Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Postal Service to review package delivery fees as Trump influence grows

Washington Post logoDeputy Postmaster General Ronald A. Stroman will leave before new agency head Louis DeJoy takes the helm.

Weeks before a Republican donor and top White House ally becomes postmaster general, the U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun a review of its package delivery contracts and lost its second-highest executive, leaving its board of governors without any officials who predate President Trump.

The moves, confirmed by six people with knowledge of the Postal Service’s inner workings but not authorized to speak publicly, underscore how Trump is moving closer to reshaping an independent agency he has dubbed “a joke.”

The Postal Service in recent weeks has sought bids from consulting firms to reassess what the agency charges companies such as Amazon, UPS and FedEx to deliver products on their behalf — often in the “last mile” between a post office and a customer’s home. Higher package rates would cost shippers and online retailers billions of dollars, potentially spurring them to invest in their own distribution networks instead of relying on the Postal Service. Continue reading.

Trump presses immunity argument in Summer Zervos defamation case

Washington Post logoNEW YORK — Lawyers for President Trump this week reiterated their argument that a defamation lawsuit from a woman who alleges Trump groped and kissed her without consent should be halted because the president is immune from lawsuits filed in state courts while serving in office.

A new 28-page court brief, filed Monday and released publicly by the New York State Court of Appeals on Tuesday, is Trump’s latest salvo in a multi-front legal battle to limit the ability of private citizens, Congress and even law enforcement to investigate him as a sitting president.

The release came on the same day that Trump’s lawyers argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that the president should be able to shield his tax returns and private business records from subpoenas issued by Democratic-led House congressional committees and the Manhattan district attorney. They argued the president should be immune from requests he believed were political attempts to harass. Continue reading.

Trump lawyer: ‘We’re asking for temporary presidential immunity’

They’d said it before, but President Donald Trump’s attorney put it more bluntly than ever:

“We’re asking for temporary presidential immunity,” Jay Sekulow told the Supreme Court Tuesday

“Temporary presidential immunity,” in the way the President’s lawyers describe it, would mean that Trump (or whomever is president at the time) couldn’t be investigated or prosecuted while holding the office of President. No subpoenas, no testimony, no indictments, if investigators sought those. Continue reading.

Frank Figliuzzi: Trump’s ‘Obamagate’ comments and Barr’s Flynn meddling suggest troubling new pivot

Trump can’t pull off this ruse by himself, of course, but he has a partner. Barr is riding shotgun during this scorched-earth joyride against justice

In my 25 years as an FBI special agent and (now retired) head of the bureau’s counterintelligence, I learned the value of predictive analysis. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI transitioned from an investigative agency adept at investigating what happened after the fact to an intelligence agency capable of forecasting and preventing harm from happening in the future.

Forecasting is a lot easier when there are clear clues. And when it comes to assessing the trap Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump appear to be setting for us, the warning signs are plentiful. We don’t need to read tea leaves for this. We only need to review tweets.

On Saturday, Trump retweeted a fantastical fiction of a theory from The Federalist asserting that former President Barack Obama’s White House intelligence discussions about, in part, the trustworthiness of incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn and members of the Trump transition team were proof that Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden were malevolently conspiring against the Trump administration. Continue reading.

Yale philosopher and author of ‘How Fascism Works’ explains why the pandemic offers Trump a dangerous opportunity to ‘rule by decree’

AlterNet logoA moment of reckoning is here. America must have committed great wrongs to be afflicted with the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump at the same time.

Authoritarians like Trump love disasters. Because they can only destroy and not create, authoritarians use such moments of misery and fear to expand their power.

Donald Trump is announcing that fact when he proclaims himself to be a “war president.” Such language is not just the superficial trappings of Trump wrapping himself in the flag and using empty words about “sacrifice” and “bravery” and “heroism.” It is something far worse and more sinister. As a “war president,” Trump is putting himself above the law and proclaiming the country is in a state of emergency. Continue reading.

Barr Openly Promotes Trump’s Dictatorial Ambitions

In a major step toward establishing a Trump dictatorship, the Justice Department moved Thursday to drop the criminal case against confessed felon Michael Flynn, the retired Army general and secret foreign agent who was Trump’s first national security adviser.

Instead of seeking equal justice under law, an extraordinary court filing demonstrated that Trump has one standard of justice for his enemies and an entirely different one for his allies. The court action shows how fully Trump has turned our Justice Department into his personal protection agency.

The 108-page court filing is rife with falsehoods and tortured interpretations of established facts, a mendacious necessity since Flynn twice confessed to multiple crimes under oath in open court. It argues that the lies Flynn told FBI agents were not “material” to the case against him. The trial court judge has already dismissed that as nonsense. Continue reading.

Exclusive: Obama says in private call that ‘rule of law is at risk’ in Michael Flynn case

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama, talking privately to ex-members of his administration, said Friday that the “rule of law is at risk” in the wake of what he called an unprecedented move by the Justice Department to drop charges against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In the same chat, a tape of which was obtained by Yahoo News, Obama also lashed out at the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster.”

“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said in a web talk with members of the Obama Alumni Association. Continue reading.

‘A constant battle of you against the leadership of your country’: Justice Dept. rattled as Flynn fallout reaches FBI

Washington Post logoPresident Trump cast fresh doubt Friday on the future of his FBI director as federal law enforcement officials privately wrestled with fallout from the Justice Department’s move to throw out the guilty plea of former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn.

The president’s comments in a phone interview with Fox News highlight the ongoing distrust between the White House and some law enforcement officials in the wake of a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russia’s 2016 election interference and the Trump campaign.

“It’s disappointing,” Trump said when asked about Christopher A. Wray’s role in ongoing reviews of the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation. “Let’s see what happens with him. Look, the jury’s still out.” Continue reading.

Flynn decision cheered by Trump and the right, as critics decry it as an attack on the rule of law

Washington Post logoThe Justice Department’s decision to drop its prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday was greeted as a triumph by President Trump and his allies, who have argued for years that Flynn was set up — but with dire alarm by Trump’s opponents, who saw the move as an attack on the rule of law.

The extreme division mirrored three years of partisan combat over how the FBI handled Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an investigation that shadowed much of Trump’s time in office.

And the circumstances of the development — delivered by a loyalist attorney general after a key prosecutor withdrew from a case in which Flynn had previously acknowledged guilt on multiple occasions — appeared only to harden positions. Continue reading.

Don’t Forget, Michael Flynn Pleaded Guilty. Twice.

New York Times logoEven President Trump has said his former national security adviser lied to the F.B.I.

It can be hard to recall, since so many members of President Trump’s inner circle have been indicted, convicted of federal crimes and even sent to prison, but the first felon to emerge from this administration was Michael Flynn.

Mr. Flynn, who served less than a month as the national security adviser before resigning in disgrace, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to F.B.I. investigators about his communications with the Russian ambassador.

When asked about the plea at the time, Mr. Trump said, “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the F.B.I.” Continue reading.