For the first time ever, this past week there was no one in Russia reading my blog. Normally Russian readers are second in number only to those in the USA. I was worried about you, my Russian friends, because of the reports of demonstrators there now being jailed. I think of you as just the kind of folks who would demonstrate. (Not saying you have to, of course!)
But as of today, you are back. And I am very glad.
Sometimes, being 80, I get weary and think I should just quit my writing about politics. But then I think of you readers in all those other countries and get a nice warm feeling of community with the whole world.
Thank you all for being there and for reading my blatherings. You are the light of my world!
And what a wonderful world we all share! Together we can keep it wonderful and make it even better for all its people.
Thanks for being back, my dear Russians.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Monday, March 27, 2017
Trump and GOP Are Done For! Ides of March Came On the 24th!
The Ides of March came for Donald Trump on Friday, March 24. On that date everything ended for him. His charade of being a president, a strongman, a Mr. Fix-it – all of it crashed, along with all of his posing, posturing, lies, and his attempts at intimidating. It's all a heap of ashes and everyone can see that. The "winner" lost. The "closer" failed. He is so apparently a fraud no one can deny it. And he has lost all political power.
It was also the Ides of March for GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and for the entire Republican body in the House.
Yes! I mean that! The Republican party has indeed lost everything. And the irony is that, in melting like the Wicked Witch, the dying GOP has given American democracy the biggest boost imaginable. (I'll write about that tremendous gain next week.)
Let's note the full extent of what the GOP lost on Friday in the House.
First of all, Trump and the GOP didn't just lose the attempt to repeal Obama's Affordable Care Act. They also lost their credibility. The GOP had pledged for seven years to repeal Obama's handiwork. Then they couldn't do it. Trump too had boasted he would repeal it on his first day in office and additionally boasted that he could make a deal with any politican. He fell on his face, his credibility in tatters.
The loss of credility is a fatal loss in politics. Once you lose it, it's gone forever. Sure, everybody loses a vote sometimes. I once lost $85 million in the voting on a funding package due to an error by the committee's clerk. But in my 55 years in politics I never lost my credibility. Without credibility, a politician is a two-legged milking stool. Trump is now a toothless tiger and so are Ryan and his GOP pals in the House.
Next, Ryan and Trump also lost their only possible shot at the huge tax break for the rich they had planned, a trillion dollar tax cut to be delivered under the name of "tax reform". Such a large giveaway could only have been accomplished if the tax measure had qualified to go through the Senate with just a simple majority of votes and thus been insulated from a Democratic filibuster. For the measure to thus qualify for the so-called "reconciliation process", the GOP would have had to show that the lost tax revenues would be offset by savings elsewhere, i.e. from the cost-cutting in the Trump/Ryan non-care health bill.
In other words, the GOP leadership was willing to strip 24 million Americans of their health insurance and rob the Medicare trust fund of $365 billion just to give the rich a super-big tax cut. That is disgusting and sinful!
But now they can't do either! And let the heavens marvel at the irony of this: it was the mule-headed intransigence of the far-right Freedom Caucus that caused the crash-and-burn of the Ryan/Trump non-care health plan, the end of the huge tax cut, and the demolishing of the entire GOP House claim of power.
For that too is the clear result of Friday's debacle. The GOP doesn't have a working majority in the House of Representatives! The Freedom Caucus's intransigence not only defeated their own avowed goals of destroying Obamacare, cutting taxes, and diminishing government. It also assured that their future power as a bloc is gone. When they disabled the GOP control of the House they took away the very stage upon which they could have played. As things stand now the Freedom Caucus is hereafter an irrelevancy.
Let's look at other specific casualties of last Friday. Here's a biggie: the broad conservative wing of the GOP, including the Freedom Caucus and Paul Ryan, passionately hate the "entitlements", i.e. Social Security and Medicare. If the Trump/Ryan non-care health plan had passed, $365 billion
would have been stripped out of the Medicare trust fund by reducing the modest amount high-earners now pay into it as part of payroll taxes. Absent this $365 billion, Medicare would soon have been in deep trouble, and Ryan's announced plan of "changing it to save it" would have come to pass. He has claimed for years that Medicare is already in deep trouble. But it isn't! Nor is Social Security! Nor is Obamacare! They could use some tweeking, but are basically just fine. He lies about this issue so as to engineer their destruction. The raid on the Medicare trust fund would have sabotaged its soundness and flung wide the door to Ryan's demolition of it, taking away Medicare and giving the elderly mere pocket change towards medical expenses.
