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

General Discussion
#605

So the stakes are even higher, with a Supreme Court Justice’s seat up for the bidding…and power plays, disgusting politics and Sen McConnell’s "The Grim Reaper’ on the ready to take that seat. No. Matter. What.

No joke…

It’s a popular sentiment on the left: Don’t mourn, organize. But with the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that won’t be enough. Ginsburg, a hero of female empowerment and of the Supreme Court, deserves much mourning. But Democrats and progressives can waste no time prepping for the battle royal that lies ahead. After all, it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mere minutes after the news of RBG’s passing to declare that the GOP-controlled Senate will vote on whoever Donald Trump sends its way to fill the Supreme Court vacancy—a direct eff-you to the Democrats after McConnell in 2016 refused to consider President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland with the phony-baloney argument that the Senate should not consider new justices during an election year. So yes, Dems will have to organize, but they must do more: They have to get ready to rumble.

What is coming, at least as the Republicans see it, is a grand political clash. They have been hellbent on reshaping the entire federal judiciary and especially drool over the prospect of locking the highest court into a right-wing course that will last decades and counter demographic trends that favor Democrats. This is their Holy Grail. After all, nothing galvanizes conservative evangelical voters more than the courts. For political consultants, it has long been conventional wisdom that right-wingers obsess over the composition of the courts and the Supreme Court far more than progressives. So Ginsburg’s departure is a gift for Trump. If there has been any erosion occurring on the edges of his conservative and evangelical base, his effort to shove another anti-choice, pro-corporate conservative on to the highest court could certainly shore up that ground for him. Here’s something Trump can campaign on for the next six and a half weeks, without breaking a sweat or fielding a tough question. It’s his lifeline. A cure for his coronavirus problem.

It will be bare-knuckles politics from the right. Do or die. By any means necessary. To replace Ginsburg with a young right-wing extremist. And for the Democrats to have a chance of thwarting them, they must realize that this fight is not only a matter of persuasion. They will not win by writing well-reasoned op-eds. Cable host tirades will be of little use. Panel discussions will be irrelevant. Clever ads highlighting GOP hypocrisy won’t do the trick. Angry editorials in the New York Times won’t help. Not even a freckin’ David Brooks column (“ conservatives should realize they have an interest in preserving democratic norm s ! “) will do them any good. Passionate speeches on the floor of the US Senate? Fuggedabout it.

This is about power.

Sure, the Democrats and influential voices in the political media world might focus on a few GOP senators and, appealing to that good ol’ American sense of fair play, urge them to preserve institutional norms and refuse to go along with McConnell’s night ride against democratic governance. But that is a long shot. Susan Collins, hero of the Republic? Do you want to bet? (She did tell a reporter earlier this month she would not seat a Supreme Court justice in October and would oppose doing so in a lame duck session if Biden wins. Yet…) Mitt Romney might be willing to throw his body on the tracks. And Lisa Murkowski has already said (before Ginsburg’s death) she won’t vote to confirm a new SCOTUS appointee until after the inauguration. But if the Dems round up this trio, you got a tie, with Veep Mike Pence eager to break the deadlock to please his lord and his Lord. Are there other Rs willing to derail the Trump-McConnell express? Don’t wager the mortgage. (One interesting wrinkle: If Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly defeats incumbent Sen. Martha McSally on November 3 in what is a special election, he could be immediately sworn in, and the Democrats might pick up a vote. But don’t think for a moment that McConnell hasn’t already taken that possibility into account.)

The win-over-reasonable-Republicans-with-reason strategy is weak sauce. That leaves the Democrats with one other choice: total political warfare. The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer—with the backing of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi—needs to threaten massive retaliation. Should McConnell try to ram a Trump nominee through, Schumer ought to vow that the Democrats, if they win back the Senate and Biden is elected president, will demolish the filibuster, which will allow the Senate to proceed to make Washington, DC, a state (two more senators, who are likely to be Democrats!) and that they will move to add two or four more seats to the Supreme Court. (There is nothing in the Constitution that limits the court’s size to the current nine justices.) In other words: They will implement a Republican nightmare (which, as it happens, can be justified on arguments of equity and fairness).

