Tag: Trump abuse of power

Trump ‘violates all recognized democratic norms,’ federal judge says in biting speech on judicial independence

Washington Post logoIn an unusually critical speech that lamented the public’s flagging confidence in the independence of the judicial branch, a federal judge slammed President Trump for “feeding right into this destructive narrative” with repeated attacks and personal insults toward judges he dislikes.

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman of the District of Columbia said Trump’s rhetoric “violates all recognized democratic norms” during a speech at the annual Judge Thomas A. Flannery Lecture in Washington on Wednesday.

“We are in unchartered territory,” said Friedman, 75, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. “We are witnessing a chief executive who criticizes virtually every judicial decision that doesn’t go his way and denigrates judges who rule against him, sometimes in very personal terms. He seems to view the courts and the justice system as obstacles to be attacked and undermined, not as a coequal branch to be respected even when he disagrees with its decisions.”

View the complete November 8 article by Katie Shepherd on The Washington Post website here.

House GOP looks to protect Trump by raising doubts about motives of his deputies

Washington Post logoHouse Republicans’ latest plan to shield President Trump from impeachment is to focus on at least three deputies — U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and possibly acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — who they say could have acted on their own to influence Ukraine policy.

All three occupy a special place in the Ukraine narrative as the people in most direct contact with Trump. As Republicans argue that most of the testimony against Trump is based on faulty secondhand information, they are sowing doubts about whether Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing to pursue their own agendas. The GOP is effectively offering up the three to be fall guys.

Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) initiated the impeachment inquiry Sept. 24, congressional Republicans have struggled to come up with a consistent and coherent explanation for why Trump tried to coerce a foreign leader to investigate the president’s domestic political rivals.

View the complete November 7 article by Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Bade on The Washington Post website here.

Who Will Betray Trump?

Donald Trump knows there are potential traitors in his midst. His presidency could depend on keeping them at bay.

From the moment Francis Rooney expressed alarm to his House colleagues that Donald Trump might have abused presidential power in his dealings with Ukraine—and more dramatically, that an impeachment inquiry could be warranted—the Florida Republican was a marked man.

He made for a most unusual suspect. A silver-haired business tycoon, former ambassador and card-carrying member of the GOP establishment, Rooney had reliably played the role of good soldier for the party since easily winning his Naples-area congressional seat in 2016. He had kept his head down. He had dutifully gone about his business as a policymaker and a politician. He had, like so many of his fellow Republicans, muffled his trepidation over the president’s behavior, recognizing that to cross Trump was to commence the extinction of his own political career.

Venting privately about the president has become a hallowed pastime in Republican-controlled Washington, a sort of ritualistic release for those lawmakers tasked with routinely defending the indefensible, and Rooney had long indulged without consequence. Certainly, his friends noticed, the Florida congressman had grown more animated in private over the past year—railing against the improprieties detailed in the Mueller report, decrying the Trump family’s brazen attempts to enrich themselves off the presidency, wondering aloud what the president needed to do before voters would turn on him. Still, there was no real risk. To the extent GOP leaders heard echoes of Rooney’s discontent, they dismissed it as just another member blowing off steam.

View the complete November 8 article by Tim Alberta on the Politico website here.

Paul Krugman: Republican lawmakers would rather ‘collude with foreign powers’ than see Democrats back in power

AlterNet logoResponding to the conventional wisdom that Republican lawmakers defend President Donald Trump because they are afraid of his wrath — mainly expressed via Twitter attacks — Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman claimed it goes beyond cowardice and into something much deeper — the fear of losing power over Democrats.

In a series of tweets on Thursday morning that highlighted reporting in USA Today that Republicans in Kentucky are searching for ways to overturn the voting on Tuesday and hand the governorship back to ousted Matt Bevin, the NYT columnist said the GOP no longer cares about what is right or legal.

“Seeing a lot of pieces about why GOP politicians are standing behind Trump even though they know he grotesquely abused power and betrayed US interests. Usually framed in terms of primary challenges, etc. But is this overthinking?” the columnist suggested.

