Tag: Trump thinks he’s above the law

Dershowitz distances himself from White House response to Democrats’ impeachment charges

Washington Post logoAlan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law emeritus professor who recently joined President Trump’s legal team, distanced himself Sunday from a response by two White House lawyers to House Democrats’ impeachment case against the president, noting that he did not sign onto the document.

“I didn’t sign that brief,” Dershowitz said in an interview on ABC News’s “This Week.” “I didn’t even see the brief until after it was filed. That’s not part of my mandate. My mandate is to determine what is a constitutionally authorized criteria for impeachment.”

Dershowitz is one of four lawyers who were selected personally by Trump and announced Friday as new members of the president’s legal team. The others are former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and former independent counsels Robert Ray and Kenneth W. Starr. Continue reading.

‘Brazen and unlawful’: Trump team attacks House impeachment effort in first formal response

The president’s initial reply comes on the same day House managers previewed their own opening arguments.

President Donald Trump launched his first formal attack on the House’s effort to remove him from office on Saturday, calling the Democrats’ impeachment case against him fatally flawed and “constitutionally invalid” while blasting the effort as a political hit job by his adversaries.

“This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election — now just months away,” Trump’s lawyers argued in a six-page response filed with the Senate just days before the president’s trial begins in earnest.

The allegations raised by Trump’s attorneys — a soft swing at the substance of the impeachment articles and a more direct rebuke of the process Democrats used to get there — mirror the House’s charges against him. Democrats allege the president pressured Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election on his behalf by launching investigations into his political opponents. Continue reading.

Trump goes off the rails in Fox News interview spewing Obama conspiracy theory

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump went off-the-rails when he called in to “Fox & Friends” Friday morning. For 57 minutes straight with no commercials the fast-talking President spewed conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, tossed around lies and personal attacks against top Democrats, including coming close to saying once again that President Barack Obama spied on him and his campaign.

“They thought I was going to win and said ‘how can we stop him?’” Trump said of Obama and his administration.

“You’re dealing at the highest levels of government. They were spying on my campaign. This is my opinion,” Trump said.

View the complete November 22 article by David Badash from The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Appeals court clears way for Congress to seek Trump financial records

The Hill logoThe federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday ruled that House Democrats can obtain President Trump‘s financial records, setting up a potential Supreme Court challenge.

The circuit court judges declined a request from Trump to have the court’s full bench of judges hear the case after a three-judge panel in October denied Trump’s request to shield his longtime accounting firm Mazars from having to comply with lawmakers’ subpoena for records.

The judges voted 8 to 3 against rehearing the case. Those in the majority included seven judges appointed by Democrats, including Chief Judge Merrick Garland, and one Republican appointee, Judge Thomas B. Griffith. The dissenters were all Republican appointees.

View the complete November 13 article by John Kruzel and Naomi Jagoda on The Hill website here.

Democrats threaten contempt after White House official refuses to testify

The Hill logoHouse Democrats are threatening to charge a key witness in their impeachment investigation with contempt after he defied a subpoena and failed to show up at the Capitol Monday morning.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the lawsuit filed by Charles Kupperman, a deputy to former national security adviser John Bolton, questioning his obligation to appear before Congress “has no basis in law” since Kupperman is now a private citizen. 

Schiff said Democrats will forge ahead with their impeachment investigation, vowing not to let the White House bog their investigation down in the courts.

View the complete October 28 article by Mike Lillis and Olivia Beaver on The Hill website here.

DeVos held in contempt for violating judge’s order on student loans

A federal judge on Thursday held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt of court and imposed a $100,000 fine for violating an order to stop collecting on the student loans owed by students of a defunct for-profit college.

The exceedingly rare judicial rebuke of a Cabinet secretary came after the Trump administration was forced to admit to the court earlier this year that it erroneously collected on the loans of some 16,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges despite being ordered to stop doing so.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim wrote that “the evidence shows only minimal efforts to comply with the preliminary injunction” she issued in May 2018 ordering the Education Department to halt its collection of

View the complete October 24 article by Michael Stratford on the Politico website here.

Trump Calls Them ‘My Judges.’ Will They Side With Him In Separation Of Powers Fight?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh is the Trump Supreme Court appointee with the longest record on presidential power.

In his effort to defend himself against any and all investigations, President Donald Trump and his lawyers have made a number of novel, often outrageous, arguments asserting he has nearly complete immunity from oversight.

He rejects subpoenas seeking his financial records, testimony from administration officials or documents from federal agencies. He asserts executive privilege on the actions of nongovernment employees. And he denies the legitimacy of the impeachment inquiry underway by the House of Representatives into his actions involving Ukraine.

Some judges have displayed shock at the “extreme” legal positions, as U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell referred to them, that Trump has deployed to evade oversight.

View the complete October 24 article by Paul Blumenthal on the Huffington Post website here.

A revealing 24 hours for the GOP and the ‘rule of law’

Washington Post logoIt’s hardly breaking news that President Trump has an uneasy relationship with the rule of law. He campaigned on putting his unindicted opponent in jail. He has attacked judges individually and the judiciary as an institution. He allegedly asked his FBI director for loyalty and to lay off a top aide. He tried to get his first attorney general to launch politically expedient investigations. Robert S. Mueller III laid out five instancesin which there was significant evidence that he obstructed justice. He’s declining to cooperate with his own impeachment inquiry. And he even criticized his Justice Department for indicting two Republican congressman.

What hasn’t been chewed over quite as thoroughly is how much this attitude has infected those around him — many of them in the Republican Party, which prides itself as the party of the rule of law.

And the past 24 hours have been full of activity on that front.

View the complete October 23 article by Aaron Blake on The National Memo website here.

Fox News reporter stunned by Trump’s ‘unnecessary’ decision to hold the 2020 G-7 at his own property: ‘The world is on fire’

AlterNet logoFox News journalist Chris Stirewalt on Thursday appeared stunned by Donald Trump’s decision to host the 2020 G-7 meeting at his Doral resort in Miami, FL, describing the decision as “an unnecessary problem to create for himself.”

Stirewalt spoke with host Harris Faulkner after the president’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters the the next G7 summit will be held at a Trump property.

“I got to tell you, the idea that this administration, dealing with what this administration is dealing with, right? A lot. You’ve for the unraveling in Syria, you’ve got the march toward Trump impeachment here at home, breaking news story every day,” Stirewalt began. “The world is on fire.”

View the complete October 17 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.

Appeals court rejects Trump bid to keep financial records from House Democrats

The Hill logoA federal appeals court on Friday ruled against President Trump in his attempt to quash a subpoena for his financial records from House Democrats.

In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of judges for the Federal Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the subpoena, issued by the Democratic-led House Oversight and Reform Committee, is “valid and enforceable.”

Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) cheered the ruling, calling it a “fundamental and resounding victory for Congressional oversight, our Constitutional system of checks and balances, and the rule of law.”

View the complete October 11 article by Naomi Jagoda on The Hill website here.