grantcart
grantcart's JournalHe is lighting the Reichstag on fire (Syria, Afghanistan, Gov shut down, Mattis)
Roger Stone and Donald Jr are about to be indicted for lying to Congress.
Other top tier indictments are on their way.
In order to distract from the inevitable collapse from the Mueller investigation and the next round of indictments Trump is going to blow up everything he can to try and force everything off the front page.
The official transcripts for Stone's House testimony is going to the Mueller today and could be at the Grand Jury by tomorrow.
Trump is lighting the Reichstag on fire but what he doesn't realize is that he is locked in the building with no escape.
His reckless actions will destroy his remaining support among Senate Republicans.
Let's make a list and check it twice of all of the ignored/forgotten scandals
One of the most infuriating things about the scandal ridden Trump era is that the media is only able to focus on a couple of the scandals at a time. While the Russian Collusion scandal is one of the biggest the campaign payment convictions are like parking tickets compared to other known scandals that would have brought down any Democratic President in a week.
I suggest that we put together a comprehensive list and start emailing our Congress people daily to keep them focused on all of the major scandals.
Here are two that should be investigated and if true should result in criminal charges and convictions:
1) Trump intervenes to cancel FBI headquarters redevelopment plan that would have created a new retail development center with a hotel that would be a competitor to his DC property. The GSA administrator testified to congress that she never had any direct conversations with Trump about it and that it was driven by the FBI. Emails proved that she was lying and that not only did Trump personally order the project stopped but sent thousands of FBI headquarter jobs to Republican states; Idaho, Alabama and West Virginia. Intervening in a government development scheme to profit personally would be automatic impeachment for any other administration.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/30/trump-intervenes-fbi-headquarters-project/?utm_term=.fa9c1a20a1b9
President Trump has become personally involved in plotting a new FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, an interest that for now has left the project in limbo and the agency stranded in a building that no longer suits its needs, according to officials and people familiar with the administration’s deliberations.
For years, FBI officials have raised alarms that decrepit conditions at its current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, constitute serious security concerns. A year ago, federal officials had finally decided on three finalist locations in Maryland and Virginia, and Congress appropriated $913 million toward a project expected to cost more than $3 billion.
Six months after Trump entered the White House, his administration abandoned the plan, and it proposed in February that the government build a smaller headquarters to replace the Hoover building in downtown D.C. and move 2,300 other FBI staffers out of the Washington area altogether, to Alabama, Idaho and West Virginia. At the time, the decision baffled real estate experts and some members of Congress.
2) Wilbur Ross lies about assets in a blind trust and goes into business with Putin's daughter. Information from the Paradise Papers (remember those? what happened to all the reporting on the world elites hiding their assets?) purported to show that Wilbur Ross lied to Congress about his willingness to put his assets into a blind trust and alleges that he is in business with the Putin family.
As Commerce Secretary Ross is directly responsible for enforcing sanctions against Russia
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/trump-commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross-business-links-putin-family-paradise-papers
Ross, a billionaire and close friend of Trump, retained holdings in Navigator after taking office this year. The relationship means he stands to benefit from the operations of a Russian company run by Putin’s family and close allies, some of whom are under US sanctions.
Corporate records show Navigator ramped up its relationship with Sibur from 2014, as the US and EU imposed sanctions on Russians. The measures followed Putin’s aggression in eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Navigator has collected $68m in revenue from its Sibur partnership since 2014.
Ross, 79, has apparently faced little official scrutiny over the arrangement. He told a US ethics watchdog that he was keeping a pair of obscurely named holding companies, but did not specify whether he would also retain their interests in Navigator and its lucrative contract in Russia.
The Ross interests appear in the Paradise Papers, a trove of millions of leaked offshore files reviewed by the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other partners. They join established links between Ross and Russian finance that have raised questions over his selection by Trump to head the US Department of Commerce.
The media bounces off all of these scandals and then flies off to the next outrage.
No one person can remember all of them
Lets put together a comprehensive list of those serious charges that are not rumour but have substantial proof already in public so that we can have a list and use it to pester our Congress people to do their oversight job.
Please add with links.
Donald Trump is on the verge of committing the ultimate political sin
The ultimate political sin in America, especially if you are running on the celebrity platform, is to become boring. A greater, more literate and more moral nation would have a greater incapacity to tolerate public immorality but this is America and the ultimate turnoff is not revulsion of character but an inability to be interesting. You can capture some with crass snake oil braggadocio but it eventually wears thin.
Trump's doubling down and then doubling down 4 more times is becoming tedious.
