Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[LFC]

Judge tells Trump a) get out and b) pay up.

A New York judge has tossed out Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times, and ordered the former president to pay all attorneys fees, legal expenses, and associated costs.

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that the newspaper, three of its reporters and his niece Mary Trump engaged in an “insidious plot” to obtain his private records for a Pulitzer-winning story about his tax issues.

While the court tossed out Trump’s claims against the newspaper and its reporters, the claims against the ex-president’s niece have yet to be ruled upon.

“The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today,” a paper spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast. “It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine newsgathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public.”

[andydp]

To the surprise of any carbon based lifeform, (Cue crickets) we now learn pardons were for sale by Giuliani/Trump

Rudy Giuliani Claimed To Sell Presidential Pardons For $2 Million, Lawsuit Says

Rudy Giuliani offered to sell presidential pardons for $2 million during his time as then-President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, according to a lawsuit a former Giuliani aide filed Monday in New York.

Noelle Dunphy also alleged the former New York mayor pressured her into having sex with him and still owes nearly $2 million for her work as director of business development for Giuliani’s companies and as his executive assistant from 2019 to 2021.

Dunphy alleged Giuliani tried to rope her into a scheme to sell presidential pardons.

“He also asked Ms. Dunphy if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split,” her 70-page lawsuit stated.

news.yahoo.com/rudy-giuliani-claimed-sell-presidential-114530924.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb&tsrc=fb

[goldenvalley]

May 16, 2023 18:05:30 GMT andydp said:

To the surprise of any carbon based lifeform, (Cue crickets) we now learn pardons were for sale by Giuliani/Trump

Rudy Giuliani Claimed To Sell Presidential Pardons For $2 Million, Lawsuit Says

Rudy Giuliani offered to sell presidential pardons for $2 million during his time as then-President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, according to a lawsuit a former Giuliani aide filed Monday in New York.

Noelle Dunphy also alleged the former New York mayor pressured her into having sex with him and still owes nearly $2 million for her work as director of business development for Giuliani’s companies and as his executive assistant from 2019 to 2021.

Dunphy alleged Giuliani tried to rope her into a scheme to sell presidential pardons.

“He also asked Ms. Dunphy if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split,” her 70-page lawsuit stated.

news.yahoo.com/rudy-giuliani-claimed-sell-presidential-114530924.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb&tsrc=fb

One Mil for Rudy, one for Trump!  And all the other stuff...this guy might be as crazy and venal as Trump is but he didn't have the family money to carry him through life.

[LFC]

The Rudy saga just keeps gettin' worse.

[LFC]

John Durham's nothing burger drops like the steaming pile that it is.

Special counsel John Durham’s final report reveals that four years, a $6.5 million spend, and many dining dates with former Attorney General Barr yielded nothing. As a prosecutor who served as a supervisor on an independent counsel investigation, I find Durham’s investigation to be a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.

Recall that Durham was handpicked by Barr to investigate the probe commenced by the FBI in 2016 into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that formed the basis for the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller probe yielded indictments of 34 individuals, two companies, and convictions of top Trump campaign officials.

By comparison, Durham’s investigation sent no one to jail but did manage to lose two jury trials, including the final loss, in which Durham personally got into the well of the courtroom to make various arguments to the jury justifying his own investigation.

Contrary to the expectations set by former President Donald Trump, Durham failed to produce any evidence of what Trump promised to be “the crime of the century”—presumably involving the “deep-state conspiracy” mantra of Trump supporters—and sent no one to jail.

What Durham did do was aid and abet the killing of a lot of trees by producing a 300-plus page report that reads like a plagiarized version of the 2019 report by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, in which Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the FBI properly opened the Russia probe—code-named Crossfire Hurricane—and found no evidence of political bias by the FBI. The OIG’s report contained a meticulous analysis of the Russia probe and offered criticisms of the FBI’s then process for utilizing FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, warrants that resulted in reforms undertaken by the FBI.

Plagiarists usually try to pass off others’ work as their own by paraphrasing and adding a few original ideas of their own. Durham adds nothing new to the OIG report but does sound like he pulled from Wikipedia concepts like “confirmation bias” to make it look like he was adding new conclusions to what the OIG had already concluded. Of course, confirmation bias is a real psychological term defined roughly as how people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. But it shouldn’t take four years and $6.5 million to warn that confirmation bias isn’t among the best practices for criminal investigations or, for that matter, any investigation.

Following the release of the OIG’s 2019 conclusion that the FBI had acted properly in opening the case, Durham immediately made a public announcement that he disagreed with some of its conclusions “as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” Durham made this statement despite his own admission that his investigation was still ongoing. His statement was greeted with incredulity by former FBI Director James Comey, who said he could make no sense of it and warned Durham: “Don’t be a part of the sliming of the IG and the department as a whole. Do your work.”

Durham at least seemed to have taken the “do your work” part of that admonition to the tune of four more years on the taxpayer dime.

