Tag: Trump making America less safe for personal gain

Trump heads to court in fight over emoluments

The Hill logoThe Trump administration is heading to court this week in two lawsuits charging that the president is violating the Constitution by profiting off of his hotels and other businesses while in office.

The cases revolve around the Constitution’s once-obscure emoluments clauses, which critics say President Trump has flouted, giving foreign diplomats an opening to curry favor with him by patronizing his businesses.

On Monday, a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments over whether members of Congress can sue the president for alleged emoluments violations, and on Thursday, the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments over whether state attorneys general can bring their own case.

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While Withholding Aid, Trump Pushed Ukraine Conspiracy On Fox

A senior budget official learned on June 19 that President Donald Trump had inquired about U.S. military aid to Ukraine after seeing a media report, according to his newly released testimony in the House impeachment inquiry.  And in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity that same night, the president linked Ukraine to a conspiracy theory involving the Democratic National Committee’s hacked server, demonstrating his state of mind about the country at that time.

Mark Sandy, a career official in the Office of Management and Budget, told the House impeachment inquiry into Trump’s abuses of power that on June 19 he was informed by OMB political appointee Michael Duffey that Trump “had seen a media report” and “had questions” about the military aid package to Ukraine.” Sandy did not recall the specific article, but some have speculated it was a June 19 report on U.S. plans to send $250 million in military equipment to Ukraine.

Other testimonies before the inquiry indicate that OMB illegally froze the aid at the president’s order on July 25, that Ukrainian officials inquired about the hold on the aid the same day, and that the package became conditioned on Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky publicly announcing investigations that would benefit Trump politically. The aid was reportedly released only after Trump became aware of a whistleblower complaint about his dealings with Ukraine.

View the complete November 28 article by Matt Gertz from MediaMatters on the National Memo website here.

More Than 70 Million Americans Watched Impeachment Hearings

More than 70 million Americans watched at least some portion of the House impeachment hearings on television over the past two weeks, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

The numbers, complied by Nielsen, do not include those who watched the hearings on C-SPAN or PBS, nor does it include millions who watched through streaming services.

NBC News told the L.A. Times that its streaming services recorded almost 10 million “starts” for the impeachment hearings.

View the complete November 27 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.