In one meeting he has gone from
-wall is already constructed
-wall is working great
-we need more wall
-Democrats won't let me build any war
-I will be like Sampson and if you don't let me have my wall and let me have all of the credit I will pull everything down.
And then the next day;
Mexico already paid for the wall.
On top of this mind numbing tedious mendacity, a grandiose structure that has so exhausted the ability to measure untruthfulness that the Washington Post has had to invent a new metric to measure it: "the bottomless Pinocchio.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/10/meet-bottomless-pinocchio-new-rating-false-claim-repeated-over-over-again/?utm_term=.5fc2a86e357f
It was President Trump’s signature campaign promise: He would build a wall along the nation’s southern border, and Mexico would pay for it.
Shortly after becoming president, Trump dropped the Mexico part, turning to Congress for the funds instead. When that, too, failed — Congress earlier this year appropriated money for border security that could not be spent on an actual wall — Trump nevertheless declared victory: “We’ve started building our wall,” he said in a speech on March 29. “I’m so proud of it.”
Despite the facts, which have been cited numerous times by fact-checkers, Trump repeated his false assertion on an imaginary wall 86 times in the seven months before the midterm elections, according to a database of false and misleading claims maintained by The Post.
He thought that once on the main stage he would be able to spin more and more fanciful promises but he just didn't understand complex issues "We are going to Mars", and he couldn't sell it so he kept coming back to the wall 86 times and it is wearing thin.
On top of this edifice of non reality he has added a level of hubristic meanness. Breaking up Muslim families with a Muslim ban, crushing the hopes of America's greatest class of over achievers - the Dreamers, turning law abiding folks from ravaged countries from Temporary Protection Status holders to illegals and now reaching back four decades to return Vietnamese refugees back to a country they will not recognize.
It seems that having been unable to strike up the imagination of people with his lies he is trying to grab interest with a level of meanness that Americans haven't seen for almost 75 years.
Splitting children from their families at the border and now a beautiful 9 year old who arrived yesterday with her father to beg for asylum at the New Mexico border died 8 hours after she got here from dehydration.
It is no longer interesting, provocative, or amusing (and never was for most of us) but is just tedious and mean.
Senator McCarthy had ignited a storm of fear and distrust and ran with it for several years until this moment in the US Senate:
As you watch Welch confront McCarthy with simple humanity the camera spans over to take in Roy Cohn. Cohn knows that there is no merit to McCarthy's attack on the young Fred Fisher (who would later become President of the Mass Bar Association) and tries to shake his head to stop McCarthy. Welch's simple question, "have you no sense of decency" answered itself with a resounding "no" and when Welch refuses to play their game the onlookers respond with thunderous applause and McCarthy was seen as the Senator with no clothes and his days were numbered.
Its interesting how circular these things are. Cohn would go to New York and work for the corrupt elite representing Trump and Murdoch. Trump idolized Cohn and wanted Michael Cohen to fill that role as fixer and fighter. Cohn was a closeted gay and came down with aids in the early 80s and would become an early victim of the terrible disease.
Roger Stone said this of Cohn
Jeffrey Toobin quotes Roger Stone: "Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men. Gays were weak, effeminate. He always seemed to have these young blond boys around. It just wasn't discussed. He was interested in power and access."[45] Stone worked with Cohn beginning with the Reagan campaign during the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries.
McCarthy would die less than 3 years from the clip above in disgrace. Cohen is a felon and Stone is about to be indicted. Trump is surrounded and cannot escape the trap he set for himself. He built a criminal empire and ran for President because he wanted to be adored and couldn't stand the fact that a black man had publicly ridiculed him.
And that leaves Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch understands a good show and was never tied to any particular group. He made a big personal contribution in Senator Clinton's Presidential campaign in 2008. Trump has been very good for the Murdoch business but once the Murdoch family determines that Trump has become boring and that they can sell more tickets to watch the burning of Trump and all of the family dramas they will turn the switch.
In fact every day one more sliver of FOX turns on the Donald. Shep has been hitting him for a long time. Napolitano has basically said he thinks he is guilty.
And now Fox and Friends challenged Secretary of State Pompeo for being weak on the Saudi Prince for committing murder.
Once Murdoch pulls the pin and there is a shift on Fox Trump's approval numbers will start to sink and once they hit the low 30s you will see all kinds of Republican Congressmen and Senators start to get misty eyed and start talking about the "rule of law" and "no one is above the law".
The real law that they are concerned about is the law of public revulsion. America has low tolerance for boring repetition of lies but it will absolutely reject it when it is covered with abject meanness.
