Tag: Trump corrupts all around him

DeVos under investigation for potentially violating Hatch Act because of Fox News interview

The Education Department’s YouTube channel includes the interview, which was also touted in an official message from the agency.

The Office of the Special Counsel has started investigatingEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos for potentially violating the Hatch Act, after she slammed Joe Biden in a Fox News interview and her agency promoted it through official channels.

The head of investigative watchdog blog Checks and Balances Project Scott Peterson said in an interview that OSC Hatch Act attorney Eric Johnson told him he had been assigned to investigate the matter.

“We’ll investigate matters in your complaint,” Johnson told Peterson, recounting the conversation. “The incident seems very well documented.” Johnson also told him that because of remote work prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, the timeline for the investigation is uncertain. Continue reading.

Democrats accuse Pompeo, allies of cover-up over IG firing

Engel calls battles with Foggy Bottom not ‘the most pleasant way to bring my three-decade career to a close’

House Democrats on Wednesday detailed their suspicions that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a small group of loyalists orchestrated the spring firing of the agency’s inspector general, as he was investigating Pompeo’s personal conduct, and then attempted a cover-up.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing with three top State Department officials close to Pompeo, including Undersecretary for Management Brian Bulatao, was months in the making.

“We should have been able to do this a few months ago and not with the acrimony that we’ve experienced,” said Chairman Eliot L. Engel, who lost the Democratic primary for his New York district this summer. Extracting information from a seemingly recalcitrant Foggy Bottom “has not been the most pleasant way to bring my three-decade career to a close,” he added. Continue reading.

Pompeo to resume ‘Madison Dinners’ despite controversy

Some State Department officials have complained about the dinners, saying they have little to do with diplomacy and will unduly burden the staff amid a pandemic.

They’ve been criticized by Democrats as a questionable use of taxpayer dollars, upset State Department employees skeptical of their diplomatic value, and postponed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is bringing back the Madison Dinners anyway.

The gatherings are set to resume with a dinner Monday and at least three more during September and October, two State Department officials told POLITICO. Prior to the pandemic causing them to be shelved this past spring, roughly two dozen such dinners had been held since Pompeo became secretary of State in April 2018. Continue reading.

Nora Dannehy, Connecticut prosecutor who was top aide to John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation, resigns amid concern about pressure from Attorney General William Barr

Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned — at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.

Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.

Durham, who has never even acknowledged that Dannehy was in Washington working for him, had no immediate comment on the resignation. Continue reading.

Barr Wields Federal Power To Protect Trump In Rape Defamation Case

Attorney General Bill Barr’s tenure at the Justice Department was further stained on Tuesday when officials announced in a court filing that the U.S. government will be defending President Donald Trump in a defamation case.

Trump is being sued by columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused the president of raping her in the ’90s. In his denial of the charge, Trump cast aspersions on Carroll and essentially branded her a liar, despite the fact that confidants of the columnist have come forward to say they were told of the assault contemporaneously. Carroll has taken legal action against Trump to hold him to account for his alleged defamation, and she seeks to have him deposed — a risky proposition for the president known for lying constantly.

But on Tuesday, Americans learned that their government’s Justice Department is intervening in the case, claiming that the allegations implicate Trump in his official capacity as president. According to the filing, Barr delegated the authority to determine whether a federal employee’s actions fall with the scope of their official duties to James G. Touhey, Jr., director of the torts branch. (Though it’s hard to believe this kind of action doesn’t happen in Barr’s Justice Department without his at least implicit approval and support.) Continue reading.

House Oversight Committee will investigate Louis DeJoy following claims he pressured employees to make campaign donations

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House Democrats are opening an investigation of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and called for his immediate suspension following accusations that he reimbursed employees for campaign contributions they made to his preferred GOP politicians, an arrangement that would be unlawful.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement late Monday that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which she chairs, would begin an inquiry, saying that DeJoy may have lied to the panel under oath.

Maloney also urged the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service to immediately suspend DeJoy, whom “they never should have hired in the first place,” she said. Continue reading.

Barr Invented Story Of Massive Mail-In Ballot Fraud

As Attorney General William Barr faced renewed calls for his impeachment after claiming not to know whether it’s illegal for a U.S. voter to cast two ballots in a federal election, prosecutors and journalists have caught the nation’s top law enforcement officer in a “massive falsehood” about a mail-in ballot fraud case in Texas.

In his interview with CNN earlier this week, Barr told Wolf Blitzer that prosecutors had indicted a man who collected 1,700 blank ballots and used them to cast a specific vote.

“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr said. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected…from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?”

Aside from vastly overstating the prevalence of fraud in vote-by-mail systems which have been used by millions of Americans for decades, Barr appeared to fabricate the facts about the case in Texas, prosecutors who worked on the case told the Washington Post. Continue reading.

Jim Gaffigan, Popular Comedian, Breaks Silence To Torch Trump On Twitter

Jim Gaffigan is an award-winning, well-regarded, popular comedian. Part of Gaffigan’s appeal is his family-friendly comedy, that he writes and works on with his wife and frequently centers around food and Gaffigan’s obsessions with food. Gaffigan has a large family, which includes five children, leading to my favorite Gaffigan joke: “If you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth, just imagine you’re drowning … and then someone hands you a baby.” Gaffigan is also devoutly Catholic, and was asked by the Roman Catholic Church to do warmup for the World Meeting of Families back in 2015, when he opened for the Pope—yes, that Pope.

If you’ve ever listened to Gaffigan interviewed or watched his act, he tends to stay away from talking politics. He’s not averse to saying that he is in general liberal, but he also doesn’t do much joking when it comes to the current political climate. However, on Thursday night, Gaffigan seems to have become fed up with the titanic levels of hypocrisy on display and the depressing level of pig-headedness shown by people pretending that what Trump is saying and doing is anything besides grotesque. So Gaffigan went online, and went off.

It began innocuously enough.

Continue reading.

As Trump appointees flout the Hatch Act, civil servants who get caught get punished

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A Defense Logistics Agency employee was suspended for 30 days without pay last fall after giving his office colleagues a PowerPoint presentation that displayed the words, “Vote Republican.”

An Energy Department worker was forced to resign in January after admitting she gave a woman running for Congress a tour of a federal waste treatment plant so the candidate could show her expertise to potential voters.

Another civil servant began a 120-day suspension without pay from the Food and Drug Administration in July after creating a Facebook page with his name and photograph to solicit political donations and then co-hosting a fundraiser. Continue reading.

Engel announces contempt proceedings against Pompeo

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The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday announced contempt proceedings against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying the country’s top diplomat has ignored the panel’s request to investigate his conduct.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said the committee will begin drafting a resolution to hold the secretary in contempt following his refusal to provide subpoenaed documents related to an investigation into whether he has misused government resources for political reasons.

The accusations of contempt are related to two subpoenas. The first stretches back to a September request to the State Department for documents related to the House impeachment investigation into President Trump’s withholding of military assistance to Ukraine. Continue reading.