Now, however, the Freedom Caucus — those entitlement-hating GOP right-extremists, those Tea Party's darlings — have cut off the GOP's best hope of destroying Medicare. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! These guys cut off their own heads!
As all this unfolds in the understanding of the GOP politicos, the Freedom Caucus will become anathema! Exactly what they should be to everyone! They are the same GOP Congressional members who stood on an outside balcony of the Capitol in 2010 and shouted encouragement to their supporters spitting on the heroic Rep. John Lewis and hitting the other Democratic Congressmen with signs as they entered to vote for Obamacare.
That was a dark moment in American history. These extremists move in darkness. It has blinded them even unto their own best interests and announced goals. But he who lives by idiocy, perishes by it. In short, it's pay-back time!
These 30 members of the Republican House chose in their blindness on Friday to end the power of the entire GOP and their own power. By making it clear that the rest of the GOP cannot work with them, they have destroyed the GOP majority position. Their House majority is as meaningless as a cancelled stamp. No one in politics can take them — or the GOP or Speaker Ryan or Donald Trump — seriously ever again. It's not just because these folks managed to defeat repeal of Obamacare but because they demonstrated for everyone to see that they have no understanding of how to use power.
Those who don't understand how to use power lose it. And quickly. That's what destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. He was "an outsider", a reformer, a self-styled non-politician. His ignorance and ineptitude in politics ruined his four years and deprived him of a second term.
The ignorance and ineptitude of Trump, Ryan, and the Freedom Caucus have shown they can't use power. They are empty suits. Politically they are a joke.
Knowledgeable politicans now wash their hands of the GOP in the House and the White House. Increasingly the media won't take them seriously either. And in further due course, neither will their base.
So, guess what! Apparently the old saying is true. Apparently God does indeed take care of dogs, drunks, and the American people!
Next week: the unexpected blessings growing from the cursedness of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the far-far-right! ........ Will wonders never cease?
It was also the Ides of March for GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and for the entire Republican body in the House.
Yes! I mean that! The Republican party has indeed lost everything. And the irony is that, in melting like the Wicked Witch, the dying GOP has given American democracy the biggest boost imaginable. (I'll write about that tremendous gain next week.)
Let's note the full extent of what the GOP lost on Friday in the House.
First of all, Trump and the GOP didn't just lose the attempt to repeal Obama's Affordable Care Act. They also lost their credibility. The GOP had pledged for seven years to repeal Obama's handiwork. Then they couldn't do it. Trump too had boasted he would repeal it on his first day in office and additionally boasted that he could make a deal with any politican. He fell on his face, his credibility in tatters.
The loss of credility is a fatal loss in politics. Once you lose it, it's gone forever. Sure, everybody loses a vote sometimes. I once lost $85 million in the voting on a funding package due to an error by the committee's clerk. But in my 55 years in politics I never lost my credibility. Without credibility, a politician is a two-legged milking stool. Trump is now a toothless tiger and so are Ryan and his GOP pals in the House.
Next, Ryan and Trump also lost their only possible shot at the huge tax break for the rich they had planned, a trillion dollar tax cut to be delivered under the name of "tax reform". Such a large giveaway could only have been accomplished if the tax measure had qualified to go through the Senate with just a simple majority of votes and thus been insulated from a Democratic filibuster. For the measure to thus qualify for the so-called "reconciliation process", the GOP would have had to show that the lost tax revenues would be offset by savings elsewhere, i.e. from the cost-cutting in the Trump/Ryan non-care health bill.
In other words, the GOP leadership was willing to strip 24 million Americans of their health insurance and rob the Medicare trust fund of $365 billion just to give the rich a super-big tax cut. That is disgusting and sinful!
But now they can't do either! And let the heavens marvel at the irony of this: it was the mule-headed intransigence of the far-right Freedom Caucus that caused the crash-and-burn of the Ryan/Trump non-care health plan, the end of the huge tax cut, and the demolishing of the entire GOP House claim of power.
