US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1472

On May 21 2019 11:09 xDaunt wrote:

Congress does not and should not have carte blanche to investigate the private business affairs of the president or any other private citizen. Hell, law enforcement doesn't have that power unless there's probable cause of a crime.

On May 21 2019 11:15 Mohdoo wrote:


May I ask what disadvantage there is to investigating the president? What do we lose when the president is investigated?

On May 21 2019 11:23 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:


Doesn't the Trump Foundation clear the probable cause bar already? He committed enough fraud through the foundation and that's existed for 30 years.

On May 21 2019 11:34 xDaunt wrote:

Giving congress unfettered power to make the president's life miserable is not good policy. This current congress is out of control already. The subpoenas on Barr are particularly egregious. There's not even a little grey area there.

On May 21 2019 11:35 xDaunt wrote:

I'm not a tax expert, but I have a hard time believing that there's probable cause of tax fraud given how many times Trump has been audited over the years.

On May 21 2019 11:38 Mohdoo wrote:



I mean what makes it bad policy? What damage is done? I don't think you've effectively argued why it is a bad thing, just that you disagree with it. I am asking what bad thing is created or what good thing is lost. Are you able to answer that?

On May 21 2019 11:09 xDaunt wrote:

Congress does not and should not have carte blanche to investigate the private business affairs of the president or any other private citizen. Hell, law enforcement doesn't have that power unless there's probable cause of a crime.

On May 21 2019 11:47 xDaunt wrote:

It's an abuse of the president's rights. Just because someone takes office doesn't mean that they surrender all rights at the door. There are huge compliance costs with those types of subpoenas. The subjects of those subpoenas have to lawyer up to ensure not only compliance but also the lawfulness of the subpoena itself. This is one of the largely untold stories of the true harm of Mueller's investigation. Tons of innocent people were swept up into the whole mess and had to spend exorbitant sums on their own legal counsel while they were being interviewed or otherwise producing things for the special counsel.

On May 21 2019 11:40 KwarK wrote:

The Foundation has provably committed extensive self dealing. Paying off business debts with Foundation cash, for example, or buying a portrait of himself with Foundation cash and then donating the portrait to himself for use in his office.

These are established facts which meet the criteria of self dealing. One simply cannot do the things that Trump does. I've audited many charitable foundations, I know this stuff. However not-for-profits basically go without any scrutiny because the IRS always has bigger fish to fry.

On May 21 2019 11:38 Mohdoo wrote:



I mean what makes it bad policy? What damage is done? I don't think you've effectively argued why it is a bad thing, just that you disagree with it. I am asking what bad thing is created or what good thing is lost. Are you able to answer that?

One reason Trump supporters such as Bannon fear Democratic oversight is that Republicans have spent years broadening and weaponizing the already formidable powers of the House majority party. For decades after Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare, the Oversight Committee was run as a gentlemanly partnership between the parties. To guard against abuse, the chairman typically had to gain the consent of the ranking member to issue a subpoena or else win a committee vote. Republicans changed this rule in 1997 to invest their Oversight chairman, Dan Burton of Indiana, with unilateral subpoena power, something he employed with astonishing zeal as he tried to take down President Bill Clinton. Burton issued 1,052 unilateral subpoenas during his five-year chairmanship, according to a calculation by the committee’s minority staff. In 2015, Republicans changed the rules again, expanding unilateral subpoena power to 14 committee chairmen to help them go after Barack Obama’s administration.

Report redactions

That leaves us with the only ground cited by the Democrats for contempt, which is Barr refusing to release the unredacted report. Senate Democrats attacked him at his at his confirmation hearing for refusing to guarantee public release of the report without redactions. As a witness, I testified that they were asking Barr to commit to a potential criminal act to secure his own confirmation. The report inevitably would contain some grand jury material, which under the law is information that cannot be publicly released without a court order. It is a crime to unveil such information.

