Tag: Trump administraiton

Trump boasts that he’s ‘like, really smart’ and a ‘very stable genius’ amid questions over his mental fitness

The following article by David Nakamura was posted on the Washington Post website January 6, 2018:

At a news conference at Camp David Jan 6., President Trump responded to a question from a reporter about a tweet he posted on his mental state earlier that day. (The Washington Post)

President Trump lashed out again at a new book that suggests top White House aides fear that he is unfit for the job, calling the book “a work of fiction” and declaring that libel laws are too weak.

“It’s a disgrace that he can do something like this,” Trump said of the book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by New York media writer Michael Wolff. “Libel laws are very weak in this country. If they were stronger, hopefully, you would not have something like that happen.” Continue reading “Trump boasts that he’s ‘like, really smart’ and a ‘very stable genius’ amid questions over his mental fitness”

FBI No. 2 Targeted By Trump Had No Conflict In Clinton Probe, Documents Show

The following article by Ryan J. Reilly was posted on the Huffington Post website January 5, 2018:

Andrew McCabe had faced criticism because his wife received campaign donations from a political action committee affiliated with a Clinton ally.

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting on the FBI’s budget requests for FY2018 on June 21, 2017 in Washington, DC. McCabe became acting director in May, following President Trump’s dismissal of James Comey. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON ― FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s Twitter tirades, did not have any role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation while his wife was running for Virginia state senator, according to documents disclosed Friday.

Trump and congressional Republicans have alleged that the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state was tainted because the campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe received nearly half a million dollars from a political action committee tied to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of the Clintons.

The FBI documents made public Friday show that McCabe had no oversight of the Clinton email investigation when it began in July 2015. At that time, McCabe was in the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Clinton inquiry was being run out of FBI headquarters. His wife lost her election in November 2015. McCabe didn’t begin overseeing the Clinton investigation until months later, when he became deputy FBI director in February 2016. Continue reading “FBI No. 2 Targeted By Trump Had No Conflict In Clinton Probe, Documents Show”

George Papadopoulos Helped Spur Russia Probe By Spilling Secrets To Diplomat: NYT

The following article by Lesley Wroughton and Roberta Rampton with Reuters was posted on the Huffington Post website December 30, 2017:

It happened “during a night of heavy drinking,” according to the New York Times.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had political dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The conversation between Papadopoulos and the diplomat, Alexander Downer, in London was a driving factor behind the FBI’s decision to open a counter-intelligence investigation of Moscow’s contacts with the Trump campaign, the Times reported. Continue reading “George Papadopoulos Helped Spur Russia Probe By Spilling Secrets To Diplomat: NYT”

In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims

The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website December 29, 2017:

Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

President Trump gave an impromptu half-hour interview with the New York Times on Dec. 28. We combed through the transcript and here’s a quick roundup of the false, misleading or dubious claims that he made, at a rate of one every 75 seconds. (Some of the interview was off the record, so it’s possible the rate of false claims per minute is higher.)

“Virtually every Democrat has said there is no collusion. There is no collusion. . . . I saw Dianne Feinstein the other day on television saying there is no collusion.”

Continue reading “In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims”

FCC vote won’t end net neutrality fight

The following article by Harper Neidig was posted on the Hill website December 16, 2017:

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (Reuters/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) vote this week to repeal net neutrality won’t end the fight over the regulation.

Opponents are already lining up to sue the agency, which voted 3-2 to scrap the rules on Thursday, while Democrats are pushing legislation that would prevent the repeal from going into effect.

The FCC said that the net neutrality repeal has to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget before it can go into effect — a process that could take months. Continue reading “FCC vote won’t end net neutrality fight”

Zinke reprimanded park head after climate tweets

The following article by Timothy Cama was posted on the Hill website December 15, 2017:

© Getty Images

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke brought the leader of a California park to his office last month to reprimand him for climate change-related tweets the park had sent via Twitter, two sources close to the situation said.

