Texas GOP chair floats secession for ‘law-abiding states’ after Supreme Court defeat

‘#Texit’: A Texas state lawmaker says he will propose a referendum on seceding from the US because the ‘federal government is out of control’

‘Lincoln told you no’: Texas GOP rebuked for secession talk

After the Supreme Court rejected the Trump-backed lawsuit from the atty. general of Texas to overturn the vote in four states Biden won, the chair of the Lonestar State’s Republican Party hinted at secession. Susan Page discusses.

Windthin · December 12, 2020, 5:48pm

One of the leaders of the far-right Proud Boys tried to pass off a White House public tour as an official visit Saturday.

MissJava · December 13, 2020, 1:22am

A post was merged into an existing topic: Must Read Op-Ed and Profiles

dragonfly9 · December 13, 2020, 3:42pm

Violence erupts in DC today…stabbings Proud Boys participating.

Adding

At least four people were stabbed Saturday night amid post-election protests in Washington, according to the DC Metropolitan Police Department’s public affairs office.

DC Fire and EMS transported eight people from the protest area since around 7 p.m.: the four stabbing victims, who were said to be in critical condition, according to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office; two police officers with non-life-threatening injuries and two people with minor injuries, the public information office said.

At least 23 people have been arrested during the “Stop the Steal” protests, the mayor’s office said.

Members of the Proud Boys yell in front of a hotel during a protest on December 12, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Large groups of protesters and counter-protesters gathered earlier in the day outside the Supreme Court and at Freedom Plaza to protest the presidential election results. Most individuals were not wearing masks.

Six people were arrested for assault on police officers, 10 were arrested for simple assault, four for riotous acts, two for crossing a police line and one for possession of a prohibited weapon – a Taser, the mayor’s office said.

Videos circulating on social media showed scuffles and small fights had broken out sporadically, but the large gatherings were mostly peaceful.

dragonfly9 · December 14, 2020, 5:38pm

Michigan Rep. Gary Eisen, a Republican from St. Clair has been removed from his committee assignments after saying he couldn’t guarantee a safe day in Lansing Monday as Michigan’s electors gather to vote for Joe Biden.

Speaking to WPHM on Monday morning, Eisen was asked, “Can you assure me that this is going to be a safe day in Lansing, nobody is going to get hurt?”

He responded, “No,” before adding that, “I don’t know because what we’re doing today is uncharted. It hasn’t been done.”

During the 11-minute interview, Eisen didn’t give details about what may happen, but said he was asked to help.

Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Speaker-elect Jason Wentworth released a joint statement saying in part, “We have been consistent in our position on issues of violence and intimidation in politics – it is never appropriate and never acceptable.”

They also said that violence has no place in the democratic process that that Eisen has been removed from his committee assignments for the rest of this term. The term does end at the end of the year.

The Michigan legislative buildings are closed Monday due to “credible threats,” police say, as the 16 Michigan electors gather to send their Electoral College votes to Washington D.C. for Joe Biden.

dragonfly9 · December 18, 2020, 8:38pm

Where the grift goes…to the children, or rather adults who should know better.

Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law and a senior campaign adviser, served on the board of a limited liability company through which the Trump political operation has spent more than $700 million since 2019, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. She was also named on drafts of the company’s incorporation papers.

The arrangement has never been disclosed. One of the other board members and signatories in the draft papers of the L.L.C., American Made Media Consultants, was John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Mike Pence and a senior Trump adviser. The L.L.C. has been criticized for purposefully obscuring the ultimate destination of hundreds of millions of dollars of spending. Ms. Trump is married to Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons.

Ms. Trump was initially intended to be the president of the entity, and Mr. Pence the vice president of it, the documents show.

The president has spent millions of campaign dollars on his own family businesses in the last five years. But the newly disclosed records show an even more intricate intermingling of Mr. Trump’s political and familial interests than was previously known.