McSally appears to be out for Senate appointment
I, for one, never thought that she would be appointed for the simple fact that Ducey would like to get a placeholder so that he can run in 2 years. He is termed out for Governor and if he ran for Senate in 2020 he could do so while still holding his the Governor's office.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/for-arizona-governor-mcsallys-star-dims-as-possible-choice-for-senate-seat/2018/12/13/866f6cc0-ff0c-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.844783579161
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) “has lost enthusiasm for appointing fellow Republican Rep. Martha McSally to the Senate in recent weeks even as Republican leaders in Washington have championed her,” the Washington Post reports.
“Ducey has made no firm decision and McSally, who narrowly lost this year’s Senate race, remains a finalist to fill the seat that John McCain held for decades, should it soon open up as expected. But her stock has fallen in the eyes of the governor, according to two people familiar with his thinking, as Ducey approaches one of the most significant decisions of his political career.”
. . .
Democrats see an opportunity to expand their gains in Arizona in the coming years. Following the special election for McCain’s seat in 2020, there will be another election for the seat in 2022.
There are at least several potential Democratic candidates, including Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; Rep. Ruben Gallego; and Grant Woods, a former chief of staff to McCain who served as state attorney general.
Mark Kelly would win in a landslide in AZ. He may be the only one that can defeat Ducey.
Dr. Maddow's Bagman podcast is unique and brilliant. (plus a couple of notes)
If you haven't listened to the Bagman podcast please do. It is of unusual quality in that it incorporates an unusual amount of original research.
For the younger folks Agnew was Trump before Trump except he was literate. He was picked by Nixon after only 2 years as Governor of Maryland.
In the middle of the closing days of Watergate the country was astonished to hear that Agnew was also being investigated for bribery, extortion and other crimes. A few days after the rumors surface Agnew resigns and is convicted. Ford becomes Vice President.
The Bagman has gone back an unearthed original documents and incorporated an unusual group to join in discussing the events. Not only are the prosecutors (one in his 20s at the time) included but Agnew's defense attorney gives candid remarks. The latter was able to be included because client/attorney privilege was pierced.
You know that you are listening to some outstanding research when the primary actors remark "we never knew that". None of the people who were involved have met each other in the 45 years. It is a heroic story of how young dedicated prosecutors saved the country from a second impeachment trauma by pursuing the case against Agnew.
I had 3 odd intersections with Agnew (none personal)
1) In 1968 a Gonzaga U student was the first to stand up to Agnew and yelled "Warmonger" at Agnew. I was there among 30 protestors and watched in astonishment as the police dragged him away. As a 14 year old it was the first time I attended a political protest.
You can read about Carl Maxey (Spokane's lone civil rights attorney and father of a classmate here)' He successfully overturned the conviction.
https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1971/40913-1.html
The city was represented by the brother of my next door neighbor who were active Democrats.
2) in 1972 I was asked to attend a meeting with Governor Evans who wanted to hear advise on whether he should cancel his vacation and escort Agnew around Spokane on his reelection campaign.
About a dozen people attended. Most were Republicans. Two Democrats, a union leader and myself were included. Everyone was polite until it came to me and I conceded that he would have to meet him but that Agnew was a despicable person. On the ride down in the elevator the Chairman of the County Republican Party asked me if I was a communist.
3) Its now 1981 and I am working for IOM as chief of operations for refugee resettlement in bangkok. A major part of what we did was arrange air transport and our Chief of Mission was French so we had our offices in the Air France building on Pat Pong which had two main businesses: Airline Offices and Go Go Bars at night.
One lunch I look out the window and exclaim "There goes Spiro Agnew". I have to explain to the Europeans who Agnew is and I wish I could tell you that I jumped up and shouted something great like "how did that whole warmonger business go for you?" but we just watched in astonishment as he walked into the only business of ill repute that operated during the day; the Thermador Massage Parlor.
One of the things that Dr. Maddow reveals is why Agnew needed the money, which is how this latter anecdote is related to chapter 6 in the Bagman.
The attorneys reveal that Agnew needed the money because he had multiple mistresses and also engaged in highly salacious behavior that is hinted at but not specified.
For those that think that Trump cannot be removed from office please remember that Nixon/Agnew had the greatest landslide in US history winning with 49 states. Two years later both Nixon and Agnew were out of office.
When the Presidential Approval Rating hits 30% and the Murdoch family decides that they have more to make with a Pence rehabilitation rather than the daily temper tantrum of Trump the bottom will fall out and Trump will be gone. Until then we must pursue the facts without favor or prejudice.
For anyone that knows Carl Maxey you will find this interesting:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/aug/03/a-leader-a-fighter/
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