Tag: Trump abuse of power

‘Are you really going to impeach me?’: How the Ukraine bombshell unfolded over 48 hours and laid bare Trump’s fixation with Biden

Washington Post logo

Just after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in her Georgetown apartment, getting ready for the day that was going to be like no other in her long career. This was the day she would formally, officially, finally announce that the House was opening the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

The California Democrat had resisted calls for impeachment from the left flank of her party for months. As the speaker, the one making the decision, Pelosi had to keep calibrating the risks. There was a risk to doing something, and a risk to doing nothing. She didn’t want to tolerate presidential misconduct. But she also didn’t want the House, or her party, to be seen as taking away the voters’ power to decide Trump’s fate. An impeachment couldn’t be personal, she kept telling her leadership team, or about policy differences. It had to be careful, fair, and easy for the American people to understand to avoid a severe backlash in an already deeply divided nation. As much as many of Trump’s actions appalled her, she had not seen an ironclad, public-unifying offense among them.

But now she had come to believe that Trump had abused his power on a July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in which he had suggested Ukraine open investigations that would benefit Trump personally — including one into his chief political rival, former vice president Joe Biden. Continue reading.

McEnany Won’t Say Trump Will Accept Election Result

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany refused to guarantee President Donald Trump will accept the election results, instead saying he would “see what happens,” and then “make a determination” what to do.

“The president has always said he’ll see what happens, and make a determination in the aftermath,” McEnany told a reporter Wednesday afternoon.

Claiming he “wants a free election, a fair election,” McEnany said Trump wants “confidence in the results of the election.” Trump has been doing exactly the opposite: working to ensure the election is not free or fair, and that the results will be questioned – especially if he loses. Continue reading.

Postal Service blocked lawmakers from key evidence on DeJoy’s selection, Schumer says

Washington Post logo

The Senate’s top Democrat says he has new evidence that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin intervened in the postmaster general appointment process.

The U.S. Postal Service blocked congressional lawmakers from interrogating the firm that helped select Louis DeJoy as the nation’s postmaster general, prompting a sharp rebuke from Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer, who called on the organization Wednesday to be more transparent as a federal investigation unfolds.

The spat over access has hindered lawmakers as they investigate DeJoy’s recent, controversial changes to mail delivery and, in the process, potentially concealed key details about the involvement of President Trump and his top aides in those decisions, Schumer (N.Y.) warned in a letter to the agency. The missive threatens to add to the already sky-high tensions between the administration and the Senate as DeJoy prepares to testify at a Senate hearing Friday, then a House hearing on Monday.

Schumer fired off his initial inquiry to the USPS in June, asking to learn more about the process that selected DeJoy, a former top Republican fundraiser, to lead the Postal Service. The postmaster general is a position filled by the USPS Board of Governors, which in this case relied on an executive search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, to guide its thinking. Continue reading.

Postmaster general agrees to testify before House panel

The Hill logo

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has agreed to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee about recently implemented cost-cutting measures at the U.S. Postal Service that have sparked fears that some ballots might not be delivered in time for Election Day.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Monday that DeJoy and Robert Duncan, the chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, had agreed to testify next Monday in response to her request.

“The American people want their mail, medicines, and mail-in ballots delivered in a timely way, and they certainly do not want drastic changes and delays in the midst of a global pandemic just months before the election,” Maloney said. Continue reading.

House accelerates oversight of Postal Service as uproar grows, demanding top officials testify at ‘urgent’ hearing

Washington Post logo

The House Oversight Committee announced a hearing for Aug. 24, inviting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan

The House Oversight Committee will hold an emergency hearing on mail delays and concerns about potential White House interference in the U.S. Postal Service, inviting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan to testify Aug. 24, top Democrats announced on Sunday.

Democrats have alleged that DeJoy, a former Republican National Convention finance chairman, is taking steps that are causing dysfunction in the mail system and could wreak havoc in the presidential election. The House had earlier not planned a hearing until September.

“The postmaster general and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Oversight Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said in a statement announcing the hearing. Continue reading.

Top DHS officials Wolf and Cuccinelli are not legally eligible to serve in their current roles, GAO finds

Washington Post logo

The top two officials at the Department of Homeland Security are serving unlawfully in their roles, the Government Accountability Office said Friday, dealing a rebuke to President Trump’s affinity for filling senior executive roles in his administration with “acting” leaders who lack Senate confirmation.

The GAO, an independent watchdog agency that reports to Congress, said Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy, are serving in an “invalid order of succession” under the Vacancies Reform Act.

Democrats in Congress called on the two men to resign, but DHS officials rejected the findings as “baseless.” Continue reading.

Yes, Trump is incompetent. But he’s becoming alarmingly good at corrupting the government.

Washington Post logoWe have become so accustomed to President Trump’s incompetence that it’s easy to miss a crucial change: In his fourth year in office, Trump is learning to bend government to his corrupt purposes.

The incompetence was and remains uppermost, most lethally in the president’s surrender to the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. mortality rate, while not the world’s highest, is some 84 times greater than South Korea’s.

But in less visible corners, Trump is coming to understand how to use the bureaucracy to his ends. We might welcome such a learning curve in most presidents, because most presidents want government to serve the public good, as they see it. Continue reading.

Nancy Pelosi owns Fox News’ Chris Wallace: ‘Clearly you don’t have an understanding of what is happening here’

AlterNet logoHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) faced off against Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday over the failure to negotiate a COVID-19 financial relief bill.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Wallace suggested that there is an upside to executive actions taken by President Donald Trump in lieu of a financial relief bill because some people will get protections from evictions “rather than getting nothing at all.”

For her part, Pelosi quoted a Republican senator who said that the president’s executive action is “constitutional slop.” Continue reading.

Trump’s Go-It-Alone Stimulus Won’t Do Much to Lift the Recovery

New York Times logoA series of executive actions will provoke lawsuits but is unlikely to stoke faster growth in an economy that has cooled this summer.

The executive actions President Trump took on Saturday were pitched as a unilateral jolt for an ailing economy. But there is only one group of workers that seems guaranteed to benefit from them, at least right away: lawyers.

Mr. Trump’s measures include an eviction moratorium, a new benefit to supplement unemployment assistance for workers and a temporary delay in payroll tax liability for low- and middle-income workers. They could give renters a break and ease payments for some student loan borrowers. But they are likely to do little to deliver cash any time soon to Americans hit hard by the recession.

Even conservative groups have warned that suspending payroll tax collections is unlikely to translate into more money for workers. An executive action seeking to essentially create a new unemployment benefit out of thin air will almost certainly be challenged in court. And as Mr. Trump’s own aides concede, the orders will not provide any aid to small businesses, state and local governments or low- and middle-income workers. Continue reading.