For that too is the clear result of Friday's debacle. The GOP doesn't have a working majority in the House of Representatives! The Freedom Caucus's intransigence not only defeated their own avowed goals of destroying Obamacare, cutting taxes, and diminishing government. It also assured that their future power as a bloc is gone. When they disabled the GOP control of the House they took away the very stage upon which they could have played. As things stand now the Freedom Caucus is hereafter an irrelevancy.
Let's look at other specific casualties of last Friday. Here's a biggie: the broad conservative wing of the GOP, including the Freedom Caucus and Paul Ryan, passionately hate the "entitlements", i.e. Social Security and Medicare. If the Trump/Ryan non-care health plan had passed, $365 billion
would have been stripped out of the Medicare trust fund by reducing the modest amount high-earners now pay into it as part of payroll taxes. Absent this $365 billion, Medicare would soon have been in deep trouble, and Ryan's announced plan of "changing it to save it" would have come to pass. He has claimed for years that Medicare is already in deep trouble. But it isn't! Nor is Social Security! Nor is Obamacare! They could use some tweeking, but are basically just fine. He lies about this issue so as to engineer their destruction. The raid on the Medicare trust fund would have sabotaged its soundness and flung wide the door to Ryan's demolition of it, taking away Medicare and giving the elderly mere pocket change towards medical expenses.
Now, however, the Freedom Caucus — those entitlement-hating GOP right-extremists, those Tea Party's darlings — have cut off the GOP's best hope of destroying Medicare. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! These guys cut off their own heads!
As all this unfolds in the understanding of the GOP politicos, the Freedom Caucus will become anathema! Exactly what they should be to everyone! They are the same GOP Congressional members who stood on an outside balcony of the Capitol in 2010 and shouted encouragement to their supporters spitting on the heroic Rep. John Lewis and hitting the other Democratic Congressmen with signs as they entered to vote for Obamacare.
That was a dark moment in American history. These extremists move in darkness. It has blinded them even unto their own best interests and announced goals. But he who lives by idiocy, perishes by it. In short, it's pay-back time!
These 30 members of the Republican House chose in their blindness on Friday to end the power of the entire GOP and their own power. By making it clear that the rest of the GOP cannot work with them, they have destroyed the GOP majority position. Their House majority is as meaningless as a cancelled stamp. No one in politics can take them — or the GOP or Speaker Ryan or Donald Trump — seriously ever again. It's not just because these folks managed to defeat repeal of Obamacare but because they demonstrated for everyone to see that they have no understanding of how to use power.
Those who don't understand how to use power lose it. And quickly. That's what destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. He was "an outsider", a reformer, a self-styled non-politician. His ignorance and ineptitude in politics ruined his four years and deprived him of a second term.
The ignorance and ineptitude of Trump, Ryan, and the Freedom Caucus have shown they can't use power. They are empty suits. Politically they are a joke.
Knowledgeable politicans now wash their hands of the GOP in the House and the White House. Increasingly the media won't take them seriously either. And in further due course, neither will their base.
So, guess what! Apparently the old saying is true. Apparently God does indeed take care of dogs, drunks, and the American people!
Next week: the unexpected blessings growing from the cursedness of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the far-far-right! ........ Will wonders never cease?
Friday, March 24, 2017
WHAT'S SCARING DEVIN NUNES? And Does He Have a Russian Connection?
(I wrote this way back but it's very relevant right now.)
That Devin Nunes is one worried-looking dude! And he keeps trying to cover for Trump and the Russians.
Does he have a Russian connection too? Is he terrified of being exposed along with the rest of Trump's crowd? After all, he too worked on the Trump campaign.
He reports raising about $2.5 million for his own 2016 campaign for his Congressional seat in California's 22nd District, spending about $1.3 million on the 2016 campaign, and in December 2016 having $3.5 milllion on hand. His Democratic opponent raised no money and spent nothing.
Why all that campaign funding for Nunes? He had no actual opposition in the general election.
Where did the extra $2 million come from? Maybe this apparently unexplained $2 million was left over from prior years? Hmmm....Let's give him the benefit of the doubt?