Schumer should utter this declaration publicly to lock the Democrats in. Of course, this could further propel Republicans to the polls. But it might do the same with Democrats. (The stakes in this election are now higher than they already were.) Crucially, there would need to be buy-in from Biden. The veteran Washington player will have to put aside his somewhat admirable (if misguided) desire to return to the older and more genteel means of legislating and compromising in the nation’s capital. But with conservative voters fired up by the dream of replacing Ginsburg with a thirtysomething right-wing firebrand, the Dems will have to counter with more than a this-isn’t-fair argument. Bring a gun to a knife fight? They will need a bazooka. Sorry if that sounds violent. But, as one sage person likes to say, we are in a fight for the nation’s soul. And sometimes you don’t get to choose the weapons or levels of intensity.

Ginsburg was an uplifting force in the ongoing American experiment. She was a feminist pioneer. She was an inspiring champion of equality, fairness, and perseverance. She wrote eloquent opinions that advanced and expanded progressive values and that made the United States a more perfect union. She penned blistering dissents that kept alive those values, even when they experienced setbacks. Her memory deserves more than passionate remembrances and praiseful eulogies. It warrants a fight. And perhaps a fight like one never seen before. One that will be damn notorious.

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#606

President Obama voices his thoughts on the passing of RBG.

https://obama.medium.com/my-statement-on-the-passing-of-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-5a925b627457

Sixty years ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg applied to be a Supreme Court clerk. She’d studied at two of our finest law schools and had ringing recommendations. But because she was a woman, she was rejected. Ten years later, she sent her first brief to the Supreme Court — which led it to strike down a state law based on gender discrimination for the first time. And then, for nearly three decades, as the second woman ever to sit on the highest court in the land, she was a warrior for gender equality — someone who believed that equal justice under law only had meaning if it applied to every single American.

Over a long career on both sides of the bench — as a relentless litigator and an incisive jurist — Justice Ginsburg helped us see that discrimination on the basis of sex isn’t about an abstract ideal of equality; that it doesn’t only harm women; that it has real consequences for all of us. It’s about who we are — and who we can be.

Justice Ginsburg inspired the generations who followed her, from the tiniest trick-or-treaters to law students burning the midnight oil to the most powerful leaders in the land. Michelle and I admired her greatly, we’re profoundly thankful for the legacy she left this country, and we offer our gratitude and our condolences to her children and grandchildren tonight.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought to the end, through her cancer, with unwavering faith in our democracy and its ideals. That’s how we remember her. But she also left instructions for how she wanted her legacy to be honored.

Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in.

A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican Senators are now called to apply that standard. The questions before the Court now and in the coming years — with decisions that will determine whether or not our economy is fair, our society is just, women are treated equally, our planet survives, and our democracy endures — are too consequential to future generations for courts to be filled through anything less than an unimpeachable process.
Written by

Barack Obama

Dad, husband, President, citizen.

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#607

Unnerving…and we’ve been here for a while. "It’s really time to wake up before it’s too late."

T and Trumpism…Warning signs about this regime who are aligning the judiciary, the economy, Republican congress, the votes, and being able to control outliers -Immigrants, blacks/browns protesters, media and health through propaganda and control the levers of power and messaging.

Fight like hell time.

The weakening of democratic values — a path that’s difficult to reverse — has accelerated, according to hundreds of indicators assessed each year

September 18, 2020 at 1:45 a.m. PDT

Three years into the Trump administration, American democracy has eroded to a point that more often than not leads to full-blown autocracy, according to a project that tracks the health of representative government in nations around the world.

The project, called V-Dem, or Varieties of Democracy, is an effort to precisely quantify global democracy at the country level based on hundreds indicators assessed annually by thousands of individual experts. It’s one of several ongoing projects by political scientists that have registered a weakening of democratic values in the United States in recent years.

V-Dem’s findings are bracing: The United States is undergoing “substantial autocratization” — defined as the loss of democratic traits — that has accelerated precipitously under President Trump. This is particularly alarming in light of what the group’s historic data show: Only 1 in 5 democracies that start down this path are able to reverse the damage before succumbing to full-blown autocracy.

“The United States is not unique” in its decline, said Staffan I. Lindberg, a political scientist at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg and a founding director of the project. “Everything we see in terms of decline on these indicators is exactly the pattern of decline” seen in other autocratizing nations, like Turkey and Hungary, both of which ceased to be classified as democracies in recent years.

