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BY BRIAN BEUTLER & CROOKED MEDIA Wednesday, March 6, 2019 |
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| —Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) on why Donald Trump paid hush money to mistresses |
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| THE GRIFTER THAT KEEPS ON GIVING |
| The fallout from Michael Cohen’s bombshell testimony last week continues to spread and envelope people in President Trump’s inner circle.
Cohen reportedly claims that Trump’s “representatives” dangled the possibility of a presidential pardon to entice him not to cooperate with federal prosecutors. That’s a crime and an impeachable offense, and any conversations Trump’s lawyers had with Cohen’s about the possibility of a pardon would not be protected by the attorney-client privilege.
In testimony this week, Cohen also presented House investigators with documentation of the edits Trump lawyers made to his perjurious testimony, in which he falsely told Congress that Trump wasn’t working on a real estate deal with the Kremlin throughout the 2016 election. Cohen has suggested that Trump and his attorney, Jay Sekulow, coached him to lie under oath, but it’s unclear whether Trump, his lawyers, or other lawyers they’re cooperating with rewrote that part of his testimony, or if they simply reviewed it, knowing it was false.
Cohen has separately produced six additional checks given to him to reimburse the illegal hush money payments he made on Trump’s behalf to two former mistresses. Of the eight checks that are now public, Trump himself signed six, and Donald Trump, Jr., and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg signed two. The family that pays together, stays together!
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| Speaking of people trying to hinder oversight, President Trump’s former campaign aide Michael Caputo claims he will not furnish documents or testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the full extent of Trump’s abuses of power, and will try to convince other witnesses to do the same.
This raises the obvious question of whether Trump or anyone else at the White House has once again tried to tamper with congressional witnesses, and how. It also underscores a problem with the Democratic approach of acknowledging Trump has committed impeachable offenses, while promising not to do anything about those offenses unless his support base shrinks: it communicates to Trump and allies that they can conceal derogatory information, keep Trump’s support above 35 percent, and obstruct their way out of trouble.
That does long-term damage to Congress as an institution, because it serves as a playbook for the executive branch to bowl over basic checks and balances.
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| President Trump pressured his then-chief of staff and then-White House counsel to grant his daughter Ivanka a security clearance in order to hide his involvement, and only interfered directly when they refused. He and Ivanka have both lied publicly about this, as well as about his insistence that Jared Kushner receive a clearance, and the White House has refused to turn documents pertaining to the security clearance process over to Congress. But in fairness to Ivanka and Jared, they are also really unqualified.
North Korea reportedly resumed construction on a long-range missile site two days after the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed last week. But their chemistry.
Trump has been threatening the schools he attended not to release his academic records since 2011, when, as leader of the Birther movement, he began accusing President Obama of concealing his transcripts to hide poor performance and evidence of his supposed foreign origins. It’s almost as if most attacks he leveled against Obama were secretly attacks on himself. Maybe he ought to look himself in the mirror and give himself a nickname: Little Donald Who Needs Love.
The Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork to claim that the resolution Congress passed in 2001 authorizing the use of military force against al Qaeda allows it to attack Iran.
The hunting club Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump own in upstate New York issued a debit card under a fake name to an undocumented caretaker, before firing him as part of a larger Trump Organization purge of employees working for them illegally.
House Democratic leaders have delayed a vote on a resolution condemning antisemitism, so that it can be amended to include condemnations of "all hate." Idea: since Republican bad faith is driving all of this, amend the resolution to say that any people who described themselves as “David Duke without the baggage,” and accused Jews of trying to “buy” the 2018 election should resign from House leadership. Fight bad faith, don’t accept it.
The DNC will not allow Fox News to host a Democratic presidential primary debate, citing a recent New Yorker article detailing the extent of the network’s propaganda and coordination with the White House. Weird. Until the New Yorker article, Fox seemed chill!
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen claimed, under oath, that the cages we all saw Border Patrol hold separated migrant children in were not in fact cages.
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| Some powerful Republicans have finally admitted that they should no longer deny the existence of climate change and should begin to propose solutions to address the climate crisis, but American right-wing ideology and GOP politics make taxes, regulation, and any other imposition on polluters impossible, so they have come up completely empty. |
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After arresting a predator who trafficked in child pornography, the FBI chose not to immediately shut down the chatrooms he frequented and instead lawfully assumed his identity in the hope of infiltrating child pornography networks and making more arrests. Thus far the gambit has resulted in no additional prosecutions, it’s not clear whether the chatrooms were ever shut down, and the bureau now faces questions about whether its tactics allowed preventable child abuse to continue. |
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| Gayle King interviewed R. Kelly about being a credibly accused rapist, child predator, and all-around monster, and he completely lost his shit, screaming, “Stop it. You all quit playing! Quit playing! I didn't do this stuff! This is not me! I'm fighting for my fucking life! Y'all killing me with this shit!" Gayle King is a cool customer. Watch → |
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