It likely didn't come out of Nunes' own pocket. He claims to have a personal net worth of only about $83,000, one of the lowest in Congress.
But his private holdings, small as he claims them to be, are interesting.
According to his federal disclosure forms, almost all his net worth consists of his share in ownership of a wine company, Alpha-Omega Wine LCC, that sells in Russia through a Russian distributor who is reputedly a friend of Putin.
Was Alpha Omega the beginning of a Russian dirty money journey into a pipeline to cleanliness in an American wine company account? Wouldn't it be difficult to show that someone who claimed to have sold wine to a Russian distributor really just took the money that needed laundering but didn't send the wine.
Maybe just sent crates of bottles filled with water?
Actually a pretty clever way to launder money.
You likely know that the Russian billionaire-politicos have a big problem getting their money washed of criminality and moving it out of Russia, often resorting to a Cyprian bank now that the Caribbean has been exposed as a flow-way for dirty money. A computer in the Trump Tower campaign HQ was connected last year to a Russian bank, leading the FBI to suspect something criminal or disloyal was afoot. The FBI therefore trotted off to court, showed probable cause for the agency's suspicions, and was able to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of the Trump-Russian bank connection.
This court-licensed surveillance was based on a showing of probable cause, meaning the FBI had some goods on Trump & Co. From the moment in January when we learned Flynn had been caught lying about phone calls with the Russians, those who know some law realized the FBI had been surveilling Trump & Co. with a court order or the Russians without one. In January the NY Times ran a story about this, though not explaining about probable cause and court-issued warrants. Trump saw at least the headline, and in his unfathonable ignorance of the law, he thought Obama must have ordered the surveillance.
Not so, Mr Trump! Only a court can green-light government surveillance of citizens.
Not until Monday did the pieces fall into place for Nunes. Perhaps what FBI Director James Comey disclosed at the Congressional hearing opened Nunes' eyes. Or were his eyes opened by a document he now claims to have been shown in an ancillary building on the White House, grounds, this info being provided by a mysterious unnamed figure. Nunes reputedly then ran post-haste to the White House, to warn the Trump team that ...... Well, what did he warn them of? "We are all in the deep poo-poo"? As if they didn't know.......?
In typical Trump fashion, Mr. Trump tried to twist the truth to his advantage, announcing that this Nunes' disclosure actually proved he was right about Obama spying on him.
Nonsense, Mr. Trump! Once again: the president CAN'T order surveillance. No one would accept that order. If an intelligence agent did so, that agent would be open to criminal prosecution. Mr. Trump, get this: Nunes and Comey are inadvertently saying that there was probable cause for a search warrant, probable cause to believe you and the Russians were up to no good. There can be no "spying", as you call it, without a warrant! No warrant without some evidence of something!
We are, in fact, a nation of laws, Mr. Trump. Get that through your strangely-colored head!
And now you and your cohorts — including maybe Devin Nunes — are going to run straight into the withering light of the law.
When things are rotten, they smell. You can hide the rotten under a basket, but the smell will out. Read "Hamlet", for heaven's sake, Mr. Trump, the all-time political story of usurpation of power!
"You shall nose him out as you go up the stair."
That Devin Nunes is one worried-looking dude! And he keeps trying to cover for Trump and the Russians.
Does he have a Russian connection too? Is he terrified of being exposed along with the rest of Trump's crowd? After all, he too worked on the Trump campaign.
He reports raising about $2.5 million for his own 2016 campaign for his Congressional seat in California's 22nd District, spending about $1.3 million on the 2016 campaign, and in December 2016 having $3.5 milllion on hand. His Democratic opponent raised no money and spent nothing.
Why all that campaign funding for Nunes? He had no actual opposition in the general election.
Where did the extra $2 million come from? Maybe this apparently unexplained $2 million was left over from prior years? Hmmm....Let's give him the benefit of the doubt?
It likely didn't come out of Nunes' own pocket. He claims to have a personal net worth of only about $83,000, one of the lowest in Congress.
But his private holdings, small as he claims them to be, are interesting.
According to his federal disclosure forms, almost all his net worth consists of his share in ownership of a wine company, Alpha-Omega Wine LCC, that sells in Russia through a Russian distributor who is reputedly a friend of Putin.