Each year, the V-Dem project asks its experts to rate their respective nations on hundreds of measures of democracy, such as the presence of legislative checks on executive power, freedom of personal expression, the civility of political discourse, free and open elections, and executive branch corruption, among others.

The United States is backsliding on all of those measures. “Executive respect for the Constitution is now at the lowest level since 1865,” said Michael Coppedge, a Notre Dame political scientist and one of the project’s chief investigators. “Corruption in the executive branch is basically the worst since Harding.”

Warren G. Harding, whose administration was tainted by corruption and scandal, is routinely ranked among the nation’s worst chief executives.

Trump, for instance, has repeatedly floated the idea of staying in office longer than the constitutionally mandated two terms. The businesses he owns have profited from repeated presidential visits, and federal courts are currently weighing whether he has violated the Constitution’s prohibition against accepting payments from foreign governments. And several current and former members of his inner circle — including Stephen K. Bannon, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone — have been arrested or indicted since he took office.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, said that “experts rate U.S. democracy as getting worse on average,” but there are considerable differences in “how they characterize the severity of the decline we’ve experienced and what they expect in the future.”

Nyhan says he is most concerned about Trump’s repeated attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections. Trump recently said that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,” for instance, and habitually casts vote-by-mail efforts as inherently fraudulent. Both beliefs are false.

Trump says after 2nd term as president, he’ll ‘negotiate’
President Trump predicted Sept. 12 he would win reelection in November and claimed he is “entitled to another four” years in office after a second term. (The Washington Post)

(See video - Trump talking to supporters about getting more time as President)

Nyhan is co-director of Bright Line Watch, a group that routinely surveys hundreds of political scientists to issue periodic assessments of the health of democracy in the United States. Those assessments show a post-2016 decline in democratic performance similar to V-Dem’s data.

“Democracy depends on both sides accepting the results of free and fair elections and willingly turning over power to the other side if they lose,” Nyhan said. “We’ve never had a president attack our electoral system in this way.”

Lindberg refers to presidential attacks on the pillars of democracy as “dictator drift,” and says it’s a common feature of authoritarian leaders around the world.

“That’s Erdogan in Turkey,” he said. “That’s Lukashenko in Belarus. That’s Orban in Hungary. That’s a slew of African dictators.”
Dropbox - Screen Shot 2020-09-19 at 8.49.22 AM.png - Simplify your life

He’s concerned about the rise of a sort of “sultanistic” power structure in the GOP, where the party largely abandons its core principles to support whatever the leader wants. The telltale sign of that, he said, was the GOP’s decision to not create a 2020 platform. Instead, it issued a resolution saying, among other things, that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”

“They just line up behind Trump,” Lindberg says. “That should ring some serious alarm bells. You have a sort of head of a family clan, without a program other than ‘we support this person.’ ”

Coppedge is particularly concerned about the possibility of election-related violence. “What I most worry about is a scenario with the incumbent president declaring victory before all votes are counted, and his followers believing any additional mail-in ballots are invalid and taking to the streets.”

“I do think there is going to be some election violence,” he added, “and I hope it won’t be widespread or long-lasting."
White House press secretary refuses to say Trump will accept 2020 election result

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in a briefing on Aug. 19 refused to guarantee that President Trump will accept the 2020 election result. (The Washington Post)
(See video Kaleigh McEnany re: accepting the election results)

Lindberg is also deeply troubled by the president’s history of endorsing violence against his perceived political opponents. “This is the precursor of civil war,” he said. “Imagine that Trump loses by a margin that’s not convincing to all his supporters. He refuses to leave the office and encourages his supporters to ‘go out and defend the Constitution.’ ”

Nyhan says that while these “worst-case scenarios remain unlikely,” we are in “unprecedented times” and should “remain vigilant.”

Coppedge recommends people concerned about these outcomes get involved in the electoral process to help make things better. “Volunteer to become a poll worker, or help some get-out-the-vote effort, or work with a political party to encourage turnout to make sure your side wins by a clear margin,” he said.

“I think that the chances are in the medium term, the long run things are going to work out,” he said. "But I think it’s going to be a bumpy ride between now and January.”

