you mean Democrats are going to keep implying that Trump has done something illegal, sure, but they will do that anyway. Witness Harry Reid lying about Romney’s tax returns.
Maybe CBS will publish some more forgeries, and the Democrats can run with that.
Dan Rather, after a 30-year career of journalistic integrity, was a little overeager on one set of documents and lost his entire career as a result. But by all means, let’s pretend that it’s anyone’s MO to publish forged documents, eh?
WASHINGTON — A team of prominent constitutional scholars, Supreme Court litigators and former White House ethics lawyers intends to file a lawsuit Monday morning alleging that President Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his hotels and other business operations to accept payments from foreign governments.
But by all means, let’s play the “normalization” game, that sounds like fun. It’s totally normal and acceptable for a sitting president to continue to be the head of a huge international corporation. It’s totally legal. And it’s not shady at all for the president’s children, who act as vice presidents to that company, to sit in on policy meetings with foreign leaders.
I will bet you $500 that if this matter ends up being tried, the final federal appellate decision will be that the Emoluments Clause is not violated by Trump’s ownership of hotels or other properties that get guests and events, or leases in his buildings, or valuable real estate deals abroad.
I will bet you $500 that if this if this matter ends up being tried, the final federal appellate decision will be that the Emoluments Clause is not violated by Trump.
I guess it depends on what you think “nothing,” should mean.
It’s an argument that sounds plausible to someone who doesn’t have any awareness of the basis for the clause’s inclusion in the Constitution, so in that sense, I agree there’s “something.” But I doubt that even the plaintiffs believe their claims are merited as a matter of historical precedent, and that’s ignoring the standing issue that must first be met.
What the plaintiffs would genuinely be hoping for, I would guess, is a court willing to carve new interpretive ground.
Every reference in this thread to someone saying Trump broke the law is a complete irrelevance. A political lawsuit by someone who hates Trump? Happens every administration. A journalist doesn’t like Trump? Well of course he doesn’t. Who cares? People don’t like Trump not divesting his holdings? No law against it.
Articles and opinion pieces on the Internet are not worth the paper they aren’t printed on. This is all the buzzing of gnats. Even evidence Trump broke the law’s irrelevant. He can’t be impeached unless Republicans want to impeach him, and they don’t care if his charity broke the law and probably wouldn’t care if he was proven he raped someone. We are a long, long way from 1974, when Congress actually cared about Presidents breaking the law.
When someone who can actually have influence in starting impeachment proceedings says they’re really thinking about it, then it’s a story. Not before.
Yes, I do see that, but the bleeding had to start somewhere, too bad for Trump that it is starting now. The point here is that as I noted this issue **can **be put under the rug by the Republicans, except that it will pop up every tax season and like Nixon I do not see Trump managing to avoid stepping on another land mine and triggering all the munitions.