Was Alpha Omega the beginning of a Russian dirty money journey into a pipeline to cleanliness in an American wine company account? Wouldn't it be difficult to show that someone who claimed to have sold wine to a Russian distributor really just took the money that needed laundering but didn't send the wine.
Maybe just sent crates of bottles filled with water?
Actually a pretty clever way to launder money.
You likely know that the Russian billionaire-politicos have a big problem getting their money washed of criminality and moving it out of Russia, often resorting to a Cyprian bank now that the Caribbean has been exposed as a flow-way for dirty money. A computer in the Trump Tower campaign HQ was connected last year to a Russian bank, leading the FBI to suspect something criminal or disloyal was afoot. The FBI therefore trotted off to court, showed probable cause for the agency's suspicions, and was able to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of the Trump-Russian bank connection.
This court-licensed surveillance was based on a showing of probable cause, meaning the FBI had some goods on Trump & Co. From the moment in January when we learned Flynn had been caught lying about phone calls with the Russians, those who know some law realized the FBI had been surveilling Trump & Co. with a court order or the Russians without one. In January the NY Times ran a story about this, though not explaining about probable cause and court-issued warrants. Trump saw at least the headline, and in his unfathonable ignorance of the law, he thought Obama must have ordered the surveillance.
Not so, Mr Trump! Only a court can green-light government surveillance of citizens.
Not until Monday did the pieces fall into place for Nunes. Perhaps what FBI Director James Comey disclosed at the Congressional hearing opened Nunes' eyes. Or were his eyes opened by a document he now claims to have been shown in an ancillary building on the White House, grounds, this info being provided by a mysterious unnamed figure. Nunes reputedly then ran post-haste to the White House, to warn the Trump team that ...... Well, what did he warn them of? "We are all in the deep poo-poo"? As if they didn't know.......?
In typical Trump fashion, Mr. Trump tried to twist the truth to his advantage, announcing that this Nunes' disclosure actually proved he was right about Obama spying on him.
Nonsense, Mr. Trump! Once again: the president CAN'T order surveillance. No one would accept that order. If an intelligence agent did so, that agent would be open to criminal prosecution. Mr. Trump, get this: Nunes and Comey are inadvertently saying that there was probable cause for a search warrant, probable cause to believe you and the Russians were up to no good. There can be no "spying", as you call it, without a warrant! No warrant without some evidence of something!
We are, in fact, a nation of laws, Mr. Trump. Get that through your strangely-colored head!
And now you and your cohorts — including maybe Devin Nunes — are going to run straight into the withering light of the law.
When things are rotten, they smell. You can hide the rotten under a basket, but the smell will out. Read "Hamlet", for heaven's sake, Mr. Trump, the all-time political story of usurpation of power!
"You shall nose him out as you go up the stair."
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
In Defense of FBI Director Comey
Lots of people I know are angry at FBI Director James Comey. People are bitterly resentful of him not discussing the Trump investigation yesterday as openly as he discussed the Clinton one last fall.
So I posted this on Facebook and share it with you here. For what it's worth, I feel pretty good about the job Director Comey will oversee. And please remember, he's not the one doing the FBI investigating. Dozens of staff people are. You can't muzzle dozens of people. Please remember that "Deep Throat" was #2 man at the FBI.
Here's my take on Comey:
So I posted this on Facebook and share it with you here. For what it's worth, I feel pretty good about the job Director Comey will oversee. And please remember, he's not the one doing the FBI investigating. Dozens of staff people are. You can't muzzle dozens of people. Please remember that "Deep Throat" was #2 man at the FBI.
Here's my take on Comey:
I'm getting lots of comments of loathing toward FBI Director Comey. As an attorney, a politico and someone who worked in government, I see things a bit differently. He talked to Congress about the Clinton investigation in the latter weeks of the campaign because he had previously told Congress he would keep them updated. Now he was reopening the investigation on her, and he had to tell them. The ruling protocol is that departments must keep their commitments to Congress because, on OUR BEHALF, the Congress is their BOSS. We have a complicated system of government.