Lindberg is less optimistic.

“If Trump wins this election in November, democracy is gone” in the United States, he says. He gives it about two years. “It’s really time to wake up before it’s too late.”

Can we put into Questionable Actions please (or lost cause dept) ? Thanks @anon95374541 @MissJava

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#608

Cross posting this Rather Questionable Fucking Behavior!

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#609

The Manhattan DA tells the courts that Vance has ‘grounds’ to investigate Trump and
his businesses for tax fraud. These are for a Grand Jury to go over…but will remain secret.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been locked in a yearlong legal battle with President Trump over obtaining his tax returns, suggested for the first time on Monday that it had grounds to investigate him and his businesses for tax fraud.

The assertion by the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., offered a rare detailed disclosure about the office’s investigation into the president and his business dealings, which began more than two years ago.

Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has never revealed the scope of his office’s criminal inquiry, citing grand jury secrecy. The investigation has been stalled by the fight over a subpoena that the office issued in August 2019 for eight years of the president’s tax returns.

…

However, prosecutors listed news reports and public testimony that alleged misconduct by Mr. Trump and his businesses. The reports, prosecutors wrote, would justify a grand jury inquiry into a range of possible crimes, including tax and insurance fraud and falsification of business records. It was the first time the office had included tax fraud among the possible areas of investigation.

“Even if the grand jury were testing the truth of public allegations alone, such reports, taken together, fully justify the scope of the grand jury subpoena at issue in this case,” prosecutors wrote.

…

The dispute ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which in July handed down a landmark decision ruling against Mr. Trump.

“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

But the justices said that Mr. Trump could return to the lower court and raise other objections to the subpoena’s scope and relevance. Mr. Trump’s lawyers went back to Judge Marrero, arguing that the document request was political and “so sweeping that it amounts to an unguided and unlawful fishing expedition.”

In August, Judge Marrero dismissed the president’s new arguments. The judge noted that Mr. Trump’s lengthy legal battle could end up allowing the statute of limitations to expire on any possible crimes, and effectively grant him the immunity to which the Supreme Court ruled he was not entitled.

“At its core, it amounts to absolute immunity through a back door,” Judge Marrero wrote. He added, “Justice requires an end to this controversy.”

Mr. Trump is now appealing that decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In recent court filings, his lawyers described Judge Marrero’s opinion as “flawed from start to finish,” and they accused him of “stacking the deck” against the president.

“The president is not trying to resurrect a categorical-immunity claim,” the lawyers wrote. “He is challenging this specific subpoena on distinct grounds.”

The appeals court scheduled oral arguments on the matter for Friday. However the court rules, either party could take the case back to the Supreme Court, making it unlikely the dispute will be decided before the presidential election on Nov. 3.

Even if Mr. Vance’s prosecutors ultimately obtain Mr. Trump’s tax records, grand jury secrecy rules make it unlikely the materials will become public anytime soon. They might only surface if Mr. Vance’s office brings charges and the tax returns are introduced as evidence in court.

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#610

Here’s a review of what QAnon is, and apparently no one is every sure of who Q is…done by ABC News

This is WTFery…and read on for clues for who and what QAnon is…does it shed light on this infuriating group…? Yes, probably. But it is dark stuff of course…and dangerous.

Who is Q?

The two Americans most clearly associated with the author of thousands of “Q drops” dating back to October 2017 are James Arthur Watkins, 56, who gained control in 2015 of the controversial anonymous message board 8chan, and his son, Ronald Watkins, former 8chan administrator and current administrator of its successor, the Watkins-owned 8kun.

Since 2001, Watkins has been living in the Philippines, according to Philippines immigration records obtained by ABC News.

“If he’s not ‘Q’ himself, he can find out who ‘Q’ is at any time,” said Fredrick Brennan, the creator of 8chan and Watkins’ former business partner.

"And he’s pretty much the only person in the world that can have private contact with ‘Q.’ He’s the only person that – through the board that ‘Q’ started on 8chan – can send ‘Q’ a direct message and get into private contact with basically the leader of this political cult that everybody wants to hear from right now."

Brennan created 8chan in 2013 when he was living in New York City, he said, after dreaming up the idea during a trip on psychedelic mushrooms.

