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Author | Topic: The Trump Presidency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
NoNukes writes: Where is the illegality? Releasing dirt is not illegal. If the dirt was illegally obtained, then you'd have something... on the Russians. But where is the American participation in an illegal activity? FEC regulations prohibit any value provided by a foreign national. Then by derivative liability the Trump campaign becomes connected to the whole Russian conspiracy, especially the tremendous value provided by release of hacked emails and by manipulation of social media. From the Cornell Law Library (52 U.S. Code 30121 - Contributions and donations by foreign nationals):
quote: The document passed from the Russians to Donald Jr. represents an "other thing of value". A crime was committed at that meeting, the meeting represents a conspiracy, and derivative liability makes the Trump campaign complicit in all the crimes described in the recent indictment. Just what is publicly known places the Trump campaign in dire straights, and obviously Mueller knows much more than we do. Trump's continual denials of collusion is a) a lie; and b) for public political consumption to try to render impotent any Mueller charges. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
PaulK writes: I think that you are stretching. Is handing over information illegal in itself ? Yes. See Message 1939.
As I say it looks bad but it doesn’t rise to the level of proving conspiracy. That may be true since whether there was a conspiracy is for a jury to decide, or if Trump is impeached then it's for the Senate to decide. But it does rise to the level of indictments charging conspiracy. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
PaulK writes: I’ll just point out that there seem to be serious questions over whether a document alleging misconduct by a Clinton donor should really be included. If you read the rest of the section (Trump campaign—Russian meetings, only three paragraphs) in addition to the small portion I quoted you'll see that it wasn't merely an allegation of "misconduct by a Clinton donor." It was an allegation that the Clinton campaign was accepting foreign campaign donations, a violation of federal campaign laws. So Donald Jr., a Trump campaign aide, accepted something of value from a Kremlin agent. Even Trump, usually unafraid to appear cozy with the Russians, realized the dangers on this one and drafted an innocuous meeting description.
Or using the title as the link, Can it be a crime to do opposition research by asking foreigners for information? by conservative columnist Eugene Volokh. Yes, that's the Trumpian view, and maybe a foreshadowing of how Trump campaign aides will argue in court, and maybe Trump himself before the Senate if it ever comes to that. I do think that Volokh has a point when he describes federal campaign law as too overly broad. For example, the Hillary Clinton campaign hired Fusion GPS (a U.S. firm) to do opposition research, something all presidential campaigns do. But was it a violation of federal campaign law when Fusion GPS hired a foreign national to do some of the research? But I don't think any U.S. courts will find problems with federal campaign laws in the case of a U.S presidential campaign gleefully ("I love it") accepting information from Kremlin agents, especially not after Trump's campaign solicitation of Russian help in tracking down the missing Clinton emails. Courts have treated what Trump said on the campaign trail regarding Muslims very seriously, and I suspect they'll do the same regarding the possibility of Russian collusion. Here's another coincidence that is unlikely to really be a coincidence: Within an hour of Donald Jr.'s meeting with the Russians, Trump tweeted about missing Clinton emails. What we know publicly about that meeting is bad enough, but what really happened at that meeting is probably devastating. In my little experience with the legal system I think what surprises me most is the pragmatism of most courts in interpreting poorly worded portions of laws. They usually go straight for what was actually intended and ignore any spurious interpretations. Regardless of the overly broad expression of federal campaign laws criticized by Volokh, I think courts will have a pretty good idea of just the kind of thing these laws were intended to prohibit, like the Donald Jr. meeting with the Russians. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
NoNukes writes: The document passed from the Russians to Donald Jr. represents an "other thing of value"
Is that your best argument? That is a serious stretch, but at least your position is out there, and we all understand it. I'm not convinced. I'm not clear on what you mean. That the document was not "an other thing of value"? That Donald Jr. didn't ask for the document, so it doesn't matter? Something else? We may never know whether what is publicly known right now is sufficient for the courts to consider it a crime, because I think Mueller knows much more, and that's what the courts will actually consider. Next in an AbE you respond to my Message 1940 to PaulK:
Percy writes: That may be true since whether there was a conspiracy is for a jury to decide This is probably not true. Sure it is.
Issues of law for always decided by the court, meaning the judge. I wasn't posing an "issue of law." I only meant the prosecutor charges the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the United States, and the jury decides whether the defendants are guilty of the charge.
The judge will interpret the law. He will either do it prior to trial or after the presentation of the case in instructions to the jury. Whether or not passing on information is included as "value" under the statute would certainly be a question of law and not a question of fact. Oh, that's what you're referring to as an "issue of law," the "other things of value." I don't recall "other things of value" ever coming up in the messages between me and PaulK, but sure, I guess I can see how whether the document constitutes an "other thing of value" is an issue of law for the judge to decide, and that it could be grist for an appellate court.
