From The Nation: 5 Ways to Debunk the GOP’s Defense of Donald Trump…
“…attempted crime is still crime, and Trump’s ineffectiveness is no defense for his actions. But here, it’s important to understand that the law makes no distinction between “attempted” bribery and bribery. The mere solicitation of the bribe is the crime itself, regardless of whether the bribe is paid. The law contemplates a public official who “directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value.”
[Editor: This is an UPDATED listing including brief references to recent findings of Trump’s corrupt treatment in regards to Ukraine. For some of us, this will serve as a good SUMMARY of the miserable daily onslaught of the last 3 years’ news reporting. For ALL OF US, this is yet another alarm bell and maybe time to contact our elected representatives! More on current IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS… – R.S.]
The trail of evidence starts with Trump’s attempt to get James Comey, the FBI director responsible for overseeing the investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 election, to drop an investigation into National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
When Comey refused, Trump fired him.
Trump made two more attempts at stopping the investigation by trying (unsuccessfully) to fire Robert Mueller, Comey’s predecessor. Then, Trump ordered White House Counsel Don McGahn to create a false record indicating that no attempts took place – McGahn refused.
In all, Robert Mueller’s investigation revealed multiple instances where there was “very substantial” evidence that Trump had committed obstruction of justice.
The Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause prohibits the president from accepting personal benefits from any foreign government or official.
Trump has retained his ownership interests in his family business while he is in office.
Thus, every time a foreign official stays at a Trump hotel, or a foreign government approves a new Trump Organization project, or grants a trademark, Trump is in violation of the Constitution.
Trump has repeatedly pushed his properties as avenues to secure his favor, and multiple foreign officials have stayed at his properties while lobbying his administration.
In the middle of the 2016 election, Trump’s son was invited to meet with a Russian national regarding “information that would incriminate Hillary and…would be very useful to” Donald Trump. Donald Trump Jr. was told it was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort took the meeting.
Federal law prohibits campaigns from soliciting or accepting anything of value from a foreign national.
This relationship between the Trump team and multiple Russian nationals raises questions of whether the campaign aided a hostile foreign power’s active operation against the United States.
When Trump gave cover to the neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville and murdered a protester, he violated his obligation to protect the citizenry against domestic violence.
When Trump encouraged police officers to rough up people they have under arrest, he violated his obligation to oversee faithful execution of the laws.
When faced with impeachment in the House, Trump has alluded to his supporters engaging in insurrection to keep him in power – a rallying cry readily picked up by his supporters.
President Trump threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine if its Prime Minister did not investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Using taxpayer dollars to manipulate an important ally against Russia and attack a political rival is a clear abuse of presidential power.
Furthermore, this administration tried to conceal the whistleblower complaint that brought this corruption to light and label the civil servant who filed it as partisan.
In addition, Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio, who was convicted for contempt of court after ignoring a court order that he stop detaining and searching people based on the color of their skin, amounted to an abuse of the pardon power that revealed his indifference to individual rights, equal protections, and the separation of powers.
Pardoning this conviction goes against the Fifth Amendment, which allows the judiciary to issue and enforce injunctions against government officials who flout individual rights.
High-ranking administration officials involved in foreign affairs have signaled that Trump does not have the capacity to make informed decisions in the event of a military crisis.
Even worse, his actions could spark a needless confrontation stemming from misunderstanding or miscalculation.
We see this in full effect every time Trump tweets or makes a public statement taunting and threatening the North Korean regime.
The president may be the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” but that does not give him the right to behave in reckless or wanton ways that put millions of lives at risk.
If he is unfit to perform his duties as Commander in Chief, he cannot be allowed to remain in the position.
President Trump has repeatedly pressured the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate and prosecute political adversaries like Hillary Clinton; now, the DOJ has reopened the Clinton email investigation in an attempt to scandalize his opponents.
This is not based in concerns with national security, law enforcement, or any other function of his office—it is an attempted power play, plain and simple.
Trump also pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the general election, by leveraging US military aide to help his reelection prospects.
There’s no question that these actions constitute an outrageous and inappropriate abuse of executive branch powers and serve as clear grounds for impeachment.
Enforcing its new “zero tolerance” policy, the Trump administration separated as many as 3,000 immigrant children from their parents at the southern border. This policy was meant to deter families from attempting to cross the border.
The children and their families have been held in internment camps and cages with what lawyers call “inhumane conditions.”
Donald Trump knew disclosure of his extramarital affairs with Stephanie Clifford (A.K.A. Stormy Daniels) and Karen McDougal could hurt his chances at winning the 2016 election.
At the direction of Trump, Michael Cohen and American Media, Inc. (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer bought the rights to the women’s stories and forced them to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements to prevent them from going public for the purpose of protecting his campaign.
Federal prosecutors, and Trump’s co-conspirators Cohen and AMI, all say that Cohen made the payments at Trump’s direction, “in concert with the campaign,” and with the intention of helping Trump win.
