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More Questionable Behavior from Trump, T Admin, DOJ, and R's vs Dems, Press, Justice

General Discussion
#824

To understand why the filibuster is so important, here is a good explainer.

From historian Heather Cox Richardson (and commentator for Bill Moyers.com)

The other story from today with a long history behind it is that the Senate is currently unable to organize itself because Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is insisting that the Democrats commit to leaving the filibuster intact. The filibuster is peculiar to the Senate, and is a procedure designed to draw out the session to prevent a vote on a measure. It is an old system, but it is not exactly hallowed: it was a bit of a mistake.

The Constitution provides for the Senate to pass most measures by a simple majority. It also permits each house of Congress to write its own rules. According to historian Brian Bixby, the House discovered early on that it needed a procedure to stop debate and get on with a vote. The Senate, a much smaller body, did not.

In the 1830s, senators in the minority discovered they could prevent votes on issues they disliked simply by talking the issue to death. In 1917, when both President Woodrow Wilson and the American people turned against the filibuster after senators used it to stop Wilson from preparing for war, the Senate reluctantly adopted a procedure to end a filibuster using a process called “cloture,” but that process is slow and it takes a majority of three-fifths of all members. Today, that is 60 votes.

From 1917 to 1964, senators filibustered primarily to stop civil rights legislation. The process was grueling: a senator had to talk for hours, as South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond did in 1957, when he spoke for 24 hours straight to stand against a civil rights act. But the need to speed up Senate business meant that in the 1960s and 1970s, senators settled on procedural filibusters that enabled an individual senator to kill a measure simply by declaring opposition, rather than through the old-fashioned system of all-night speeches. The Senate also declared some measures, such as budget resolutions, immune to filibusters. Effectively, this means that it takes 60 votes, rather than a simple majority, to get anything–other than absolutely imperative financial measures-- done.

In 2013, frustrated by the Republicans’ filibustering of President Obama’s judicial nominees and picks for a number of officials in the Executive Branch, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) prohibited filibusters on certain Executive Branch and judicial nominees. In 2017, when Democrats tried to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell killed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, as well.

The filibuster remains in place for legislation.

The Democrats currently have no plans to try to kill the filibuster altogether—they do not have the votes, as Joe Manchin (D-WV) has openly opposed the idea and others are leery—but they want to keep the threat of killing it to prevent McConnell and the Republicans from abusing it and stopping all Democratic legislation.

This impasse means that senators are not organizing the Senate. New senators have not been added to existing committees, which leaves Republicans in the majority in key committees. This is slowing down Biden’s ability to get his nominees confirmed.

What’s at stake here is actually quite an interesting question. While the new Senate is split evenly—50 Democrats, 50 Republicans—the 50 Democrats in the Senate represent over 41.5 million more people than the 50 Republicans represent. The filibuster means that no legislation can pass Congress without the support of 10 Republicans. Essentially, then, the fight over the filibuster is a fight not just about the ability of the Democrats to get laws passed, but about whether McConnell and the Republicans, who represent a minority of the American people, can kill legislation endorsed by lawmakers who represent quite a large majority.

We are in an uncomfortable period in our history in which the mechanics of our democracy are functionally anti-democratic. The fight over the filibuster might seem dull, but it’s actually a pretty significant struggle as our lawmakers try to make the rules of our system fit our changing nation.

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#825
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#826

Downward spiral on T’s finances and legal problems…no one is surprised.

Donald Trump returns to his company this week as it faces a deepening crisis, with key properties bleeding revenue and its bankers, lawyers and customers fleeing the company.

Financial disclosure forms, filed by the former president as he left office, revealed that his hotels, resorts and other properties had lost more than $120 million in revenue last year, as the pandemic forced long-term closures and kept customers home.

Those losses were worst in the places where Trump could least afford it: His Washington hotel, which has a $170 million loan outstanding, saw revenue drop more than 60 percent. His Doral resort in Miami — also carrying a huge debt load — saw a 44 percent drop.

