Tag: Trump sleaze

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.

Conservative group linked to DeVos family organizes protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan

AlterNet logoProtesters rallied around the country this week against stay-at-home orders forcing nonessential businesses to shut down, but Michigan’s governor warned that they may have backfired by creating “a need to lengthen” the lockdowns.

Protesters in at least six states planned to protest restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the new coronavirus this week. In Michigan, a conservative group linked to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ family organized “Operation Gridlock” to protest restrictions on nonessential businesses and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s recent order barring travel between homes. The state is among the hardest-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, reporting more than 27,000 confirmed cases and 1,909 deaths.

Some protesters, several of whom wore pro-Trump gear, gathered on the capitol steps as many remained in their cars. Demonstrators chanted “recall Whitmer” and “lock her up,” a chant normally usually used by Trump supporters in reference to his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Continue reading.

Trump Calls Mail Voting ‘Corrupt’ — Except When He Does It

With the coronavirus pandemic threatening to disrupt ongoing elections and looming over the major vote in November, universal mail-in voting has become more of a necessity than ever.

But President Donald Trump, and Republicans more generally, are terrified of the idea — because they clearly fear that easier access to the polls will tank their chances of holding on to power.

At his Tuesday circus-like press briefing, ostensibly about the coronavirus crisis, a reporter pressed him on his opposition to voting by mail. While he declared categorically that voting by mail is bad, the reporter pointed out that he, in fact, votes by mail. Continue reading.

Trump defends firing of intel watchdog, calling him a ‘disgrace’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Saturday defended his decision to fire Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson and called him a “disgrace” to inspectors general.

Trump, responding to a reporter’s question about the late Friday decision, tore into Atkinson for what he described as his unfair handling of a whistleblower complaint that eventually triggered the president’s impeachment last fall.

Trump complained that the ICIG didn’t call him before alerting Congress to the complaint about his dealings with Ukraine. Continue reading.

Trump Suggests He Can Gag Inspector General for Stimulus Bailout Program

New York Times logoIn a signing statement, the president undermined a key safeguard Democrats had insisted upon as a condition of approving $500 billion in corporate relief in the $2 trillion law.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump signed the $2 trillion economic stabilization package on Friday to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, he undercut a crucial safeguard that Democrats insisted upon as a condition of agreeing to include a $500 billion corporate bailout fund.

In a signing statement released hours after Mr. Trump signed the bill in a televised ceremony in the Oval Office, the president suggested he had the power to decide what information a newly created inspector general intended to monitor the fund could share with Congress.

Under the law, the inspector general, when auditing loans and investments made through the fund, has the power to demand information from the Treasury Department and other executive branch agencies. The law requires reporting to Congress “without delay” if any agency balks and its refusal is unreasonable “in the judgment of the special inspector general.”

Trump takes immediate step to try to curb new inspector general’s autonomy, as battle over stimulus oversight begins

Washington Post logoIn signing statement, he signals he could restrict new watchdog’s independence

Immediately after signing the historic $2 trillion coronavirus aid package, President Trump sought to curb oversight provisions in the bill by asserting presidential authority over a new inspector general’s office.

The move could presage a major battle between the White House and Capitol Hill as the Trump administration moves to implement the new law.

In a White House signing statement released Friday evening, Trump questioned the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that a new Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery notify Congress immediately if the administration “unreasonably” withholds information requested by investigators. Continue reading.

U.S. judge freezes House lawsuit seeking President Trump’s IRS tax records

Washington Post logoA federal judge froze a House lawsuit on Friday that seeks to enforce a subpoena for six years of President Trump’s federal tax records.

The judge said he will wait at least until an appeals court rules on whether Congress, in a separate case related to former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn, can sue to compel executive branch officials to testify. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of Washington indicated that the hold in the tax records case could go on longer if the McGahn case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The House sued the administration in July after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to comply with a subpoena for Trump’s business and tax records issued in May. Continue reading.

Are They Finally Getting Wise To The Conman In The White House?

As was only fitting on St. Patrick’s Day, my brother Tommy and I congratulated each other on our hardy Irish peasant genes. Centuries of living on dirt floors with pigs, we smugly agreed, have rendered us Micks immune from contagion.

Um, except for our grandfather Michael Sheedy, who died in the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic—the last time a highly contagious virus with no immunity and no vaccine spread worldwide. He’s buried in Elizabethport, NJ, within walking distance of the salt water that carried his family here from County Cork on so-called “coffin ships” (because so many passengers died at sea) during the Great Irish Famine. He was 32.

That’s basically all we know. Our mother was two when her father died; her mother remarried. We must have Sheedy cousins somewhere, but we’ve never met them. Continue reading.

DHS inspector general’s office nearly dormant under Trump as reports and audits plummet

Washington Post logoThe Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog division has been so weakened under the Trump administration that it is failing to provide basic oversight of the government’s third-largest federal agency, according to whistleblowers and lawmakers from both parties.

DHS’s Office of the Inspector General is on pace to publish fewer than 40 audits and reports this fiscal year, the smallest number since 2003 and one-quarter of the agency’s output in 2016, when it published 143, records show. The audits and reports cover everything from contracts and spending to allegations of waste and misconduct.

At a time w hen DHS has morphed into an instrument for some of President Trump’s most ambitious domestic policies, the inspector general’s role calls for the office to exert rigorous oversight of the department’s $70 billion budget and 240,000 employees, Democratic and Republican lawmakers say. Continue reading.

‘Depraved’: Trump offered German scientists ‘large sum’ for exclusive US rights to coronavirus vaccine, German government confirms

AlterNet logoGerman lawmakers and government officials voiced outrage at reporting Sunday that the Trump administration is seeking to secure exclusive rights to a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed by the German firm CureVac as the pandemic spreads and takes lives across the globe.

The German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, citing an anonymous German government official, reported Sunday that the Trump administration offered CureVac $1 billion to hand the U.S. exclusive rights to a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

Trump wants the vaccine “only for the USA,” the German official said. The New York Times confirmed late Sunday that the Trump administration attempted to persuade CureVac to move its research to the U.S., offering the company what one German official described as a “large sum” of money. Continue reading.