He moved to Manila in 2014 to work with James and Ron Watkins and in 2015 he cut a deal that turned over ownership of the site to the elder Watkins. He continued to work on other Watkins projects until 2018 before splitting entirely and to date remains embroiled in a bitter personal dispute with the family.

Watkins and his son, Ron, who have previously denied being "Q," declined repeated ABC News interview requests and did not reply to a subsequent list of questions from ABC News submitted through his U.S. attorney and in letters delivered to his home and businesses in Manila.

A day after the letters were delivered in Manila and ABC News spoke briefly with Watkins’ brother-in-law, an ABC News reporter was blocked from accessing Watkins’ primary Twitter account.

…

Late last month, Brennan caused a stir among QAnon researchers when he posted an image of an IP address in a tweet that he said proved that Watkins’ 8kun was sharing the same IP address with QMap, one of the largest dissemination websites on the internet for “Q drops,” with 10 million visitors a month in recent months, according to the web analytics site SimilarWeb Ltd.

“Oh my God,” Brennan declared in an Aug. 23 tweet. “This is not a drill, people. Jim Watkins is the owner of QMap.pub.”

Brennan told ABC News that the image suggested for the first time that Watkins is profiting from both “Q”'s original posts on 8kun, as well as from QMap.

"These were previously thought to be two separate entities," Brennan said.

Earlier this month, the fact-checking website Logically identified QMap’s developer, or operator, as an IT expert living in New Jersey. The IT executive denied any association with Watkins to Daily Dot, a tech-centric website.

Until it went offline, QMap was hosted by the same content delivery network (CDN) service as 8kun. The CDN only hosts two other domains: Watkins’ domains and The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.

The host service company “was started right … at the end of October, 2019,” Brennan said. 8kun launched weeks later.

…

Researcher Mike Rains said he has long believed that Watkins is at least in direct contact with “Q” and said that Brennan’s tweet appears to be yet another indication of the degree to which the Watkins family controls the QAnon posts dispatched on 8kun.

“It doesn’t really matter who is writing the ‘Q drops,’” said Rains, a Massachusetts-based researcher who posts frequent critiques of QAnon conspiracies and hosts the podcast “Poker and Politics.” “Watkins is the publisher. He is the only source of information that is allowed to get out there.”

…

Brennan said that a loss for Trump in November could have significant ramifications for the QAnon movement.

"If Trump loses, I think that how a lot of people are going to view it is: the deep state has won. Trump has lost. Our god, essentially, has been crucified," he said. Because, "Trump is – for many of them – a god, and they are going to punish Democrats on the other side with political violence. That’s what I see happening."

Brennan said that QAnon followers believe a second term for Trump will trigger “The Storm,” followed by the “Great Awakening.”

“Even if 99% of them can come up with a new narrative and still think ‘Q’ is true, I think it’s very likely that much more than 1% are going to feel betrayed, duped and deceived by not only Watkins but everyone involved in Q[Anon].”

:slightly_frowning_face::anguished:

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#611

Here’s an authoritarian move…fill the outside agencies with WH staff who will act as Liasons back to the White House. And they must be loyalists to the President

Liaisons are the White House’s eyes and ears inside the agencies — and in the Trump administration they’re charged with enforcing loyalty to the president and his agenda

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told administration officials Monday to expect senior aides to be replaced at many government agencies, according to an internal email obtained by Axios.

Behind the scenes: Meadows asked the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office John McEntee “to look at replacing the White House Liaisons (WHLs) at many of your agencies,” according to the email. “John will be working with outgoing liaisons to explore other opportunities.”

  • “Please welcome incoming liaisons as they begin their new roles,” Meadows wrote. “I ask that you encourage your teams to equip the WHLs with everything they need to support your agency and the President’s agenda.”
  • “It is important that WHLs have direct access to principals and senior staff regarding all political hiring decisions.”

Why it matters: As Meadows reminded the recipients of his email, these liaisons are the senior-level staff responsible for managing political appointees within each agency.

The White House declined to comment.

Between the lines: Liaisons are the White House’s eyes and ears inside the agencies — and in the Trump administration they’re charged with enforcing loyalty to the president and his agenda.