On Thursday, the company’s troubles grew: One of its banks and one of its law firms said they would cut their ties with the Trump Organization. They are the latest in a string of vendors and customers who severed their relationships with the company after Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol directly after he addressed them at a rally.

The picture emerging shows the inversion of Trump’s fortunes since 2015, when he entered politics promising to remake the country in the image of his growing, swaggering business.

Now, Trump returns to a business remade in the image of the country he led: beleaguered, indebted and toxically politicized.

“He faces some very serious problems that have been building in recent years and I think are going to come to a head now that he’s left office,” said Bert Ely, a banking consultant who has testified before Congress on financial matters.

Not long after he strides across the White House grounds Wednesday morning for the last time as president, Donald J. Trump will step into a financial minefield that appears to be unlike anything he has faced since his earlier brushes with collapse.

The tax records that he has long fought to keep hidden, revealed in a New York Times investigation last September, detailed his financial challenges:

Many of his resorts were losing millions of dollars a year even before the pandemic struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, which he personally guaranteed, must be repaid within a few years. He has burned through much of his cash and easy-to-sell assets. And a decade-old I.R.S. audit threatens to cost him more than $100 million to resolve.

In his earlier dark moments, Mr. Trump was able to rescue businesses he runs with multimillion-dollar infusions from his father or licensing deals borne of his television celebrity. Those lifelines are gone. And his divisive presidency has steadily eroded the mainstream marketability of the brand that is at the heart of his business.

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#827

Another piece of damning evidence of T’s attempts at manipulating the outcome of the GA elections - forcing Acting AG Rosen to proclaim T’s victory.

Yup…it is all coming out. Impeachable offense.

Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.

Mr. Clark said that this account contained inaccuracies but did not specify, adding that he could not discuss any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department lawyers. “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”

Mr. Clark also noted that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request last month asking a federal judge to reject a lawsuit that sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election.

Mr. Trump declined to comment. An adviser said that Mr. Trump has consistently argued that the justice system should investigate “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”

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#828

Impeachment begins Feb 8th…and close to a month after the insurrection.

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#829

OMG - There are shocking reports on the planning phases of the Insurrection and a potential attempt a few days prior to Jan 6th to take down some Senators. As well, what these Insurrectionists were communicating during the Jan 6th take down - specific locations of Senators, tunnels etc.

FBI gathering intel from Zello, which handled the push-to-talk communications info between the militia members.

Could have been a lot worse.

Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

We have about 30-40 of us. We are sticking together and sticking to the plan,” co-defendant Jessica Watkins, 38, an Army veteran, said while the breach was underway, according to court documents.

“You are executing citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud,” a man replied, according to audio recordings of communications between Watkins and others during the incursion.

“We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it. They are throwing grenades, they are fricking shooting people with paint balls. But we are in here,” a woman believed to be Watkins said, according to court documents.

A man then responds, “Get it, Jess,” adding, “This is . . . everything we f—ing trained for!”

The FBI said it recovered the exchange from Zello, a push-to-talk, two-way radio phone app.

FBI charging papers against Caldwell, Watkins and a third person, former U.S. Marine Donovan Crowl, 50, allege that Caldwell and others coordinated in advance to disrupt Congress, scouted for lodging and recruited Oath Keepers members from North Carolina and like-minded groups from the Shenandoah Valley. The group claims thousands of members who assert the right to defy government orders they deem improper. The plotters both anticipated violence and continued to act in concert after the break-in, investigators alleged in court documents. FBI papers also say that Caldwell suggested a similar event at the local level after the attack, saying in a message: “Lets storm the capitol in Ohio. Tell me when!”

The three are charged with five federal counts of conspiracy against the United States; obstructing an official government proceeding; impeding or injuring government officers; and destroying U.S. property, entering restricted grounds and disorderly conduct at the Capitol.

Attempts to reach attorneys for Caldwell, Watkins and Crowl have been unsuccessful. No one immediately responded to messages left at numbers connected to Caldwell.