But Durham’s 2019 bravado ended with a whimper, as his report ended up supporting the conclusion in the 2019 OIG report that the FBI had properly opened the investigation, although Durham does quibble over whether it should have been opened as a preliminary investigation rather than a full investigation.

He offers almost nothing in the way of recommended policy change or reform for the FBI besides a half-hearted suggestion at the very end of the report that the FBI should have an official designated to “challenge” politically sensitive investigations. Arguably, that kind of “red team” function is already fulfilled by the layers of scrutiny that accompany any politically sensitive investigation.

Durham also lacks any moral authority to lecture the FBI or anyone else about concerns over political bias when his entire investigation originated with Barr’s efforts to politically weaponize the DOJ. Durham’s investigation was so compromised that his own top aide, a respected career prosecutor, resigned in protest over Barr’s pressuring Durham to issue a report prior to the 2020 presidential election. Presumably such pressure was intended by Barr to help Trump in the election by undermining the legitimacy of the Russia probe. Another lawyer resigned in protest over Durham’s decision to indict a lawyer with ties to the Clinton campaign.

This is huge. It shows that Durham was a political actor, only interested in protecting Donald Trump.

Further calling into question Durham’s motivations is a notable absence from his report of the allegations made against Trump by Italian officials in the fall of 2019. These allegations involved a tip from an Italian official that linked Trump to financial crimes and were serious enough to merit investigation. But Barr and Durham decided to have Durham do the investigation even though it would not appear to fall within Durham’s investigation mandate. Durham never brought criminal charges and there is no mention of the allegations or what investigation Durham undertook in his final report.

[LFC]

TPM's take on the Durham Report.

Bill Barr’s Trusty Stooge

Special Counsel John Durham got spun so many different ways by Bill Barr that by the time he released his 300-plus-page final report yesterday – after a four-year investigation that stretched longer than the Mueller investigation he was investigating – his reputation, dignity, and sense of proportion had all disappeared.

The problem with trying to hold Durham to account on the facts now is that it requires extensive knowledge of events that are now creeping from current affairs into the historical past: the run-up to the 2016 election, Russia’s meddling in the election, Trump’s many misdeeds in this arena before and after his inauguration, the Mueller investigation, the origins of the Durham probe, the many bogus conspiracy theories that gave rise to the Durham probe and that it unselfconsciously helped to reinforce.

It’s a lot.

I’ve followed it all closely for years, but I can’t keep it all in my head. You probably can’t either. Neither can most journalists or policymakers. And therein lies much of the disadvantage that misinformation thrives on. It was easy for bad-faith, conspiracy-minded MAGA supporters to hold up Durham’s tome yesterday and declare that it showed exactly what they said all along, even though it didn’t.

But let me zero in on what I think is the most glaring example of Durham’s bad faith, Bill Barr’s ratfuckery, and the politicization of the Justice Department under Trump.


The Big Missing Piece

Back in January, the New York Times did a commendable, ground-breaking bit of reporting on the Durham probe. Times reporter Charlie Savage more than any other mainstream report has had a very clear-eyed view of Durham and his mess of an investigation. One of the bombshells from that report was that Durham’s remit had secretly expanded to include an allegation of wrongdoing against Trump:

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

The guy investigating the investigators it turns out was also investigating the target of the original investigators. Big news!

But what does Durham’s final report, which under the rules and regs is supposed to explain his decisions to prosecute and to decline to prosecute, say about the Italian tip about Trump financial dealings, about his actions or decisions in that matter, about the ultimate conclusions he reached?

Bupkis! It’s not mentioned at all.

Here’s how Savage et al put it delicately in their story on the final report:

… Italian officials unexpectedly gave Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham a tip about suspected financial crimes linked to Mr. Trump. While the tip was unrelated to the Russia investigation, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter rather than referring it to another prosecutor. Mr. Durham brought no charges.

Mr. Durham’s report did not mention any of those matters.

It looks all the world like Bill Barr used John Durham to bury an allegation of wrongdoing against then-President Trump. And it worked.


Wanna Go Deeper On Durham?

Marcy Wheeler is the encyclopedia of all things John Durham.
Politico has 5 takeaways

[andydp]

I'm really amazed none of these bozos had the guts to say this when the previous guy was in power.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says world leaders saw Trump as a 'laughing fool' and disputes that the ex-president could have stopped Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Tuesday said that foreign leaders saw former President Donald Trump as a "laughing fool" and rejected his ex-boss's claims that he could have stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine had he still been in office last year.

During an interview on CNN's "This Morning," Bolton — an experienced diplomat and defense hawk who served under Trump from April 2018 to September 2019 — pushed back against assertions that the former president made about Ukraine last week as he participated in the network's controversial town hall. While speaking with journalist Kaitlan Collins, Trump said that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been in the Oval Office and also said that he could "settle" the conflict in 24 hours if voters send him back to office — both highly questionable claims for a war the US is not a direct participant in.