  • McEntee, the president’s 30-year-old former body man who now runs hiring for the government, has become a controversial figure within the agencies.
  • Since taking over the role, McEntee has been systematically purging or reassigning agency officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.
  • As we have previously reported, McEntee, in a highly unusual campaign, has been making significant staffing changes inside top federal agencies “without the consent — and, in at least one case, without even the knowledge — of the agency head.”
  • This has not endeared him to some agency heads and career officials, but Trump expressed delight at McEntee’s efforts, according to sources familiar with the president’s private comments.

What we’re hearing: Some of McEntee’s moves have backfired — with media outlets printing articles about young, unqualified picks and others with a public history of incendiary or homophobic statements.

  • It’s noteworthy that this latest staffing direction comes from Meadows, not McEntee.
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#612

Here’s some conjecture that CIA head Gina Haspel is limiting the amount of Russian information coming to the WH, particularly from the ‘Russia House.’

The CIA has made it harder for intelligence about Russia to reach the White House, stoking fears among current and former officials that information is being suppressed to please a president known to erupt in anger whenever he is confronted with bad news about Moscow.

Nine current and former officials said in interviews that CIA Director Gina Haspel has become extremely cautious about which, if any, Russia-related intelligence products make their way to President Donald Trump’s desk. Haspel also has been keeping a close eye on the agency’s fabled “Russia House,” whose analysts she often disagrees with and sometimes accuses of purposefully misleading her

Last year, three of the people said, Haspel tasked the CIA’s general counsel, Courtney Elwood, with reviewing virtually every product that comes out of Russia House, which is home to analysts and targeters who are experts in Russia and the post-Soviet space, before it “goes downtown” to the White House. One former CIA lawyer called it “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this extent.”

Four of the people said the change has resulted in less intelligence on Russia making its way to the White House, but the exact reason for that — whether Elwood has been blocking it, or whether Russia officers have become disillusioned and are producing less, or even self-censoring for fear of being reprimanded — is less clear.

Can you please move this to Questionable Behavior of R’s? - thanks @MissJava and @anon95374541

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Day 1342
#613

The lengths to which the WH wanted to squash Bolton’s book, even if it had been vetted before publication and a lawsuit follows challenging those moves. A he said/she said, but in this case Bolton did publish the book despite the WH wanting to stop it.

Representatives for the National Security Council and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Bolton, Charles J. Cooper, declined to comment on the specifics of the letter but said his client had not asked Ms. Knight to disclose her account of events and that he had received a copy of the letter unexpectedly on Tuesday evening.

The filing was an extraordinary twist in the legal saga surrounding Mr. Bolton’s book. The Trump administration unsuccessfully sought to block distribution of the book earlier this year after it was already printed, claiming despite Ms. Knight’s assessment that it contained large amounts of classified information. It is moving to seize his $2 million advance and has opened a criminal investigation, threatening criminal charges for unauthorized disclosures of secrets.

But the letter called into question the premise of all of those efforts — that the book, in its published form, contains any classified information.

Ms. Knight’s account is also the latest in a series of disclosures by current and former executive branch officials as the election nears accusing the president and his political appointees of putting his personal and political goals ahead of the public interest and an evenhanded application of the rule of law.

Mr. Wainstein recounted a series of irregularities that he said were unlike any other prepublication review Ms. Knight had handled in her two years working at the National Security Council.

Ms. Knight, after extensive work with Mr. Bolton to change aspects of his draft to eliminate classified information, had told his team informally that it no longer had any unpublishable material. But the White House never sent a formal letter saying the process was over and political appointees in the White House directed Ms. Knight not to communicate with them in writing about the book.

In June, as the delay dragged on, Mr. Bolton and Simon & Schuster published the book, arguing that Ms. Knight’s informal assurance fulfilled the legal commitment he had undertaken, as a condition of receiving his security clearance, to submit future writings about his job to prepublication review.

But the White House had earlier proceeded to have a politically appointed lawyer — Michael Ellis, a former aide to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and a close Trump ally — conduct his own review of the book.

Mr. Ellis had no training in prepublication reviews at the time — he underwent it after he completed his review — and pronounced the book replete with still-classified information, a position the Justice Department then made in court seeking to block Mr. Bolton from distributing the book.