Barr promised to release as much of the report as possible, and he has delivered. Indeed, he is not expressly given the authority to release the confidential report. Yet, he not only released it but declared executive privilege waived on its content. The key obstruction portion of the report is virtually unredacted. Just 8 percent of the public report was redacted, largely to remove material that could undermine ongoing investigations. The sealed version of the report given to Congress only had 2 percent redacted. Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material.

Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings.

So Congress now will ask a court to find civil contempt for Barr refusing to release grand jury information. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a district court claim to have the “inherent supervisory authority” to disclose grand jury matters because of great public interest. To make matters worse, the Justice Department has now said the president has invoked executive privilege over the entire report, making this contempt claim even less likely to prevail over the long run.

Democrats are launching the weakest possible contempt claim against the administration in a civil action with a long track through the courts. In the end, there is utter contempt in this action, but not in the case of Barr.

On May 21 2019 14:19 Introvert wrote:
The House may very well win on these things-- maybe, if things are not obvious but we have to choose, they should win. But it is impossible to say that the Democrats are serious about any of this or that legitimate oversight is their primary goal. An easy example of this is the contempt issue against Barr, where they are holding him in contempt for not releasing something he cannot release.



Again, in so many ways it would be so much easier if we could admit what is actually going on here instead of pretending that the fight over his tax returns is about oversight instead of embarrassment. The committee skipped all the steps one would take if oversight was their end goal (like getting info from the IRS or going after more information from presidential tax returns of individuals from years they were actually president). It's just laughable.

On May 21 2019 15:55 semantics wrote:
Barr has done well to this point is a bit of a stretch

Most people who have actually read the Muller report know that barr defense of the president is just that. Barr has been acting like the president's lawyer.

General incompetence by trump or his team is the reason the Muller report isn't straight up damning, atleast in reading the report open to the public. Complete moral bankruptcy is evident ignoring if things are technically illegal.

On May 21 2019 14:19 Introvert wrote:
The House may very well win on these things-- maybe, if things are not obvious but we have to choose, they should win. But it is impossible to say that the Democrats are serious about any of this or that legitimate oversight is their primary goal. An easy example of this is the contempt issue against Barr, where they are holding him in contempt for not releasing something he cannot release.



Again, in so many ways it would be so much easier if we could admit what is actually going on here instead of pretending that the fight over his tax returns is about oversight instead of embarrassment. The committee skipped all the steps one would take if oversight was their end goal (like getting info from the IRS or going after more information from presidential tax returns of individuals from years they were actually president). It's just laughable.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said on Monday the FBI has "something to hide" about Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, the man who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos the Russians had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

During a Fox News interview, the House Intelligence Committee ranking member said he has sent two letters this month to the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI, National Security Agency, and State Department asking for all documents they have on Mifsud.

Nunes said all but the FBI are cooperating.

"The FBI is not cooperating, per usual, which means they've got something to hide," he said.

Mifsud, a London-based professor and former Maltese diplomat, has long been suspected of deep ties to Russian intelligence.

Although special counsel Robert Mueller's team portrayed Mifsud as a Russian asset with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their 448-page report, Nunes has said they decided to "cherry pick" information from news reports, leaving out that he described as a Western intelligence asset. Nunes specifically noted that Mifsud has a lot of ties to U.S., British, and Italian intelligence services.

"It is impossible that Mifsud is a Russian asset," Nunes said Monday. "He is a former diplomat with the Malta government. He lived in Italy. He worked and taught FBI, trained FBI officials, and worked with FBI officials."

Mueller's report, released last month with redactions, states that Mifsud traveled to Moscow in April 2016, after which he met Papadopoulos in London. It was at this meeting that Mifsud informed Papadopoulos that during his trip he learned that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton, who served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and was President Trump's Democratic rival in the 2016 election.

Papadopoulos later repeated this claim to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who informed the U.S. government and prompted the original counterintelligence investigation into Trump's campaign in July 2016.

Although Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, told investigators Mifsud talked to him about the Russians having "thousands" of Clinton emails, Mifsud denied to the FBI he knew or mentioned anything about emails.