Tag: Trump abuse of U.S. Constitution

Trump administration secretly obtained CNN reporter’s phone and email records

CNN Logo

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration secretly sought and obtained the 2017 phone and email records of a CNN correspondent, the latest instance where federal prosecutors have taken aggressive steps targeting journalists in leak investigations.

The Justice Department informed CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, in a May 13 letter, that prosecutors had obtained her phone and email records covering two months, between June 1, 2017 to July 31, 2017. The letter listed phone numbers for Starr’s Pentagon extension, the CNN Pentagon booth phone number and her home and cell phones, as well as Starr’s work and personal email accounts.

It is unclear when the investigation was opened, whether it happened under Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Attorney General William Barr, and what the Trump administration was looking for in Starr’s records. The Justice Department confirmed the records were sought through the courts last year but provided no further explanation or context. Continue reading.

State Department mutes reporter asking about Bolton’s book

The silencing of the journalist’s phone line happened during a briefing highlighting the importance of a free press.

The State Department’s top spokesperson on Monday muted the line of a reporter asking about John Bolton’s book during a briefing extolling press freedom.

The department convened a telephone briefing ahead of its designation of four additional Chinese news outlets as foreign missions. But when David Brunnstrom, a journalist from Reuters, asked whether U.S. allies had reached out to the assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the wake of Bolton’s book, his line was muted.

“That’s not what this call is about,” the department’s spokesperson, Morgan Ortagus, said in response to the question. Continue reading.

Number Of Trump Campaign Donors On Back-To-Work Council Raises Ethics Alarm: Report

Businesses may press to lift coronavirus restrictions too early, and Trump has millions of reasons to listen to them.

At least 25 members of President Donald Trump’s new back-to-work council, tasked with reviving the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, have made substantial donations to his reelection campaign, raising serious ethical concerns, ABC News reported Friday.

It’s an example of how “writing big checks to the president and a super PAC means that your voice is heard louder than many others,” Brendan Fischer, a federal reforms director at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, told ABC.

The concern for the public is that the business leaders who bankroll Trump’s campaign can press their interests over the health of Americans — such as reopening stores, hotels or casinos too early, triggering a new surge of coronavirus infections. Continue reading.

On The Trail: Governors rebuke Trump for claiming ‘total’ authority

The Hill logoA looming showdown between President Trump’s eagerness to revive a cratering economy and governors facing a deadly pandemic is leading to what could become the most contentious standoff between state and federal governments since the civil rights era.

For almost 250 years, the competing interests of states and the U.S. government have undergirded the most divisive debates in American history.

Now, as governors and the Trump administration grapple with the combined threats of a fast-moving outbreak that has already claimed tens of thousands of American lives and an economic catastrophe that has cost tens of millions of jobs, state leaders are increasingly at odds with President Trump over how to move through a rapidly evolving crisis. Continue reading.

Trump tore into Obama in 2016 for playing golf — now those attacks have blown up in his face

When Donald Trump was running for president in 2015 and 2016, he spent a lot of time criticizing President Barack Obama for playing so much golf — insisting that Obama could have been more productive if he had spent more time in the White House. But Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), reported in a Friday morning tweet that Trump has now surpassed Obama in the amount of time spent golfing as president. And Maguire illustrates his point by posting a hilarious video in which candidate Trump railed against Obama’s golf habit in 2015 and 2016.

Maguire, in his Friday morning tweet, writes that in December 2015, “candidate Trump criticized Obama” for having “played 250 rounds of golf” during his seven years as president. But Maguire quickly adds, “Trump is making his 251st taxpayer-funded visit to one of the golf resorts he still profits from and said he wouldn’t visit if elected.”

Maguine also tweets, “In less than three years in office, Trump has almost surpassed Obama’s eight-year golf tally, which Trump relentlessly criticized on the campaign trail in 2016 (as the video shows).” Continue reading

Appeals court revives Trump emoluments lawsuit

A federal appeals court will rehear a lawsuit that challenges the president’s ownership of a luxury hotel five blocks from the White House.

A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit brought by Maryland and the District of Columbia that challenges President Donald Trump’s ownership of a luxury hotel five blocks from the White House.

=A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the case dismissed in July. But the full appeals court agreed late Tuesday to rehear the case, which has the effect of wiping out the panel’s ruling and giving Maryland and D.C. another chance to argue their case, claiming that Trump’s holdings present a conflict between his business profits and the nation’s interest.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh praised the appeals court’s action, saying, “We look forward to arguing our case before the full panel to stop President Trump from violating the Constitution and profiting from the presidency.”

View thew complete October 15 article by Pete Williams on the NBC News website here.

Republicans grumble over Trump shifting military funds to wall

The Hill logoGOP lawmakers are grumbling over President Trump’s redirection of funds from military construction projects in their states and districts to his promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Their uneasiness stems from this week’s announcement by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that $3.6 billion will be stripped from 127 projects at U.S. bases, including some in states where GOP senators are up for reelection

Congressional Republicans now face the fraught task of assuring their constituents that the projects won’t be canceled while also working with the Defense Department and Democrats to craft legislation that will replenish or “backfill” the funding — all while not coming across as publicly rebuking President Trump..

View the complete September 5 article by Ellen Mitchell and Jordan Carney on The Hill website here.

Legal scholar Laurence Tribe: Framers would impeach Trump immediately

AlterNet logoHouse Democrats continue to move in a plodding and methodical way toward the impeachment of Donald Trump. On Aug. 8, the House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., announced the formal launch of impeachment proceedings.

But the Democratic Party’s leadership is also sending mixed signals, vacillating between being relatively direct about their desire to remove Trump from office and then signaling a clear lack of enthusiasm for actually doing so.

It may soon be too late to impeach and remove Donald Trump from the presidency before he has done irreparable harm to American democracy — and perhaps before he moves to an even more dangerous stage in his fascist-authoritarian campaign to usurp the rule of law in his favor.

View the complete August 22 article by Chauncey DeVega from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Democrats’ emoluments lawsuit against President Trump can proceed, federal judge rules

Washington Post logoRejecting a request from President Trump, a federal judge in Washington on Tuesday cleared the way for nearly 200 Democrats in Congress to continue their lawsuit against him alleging that his private business violates an anti-corruption provision of the Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan declined to put the case on hold and said lawmakers could begin this week seeking financial information, interviews and other records from the Trump Organization.

“This case will be poised for resolution within six months; an immediate appeal would hardly materially advance its ultimate termination,” Sullivan wrote in a 12-page ruling rejecting the president’s position.

View the complete June 25 article by Ann E. Marimow, Jonathan O’Connell and Carol D. Leonnig on The Washington Post website here.

New White House press secretary yanked Arizona reporters’ access after critical coverage

Washington Post logoOn April 5, 2016, Hank Stephenson checked his email and saw that he had a new message from Stephanie Grisham. “Attached please find the form that you requested for the cursory background check we have discussed,” Grisham, then the press secretary for the Republican majority in the Arizona House of Representatives, wrote. “Really appreciate everyone’s willingness to work with us.”

Stephenson, who at the time was a reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times, initially hadn’t thought too much about what Grisham claimed was a new security protocol. That was about to change.

“At first it was kind of like, eh, whatever,” he told The Washington Post. “And then, they explained what they would want.”

View the complete June 26 article by Antonia Noori Farzan on The Washington Post website here.