Paywall

Windthin · December 18, 2020, 10:47pm

Unpacked: Presidential pardons and obstruction of justice

THE ISSUE: In just over a year, the Russia investigation has resulted in 35 guilty pleas or indictments. With the investigation entering its second year, questions remain about whether a presidential pardon of former advisors like Michael Flynn or Paul Manafort would constitute obstruction of justice, and if those charges might lead to an impeachment.

The things you need to know:

A president is bound by the same laws as the rest of us.
If a president were to issue pardons in order to block an investigation for a wrongful purpose—like a president protecting himself because he believed that someone who was pardoned would disclose incriminating evidence against that president—that would constitute obstruction of justice.
Congress has said that it is a crime in the United States to obstruct justice.
There’s a debate over whether a sitting president can be prosecuted.
Another option would be for the Department of Justice to refer the case to Congress. With (or without) a report, Congress could have hearings in the House Judiciary Committee as to whether a president committed obstruction of justice by giving a pardon with corrupt intent to himself or those around him.
Trump’s frequent use of pardons has broader implications.
Many analysts and advisers to President Trump have reported that President Trump is delighted by his power to pardon, viewing it as a sign of unconstrained authority.
Trump may be issuing pardons strategically, “dangling” pardons before witnesses who might testify against him to disincentivize them from cooperating with investigations.
The signal of impunity this may send to witnesses, subjects, targets, and defendants participating in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is profoundly troubling.

dragonfly9 · December 19, 2020, 3:38pm

Last minute moves by T 'n co to grant land use…but the silver lining “Representative Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico — to lead the Interior Department, will still have the ability to reshape, slow or even block certain projects.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office.

In Arizona, the Forest Service is preparing to sign off on the transfer of federal forest land — considered sacred by a neighboring Native American tribe — to allow construction of one of the nation’s largest copper mines.

In Utah, the Interior Department may grant final approval as soon as next week to a team of energy speculators targeting a remote spot inside an iconic national wilderness area — where new energy leasing is currently banned — so they can start drilling into what they believe is a huge underground supply of helium.

In northern Nevada, the department is close to granting final approval to construct a sprawling open-pit lithium mine on federal land that sits above a prehistoric volcano site.

And in the East, the Forest Service intends to take a key step next month toward allowing a natural gas pipeline to be built through the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and West Virginia, at one point running underneath the Appalachian Trail.

These projects, and others awaiting action in the remaining weeks of the Trump administration, reflect the intense push by the Interior Department, which controls 480 million acres of public lands, and the Forest Service, which manages another 193 million acres, to find ways to increase domestic energy and mining production, even in the face of intense protests by environmentalists and other activists.

When he takes office on Jan. 20, Mr. Biden, who has chosen a Native American — Representative Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico — to lead the Interior Department, will still have the ability to reshape, slow or even block certain projects.

Some, like the South Dakota uranium mine, will require further approvals, or face lawsuits seeking to stop them, like the planned helium drilling project in Utah. But others, like the lithium mine in Nevada, will have the final federal permit needed before construction can begin, and will be hard for the next administration to stop.

Whether they are the final word or not, the last-minute actions are just the latest evidence of how the far-reaching shift in regulatory policy under Mr. Trump has altered the balance between environmental concerns and business, giving substantial new weight to corporate interests.

Mr. Trump chose former industry executives to run major federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, and industry executives and lobbyists who cycled in and out of government positions were granted substantial influence in setting regulations.

For four years, Mr. Trump’s team and its allies have raced to roll back federal rules intended to protect federal lands and the nation’s air and water, as well as other safety rules in agencies across the government. The changes were often made in direct response to requests from lobbyists and company executives who were major donors to Mr. Trump and frequent patrons at his hotels and resorts.

The final push on the mining and energy projects has come in part from senior Trump administration officials, including the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, a steel industry investor before joining Mr. Trump’s cabinet.