In the hearings on Monday he refused to comment on individuals in Trump's bunch because THEY ARE UNDER INVESTIGATION. That tells us exactly what we want to know. The more mum he was, the greater the possibility of their guilt. He had made no prior commitment to Congress to reveal names, etc. nor could he. But he HAD to tell Congress he was reopening the investigation on Clinton. Those are two very different things in a criminal proceeding.
Also he was protecting the FBI when he disclosed the FBI was reopening the Clinton matter. If he, and thus the FBI, had sat on that information and she'd been elected and the new evidence then turned out to be seriously incriminating, he and the FBI would be in a hell of a mess.
Yes, he was also protecting himself — sort of. Notice though that the anger about his choosing to tell Congress has fallen all on him, not on the FBI. Notice also that his choice made sure this country would not face a terrible crisis if the newly-elected Clinton had to be prosecuted because the Weiner computer evidence was so damning of her.
Don't we all wish Anthony could have kept his pants on!
Jail Trump to Celebrate Anniversary of 1917 Espionage Act?
INTRODUCTION: I wrote this back in the second week of January. But I didn't publish it then because I was afraid my instincts were running away with me. Guess I should have trusted my instincts! At age 80, why not?
The NY Times story referred to is the one Trump saw that led him recently, though belatedly, to say Obama had wire-tapped him. In the most bizarre twist in a presidency ever, Trump's claim did two things to hurt him: (1) it meant a court had found probable cause to issue a warrant to put him under surveilllance, and (2) the screams from him and GOP Congressmen for the FBI to investigate the "tapping" pushed the Congressional investigation that yesterday hosted FBI Director James Comey announcing Trump and his cohort had indeed been under investigation all along for collusion with the Russians and that Obama had not done the wire-tapping.
In seeking to distract from his Russian Connection with an accusation against Obama, Trump has shot himself in both feet! He's been now labeled a liar by the head of the FBI and he is identified as being under criminal investigation. So, belatedly from mid-January, here it is at last, what I wrote then but withheld. Maybe we should call it "Trump the Traitor"?]
The New York Times' top story this morning [January 11] uses the word "treasonous" in discussing newly-leaked intelligence reports that Trump colluded with the Russians in anti-American acts. Trump Briefed on Claim That Russia Had Secrets on Him. Treason, as you likely know, is a capital offense and the only crime defined in the Constitution.
The Times first refers to Russian-held video tape of Trump's sex with prostitutes and then says, "If some of the unproven claims in the memos are merely titillating, others would amount to extremely serious, potentially treasonous acts." [Emphasis added.] These acts would include colluding with the Russians in their hacking into an American election.
To get to this point, the Times hurriedly brushes aside the sex to get to the treason. The sex tapes (if they exist) were merely a tool in the treason, making it easier for the Russians to blackmail Trump into treasonous collusion and into the "friendship" he is indeed now extending Russia, including letting the Russians gobble Ukraine without protest and appointing as Secretary of State a pro-Russian oil man who wants to remove the sanctions the US has applied to Russia regarding its illegal oil dealings with Iran.
We especially care about treason nine days before the presidential inauguration of the alleged traitor!
It's probably unrealistic to hope that this issue can be resolved before January 20. Nevertheless at least one Congressman has overnight demanded an investigation: "Democrats on Tuesday night pressed for a thorough investigation of the claims in the memos. Representative Eric Swalwell of California, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, called for law enforcement to find out whether the Russian government had had any contact with Mr. Trump or his campaign." donald-trump-russia-intelligence.html. From the report leaked by the CIA and the other intel agencies (see the foregoing cites), it appears that the agencies are in fact investigating just that.
And as for Trump "contact" with the Russians, he has himself boasted of such trips and contacts.
Were these contacts treasonous? Are you aware in all our history of a walk-up to the inauguration when the question is whether the president-to-be has committed treason? The fact that the New York Times uses the term is itself significant. The Times is the premier news outlet in the world. And the word "treason" carries a red-letter label in journalism: "Use only with extreme caution."
The legal community is also chary of the term. In fact, "treason" prosecutions under the Constitution are so difficult to win that prosecutors typically proceed under other broader laws, such as the Espionage Act of 1917.
Perhaps soon we will hear the law book pages turning throughout Washington D.C. and elsewhere as interested parties begin carefully reading the Espionage Act and its brethren.