Other arrests Tuesday also underscored law enforcement’s concerns about threats to elected leaders, particularly because so many of the participants in the Jan. 6 chaos are still unidentified.

In New York, a Queens man who worked in the state court system was accused Tuesday of making threats to murder Democratic politicians, including suggesting another attack on the Capitol timed to Biden’s inauguration. The man was not at the riot on Jan. 6 but made threatening remarks about Democratic politicians beforehand that intensified in a video he posted two days later, which was titled “KILL YOUR SENATORS.” In the video, he encourages people to return to the Capitol and take up arms.

“If anybody has a gun, give it to me, I’ll go there myself and shoot them and kill them,” the man said, according to the FBI.

In Caldwell’s charging papers, the FBI said that it is reviewing communications between Cald­well “and other known and unknown Oath Keepers members.”

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#830

Here come all the excuses

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#831

When the rich and influential get pardoned by T because of their friendly relationship with Trump, and what that does to the prosecutors who worked tirelessly to get them jailed, creates the belief that the rich can do anything they want.

It was New Year’s Eve, and dance music was pulsating from the backyard of a multimillion-dollar home here co-owned by Philip Esformes, a former nursing home executive who orchestrated one of the biggest Medicare frauds in United States history.

Just days after being granted clemency by President Donald J. Trump and released after serving four years of his 20-year sentence, Mr. Esformes was under a disco ball celebrating his daughter’s wedding.

Not far away, in Hialeah, Fla., Judith Negron, 49, who had been convicted in a separate scheme to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent Medicare payments, was also at home for the holidays instead of in federal prison. Thanks to a commutation by Mr. Trump, she had been released after serving eight years of a 35-year sentence and was relieved of any remaining obligation to pay her share of $87 million in court-ordered restitution.

This was hardly the outcome that Paul E. Pelletier expected when he and a team of other top Justice Department prosecutors and federal investigators set out to expose what Mr. Esformes and Ms. Negron had done.

After years of painstaking work and millions of dollars spent to investigate and prosecute the cases, the remainders of the sentences being served by the two convicted felons — participants in a type of fraud that costs taxpayers billions of dollars — had been wiped away by the stroke of a presidentia

In explaining his decisions, Mr. Trump said that Ms. Negron was a “wife and mother” and had dedicated her time in prison to “improving her life and the lives of her fellow inmates.” Mr. Esformes, he said, spent his time in prison “devoted to prayer and repentance and is in declining health,” and others had raised claims of misconduct by prosecutors in his case.

The presidential rationales did not hold much weight with those who had sought to hold Mr. Esformes and Ms. Negron accountable.

“It is an incredible kick in the teeth to the agents and prosecutors who toil away every day under very difficult circumstances to achieve justice and some restitution to the taxpayers from the billions of dollars that has literally been stolen from them,” Mr. Pelletier said.

His frustration is shared by many current and former Justice Department officials who spent years working on these cases, considered two of the most important taken up in the nationwide effort to combat widespread Medicare fraud.

“It is disheartening, demoralizing,” said Wifredo A. Ferrer, a former United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida, speaking generally about presidential commutations in Medicare fraud cases. “We are doing these cases to control health care costs and save lives and make sure legitimate health care centers don’t have to compete with the crooks.”

The wave of pardons and commutations issued by Mr. Trump in his final months in office has drawn criticism from prosecutors and federal agents involved in other types of cases as well. Most notably, his decision to pardon four Blackwater guards convicted in the killing of Iraqi civilians infuriated many involved in those complex, long-running and contentious prosecutions.

But Mr. Trump’s willingness to grant clemency in a string of Medicare cases has elicited particular outrage in Florida, a hotbed of this type of case and a focus of Justice Department efforts to combat fraud.

Mr. Trump added to the anger on Tuesday, when he commuted what was left of the prison sentence for Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, 66, who ran clinics in Florida that fraudulently diagnosed Medicare patients with eye diseases and then performed medically unnecessary tests and procedures, falsely billing the federal government at least $42 million, according to prosecutors.