Zinke did not take any formal disciplinary action against David Smith, superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park. And the tweets at issue weren’t deleted, because they didn’t violate National Park Service or Interior Department policies. Continue reading “Zinke reprimanded park head after climate tweets”

Senate Republicans try to shield Mueller from criticism of his Russia probe

The following article by Karoun Demirjian was posted on the Washington Post website December 14, 2017:

Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, leaves Capitol Hill on June 21 after a closed-door meeting. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

Senate Republicans are scrambling to shield special counsel Robert S. Mueller III from mounting GOP fury about new evidence that members of his team were biased against President Trump, as factions of the party charge that his entire investigation is tainted.

The stakes are high: If the GOP moves to hold Mueller accountable for his former subordinates’ actions, it could enable Trump to order his ouster and cripple the inquiry he has run examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether the president’s campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to tilt its outcome in his favor. Continue reading “Senate Republicans try to shield Mueller from criticism of his Russia probe”

Trump is being sued to stop him from shrinking Bears Ears national monument by 85 percent. Who will win?

The following article by Todd A. Curry and Rebecca A. Reid was posted on the Washington Post website December 11, 2017:

The Moon House ruins in McLoyd Canyon, part of Bears Ears National Monument, near Blanding, Utah, is pictured in July 2016. President Trump made a rare move to shrink two large national monuments in Utah, including land that Native Americans consider sacred. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

On Thursday, President Trump announced that he would slash the size of Utah’s newest national monument, Bears Ears, shrinking by 85 percent land that President Barack Obama had declared protected in 2016. In response, five Indian tribes sued over Trump’s move in federal court. The tribes claim significant ancestral ties to this land and oversee the area in conjunction with the Bureau of Land Management. They argue that although Congress delegated power to the president under the Antiquities Act to designate national monuments, it did not give the power to revoke them.

The Bears Ears suit follows several other tribal legal challenges this year against the federal government, including efforts to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and to improve health care on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. All of the tribes’ legal challenges this year have failed. That bodes poorly for the five tribes that have taken the Trump administration to court over Bears Ears. Continue reading “Trump is being sued to stop him from shrinking Bears Ears national monument by 85 percent. Who will win?”

No one is above the law

The following commentary by Alan M. Dershowitz was posted on the Hill website December 5, 2017:

© Getty Images

Our Constitutional system of separation of power and checks and balances provides that the members of each branch of government be protected from legal consequences for performing their constitutionally mandated functions. Thus, Article I of the Constitution explicitly immunizes from arrest all members of Congress “during their attendance at the Sessions of their respected Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.” This immunity, though limited, protects legislators from arrest for actions for which ordinary citizens could be prosecuted. This limited immunity does not put them “above” the law, since it is the law itself that provides the immunity.

Judges, too, are immunized from not only from criminal prosecution, but also from civil liability for actions taken within their judicial authority. This is how the Supreme Court put it in Stump v. Sparkman (in which a young woman sued the circuit judge who had tricked her into being involuntarily sterilized by misinforming her that it was an appendectomy!): “The governing principle of law is well established, and is not questioned by the parties. As early as 1872, the court recognized that it was ‘a general principle of the highest importance to the proper administration of justice that a judicial officer, in exercising the authority vested in him, [should] be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself.’” Continue reading “No one is above the law”

The Daily 202: Trump keeps giving in-kind contributions to Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 campaign-in-waiting

The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website November 28, 2017:

The White House and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are in a standoff over who will become its acting director: Leandra English or Mick Mulvaney. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

THE BIG IDEA: In 2007, a small quarterly journal published an article by a little-known bankruptcy professor at Harvard Law School named Elizabeth Warren that called for a “Financial Product Safety Commission” to protect Americans from predatory lenders and faulty mortgages the same way that the Consumer Product Safety Commission protects them from toasters that burst into flames.

Warren’s idea seemed prescient a year later when economic calamity struck, and Barack Obama pushed to include it in what became the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. As a special adviser to the Treasury Department, Warren brought the concept to lifein what’s now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Continue reading “The Daily 202: Trump keeps giving in-kind contributions to Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 campaign-in-waiting”