Tag: Trump thinks he’s above the law

Trump’s broad claims of executive immunity lead to criticism he is acting above the law

Washington Post logoIn a series of legal maneuvers that have defied Congress, drawn rebukes from federal judges and tested the country’s foundational system of checks and balances, President Trump has made an expansive declaration of presidential immunity that would essentially place him beyond the reach of the law.

In courts and before Congress, Trump’s legal teams are simultaneously arguing two contradictory points: that the president can’t be investigated or indicted by prosecutors because Congress has the sole responsibility for holding presidents accountable, and that the House’s impeachment inquiry is an unconstitutional effort that the White House can ignore.

“We have a president who simply doesn’t believe that Congress is a coequal branch of government,” said Elliot Williams, who helped run the Justice Department’s legislative affairs office during the Obama administration. “That’s a huge departure from anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”

View the complete October 9 article by Tolus Olorunnipa and Ann E. Marimow on The Washington Post website here.

Nancy Pelosi Calls Trump’s Bluff: ‘You Are Not Above The Law’

The White House refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, calling it an “unconstitutional” effort to overturn the 2016 election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) castigated President Donald Trump’s refusal to cooperate with Congress’ impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, saying the White House was trying to make “lawlessness a virtue” and pledging to hold the administration accountable.

“The American people have already heard the President’s own words ― ‘do us a favor, though,’” Pelosi said in a statement, referencing the whistleblower complaint that led her to formally open the impeachment inquiry last month. “The President’s actions threaten our national security, violate our Constitution and undermine the integrity of our elections. The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the President is above the law.”

Her response came just hours after White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent Pelosi and other top Democrats an eight-page letter accusing them of waging a “partisan and unconstitutional” effort to overturn the 2016 election.

View the complete October 8 article by Nick Visser on the Huffington Post website here.

White House tells Pelosi, committee chairs it won’t cooperate with impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoThe White House on Tuesday wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and three Democratic committee leaders to say it would not cooperate with the House’s ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump, framing the investigation as an effort to “overturn the results of the 2016 election.”

White House counsel Pat Cipollone accused House Democrats in an eight-page letter of making “legally unsupported demands” of the executive branch and accused them of violating the Constitution and past precedent in opening the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

“Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it,” Cipollone wrote. “Because participating in this inquiry under the current unconstitutional posture would inflict lasting institutional harm on the Executive Branch and lasting damage to the separation of powers, you have left the President no choice.”

View the complete October 8 article by Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump scoffs at rising impeachment calls: ‘It’s nonsense’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Tuesday scoffed at the mounting calls or impeachment proceedings from House Democrats as he faces increasing scrutiny for his interactions with Ukraine.

More than a dozen Democrats have come out in favor of impeachment in recent days as new information emerged that Trump withheld funds for Ukraine and raised the subject of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for president, and his son during a call with the Ukrainian president

“I think it’s ridiculous. It’s a witch hunt. I’m leading in the polls. They have no idea how they stop me, the only way they can try is through impeachment,” Trump told reporters as he arrived at the United Nations ahead of his address to world leaders Tuesday morning.

View the complete September 24 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Fact-checking Trump’s latest claims on Biden and Ukraine

Washington Post logo“That call [with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] was a great call. It was a perfect call, a perfect call. What wasn’t perfect is the horrible thing that Joe Biden said. And now he made a lie when he said he never spoke to his son. I mean, give me a break. He’s already said he spoke to his son. And now he said yesterday very firmly. Who wouldn’t speak to your son? Of course you spoke to your son. So, he made the mistake of saying he never spoke to his son. He spoke to his son. But, more importantly, what he said about the billions of dollars that he wouldn’t give them unless they fired the prosecutor, and then he bragged about how they fired the prosecutor, and then they got the money.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters, Sept. 22, 2019

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

— Former vice president Joe Biden, speaking to reporters, Sept. 21

“Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement, because it was disgraceful, where he talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case. So, somebody ought to look into that.”

— Trump, remarks to reporters, Sept. 20 Continue reading “Fact-checking Trump’s latest claims on Biden and Ukraine”

Trump suggests he mentioned Biden in phone call with Ukrainian president

Washington Post logoPresident Trump appeared to confirm Sunday that he mentioned former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter in a phone call with the leader of Ukraine, as some senior Democrats revived talk of impeachment hearings over revelations that Trump had asked a foreign government to investigate one of his potential 2020 opponents.

The president and his close allies also escalated their attacks on Biden on Sunday, demanding probes into the former vice president and his son’s work in Ukraine, though no evidence has surfaced that Biden acted inappropriately and Trump’s allies did not provide any.

Across several networks Sunday, top administration officials, outside advisers and lawmakers close to Trump repeatedly raised the specter of impropriety on the part of Biden, whose younger son, Hunter, was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate, according to people familiar with the matter.

View the complete September 22 article by Seung Min Kim and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s new argument: He’s immune from all criminal investigation in new tax return lawsuit

View the complete September 21 articl eby Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Trump’s rhetoric will have a chilling effect on whistleblowing, legal experts

Washington Post logoIt’s tough to be a whistleblower any day — but especially today, when the moment’s most prominent one hasn’t even been publicly identified, yet has already been ridiculed by the president of the United States and the country’s most-watched cable news network.

The intelligence official who lodged a complaint about President Trump’s conversation with a foreign leader is “a partisan person” carrying out a “political hack job,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Friday, offering no evidence and saying he didn’t know the person’s identity.

The whistleblower is “a punk, a punk who’s snitching out the president’s phone calls to a foreign leader,” said Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera on Friday’s episode of “Fox & Friends,” adding that the person is one of “these, you know, deep state people.”

View the complete September 20 article by Reis Thebault on The Washington Post website here.

Trump sues Manhattan DA to block release of tax returns

Axios logoPresident Trump on Thursday sued Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in an effort to block New York prosecutors from obtaining 8 years of his personal and corporate tax returns from his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA.

Context: The New York Times reported this week that Vance’s office had subpoenaed Trump’s tax returns as part of its investigation into hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

  • This will be at least the third time Trump has sued to block the release of his tax returns. Earlier this year, the president filed a lawsuit against House Democrats and the state of New York over a law that would permit tax officials to turn over Trump’s state tax returns.
  • Trump, his family and his company also filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank to block the bank from complying with congressional subpoenas for their business records. A federal judge in Manhattan declined their request to block Deutsche Bank, which later confirmed that it is indeed in possessionof Trump’s tax returns.

The big picture: A federal investigation into the payments resulted in Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, and it “effectively concluded” in July with no further charges.

  • Vance’s office opened a new investigation last month into whether the Trump Organization falsely listed its reimbursement of Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels as a legal expense, which would be illegal under New York law.

View the complete September 19 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

Trump just got busted for inflating his golf resorts’ value by $165 million — which could be a federal crime

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump appears to have misstated the value of his Scottish golf resorts by $165 million, an act which could potentially constitute a federal crime.

The controversy came to light after seemingly conflicting financial disclosure forms regarding the president’s Aberdeen and Turnberry resorts in Scotland were submitted in the U.S. and the U.K., according to a new report by HuffPost.

In the president’s 2018 U.S. filing for those resorts, he claimed that each resort was worth more than $50 million. In his balance sheets to the British government filed for the same period, Trump claimed that the resorts’ aggregate debt was greater than their assets by 47.9 million pounds, or the equivalent to $64.8 million as of Dec. 31, 2017.

View the complete August 21 article by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.