View the complete November 7 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

House investigators subpoena Mulvaney; State Department official says Giuliani was engaged in a campaign ‘full of lies and incorrect information’ about former ambassador

Washington Post logoGeorge Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, criticized Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, for engaging in a smear campaign against former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to the transcript of his closed-door deposition released by House investigators Thursday.

Kent testified that Giuliani’s “assertions and allegations against former Ambassador Yovanovitch were without basis, untrue, period.”

Earlier Thursday, Jennifer Williams, a special adviser to Vice President Pence on Europe and Russia, appeared after being subpoenaed and testified behind closed doors for about five hours, as former national security adviser John Bolton declined to appear before House investigators.

View the complete November 7 article by Colby Itkowitz, John Wagner and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

Bolton willing to defy White House and testify if court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views

Washington Post logoFormer national security adviser John Bolton is willing to defy the White House and testify in the House impeachment inquiry about his alarm at the Ukraine pressure campaign if a federal court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views.

Bolton could be a powerful witness for Democrats: Top State Department and national security officials already have testified that he was deeply concerned about efforts by Trump and his allies to push Ukraine to open investigations into a political rival of the president’s while the Trump administration held up military aid to that country.

The former national security adviser, who abruptly left his post in September, is expected to confirm those witnesses’ statements and describe his conversations with Trump, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry.

View the complete November 7 article by Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

Jordan: Republicans to subpoena whistleblower to testify in public hearing

The Hill logoRepublicans intend to subpoena the government whistleblower to testify in the House’s impeachment investigation into President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

The effort is not likely to bear fruit, as Democrats have rejected the idea of outing the anonymous figure, citing safety concerns, and they have veto power over any GOP subpoena requests for witness testimony.

But Trump and his Republican allies in the Capitol have made the whistleblower a central part of their defense, casting doubts about the figure’s political motivations even as they readily acknowledge they don’t know the person’s identity.

View the complete November 7 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Hearing Transcripts Show Republicans Don’t Care About National Security

Transcripts of closed-door testimony in the Trump impeachment investigation show a disturbing pattern of behavior by Republican lawmakers, not one of whom expressed concern about our national security or about White House undermining of our diplomats or their safety.

Then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Yovanovitch, got a call in middle of the night from the State Department telling her to be on the next plane out of Kyiv. She told lawmakers in vivid detail how the Trump administration’s actions are “hollowing out” our State Department and benefitting our adversaries, notably Russia.

She predicted that the damage already done will last for decades and may be irreparable, undoing the influence American won with blood and treasure by defeating its enemies in World War II and then building a global community to replace the war-ravaged past.

View the complete November 6 article by David Cay Johnston from DC Report on the National Memo website here.

Trump appears to accidentally confirm key detail in report he asked Barr to lie about Ukraine

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump again disputed a Washington Post report on his talks with Attorney General William Barr with a curious denial.

The newspaper reported that Trump had asked the attorney general to hold a news conference absolving him of wrongdoing in his dealings with Ukraine, but the Post reported that Barr refused.

Trump claimed the report was “fake news” based on nonexistent sources in a Wednesday night tweet, and again attacked the report Thursday morning with an eyebrow-raising claim.

View the complete November 7 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Facing Investigation, Giuliani Needed a Lawyer, but Firms Stayed Away

New York Times logoAfter weeks of looking, Mr. Giuliani said he assembled a legal team to represent him as he comes under scrutiny from federal prosecutors.

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Wednesday that he had assembled a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, an announcement that came after weeks of sputtered attempts to find a lawyer willing to take him on as a client.

Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter that he would be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. The hires show how seriously Mr. Giuliani is treating the inquiry by federal prosectors in Manhattan, who are investigating whether he violated lobbying laws in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Mr. Trump’s rivals.

“The evidence, when revealed fully, will show that this present farce is as much a frame-up and hoax as Russian collusion, maybe worse, and will prove the President is innocent,” Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter, just before naming his new lawyers.

View the complete November 6 article by Maggie Haberman, William K. Rashbaum and Michael Rothfeld on The New York Times website here.