He was sentenced in 2018 to 17 years in prison and was not scheduled to be released from prison until 2031, according to Bureau of Prisons records.

Roger H. Stefin, the lead prosecutor on the Melgen case, said that he considered it to be the most important conviction of his nearly 32-year career at the Justice Department — and that he was outraged at what Mr. Trump did.

It is an insult and slap in the face to everybody,” said Mr. Stefin, 67, who retired last month, including “the patients who are getting needles stuck in their eyes and lasers blasting their retinas for treatments they did not even need.”

He remains baffled at why Mr. Trump acted in this case. “Why do these rich and well-connected people — really bad people — get this special treatment?” he said. “Why do they deserve it when other people are languishing in the jails?”

Ms. Negron, and lawyers for Dr. Melgen and Mr. Esformes, 52, argue that the commutations were justified. They said the Justice Department was overzealous in its prosecutions, either by using unethical practices during the investigation or by pushing for excessively long prison sentences and unrealistic restitution orders.

“I was sentenced based on numbers that were not relevant to me,” Ms. Negron said this month in an interview, referring to her 35-year sentence and multimillion-dollar restitution requirement. She argued that her earnings from the scheme were not more than her salary of about $250,000 a year. Prosecutors said during the trial that much of the stolen money was still missing.

Dr. Melgen’s case had become particularly high-profile because of his friendship with Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who was accused of bribery and corruption for accepting gifts from Dr. Melgen while intervening in his case with federal officials. Mr. Menendez’s trial ended with a deadlocked jury; a judge subsequently dismissed some of the charges and the Justice Department decided not to retry him.

“Throughout this ordeal, I have come to realize the very deep flaws in our justice system and how people are at the complete mercy of prosecutors and judges,” Dr. Melgen said in a statement issued by his lawyer.

…

The cases involving Mr. Esformes and Ms. Negron were investigated by a special unit created in Miami in 2007 and led by Mr. Pelletier that targeted Medicare fraud.

Mr. Pelletier and his colleagues said they were amazed at the depth of corruption they found.

“We were ground zero for Medicare fraud,” Mr. Ferrer said.

There were so many schemes unfolding in South Florida that prosecutors set up an office with two football fields’ worth of space to store documents seized during raids and house the dozens of prosecutors, F.B.I. agents, and personnel from the inspector general’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services assigned to the team.

The team also included a nurse who could help them reverse-engineer falsified billing codes and data experts who could examine billing trends to help them identify surges in reimbursements that might merit further investigation.

The program was eventually expanded to 14 other cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Houston and Chicago.

In Ms. Negron’s case, investigators found that the network of mental-health clinics she helped run, known as American Therapeutic Corporation, paid bribes and kickbacks to owners of nursing homes and halfway houses and to so-called patient brokers to deliver clients to their clinics. In many cases, those clients were not eligible for the services that the company then billed Medicare to supposedly provide.

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#832

Why McConnell Dumped Trump | The New Yorker

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#833

Another level of shocking abuse of power from the Republican Rep Scott Perry of the Freedom Caucus who wanted to help with the throwing of the election. He helped secure the lawyer Clark who was compliant with all the underhanded schemes. See all the offenses that are being discovered prior to the Impeachment trial. PLENTY!

WASHINGTON — When Representative Scott Perry joined his colleagues in a monthslong campaign to undermine the results of the presidential election, promoting “Stop the Steal” events and supporting an attempt to overturn millions of legally cast votes, he often took a back seat to higher-profile loyalists in President Donald J. Trump’s orbit.

But Mr. Perry, an outspoken Pennsylvania Republican, played a significant role in the crisis that played out at the top of the Justice Department this month, when Mr. Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and backed down only after top department officials threatened to resign en masse.

It was Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, who first made Mr. Trump aware that a relatively obscure Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, the acting chief of the civil division, was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s view that the election had been stolen, according to former administration officials who spoke with Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Perry introduced the president to Mr. Clark, whose openness to conspiracy theories about election fraud presented Mr. Trump with a welcome change from the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who stood by the results of the election and had repeatedly resisted the president’s efforts to undo them.