…

On June 13, the letter said, politically appointed White House officials — led by Patrick Philbin, the deputy White House counsel — called her in for a Saturday meeting and challenged her on why she had signed off on large amounts of material that Mr. Ellis claimed was classified. By her account, she was able to explain why he was wrong about everything, frustrating them.

“It was clear to Ms. Knight that they were trying to get her to admit that she and her team had missed something or made a mistake, which mistake could then be used to support their argument to block publication,” it said. “To their consternation, Ms. Knight was able to explain the clear and objective reasoning behind her team’s decision-making as to each of the challenged passages.”

Over the next five days, the letter continued, a series of White House and Justice Department political appointees pressured her during 18 hours of meetings to sign an affidavit they could submit to a court for the litigation against Mr. Bolton that purported to describe her role in the process but was worded in a way that would support their narrative that her review was subpar and had left classified information in the book. She refused.

Can we move to Questionable behavior please? Thanks @anon95374541 and @MissJava

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Day 1342
#614

Judge orders Eric Trump to testify before election in New York attorney general probe of President Trump’s company

Eric Trump must be questioned under oath by New York State Attorney General Letitia James within two weeks: judge

Judge Orders Eric Trump to Testify in N.Y. Fraud Inquiry

The president’s son had said he would not give a sworn deposition to the New York attorney general until after the election, but a state judge said he must cooperate sooner.

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#615

Oh, hey, twitter links are working again!

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#616

Garbage in…garbage out.

Allen Souza: Trump names intelligence community IG nominee - CNNPolitics

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#617

In Politically Charged Inquiry, Durham Sought Details About Scrutiny of Clintons

John Durham’s team has sought information about the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton Foundation investigation, raising questions about the scope of the prosecutor’s review.

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#618

:boom:

Here’s a switch…and a good one. No early ending of the Census which has been deemed a very politicized move.

A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Friday from ending the 2020 census a month early, the latest twist in years of political and legal warfare over perhaps the most contested population count in a century.

In U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Lucy H. Koh issued a preliminary injunction preventing the administration from winding down the count by Sept. 30, a month before the scheduled completion date of Oct. 31. She also barred officials from delivering completed population data to the White House on Dec. 31 rather than the April 2021 delivery date that had previously been set out.

The judge had temporarily stayed the early completion of the census count on Sept. 5 pending a hearing held on Tuesday.

The ruling came after evidence filed this week showed that top Census Bureau officials believed ending the head count early would seriously endanger its accuracy.

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#619

Here comes the republican Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows lying about whether there is voter fraud. A call to take the tweet down.

video

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#620

#FileUnderRetribution and #OhtheIronyFreeSpeecher not given award, already designated.

The Trump administration rescinded an award recognizing the work of a journalist from Finland last year after discovering she had criticized President Trump in social media posts, then gave a false explanation for withdrawing the honor, according to a report by the State Department’s internal watchdog.

The report tracks how the discovery of the journalist’s remarks worried senior U.S. officials and prompted a decision to withdraw the honor to avoid a possible public relations debacle.

The report’s release is likely to worsen tensions between the department’s leadership and the inspector general’s office, which has undergone several shake-ups following the firing of Inspector General Steve Linick in the spring at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“The Inspector General’s report is another somber example of how fear and partisanship have permeated our nation’s foreign policy and diplomacy under the Trump administration,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who along with seven other senators requested the investigation.

According to the report, the journalist, Jessikka Aro, was selected for the State Department’s International Women of Courage Awards for her reporting on Russian propaganda activities dating back to 2014. Aro endured death threats and cyber attacks for her work, which helped expose Russian troll factories.

After she was informed of her selection and offered flight options, State Department interns discovered her Facebook and Twitter posts, including one from September 2018 in which she noted that “Trump constantly labels journalists as ‘enemy’ and ‘fake news,’ ” said the report. In another tweet, she noted that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet in Helsinki where “Finnish people can protest them both. Sweet.”

After the State Department withdrew Aro’s invitation and the story became public in a report by Foreign Policy, the department’s press office told reporters that Aro had been “incorrectly notified” that “she’d been selected as a finalist. This was an error. This was a mistake.”

The department also told Congress that Aro “ultimately was not selected to receive the award, due to the highly competitive selection of candidates.”

