Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Trump lashes out at Black Lives Matter, accuses one member of ‘treason’

Washington Post logoPresident Trump lashed out at the Black Lives Matter movement in twin tweets Thursday, accusing one of its members of treason and lamenting reported plans for a new mural in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan that honors the cause.

Trump, who has said he supports peaceful protesters, has increasingly articulated disdain for the protests that continue across the country after the death of George Floyd. His comments Thursday were among his most aggressive attacks on the movement that rose up in recent years against racial profiling and police violence.

“Black Lives Matter leader states, ‘If U.S. doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.’ This is Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!” Trump tweeted. Continue reading.

Trump’s use of Pentagon funds for US-Mexico border wall illegal, court rules

The Hill logoA federal appeals court in California on Friday ruled that the Trump administration’s use of Pentagon funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is illegal.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that President Trump’s diversion of defense, military and other funding — billions of dollars that were not originally earmarked for border wall construction — violated the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress the exclusive power of the purse.

“These funds were appropriated for other purposes, and the transfer amounted to ‘drawing funds from the Treasury without authorization by statute and thus violating the Appropriations Clause,’ ” the majority wrote. “Therefore, the transfer of funds here was unlawful.” Continue reading.

Trump’s pick for Manhattan U.S. attorney refuses to say he would recuse from probes of president’s associates

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s nominee to take over the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office after the abrupt dismissal of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman refused on Thursday to say whether he would recuse himself from pending investigations involving Trump’s interests and associates if confirmed for the post.

Appearing before a House Financial Services subcommittee, Securities and Exchange Committee Chairman Jay Clayton sought to deflect Democrats’ questions about his selection for the job and the circumstances under which Berman was removed over the weekend, characterizing the Senate confirmation process as “way down the road.” But when pressed by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to “commit, right here, to recusing yourself” from matters in which the president has a personal stake, Clayton demurred

“What I will commit to do, which is what I commit to in my current job, is to approach the job with independence and to follow all ethical rules,” Clayton responded. Continue reading.

Analysts say Barr is eroding Justice Department independence — without facing any real personal consequence

Washington Post logoA federal prosecutor’s testimony Wednesday that he was pressed by supervisors to offer a more lenient sentencing recommendation for a friend of President Trump’s capped a remarkable four-month stretch in which Attorney General William P. Barr has seemed to repeatedly bend the Justice Department to Trump’s political interests — generating significant controversy but no personal consequence, legal analysts said.

Since February, Barr has intervened in two criminal cases to the benefit of those who once advised Trump; ousted a U.S. attorney who is investigating Trump’s personal lawyer; and dutifully implemented Trump’s vision for a forceful crack down on demonstrators in the District protesting police violence.

Democrats and legal observers have decried the moves — calling on Barr to resign or be investigated by his agency’s internal watchdog — and morale inside the Justice Department has plummeted, according to several Justice Department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly. But lawmakers, who already held Barr in contempt last year for defying congressional subpoenas, seem to have little in the way of practical recourse. Continue reading.

MIT report exposes Trump campaign app as a deceptive ‘surveillance tool’

AlterNet logoAbout 800,000 people have downloaded the Trump 2020 campaign’s app. According to a study by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, better known as MIT, users are handing over a massive amount of personal information – and an astonishing amount of access – to the Trump campaign.

MIT, which investigated both the Trump campaign app and the Biden campaign app says the Trump campaign app is a “voter surveillance tool” with “extraordinary power.”

The Biden campaign app also collects data but far less than the Trump campaign app. Continue reading.

5 takeaways from the scathing testimony about William Barr’s Justice Department

Washington Post logoThe Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr has made several controversial and extraordinary decisions with regard to President Trump and his allies. And two of those decisions came to a head Wednesday.

First came a federal court ruling that the case against Michael Flynn should be dropped after Barr’s Justice Department moved to withdraw its prosecution — despite Flynn already having pleaded guilty. Arguably the more interesting development came Wednesday afternoon, when a former prosecutor on the Roger Stone case testified that political pressure was indeed behind the Justice Department’s reduction in Stone’s sentencing recommendation.

Aaron Zelinsky was one of four prosecutors who withdrew from the case when that decision was made, and in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, he detailed what happened. Continue reading.

Prosecutor testifies on alleged politicization inside Barr’s Justice Department

Washington Post logoThe House Judiciary Committee heard testimony Wednesday from a federal prosecutor and another witness who have accused Attorney General William P. Barr and his top deputies of acting “based on political considerations” and a desire to appease President Trump.

Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland formerly detailed to the Russia investigation by special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, told the panel that prosecutors involved in the criminal trial of Trump’s friend Roger Stone experienced “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice” to give Stone “a break” by requesting a lighter sentence.

Zelinsky was joined by John Elias, an official in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, who said Barr ordered staff to investigate marijuana company mergers simply because of his “personal dislike” of the nature of their underlying business. Continue reading.

The Barr Memo and the Imperial Presidency

NOTE:  This is “an oldie, but a goodie” article from the American Constitution Society about Bill Barr’s beliefs about the American presidency. With what we’re hearing from people inside the Justice Department and the firing of qualified attorneys for Trump hacks, it’s worth posting.

Last summer, William Barr wrote a memo for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Steve Engel.  The memo had to do with the Mueller investigation and whether President Trump can be understood to have violated the obstruction of justice statute (spoiler alert:  his answer was an emphatic “no”).  Because William Barr is Trump’s nominee to be Attorney General, the memo has been the focus of attention for what it says about the Mueller investigation and for what it directly implies about that investigation (more spoilers:  (1) Trump can take over, manipulate, or terminate the investigation, and (2) don’t hold your breath waiting to see a Mueller report).

If possible, I would like to focus attention elsewhere – on the ramifications of Mueller’s theory of the President’s constitutional powers for the rest of the government.  Those ramifications are vast and proceed from the memo’s most jaw-dropping passage:  “Constitutionally, it is wrong to conceive of the President as simply the highest officer within the Executive branch hierarchy.  He alone is the Executive branch.”[1]

The conception of presidential power embraced in the Barr Memo goes well beyond the ordinary unitary executive claims.  I have taken to calling it the imperial executive, in part because no Attorney General has ever come so close to accepting Louis XIV’s motto, “L’etat c’est moi.” This theory revives the view of executive power that launched a thousand signing statements, generated the torture memo, and justified warrantless domestic surveillance in spite of the legal prohibitions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  It is impossible to conceive of all the damage this theory will do in the hands of the Trump Administration, and a full catalog would require a book length post.  I would, nonetheless, like to highlight a few implications that strike me as immediately obvious. Continue reading.

Barr to testify in House oversight hearing next month

The Hill logoAttorney General William Barr will testify before the House Judiciary Committee next month as Democrats on the panel seek to investigate his decision to fire a top prosecutor in Manhattan.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec confirmed on Twitter that the president’s top law enforcement official will participate in a general oversight hearing in late July.

“The Attorney General has accepted an invitation to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a general oversight hearing on July 28th,” Kupec tweeted. Continue reading.