You did notice, didn't you, that this is the centennial of the 1917 Act?
Are we about to celebrate its enactment in a very vivid fashion?
The NY Times story referred to is the one Trump saw that led him recently, though belatedly, to say Obama had wire-tapped him. In the most bizarre twist in a presidency ever, Trump's claim did two things to hurt him: (1) it meant a court had found probable cause to issue a warrant to put him under surveilllance, and (2) the screams from him and GOP Congressmen for the FBI to investigate the "tapping" pushed the Congressional investigation that yesterday hosted FBI Director James Comey announcing Trump and his cohort had indeed been under investigation all along for collusion with the Russians and that Obama had not done the wire-tapping.
In seeking to distract from his Russian Connection with an accusation against Obama, Trump has shot himself in both feet! He's been now labeled a liar by the head of the FBI and he is identified as being under criminal investigation. So, belatedly from mid-January, here it is at last, what I wrote then but withheld. Maybe we should call it "Trump the Traitor"?]
The New York Times' top story this morning [January 11] uses the word "treasonous" in discussing newly-leaked intelligence reports that Trump colluded with the Russians in anti-American acts. Trump Briefed on Claim That Russia Had Secrets on Him. Treason, as you likely know, is a capital offense and the only crime defined in the Constitution.
The Times first refers to Russian-held video tape of Trump's sex with prostitutes and then says, "If some of the unproven claims in the memos are merely titillating, others would amount to extremely serious, potentially treasonous acts." [Emphasis added.] These acts would include colluding with the Russians in their hacking into an American election.
To get to this point, the Times hurriedly brushes aside the sex to get to the treason. The sex tapes (if they exist) were merely a tool in the treason, making it easier for the Russians to blackmail Trump into treasonous collusion and into the "friendship" he is indeed now extending Russia, including letting the Russians gobble Ukraine without protest and appointing as Secretary of State a pro-Russian oil man who wants to remove the sanctions the US has applied to Russia regarding its illegal oil dealings with Iran.
We especially care about treason nine days before the presidential inauguration of the alleged traitor!
It's probably unrealistic to hope that this issue can be resolved before January 20. Nevertheless at least one Congressman has overnight demanded an investigation: "Democrats on Tuesday night pressed for a thorough investigation of the claims in the memos. Representative Eric Swalwell of California, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, called for law enforcement to find out whether the Russian government had had any contact with Mr. Trump or his campaign." donald-trump-russia-intelligence.html. From the report leaked by the CIA and the other intel agencies (see the foregoing cites), it appears that the agencies are in fact investigating just that.
And as for Trump "contact" with the Russians, he has himself boasted of such trips and contacts.
Were these contacts treasonous? Are you aware in all our history of a walk-up to the inauguration when the question is whether the president-to-be has committed treason? The fact that the New York Times uses the term is itself significant. The Times is the premier news outlet in the world. And the word "treason" carries a red-letter label in journalism: "Use only with extreme caution."
The legal community is also chary of the term. In fact, "treason" prosecutions under the Constitution are so difficult to win that prosecutors typically proceed under other broader laws, such as the Espionage Act of 1917.
Perhaps soon we will hear the law book pages turning throughout Washington D.C. and elsewhere as interested parties begin carefully reading the Espionage Act and its brethren.
You did notice, didn't you, that this is the centennial of the 1917 Act?
Are we about to celebrate its enactment in a very vivid fashion?
Monday, March 20, 2017
Trump/Russian Collusion? Here We Go!
In case you hadn't heard....."The game is afoot, Watson!"
FBI Director Comey confirms probe of possible coordination ... in The Washington Post today, March 20.
Comey Confirms Inquiry on Russia Election Role and Ties to Trump New York Times today.
FBI Director Comey confirms probe of possible coordination ... in The Washington Post today, March 20.
Comey Confirms Inquiry on Russia Election Role and Ties to Trump New York Times today.
The Trump-Russia Hearings Begin
The Congressional hearings into the Trump-Russia connections begin today. This widely republished article and chart may be useful as you watch the hearings or the news about them.
Now, Congressional committees, do your job! The web of relationships between Team Trump and Russia
Now, Congressional committees, do your job! The web of relationships between Team Trump and Russia
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