Mr. Ross’s calendar shows at least three appointments with top executives at Rio Tinto, the Australia-based mining giant backing the Resolution Copper mine planned for construction in Arizona next to the San Carlos Apache reservation. Mr. Ross also made a trip to the mine site this year.

dragonfly9 · December 23, 2020, 12:54am

Here come some more pardons…Bracing for more undeserving pardons…

two people convicted in the special counsel’s Russia inquiry, four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians and three corrupt former Republican members of Congress.

In an audacious pre-Christmas round of pardons, President Trump granted clemency on Tuesday to two people convicted in the special counsel’s Russia inquiry, four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians and three corrupt former Republican members of Congress.

Among those pardoned was George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and pleaded guilty in 2017 to making false statements to federal officials as part of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Also pardoned was Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to the same charge in 2018 in connection of the special counsel’s inquiry. Both men served short prison sentences.

Mr. Trump recently pardoned his former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who pleaded guilty twice to charges including lying to the F.B.I. in connection with the inquiry into Russian involvement in the election. Mr. Trump in July commuted the sentence of Roger J. Stone Jr., his longtime adviser who was convicted on a series of charges related to the investigation. Both men have maintained their innocence.

Mr. Trump’s pardon list also included four former U.S. service members who were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007.

One of them, Nicholas Slatten, had been sentenced to life in prison after the Justice Department had gone to great lengths to prosecute him. Mr. Slatten had been a contractor for the controversial company Blackwater and was sentenced for his role in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad — a massacre that left one of the most lasting stains on the United States of the war.

The three former members of Congress pardoned by Mr. Trump were Duncan Hunter of California, Chris Collins of New York and Steve Stockman of Texas.

Mr. Hunter was set to begin serving an 11-month sentence next month. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to one charge of misusing campaign funds.

dragonfly9 · December 23, 2020, 1:03am

Another attempt by T loyalists to instigate lawsuits in about voter fraud…but the lawyer, Linn Wood has been reprimanded for his behavior…Looks as though this one will be tossed out too.

Explainer

dragonfly9 · December 29, 2020, 3:58pm

The power of T’s pardon…for another low life who ripped off millions via Medicare and other healthcare institutions.

President Trump’s tsunami of pardons and commutations has been such an effective guide to the most loathsome individuals in today’s America that it’s hard to know where to begin in pulling out case histories.

But here’s a standout: It’s the case of Philip Esformes, who was convicted last year in what federal prosecutors termed “the largest healthcare fraud scheme ever charged by the Department of Justice.”

Esformes’ crimes involved $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid for services at his network of nursing and assisted living facilities in Florida. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison on 20 felony counts. Noting that the charges on which he was found guilty carried combined maximum sentences of 255 years, prosecutors had asked for 30 years.

Esformes, 52, served a bit less than 4 1/2 years. Now, thanks to Trump, he’s a free man.

It’s fair to say that the Esformes case doesn’t involve crimes as shocking as those of some recipients of Trump pardons. There are the four mercenaries working for Blackwater who were convicted in 2014 of an unprovoked attack in Baghdad, killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 17.

They were sentenced in 2019 to terms ranging from 12 years and seven months up to life in prison. Blackwater, their employer, was founded by Trump supporter Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education secretary.

Nor does it involve assaults on the norms of government as striking as those of former Trump aides Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, who had been convicted in relation to the Mueller investigation of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Coming as it does in the midst of a pandemic, however, the Esformes clemency underscores all the inequities and dysfunctions of the American healthcare system, which Esformes exploited for massive personal gain.

Trump has done exactly nothing to help the millions of Americans still in need of adequate health coverage, and almost nothing to assist the millions driven to the fringes of the economy by illness and job losses due to COVID-19. (Even his signing of the latest COVID relief package warrants no praise because he waited so long to do so that millions will lose out on a week of unemployment benefits.)