But the IG ultimately found that the decision to give her the award was not a mistake and was included in a memo approved by Pompeo.

According to meeting notes obtained by the inspector general, senior U.S. officials argued that Aro’s invitation should be withdrawn, including the acting director of the Office of Global Women’s Issues. The director’s concerns included the possibility that the “media could highlight the tweets and Facebook posts during the ceremony,” which could cause “potential embarrassment to the Department, particularly given the involvement of the Secretary and the First Lady [Melania Trump].”

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#621


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#622

Letter to Judge Sullivan indicating that additional notes were added to ex-FBI Strzok’s chronology for Michael Flynn. Why? Just a way to move Flynn out of jail from DOJ.

Can we put this in Questionable Behavior please? @anon95374541 @MissJava Thanks!

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Day 1348
#623

The disgusting way the Trump campaign is using Brad Parscale’s mental health as a political weapon

The Trump Campaign Is Quietly Disappearing Brad Parscale From Their Website

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale was detained by police last week after his wife reported that he was planning to harm himself.

Police use of force on ex-Trump campaign manager familiar during crisis calls, experts say

‘Brad Parscale hits her’: Former Trump campaign manager accused of domestic violence

Hospitalized Brad Parscale ‘is under investigation for stealing up to $40million from Trump’s campaign and $10million from the RNC’, as he spirals out of control over White House ‘gravy train’ ending and mounting debt

  • Brad Parscale is under investigation for ‘stealing’ between $25-$40 million from Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, well-placed sources told DailyMail.com
  • The 44-year-old is also being investigated for ‘pocketing’ another $10 million from the Republican National Committee, the insiders added
  • He was involuntarily committed to a hospital by Fort Lauderdale police on Sunday afternoon following a concerning episode at his $2.4M Florida home
  • DailyMail.com revealed on Monday his wife Candice was fleeing the home in just her bikini, telling a passerby: 'I think my husband just killed himself’
  • She told police Parscale had been 'stressed out for the past two weeks and has made suicidal comments throughout the week to shoot himself’
  • A Trump insider explained to DailyMail.com Parscale went into a tailspin after he was demoted in July and replaced by his former number two, Bill Stepien
  • Trump later ordered an audit of the spending of the RNC
  • Campaign records show Parscale was making $15,000 a month as Trump’s electioneering guru
  • DailyMail.com previously reported he owns $300k in cars and $5M in condos

Brad Parscale facing investigation for ‘stealing’ $40 million from Trump campaign: report

Brad Parscale faces investigation for ‘stealing’ $40 million from Trump campaign: report

All roads on this investigation story lead back to the Daily Mail so far, so I am watching to see if this proves true and more comes out.

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#624

:boom:

Per the request of Judge Reggie Walton, the redacted portions of the Mueller report DO need to be unredacted. He read through the report and it needs to come out. A FOIA request also had some additional pressure about this too! They will be out before Nov 2nd…

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish information redacted from the Mueller report that had been designated as privileged.

District Judge Reggie Walton said the Trump administration had failed to justify certain redactions from the report on the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The specific redactions he took issue with cover the decisionmaking process within former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team over whether to charge certain people with crimes during the probe.

“Based on the Court’s review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report, the Court concludes that the Department has failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that the withheld material is protected by the deliberative process privilege,” Walton, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote in his 40-page opinion.

The decision comes as a result of a pair of lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) brought by a journalist with BuzzFeed News and the Electronic Privacy Information Center that sought to have the full, unredacted report released to the public.

Walton on Wednesday ruled that the DOJ could continue to withhold material it had redacted under FOIA exemptions allowing agencies to conceal information that would compromise law enforcement investigations or compromise the privacy of witnesses.

Matt Topic, who was lead attorney for plaintiffs, told The Hill: "After a very thorough review, the Court found that the Justice Department violated federal law with regard to a number of the redactions to the Mueller Report. We look forward to the release of this additional information by November 2."

A spokeswoman for the DOJ did not immediately respond when asked for comment.

In March, Walton ordered the DOJ to give him access to an unredacted copy of the report so that he could review their withholdings. He excoriated the department and Attorney General William Barr at the time for misrepresenting the report’s conclusions before it was actually released.

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