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#834

Man who tweeted about assassinating Ocasio-Cortez faces charges in Capitol riot

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#835

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#836

This is a very big deal - having Facebook’s Oversght Board decide on bringing back Trump into the fold. Huge consequences for Facebook…but they’ve been superfriendly with the Alt Rights and the controversial conspiracists.

They meet mostly on Zoom, but I prefer to picture the members of this court, or council, or whatever it is, wearing reflective suits and hovering via hologram around a glowing table. The members include two people who were reportedly on presidential shortlists for the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a British Pulitzer winner, Colombia’s leading human rights lawyer and a former prime minister of Denmark. The 20 of them come, in all, from 18 countries on six continents, and speak 27 languages among them.

This is the Oversight Board, a hitherto obscure body that will, over the next 87 days, rule on one of the most important questions in the world: Should Donald J. Trump be permitted to return to Facebook and reconnect with his millions of followers?

The decision has major consequences not just for American politics, but also for the way in which social media is regulated, and for the possible emergence of a new kind of transnational corporate power at a moment when almost no power seems legitimate.

The board will seriously examine the Trump question, guided by Facebook’s own rules as well as international human rights law. If Facebook accepts its rulings, as it has pledged to do, as well as the board’s broader guidance, the company will endow this obscure panel with a new kind of legitimacy.

But the board has been handling pretty humdrum stuff so far. It has spent a lot of time, two people involved told me, discussing nipples, and how artificial intelligence can identify different nipples in different contexts. Board members have also begun pushing to have more power over the crucial question of how Facebook amplifies content, rather than just deciding on taking posts down and putting them up, those people said. In October, it took on a half-dozen cases, about posts by random users, not world leaders: Can Facebook users in Brazil post images of women’s nipples to educate their followers about breast cancer? Should the platform allow users to repost a Muslim leader’s angry tweet about France? It is expected to finally issue rulings at the end of this week, after what participants described as a long training followed by slow and intense deliberations.

And it has faced questions about whether it would ever be more than a public relations gesture, including from critics who started an alternate “Real Facebook Oversight Board” to call for a sweeping crackdown on the platform. So when Facebook suspended Mr. Trump’s account indefinitely after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, the Oversight Board’s leaders didn’t disguise their eagerness to take on a big and meaty question.

“This is the kind of case the oversight board is for,” said one of the board’s co-chairs, Jamal Greene, a former Supreme Court clerk and Kamala Harris aide who is the Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School and a prominent legal scholar. Another board co-chairman, the conservative former federal judge and Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, told me before Facebook finally referred the case that it was “quite appropriate for the board to hear” the questions raised by the Trump ban.

It’s hard to imagine a more consequential case. The decisions by Twitter and Facebook to bar Mr. Trump immediately reshaped the American political landscape. In the course of a few hours after the Capitol riots, they simply vaporized the most important figure in the history of social media.

The board took up the case Thursday, and will appoint a panel of five randomly selected board members, at least one of them American, to decide what is to be done with Mr. Trump’s account. The full, 20-person board will review the decision, and could reinstate Mr. Trump’s direct connection to millions of supporters, or sever it for good.

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#837

My question is how would they handle someone not named trump & not a former president.

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#838

FB certainly gets no points for even pretending to create a fairness agenda.

What do you think they’d do?

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#839

Not a lot of love out there for Zuckerberg and FB.

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#840

Discussion on how the Dems let the R’s lead them around.

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#841


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#842
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#843

Looks like more evidence that protection for the rioters was being given before the riots, even if The DC authorities normally would go in an instant to help protect people caught in a riot.

The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.

Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.

But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said the Pentagon essentially took that power and other authorities away from him ahead of a pro-Trump protest on Jan. 6. That meant he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when he received a panicked phone call from the Capitol Police chief warning that rioters were about to enter the U.S. Capitol.

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