Trump didn’t pardon Esformes but commuted his 20-year sentence to time served. His conviction stands, as does the requirement that he pay whatever is left of $5.5 million in restitution that is part of his sentence. The size of the balance couldn’t be learned Monday; Howard Srebnick, his defense attorney, didn’t respond to my requests for comment.

Trump could have upheld the example set by Esformes’ sentence, which presented the prospect that he would die in prison. Instead, he set a negative example, showing that one can get away with the harshest consequences for one’s misdeeds if one has access to money and high-placed friends. (In this case, a gaggle of former Republican attorneys general.)

Of course, Floridians have seen this before, and don’t seem to care. Rick Scott was elected twice as the state’s Republican governor and once (so far) as its U.S. senator, despite the Medicare and Medicaid fraud committed by the healthcare company Columbia/HCA during his tenure as chief executive.

The government charges, to which the company pleaded guilty, resulted in then-record $1.7 billion in fines and penalties. Scott wasn’t charged personally.

Esformes played an indisputable role in the crimes that led to his conviction, however. Let’s take a look.

In announcing his conviction in April 2019, the Department of Justice observed that Esformes’ actions “led to over $800 million in fraudulent health care claims, the largest amount ever charged by the Department of Justice.”

The Department of Justice said that he “cycled patients through his facilities in poor condition where they received inadequate or unnecessary treatment, then improperly billed Medicare and Medicaid.” In one form or another, Esformes’ scheme went on for 18 years, until mid-2016, the said.

Esformes bribed doctors to admit patients into his facilities, “where they often failed to receive appropriate medical services, or received medically unnecessary services,” the Department of Justice said. He bribed regulators to give him advance notice of surprise inspections.

He personally pocketed scores of millions of dollars, which he spent on a lavish lifestyle that included a luxury automobile and a $360,000 watch. He ended up with a net worth of nearly $80 million, prosecutors said.

On a side issue, Esformes bribed a basketball coach at the University of Pennsylvania with $300,000 to get his son into the school as a basketball recruit. The son didn’t make the team but did acquire a Penn degree.

In their pre-sentencing memorandum, federal prosecutors described Esformes’ conduct as “pernicious, premeditated, and part of a lifelong pattern of disrespect for the law… This was not one criminal act, but hundreds of choices to break the law, even thousands, for more than a decade.”

Indeed, Esformes had already reached settlements with the government on two civil cases when he was charged criminally, including one in which he had been accused of committing fraud at the same nursing and assisted living facilities that became central to the criminal case.

The prosecutors’ depiction of a fraudster with a “total lack of remorse” was at odds, unsurprisingly, with the portrait painted by his defense team, which pleaded for a 10-year prison term.

According to them, he was a “humbled and broken man” seeking “a chance at redemption.” He was racked with “contrition, regret, remorse, and acceptance of responsibility,” they told federal Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. of Miami.

He wasn’t remorseful enough to give up on an appeal, in which his lawyers are asserting that he was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct, including the seizing of material during a search that should have been protected by attorney-client privilege.

An amicus brief supporting the appeal has been filed by former GOP Attys. Gen. John Ashcroft, Edwin Meese, Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzalez, along with Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Scola had considered that claim before trial and ruled that although the evidence was collected improperly and should be suppressed, it didn’t warrant dismissing the indictment. The appeal is pending.

In commuting Esformes’ sentence, Trump swallowed the defense claims. He nodded to the claim of prosecutorial misconduct and even cited the amicus brief of the former attorneys general. He pictured Esformes as a convict “devoted to prayer and repentance and … in declining health.”

Perhaps Esformes is the changed and ailing individual his lawyers claim. One would probably have to be terminally naive to take their representations at face value. And one would have to be hopelessly insensitive to the scale of Esformes’ wrongdoing over nearly two decades to think that he deserves a break.

For the average American struggling with the high price of healthcare and cognizant of the opportunities that unscrupulous healthcare executives have to exploit our system for their own benefit, this case adds to the injury embodied in Esformes’ thefts to the insult of giving him a pass out of jail for them.

