Tag: GOP OK with Trump corruption

Barr defends Trump on obstruction, says he faced ‘unprecedented’ situation

Attorney General William Barr offered a robust defense of President Trump on Thursday at a press conference previewing the release of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report, explaining why he did not find Trump obstructed justice based on Mueller’s findings.

Barr said the report, which is to be released later Thursday, offered a vindication of Trump and that on obstruction it was important to consider the “context” of Trump’s actions analyzed in Mueller’s final report.

Barr said that Trump faced an “unprecedented situation” in the course of Mueller’s investigation as well as “relentless speculation” in the media surrounding Trump’s own possible culpability in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Barr also said that Mueller’s report acknowledges the existence of “substantial evidence” showing Trump was frustrated by a “sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents and fueled by illegal leaks.”

View the complete April 18 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Why has Congress stalled on investigating money laundering allegations at Trump properties?

Stonewalled by the Trump administration, Congress seems to have lost interest.

When Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, two of his foreign projects — one in Panama and one in Azerbaijan — stood out for what appeared to be clear links to foreign money laundering operations. But with Trump’s presidency enveloped in an unprecedented number of scandals, congressional willingness to investigate the properties appears to have wilted — in no small part because of stonewalling by the current administration.

Both properties were closely associated with Ivanka Trump. Trump described the Trump Ocean Club property in Panama City, Panama, as Ivanka’s “baby,” while the Trump Tower Baku project, located in Azerbaijan’s capital, was something Ivanka herself claimed she “oversaw.” Both endeavors, however, have been swamped in controversy — not simply because of signs pointing to money laundering operations, but because both projects have since imploded, with neither any longer carrying Trump’s name.

In Panama, for instance, the indicators of money laundering at Trump Ocean Club Panama, which the Trump Organization helped manage, were impossible to miss. From purchases in cash to bulk sales, from sales to anonymous shell companies to purchasers using “bearer shares” — in which the company is owned by whoever holds a physical stock certificate, without any registry keeping track of ownership — the signs were all there. One of the property’s primary sales brokers, Alexandre Ventura Nogueira, admitted in a 2013 conversation secretly taped by a former business partner that he was “regularly laundering money”  across Panama.

View the complete April 11 article by Casey Michel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Schiff recites long list of Trump’s Russia contacts after Republicans call for his resignation

“I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic, and yes, I think it’s corrupt and evidence of collusion.”

A group of House Republicans on Thursday called on House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to resign from his post because he has repeatedly expressed concerns that President Donald Trump may have colluded with America’s political adversaries. In response, Schiff shot back with a detailed list of all of the times that Trump associates have had contact with Russians, admonishing his colleagues for normalizing that conduct, even if it stops short of a criminal conspiracy.

“I have always said that the question of whether this amounts to conspiracy is another matter,” Schiff said during the heated exchange. “But I do not think that conduct, criminal or not, is okay — and the day we do think that’s okay is the day we will look back and say, ‘that is the day America lost its way.’”

Reading a letter signed by nine Republican committee members calling for Schiff to step down as chairman, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) had claimed moments prior that Schiff’s “willingness to promote a demonstrably false narrative is alarming.”

View the complete March 28 article by Danielle McLean on the ThinkProgress website here.