The New York Times, by Nicholas Fandos, Eileen Sullivan, Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg, Sep 19, 2019
Watchdog Refuses to Detail Whistle-Blower Complaint About Trump
The complaint, being discussed in a closed meeting with House lawmakers, addresses a commitment that President Trump was said to have made to a world leader.
Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said none of the previous directors of national intelligence had ever refused to provide a whistle-blower complaint to Congress. Credit Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The internal watchdog for American spy agencies declined repeatedly in a briefing on Thursday to disclose to lawmakers the content of a potentially explosive whistle-blower complaint that is said to involve a discussion between President Trump and a foreign leader, members of Congress said.
During a private session on Capitol Hill, Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, told lawmakers he was unable to confirm or deny anything about the substance of the complaint, including whether it involved the president, according to committee members.
The complaint, which prompted a standoff between Congress and Mr. Trump’s top intelligence official, involves a commitment that Mr. Trump made in a communication with another world leader, according to a person familiar with the complaint. The Washington Post first reported the nature of the discussion. The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to give the complaint to Congress, as is generally required by law, the latest in a series of fights over information between the Democratic-led House and the White House.
Few details of the whistle-blower complaint are known, including the identity of the world leader. And it is not obvious how a communication between Mr. Trump and a foreign leader could meet the legal standards for a whistle-blower complaint that the inspector general would deem an “urgent concern.”
Under the law, the complaint has to concern the existence of an intelligence activity that violates the law, rules or regulations, or otherwise amounts to mismanagement, waste, abuse, or a danger to public safety. But a conversation between two foreign leaders is not itself an intelligence activity.
And while Mr. Trump may have discussed intelligence activities with the foreign leader, he enjoys broad power as president to declassify intelligence secrets, order the intelligence community to act and otherwise direct the conduct of foreign policy as he sees fit, legal experts said.
Mr. Trump regularly speaks with foreign leaders and often takes a freewheeling approach. Some current and former officials said that what an intelligence official took to be a troubling commitment could have been an innocuous comment. But there has long been concern among some in the intelligence agencies that the information they share with the president is being politicized.
Andrew P. Bakaj, a former C.I.A. and Pentagon official whose legal practice specializes in whistle-blower and security clearance issues, confirmed that he is representing the official who filed the complaint. Mr. Bakaj declined to identify his client or to comment.
Mr. Trump denied wrongdoing on Thursday, explaining that he would not “say something inappropriate” on calls where aides and intelligence officials from both sides routinely listen in.
But whatever Mr. Trump said was startling enough to prompt the intelligence official to file a formal whistle-blower complaint on Aug. 12 to the inspector general for the intelligence agencies. Such a complaint is lodged through a formal process intended to protect the whistle-blower from retaliation.
Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been locked in the standoff with Mr. Maguire over the complaint for nearly a week. He said Mr. Maguire told him that he had been instructed not to give the complaint to Congress, and that the complaint addressed privileged information — meaning the president or people close to him were involved.
Mr. Schiff told reporters after the briefing that he still did not know the contents of the complaint and had been unable to get an answer to whether the White House had been involved in suppressing it.
“I don’t think this is a problem of the law,” he said. “I think the law is written very clearly. I think the law is just fine. The problem lies elsewhere. And we’re determined to do everything we can to determine what this urgent concern is, to make sure that the national security is protected and to make sure that this whistle-blower is protected.”
Mr. Schiff said he would explore potential recourse with the House’s general counsel to try to force the release of the complaint, including potentially suing for it in court.
Mr. Schiff has said that none of the previous directors of national intelligence, a position created in 2004, had ever refused to provide a whistle-blower complaint to Congress. The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena last week to compel Mr. Maguire to appear before the panel. He briefly refused but relented on Wednesday, and is now scheduled to appear before the committee in an open hearing next week.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, said on Thursday that he and the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, also expected both the inspector general and acting director to brief them early next week and “clear this issue up.”
Mr. Maguire and Mr. Atkinson are at odds over how the complaint should be handled. Mr. Atkinson has indicated the matter should be investigated, and alerted the House and Senate Intelligence committees, while Mr. Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, says the complaint does not fall within the agencies’ purview because it does not involve a member of the intelligence community — a network of 17 agencies that does not include the White House.
[Read a pairof letters from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the complaint.]
The inspector general of the intelligence community “determined that this complaint is both credible and urgent, and that it should be transmitted to Congress under the clear letter of the law,” Mr. Schiff, Democrat of California, said in a statement on Wednesday evening.
Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said the law is “very clear” that the whistle-blower complaint must be handed over to Congress.
“The Inspector General determines what level of concern it is,” said Mr. King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Once the determination is made,” he added, the director of national intelligence “has a ministerial responsibility to share that with Congress. It is not discretionary.”
“This is based upon the principle of separation of powers and Congress’s oversight responsibility,” Mr. King said.
Mr. Maguire was named the acting director in August, after the president had announced that the previous director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, would be stepping down. Mr. Trump had planned to nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, a Trump loyalist without an extensive background in intelligence. But the president dropped the plan after lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about Mr. Ratcliffe’s qualifications and possible exaggerations on his resume.