He tried to help associates flee the country rather than testify against him (they were already cooperating with the government) and tried to persuade one to commit suicide rather than face trial, according to trial testimony.

dragonfly9 · December 29, 2020, 4:05pm

Watch what they do…

Ted Cruz Got $35 Million For Billionaire Fracking Donors In Last COVID-19 Aid: Report

The senator’s push was criticized as a massive taxpayer-backed payoff to major campaign contributors.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wilks-fracking-donors-ted-cruz-35-million-loan-coronavirus-relief_n_5fea86eec5b64e442105c571

As President Donald Trump complains about “pork” in the current COVID-19 relief package, The Wall Street Journal reports that the last time around, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) helped manipulate the aid program to get $35 million for Texas billionaire fracking brothers who are major Cruz contributors.

Dan and Farris Wilks collected the windfall even though their businesses were busy buying stakes in six other fracking companies, according to corporate records, the Journal reported.

The Wilks brothers lobbied Cruz when it appeared that gas and oil operations would be cut out of the government-backed loans of the Mainstreet Lending Program in the last COVID-19 economic stimulus package last spring, according to the newspaper.

Cruz in turn helped convince the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve to change the rules for pandemic loans to include the operations, the Journal reported. The government quickly changed the rules, and the Wilks brothers obtained the hefty $35 million loan for ProFac Holdings LLC, a supplier of pumping equipment and services, according to records.

The nonprofit BailoutWatch, which tracks coronavirus pandemic aid to businesses, blasted Cruz’s efforts as a massive payback to a major campaign contributor.

“ProFrac’s loan is blatant misappropriation of taxpayer dollars,” Chris Kuveke, an analyst for the organization, told the Journal. The senator’s biggest contributors cashed in with one of the program’s largest loans to the fossil fuel industry, Kuveke noted. “It’s hard not to connect the dots," he said.

dragonfly9 · December 31, 2020, 2:30am

No one at the wheel…

(CNN)President Donald Trump received information earlier this month that China sought to pay non-state actors to attack American forces in Afghanistan, a senior administration official said.

The intelligence, which will be declassified by the Trump administration, was provided to the President in his daily brief on December 17, the official said. His national security adviser Robert O’Brien discussed the information with the President that same day, the official said.

News of the briefing and the administration’s intention to declassify the information was first reported on Wednesday by Axios.

Information of this alleged intelligence is thus far uncorroborated. The scenario is reminiscent of reports earlier this year that Russia allegedly offered Afghan militants bounties to kill US forces in Afghanistan. That information also appeared in the President’s intelligence briefing although it was later revealed that the information likely went unnoticed for weeks.

Windthin · January 1, 2021, 3:03am

Hawley faces heat from Senate Republicans over Electoral College plans

The Missouri senator missed a Thursday call where Mitch McConnell asked him to explain his plans, emailing colleagues later instead.

dragonfly9 · January 1, 2021, 7:37pm

Ok…there’s always a 1st override…and one bill T could not override Congress on. He’s calling Sen Thune a RINO (Republican in Name Only) for going against him for his next primary race…but that’s just who T is - name caller, bully and destroyer of norms.

NBC reporting

Windthin · January 1, 2021, 9:30pm

Trump’s ‘Calvary’ Retweet Emphasizes Fear After Election Loss

dragonfly9 · January 2, 2021, 6:41am

Rep Louie Gohmert (R-Tx) brought a case which wanted Pence to call the election. A TX judge dropped the case tonight.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-01-01/pence-seeks-dismissal-of-suit-aiming-to-overturn-election

Texas Judge Dismisses Suit Aimed at Overturning Election

A federal judge has dismissed a last-gasp lawsuit led by a House Republican that seeks to give Vice President Mike Pence the power to overturn the results of the presidential election won by Joe Biden when Congress formally counts the Electoral College votes next week.

WTF Community

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

Lawyers across the country urge bar associations to investigate Trump’s legal team.