Tag: Trump abuse of power

Trump seizes on Bush-era torture memo author’s call for extralegal executive authority: ‘Intellectual bankruptcy’

AlterNet logoProgressives are raising alarm after news Sunday that President Donald Trump is reportedly looking to move forward with a series of extralegal maneuvers to further his agenda by bypassing Congress with use of a legal argument from John Yoo, the lawyer notorious for- helping craft the justification of torture in the George W. Bush administration.

“The fun part is that Yoo frames this as ‘making it easy for presidents to break the law,’” tweeted journalist David Dayen “and Trump jumps on it and says ‘yes let’s do that.’”

According to Axios, which broke the news of the new White House strategy Sunday evening, the president is relying on a legal argument in an article Yoo wrote in June for the National Review after the Supreme Court’s Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California ruling. Continue reading.

Portland’s disturbing events show why federal law enforcement must not be allowed to ‘morph into’ a ‘Stasi-like’ secret police

AlterNet logoThe images coming out of Portland, Oregon in recent days have been disturbing: federal law enforcement agents, wearing military fatigues and driving unmarked vehicles, have detained nonviolent George Floyd protesters — and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has described the agents as President Donald “Trump’s secret police.” Much of the criticism of the agents has come from liberal and progressive website, but some conservative outlets are troubled as well, including The Bulwark. And in an article published in The Bulwark on July 20, Carrie Cordero — an intel/security specialist and former attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice — explains why having a “purely domestic security service” in the United States is a terrible idea.

“This past week, (Department of Homeland Security) personnel, including officers of the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), were deployed by the acting secretary of Homeland Security to conduct domestic law enforcement activities in Portland,” Cordero notes. “But policing protest activity, in particular, requires a special sensitivity to and protection of constitutional rights. And the reports out of Portland indicate that DHS has provided an uncontrolled and over-militarized response. Moreover, these assignments of federal officers to control domestic unrest may be part of a broader slide toward a federal domestic security expansion that has neither been announced nor vetted either by the citizenry, the Congress, or the courts.” Continue reading “Portland’s disturbing events show why federal law enforcement must not be allowed to ‘morph into’ a ‘Stasi-like’ secret police”

Trump law enforcement officials brush off pleas to butt out of Portland

The president praised the DHS officers whose aggressive treatment of protesters has drawn widespread scrutiny.

President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement officials on Monday defended the descent of militarized government forces upon Portland, Ore., rejecting pleas from local and state leaders to pull back the fusion of federal officers.

In an interview on CNN, acting deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli claimed the department deployed federal law enforcement personnel to Portland over the July 4 weekend after having received “locally generated” intelligence regarding “planned attacks” on federal facilities.

Cuccinelli said the federal agents have “been there ever since” on a mission to protect those U.S. government buildings, wearing the “very same uniforms” throughout their time in Portland. Continue reading.

Think you’ve heard the Cuccinelli name before?  You have: https://americasvoice.org/blog/ken-cuccinelli/
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/01/811023475/judge-says-ken-cuccinelli-was-appointed-unlawfully-to-top-immigration-post
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/blog/top-five-things-you-need-know-about-ken-cuccinelli

Trump to send federal forces to more ‘Democrat’ cities

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Monday said he would send law enforcement to more U.S. cities, as a federal crackdown on anti-racism protests in Oregon with unmarked cars and unidentified forces angered people across the country.

Trump, a Republican, cited New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland, California, as places to send federal agents, noting the cities’ mayors were “liberal Democrats.” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot frequently blasts Trump on Twitter.

“We’re sending law enforcement,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let this happen to the cities.”

The Lincoln Project is out with a stark new ad on Portland, Trump’s ‘shadowy’ thugs, and your city

A dystopia is an imagined place, and the latest Lincoln Project ad, released Sunday night, rolls out like the trailer for a film about such a dark state. But, of course, Portland, Oregon, is a very real place, and the ad is based on a very real story unfurling right now, rendered in black and white and red with a pulp-noir sensibility.