...while they are supposed to give deference to the lower court's decision on fact issues. Off-topic, but this is a pet peeve of mine. I understand the need for finality regarding facts, especially in an era of endless appeals and and "new" facts and witnesses recanting and so forth, but I've read too many examples in the news of cases of the courts sticking with the original facts way beyond the point of reasonability. Worst one for me is still the Fells Acre Day Care case. Scott Harshbarger probably still believes there was a nationwide outbreak of Satanic ritual abuse of children in the 1980's, but he has to because he built his career upon it (see Harshbarger and the Amiraults and Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial). --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
NoNukes writes: I am not going to pretend that the current process is ideal. I know that some folks get the shaft because of desire for finality of judgment. But there are reasons why there are limits on what courts can do. It's not that the current process isn't ideal. I actually think the process when considered in isolation is pretty good. The problem is that people run the process, people aren't perfect, and we need a process that takes that into account. Again using the example of the Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial, District Attorney Scott Harshbarger prosecuted the case and put three innocent people in jail. As the appeals wended their way through the courts Harshbarger became Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (very much on the reputation he established by convicting the Amiraults) and was influential in causing the courts to deny appeals over and over again. When Gerald Amirault was finally released from prison in 2004, one of the more likely reasons it wasn't challenged was because the then DA had no stomach for marching into a courtroom armed with the childrens' "expert child psychologist" extracted testimonies about magic rooms and rapes using knives and forks (no medical evidence supported any rapes) and assaults by clowns and being tied to trees and so on. Back in 1984 it wasn't understood how children responded to leading questions, especially when pressured with tactics like (I'm recollecting here, not quoting), "But I thought you wanted to help us? Sally helped us by telling us what happened. Don't you want to help us, too?" By 2004 it was understood all too well that such pressure combined with suggestive questions could cause 4-year olds to come up with wild fantasies. The Amirault case is one I use as an example of extreme injustice because I'm so familiar with it. It occurred in the state where I worked and was in the news a lot, plus Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal took up the cause in a years-long series of articles (for which she won a Pulitzer) that kept the Amirault's plight in the news long after it might have been forgotten. You probably have your own examples of extreme injustice, and I think such examples show that our confidence in the ability of our legal process to mete out justice is unwarranted because it doesn't take into sufficient account that the people running it are only people, with all the biases and weaknesses and egos and so forth that accompany. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
This past week was the annual meeting of CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), and many prominent conservative have addressed the meeting this week. Yesterday in a four woman panel National Review columnist Mona Charen criticized the Republican Party for tolerating harassers and abusers of women. She was booed and provided a security escort out after the panel (which she said she thought unnecessary). Here are some of her words from the New York Magazine article CPAC Speaker Needed Security Escort After Flagging Trump’s Sexual Misconduct. What she said on the panel:
quote: Charen wrote about her experience at the CPAC conference in an op-ed piece in the New York Times (I’m Glad I Got Booed at CPAC). Here are some excerpts from that:
quote: So there *are* conservatives with a conscience out there. Let us hope that their voices are heard and that the debate returns to left versus right instead of left versus mindless toadyism for Trump's parade of racist, misogynistic, xenophobic comments and actions. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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An editorial in today's New York Times (Either a Conspirator or a Sucker) calls attention to the order of events that makes the Donald Jr./Kushner/Mannafort/Russians meeting in Trump Tower more problematic. It could (and will) be argued that the document the Russians passed to Donald Jr. was not "an other thing of value" or at least not sufficiently "an other thing of value", so leave that aside for the moment as an issue to resolve in the future.
But the editorial notes that the Schiff memo, the recently released response to the Nunes memo (Nunes is the majority head of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff is the ranking minority member), tells us that George Papodopoulos had already been briefed by Russian agents about the stolen Clinton campaign emails when he set up that meeting at Trump Tower. No publicly available information tells us that Papodopoulos told Donald Jr, Jared Kushner or Paul Mannafort about the Clinton campaign emails the Russian had stolen, but we can be sure that a climber like Papodopoulos told at least one of them and probably all of them (directly or indirectly) of what he had learned. Given this, it seems very unlikely that the Trump Tower meeting was a "nothing meeting" (Reince Priebus, Trump's former Chief of Staff in July of 2016), especially since Trump himself wrote the false description of what the meeting was about. Every time Mueller takes public action we learn that he knows far more than anyone guessed he knew, and I think this pattern is likely to continue. That is, I think Mueller knows what was said at the meeting, and he knows about other meetings that aren't currently public knowledge and what was said at them. And the testimonies he is gathering from both those indicted and those merely interviewed have probably given him a wealth of conflicting information that at some point many people associated with Trump are going to become highly motivated to get straight in order to avoid jail time. There will be a scramble to tell Mueller their story. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