The reports about the whistle-blower complaint touched off speculation about what Mr. Trump said and to whom.
And current and former intelligence officials have expressed surprise that during his first few months as president, Mr. Trump shared classified information provided by an ally, Israel, with the Russian foreign minister.
Such disclosures are not illegal, but Mr. Trump flouted intelligence-sharing decorum by sharing an ally’s intelligence without express permission.
Mr. King expressed some doubt about how serious the underlying complaint might be.
“I am a little concerned it is being overblown,” Mr. King said. “On the other hand, it may be significant. But we won’t know that for a few days.”
Charlie Savage contributed reporting. Matthew Rosenberg, a Washington-based correspondent, was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump and Russia. He previously spent 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Nicholas Fandos is a reporter in the Washington bureau covering Congress. Eileen Sullivan is the morning breaking news correspondent in Washington. She previously worked for The Associated Press for a decade, covering national security and criminal justice. Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for the Wall Street Journal.
The Washington Post, by Richard Cohen, May 1, 2017
Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1894 at age 35. (Associated Press)
The greatest achievement of Donald Trump’s first 100 days as president was that there was a 101st. If things continue this way, he will finish out his term and then the nation, like someone after a boozy night, can right itself and get on with its business. We will restore the environment, repair alliances, recognize science, welcome immigrants, cherish honesty, value knowledge and return dignity to a White House where Jefferson may have dined alone but where Trump was joined by Sarah Palin. More than a fresh coat of paint is needed.
The passing of the first 100 days was simultaneously cause for mockery and relief — and both for the same reason: President Trump accomplished next to nothing. The courts held firm, so did much of the bureaucracy, and the press not only remains free, it has a new bounce to its step. Most of all, Trump seemed dazed by reality. All sorts of policies were pirouetted — China, Iran, Russia, Syria and Israel, among others — and Trump, like the junkie he is, scorned the news media while craving it dearly. He held it up like a mirror: Am I great? Am I pretty? Am I popular?
And so the alarms have been muted. The Great Fascist Threat has receded, and it is considered both gauche and ahistorical to compare Trump to dictators of the past — you know their names. I quibble with that, because we can always learn from even extreme examples, but the Trump prototype that now seems most relevant is yet another German: Kaiser Wilhelm II. During his reign, World War I began.
That war, more than the greater one that followed, continues to intrigue historians because its cause is so hard to isolate. By Armistice Day, four empires were no more, about 17 million people were dead and the stage was set for a further calamity. But what started it? There are many explanations, but one factor, certainly, was the idiotic bellicosity of the German kaiser.
VIDEO: The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have been chaotic and unpredictable. Reporters who covered it recount the events that dominated the news. (Alice Li, Jayne Orenstein, Julio Negron/The Washington Post)
Anyone who turns to Christopher Clark’s book about the run-up to World War I, “The Sleepwalkers,” will recognize a Trump-like figure. The kaiser was a tweeter before his time, firing off letters, telegrams and orders without pausing to wonder about contradictions or policy or even common sense. (He demanded plans for invasions of Cuba, Puerto Rico and New York.)
“There can be no doubt about the bizarre tone and content of many of the kaiser’s personal communications in telegrams, letters, marginal comments, conversations, interviews and speeches on foreign and domestic themes,” Clark writes. “The kaiser spoke, wrote, telegraphed, scribbled and ranted more or less continuously.”
Clark then wonders whether “such utterances connected with the world of actual outcomes.” His answer is both frightening and reassuring. In the end, the kaiser was king but not dictator. He was considered a fool and widely ignored within his own government. Other governments had a harder time figuring him out. He often contradicted himself. He often seemed not to understand what he was saying, and he felt that he had no need to. “I am the foreign office,” he proclaimed. “I am the sole master of German policy.”
My nifty likening of Trump to Wilhelm suffers from one compelling problem: The American president is much more powerful than the German kaiser ever was. Trump’s response to Syria’s use of the sarin nerve agent — swift but bracketed by contradictory policy statements — would not have been possible for Wilhelm. His ministers would have mulled it over, possibly blocked it — said “yes, sir,” clicked their heels — and then done nothing. (President Richard Nixon’s aides took the same approach to many of his harebrained schemes.) The kaiser benefited from a lazier technology. Mobilization took time, and a tomahawk was a hatchet, not a missile.
More disturbing than the similarities between Wilhelm of Prussia and Trump of Queens are their differences. The kaiser was the product of an archaic monarchical system — the bad luck of the draw. Trump, however, was elected in a democratic process, and yet the result has been distressingly similar. All Trump lacks is a pickelhaube, the familiar spiked helmet.
Whatever the cause of World War I, it is clear that the Europe of 1914 needed stability. The arrangements of the 19th century were crumbling, Germany and Britain were warily eying each other, and the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were coming apart. The kaiser, with his chaotic mind, was only making things worse. The world needed consistency, clarity, wisdom — instead, it got the juvenilia of a deluded leader. Not much has changed.
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