<SNIP>

"Trump has this impression that foreign leaders, especially adversaries, hold him in high regard — that he's got a good relationship with Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un," Bolton said of the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea, respectively.  "In fact, the exact opposite is true," he continued. "I have been in those rooms with him when he met with those leaders. I believe they think he's a laughing fool and the idea that somehow his presence in office would have deterred Putin is flatly wrong."

Bolton then said that if Trump had won reelection in 2020, the former president's push to weaken NATO would have aided Russia in their quest to take over Ukraine.

"If anything, if Trump had won a second term and done what I think he intended to do which is get out of NATO, Putin would have just waited and let him do it," he said. "Even the weakening of NATO would have it made a lot easier for the Russians to have prevailed."



www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-national-security-advisor-john-bolton-says-world-leaders-saw-trump-as-a-laughing-fool-and-disputes-that-the-ex-president-could-have-stopped-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine/ar-AA1bgCRT?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=9323c2e505cd4e499a7955d471692b08&ei=36

[LFC]

May 17, 2023 10:24:27 GMT andydp said:

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says world leaders saw Trump as a 'laughing fool'

Bolton, being self-unaware, doesn't understand that world leaders and much of the U.S. see him as a "snarling fool."

[LFC]

Disbar this fascist!

A federal judge has cleared the way for District of Columbia Bar authorities to resume long-stalled disciplinary proceedings against Jeffrey Clark, a top ally in Donald Trump’s bid to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Clark, an assistant attorney general in Trump’s Justice Department — whom Trump considered naming acting attorney general amid his final, frenzied bid to remain in power — had tied up those proceedings for nearly eight months as he sought to transfer the battle to federal court.

But U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras rejected Clark’s effort on Thursday, issuing a 36-page opinion concluding that federal courts have no jurisdiction over disciplinary proceedings meant to be managed by the D.C. Bar and local courts.

D.C. Bar authorities charged Clark in July 2022 with engaging in “dishonest” conduct and seeking to “seriously interfere with the administration of justice” when he embarked on a weekslong effort to help Trump sow doubt about the results of the 2020 election.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 9, 2023 19:33:54 GMT LFC said:

Disbar this fascist!

A federal judge has cleared the way for District of Columbia Bar authorities to resume long-stalled disciplinary proceedings against Jeffrey Clark, a top ally in Donald Trump’s bid to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Clark, an assistant attorney general in Trump’s Justice Department — whom Trump considered naming acting attorney general amid his final, frenzied bid to remain in power — had tied up those proceedings for nearly eight months as he sought to transfer the battle to federal court.

But U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras rejected Clark’s effort on Thursday, issuing a 36-page opinion concluding that federal courts have no jurisdiction over disciplinary proceedings meant to be managed by the D.C. Bar and local courts.

D.C. Bar authorities charged Clark in July 2022 with engaging in “dishonest” conduct and seeking to “seriously interfere with the administration of justice” when he embarked on a weekslong effort to help Trump sow doubt about the results of the 2020 election.

Fine but he can still spout his BS and get paid for it on the Trump entertainment circuit.

[goldenvalley]

Here's a long article on Gen. Milley in The Atlantic. (I don't think it's paywalled).  Interesting insight into what was going on in the former president's administration.  Lots of what we imagined might be happening, but it's better to read about from someone who knows.

Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office. A plain reading of the record shows that in the chaotic period before and after the 2020 election, Milley did as much as, or more than, any other American to defend the constitutional order, to prevent the military from being deployed against the American people, and to forestall the eruption of wars with America’s nuclear-armed adversaries. Along the way, Milley deflected Trump’s exhortations to have the U.S. military ignore, and even on occasion commit, war crimes. Milley and other military officers deserve praise for protecting democracy, but their actions should also cause deep unease. In the American system, it is the voters, the courts, and Congress that are meant to serve as checks on a president’s behavior, not the generals. Civilians provide direction, funding, and oversight; the military then follows lawful orders.

I'm curious about his opinion on the vets that participated in 1/6. Maybe someday we will find out...

[andydp]

i feel so honored.  President Trump just sent me a letter asking for money to combat (whatever his new word is this week).   As we have noted in previous solicitations, its NOT just a one time deal.  

Nestled inside the form is a check off labeled: 

"Check this box to make your contribution to help elect Republicans at all levels monthly !"  

One wonders how many will figure out the "monthly" part means their credit card will be charged every month.

[Rue Bella]

One wonders how many will figure out the "monthly" part means their credit card will be charged every month.

The GOP has been doing things like this for many years. My friends' very elderly mother got a check from the GOP which she had endorsed and put with her regular checks for my friends to put in the bank for her... When they looked closely at this new check, it said in small print "cashing this check authorizes deductions every month to .... "   Slime balls.