NoNukes writes: I agree regarding the likelihood that the meeting was not a "nothing meeting", but to date, we have nothing other than speculation about any illegal activity that might have occurred at the meeting. At least with regards to that document, we have some concrete evidence about how it related to the discussion. One thing about the meeting that doesn't often get mentioned is that though the Donald Jr./Kushner/Mannafort/Russians meeting took place in June of 2016, it didn't come to light until June of 2017. This means that when Trump drafted the misleading description of the meeting on July 8, 2017, aboard Air Force One, he did so as president. Lying to the press is not a crime, but a conspiracy to cover up a conspiracy to collude *is* a crime. Donald Jr.'s account of the meeting, from a July 8, 2017, article in the Washington Post: Trump Jr. says he, Kushner and Manafort met with lawyer tied to Kremlin But the account was actually drafted by President Trump, from a July 31, 2017, article in the Washington Post: Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer I (and you too, I expect) lived through Watergate. Nixon wasn't directly implicated in the break-in (though a host of dirty tricks efforts by the Nixon administration were uncovered) but was guilty of efforts to cover up the break in. Throughout most of the reporting, investigations, and hearings leading up to the resignation few expected Nixon would be found so directly involved, but he was. In his contempt for and arrogance regarding the rule of law as it applies to him, Trump seems Nixon's equal. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
And now we have more evidence of a direct connection between the Trump Campaign and the Russians though the person of Roger Stone, advisor to the Trump campaign in 2016. Stone is suspected of coordinating the WikiLeaks release of Podesta and DNC emails public during the 2016 presidential campaign. Sources for this post:
The events implicating Roger Stone are:
Roger Stone's accounts of his involvement in the release of the DNC and Podesta emails are so full of lies and contradictions and changing stories that one cannot rely upon him as a source. What we do know is this:
Both Stone and Wikileaks deny having direct contact with each other, but The Atlantic's documentation reveals this to be a falsehood. While the smoking gun of direct coordination between Stone and Wikileaks of the email releases does not exist publicly, unless one believes in incredible consecutive coincidences (read the Atlantic article) coordination must have been a factor in the timing. That is, Roger Stone, an advisor to the Trump Campaign, engaged in a conspiracy with Russian operatives to defraud the United States by coordinating the release of hacked emails by Wikileaks to do maximum damage to the Clinton campaign. Just by what we know publicly it is already apparent that Mueller has multiple avenues for pursuing conspiracy charges against members of the Trump campaign and, I believe, Trump himself. I'm aware that there's a "wishful thinking" aspect to my views, but again, think Nixon, whose detractors saw their fondest wishes come true, at least until Gerald Ford issued a "full, free and absolute pardon". --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Jennifer Rubin, op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, writes a mean editorial. Here she is in today's Post sort of summarizing where things stand in the Trump administration. Some excerpts (all the links work):
quote: --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Another good opinion piece appears in today's Washington Post: Mueller’s net is tightening around Trump’s inner circle and maybe Trump himself by Randall D. Eliason who teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. Instead of quoting from it I'll just summarize his points. I'll may occasionally use his language without quotes:
--Percy Edited by Percy, : Formatting.
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
There are at least several articles about this, but this one's from the Washington Post: In fundraising speech, Trump says he made up trade claim in meeting with Justin Trudeau
In a meeting with Trudeau Trump claims Trudeau was wrong about who had a trade deficit with who. The conversation went like this:
quote: Summarizing, Trump's and Trudeau's guys go off and figure out who has the deficit, and Trump says that once energy and timber is taken into account that the US runs a deficit with Canada. The Post says that the Office of the United States Trade Representative says the US runs a surplus with Canada. But does that take energy and timber into account? Is energy and timber some special category between the US and Canada by which we agree not to count it in trade figures? Whatever direction the deficit runs, it is small by the standards of countries, in the $0-20 billion range. My guess is that which direction the deficit runs varies with fluctuating oil and gas prices. When the price of oil is high the US runs a deficit, when low Canada runs a deficit. My further guess is that the $17 billion/year deficit Trump claims we're running with Canada is the figure based on the price of oil that day and then annualized. If I've got this right then Trump is going to run to our various trading partners claiming ill treatment every time the price of some commodity we sell them or they sell us changes in a direction unfavorable to us. What a way to run a country! --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Found some more information. This is from U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services January 2018. I assume this is the latest month for which figures are available (Canada is 4th from last in the list):
quote: Naturally Trump doubled down on his lie earlier today, tweeting:
quote: --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Trump is being sued in civil court for violations of the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the constitution by the attorneys general for Maryland and Washington D.C.: President Trump receives court summons at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Just now saw this news: Warning of ‘repercussions,’ Trump company lawyers seek Panama president’s help. Trump has, in my view, just threatened the Panamanian government to interfere in his favor in a legal dispute between the Trump Organization and the owner of one of his branded hotels (the Trump International Hotel in Panama City), or else. Panama maintains independence of their executive and judicial branches, just as in the United States.
This is (again, in my view) the worst single thing Trump has done. Agree or disagree with his actions on healthcare, tax cuts, trade, environment, etc., he did nothing improper. He may be involved in obstruction of justice, but that hasn't been demonstrated yet, so so far nothing improper. But pressuring a foreign government to intervene on behalf of his business, that is clearly an improper conflict of interest and is why presidents should divest their ownership in any enterprise, public or private, commercial or nonprofit. I include nonprofits because of all the trouble surrounding the Clinton Foundation. --Percy
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