“This is how it starts: A president out of control as polls forecast his downfall,” the narrator begins over an image of President Trump and a typically bad poll. “This is how it starts: In a small city far from the Beltway, shadowy men — no badges, no ID, deputized by a rogue attorney general — snatch so-called ‘enemies of the state’ off the streets. This is how it starts: Without a warning or a warrant, heavily armed paramilitary units shove their targets into unmarked vans and race away.”

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf gets a cameo, too, and the ad makes clear the federal incursion into Portland is designed for a national rollout: “Faceless enforcers say you don’t have the right to protest. Now Trump’s bureaucrats are promising to send their their thugs everywhere — your town, your neighborhood. This is how it starts, and how freedom dies — unless we stand up, unless we speak out, unless we demand justice.” Continue reading.

In Portland, federal agents are reportedly tossing protesters in unmarked vans

For the past several days, unidentified, ambiguously accountable, and largely anonymous federal agents have been terrorizing the activist community in Portland, Oregon, snatching protesters off the streets and throwing them into unmarked civilian vans as the social justice movement launched in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer continues to embroil the city.

“I see guys in camo,” protester Conner O’Shea told Oregon Public Broadcasting, describing the scene as his friend Mark Pettibone was detained by the assortment of federal officers. “Four or five of them pop out, open the door, and it was just like, ‘Oh shit. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.'”

“I am basically tossed into the van,” Pettibone added. “And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see and they held my hands over my head.” Continue reading.

Oregon attorney general sues federal agencies for allegedly violating protesters’ civil rights

Washington Post logoPORTLAND, OREGON — The Oregon attorney general filed a lawsuit late Friday night alleging that the federal government had violated Oregonians’ civil rights by seizing and detaining them without probable cause during protests against police brutality in the past week.

The legal action comes after days of intensifying clashes between the Trump administration and Portland officials, who have accused federal agencies of heavy-handed tactics that inflame unrest and threaten citizens.

Department of Homeland Security agents have swarmed the city in recent days, arguing that they are needed to restore order after nearly two months of demonstrations. But local officials, including Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D), have implored the agency to step down, with the mayor calling the police force President Trump’s “personal army” and suggesting its tactics are only making things worse. Continue reading.

Roger Stone, and Trump’s extraordinary record on clemency

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has attempted to make law and order his calling card in the 2020 election. In fact, he’s tweeted or retweeted the words “LAW & ORDER” — in ALL CAPS — more than two dozen times since May 31.

The same president just commuted the sentence of a political ally, Roger Stone, who was recently convicted of seven crimes, including ones aimed at shielding the president himself.

The first thing that jumps out at you about Trump’s pardons and commutations is the inordinate number of them which have gone to people with either personal or political ties to Trump (or both): Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, Conrad Black, Bernard Kerik, Rod Blagojevich, Michael Milken, Paul Pogue, David Safavian, Eddie DeBartolo Jr. and now Stone. It’s hardly unheard-of for a president to pardon allies — see Marc Rich et al. — but Trump has taken it to another level. Continue reading.

Trump commutes longtime friend Roger Stone’s prison sentence

President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of his longtime political confidant Roger Stone, intervening in extraordinary fashion in a criminal case that was central to the Russia investigation and that concerned the president’s own conduct.

The move came Friday, just days before Stone was to begin serving a 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

The action, which Trump had foreshadowed in recent days, underscores the president’s lingering rage over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and is part of a continuing effort by the president and his administration to rewrite the narrative of a probe that has shadowed the White House from the outset. Democrats, already alarmed by the Justice Department’s earlier dismissal of the case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, denounced the president as further undermining the rule of law. Continue reading.

McEnany Hints ‘Rogue Intelligence Officers’ Targeted Trump

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed Tuesday, without evidence, that “rogue intelligence officers” are behind reports that Donald Trump knew about Russia offering bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“These are rogue intelligence officers who are imperiling our troops’ lives,” McEnany said at her press briefing.

Pressed by a reporter to clarify if she was truly alleging that members of the intelligence community “are going after Trump,” McEnany said, “It very possibly could be.” Continue reading.