US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2805

On October 29 2020 16:29 Zambrah wrote:
"My dog ate my homework, I swear!"

Classic material, really, you can't go wrong.

Tucker Carlson is a shamefully idiotic person and I struggle to imagine why anyone listens to him beyond needing someone they can relate to on an intellectual level.

On October 29 2020 20:44 NewSunshine wrote:
Evidently. It's aimed squarely at folks who will listen to a multi-millionaire tell them how wealthy elites are the problem.

On October 29 2020 21:01 Simberto wrote:


And that the solution to that problem is to lower the taxes on the rich.

On October 29 2020 09:43 micronesia wrote:

If Biden wins, Trump remains president until inauguration day in January. On that day, Biden is sworn in as president. Most importantly, inauguration day is a federal holiday for the Washington DC workforce due to the chaos in the city. Four years ago I used that day to play starcraft.

On October 29 2020 22:56 JimmiC wrote:

Yeah it is a huge religion where I live as well. It lasting has a lot more to do with Brigham Young though, him getting them to Utah where most thought was unliveavle and then all their advancements in irrigation are pretty impressive. The origin story and Joseph Smiths inclinations, not so much.

The bank had the right to try to negotiate a settlement. But his prosecutors were still investigating key individuals, including some with ties to Mr. Erdogan, and believed the scheme had helped finance Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

“This is completely wrong,” Mr. Berman later told lawyers in the Justice Department, according to people who were briefed on the proposal and his response. “You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”
[...]
Six months earlier, Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Mr. Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Mr. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Mr. Erdogan repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.

The president’s apparent eagerness to please Mr. Erdogan has drawn scrutiny for years. So has the scale and intensity of the lobbying effort by Turkey on issues like its demand for the extradition of one of Mr. Erdogan’s political rivals, a Turkish religious leader living in self-imposed exile in the United States. Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.

And Mr. Trump’s sympathetic response to Mr. Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.

[...on sources]
This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Turkish and U.S. government officials, lobbyists and lawyers with direct knowledge of the interactions. Representatives for the Turkish government, Halkbank, the Justice Department and the White House declined to comment.

[... Bolton discussed the relationship underlying it]
In the interview with The Times, Mr. Bolton said he did not know the details of Mr. Barr’s intervention in the Halkbank negotiations. But he said he was disturbed by the tenor of the interaction between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan related to Halkbank.

“It was so idiosyncratic, so personal to Trump in the pursuit of personal relationships, that it was very dangerous,” Mr. Bolton said. “And it does look like obstruction of justice.”

Just how idiosyncratic became more apparent last October, when Mr. Erdogan sent troops into Syria. Mr. Trump, who had initially given Mr. Erdogan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipartisan backlash, leading him within days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threatening economic reprisals.

“You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy — and I will,” Mr. Trump wrote to the Turkish leader on Oct. 9, 2019, without elaborating.

On Oct. 15, the Justice Department gave the prosecutors in Manhattan approval to file charges against Halkbank, a direct slap at Mr. Erdogan.

The prosecutors rushed to present evidence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indictment that same day charging Halkbank with money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy to violate the Iran sanctions. So far, no additional individuals have been charged.

When the charges against the bank were announced, Mr. Berman said in a statement that the “bank’s audacious conduct was supported and protected by high-ranking Turkish government officials, some of whom received millions of dollars in bribes to promote and protect the scheme.”

In June, eight months after the indictment was returned, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Berman. Justice Department officials cited his handling of the Halkbank matter, including his blocking of the proposed global settlement, as a key reason for his removal.

On October 30 2020 00:54 Mohdoo wrote:
People giving credit to the hunter Biden thing need to be dragged over the coals way more. This whole “lost the evidence” thing is totally nuts.