Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Forty Two » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:07 am

Brian Peacock wrote:You mean the more dirt he can dish the better it will be for him?
That's generally how leniency bribes work - the more he turns, the better it is for him.

It's an ugly side of American criminal law that prosecutors get one witness under their thumb, and squeeze him or her under threat of the risk of criminal penalties. Even if someone is innocent, they know and are advised by their defense attorney that to go to trial is a big risk.
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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:30 am

But the bad guys get their comeuppance though, right?
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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Forty Two » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:35 am

L'Emmerdeur wrote:A short American civics lesson-- Impeachment by the US House of Representatives is analogous to bringing an indictment. This is followed by a trial before the US Senate, which will determine whether the accused shall be removed from office.

A short American history lesson-- Bill Clinton was impeached. Contrary to what some may believe, he was never convicted of any crime. However, he was held to be in civil contempt of court (as opposed to criminal contempt of court) by a US District Court judge and fined. His impeachment trial resulted in a vote by the Senate to acquit.
Indeed, that’s accurate. He was fined $90,000 or so for his perjury in the civil case for his sexual harassment of Paula Jones - he paid her almost $900,000 in settlement of those claims. He was no arrested and prosecuted for his perjury, but his perjury formed the basis of the contempt order and fine, which he paid.

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:45 am

Forty Two wrote:Well, as someone who is a fan of the ACLU, and as someone who has followed its positions on civil rights issues for the better part of 40 years, I am surprised that they felt the need to issue a press release not only clarifying that there is a very narrow exception to the attorney-client privilege, but declaring that the issuance of a no knock warrant based on a sealed affidavit constitutes evidence that the rule of law is alive and well.

The ACLU has been working against "no knock" warrants for decades, and they have generally viewed them with skepticism and caution, suggesting that issuing warrants allowing cops to bust down the door guns drawn is a recipe for disaster, and questionable constitutionally.

With regard to warrants, the ACLU has fought hard to oppose the government's use of warrants which are more general in character, as the Fourth Amendment was in part designed to eliminate the British practice of "General Warrants" which allowed law enforcement to just go and root through your stuff. The point was that the State has to show a reason to search based on "probable cause" that the place searched contains actual evidence of a crime, and that the language of the warrant - the place to be searched and the stuff to be seized -- must be described with "the most scrupulous exactitude."

Further, sealing of warrants is something the ACLU generally opposes. “Under Virginia law and a long tradition of open judicial proceedings, warrants are public record,” said ACLU of Virginia executive director Kent Willis in a letter to judge asking that warrants be unsealed. https://www.acluva.org/en/press-release ... h-warrants

Also there is a common law and constitutional right of access to search warrants, even pre-indictment, which are public records. If the court is going to seal them, then the court must do so on motion of the government articulating the specific need or reason to seal the documents, and that should be done on record.

There are many cases where the press and other interested persons have filed motions to unseal the documents, so that they can report on issues.

Here, we have the press not investigating what might be in the warrants, and not bringing actions to try to unseal the documents. Instead, they are writing articles defending the process, and suggesting that even though we don't know what the fuck is going on, the process "must" be on the up-and-up because somebody had to get a magistrate judge to issue the warrant.

I mean, such backwards logic is unbelievable. Of course! In every case where a warrant is issued, someone must get the judge to sign a warrant, but these fuckers sign warrants constantly and they simply rely on the representations of the prosecutor and the cops or FBI agents. They'll address anyissues of overreach later.

We have a special prosecutor here who is supposed to be investigating illegal collusion with Russia, if any. He is authorized, of course, to take action on other illegal stuff he runs across in the investigation too. They have that catch-all, but the purpose of the investigation at its core was supposed to be illegal collusion by the President with a foreign power, not whether he committed a campaign finance violation.

That being said, we have the special prosecutor allowing or authorizing his folks to secretly get a warrant, from a magistrate judge, to - under seal -- so nobody can see why they are doing this, and what the are searching for, issue a no knock warrant on the President's personal attorney, and the only possible crime we know of is that Cohen's payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels may have been a campaign finance violation which is punishable by a fine.

Surely, something smells funny here, doesn't it?
Everything could be perfectly legit. But I believe the feds need to prove that, and the ACLU should be playing the role of an organization that makes them prove it. I'm glad they believe in the rule of law. If the government has done nothing wrong then they can demonstrate that and they don't need the ACLU's support.

Perhaps the ACLU would also like to lend their voice to the feds campaign to convince us that threats to our civil liberties have been greatly exaggerated at their Patriot Act site? :dunno:

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Tero » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:48 am

Cohen and manafort and all will be rolled into one giant ball by 2019.
CNBC:
All of that (Ryan etc) smooths the path for Democrats to recapture the House in November and hand Nancy Pelosi the speaker's gavel once again. And there's little doubt that a Democratic-controlled House would seek to impeach the president.

That's not a subject Democrats want to highlight as they woo swing voters on the 2018 campaign trail. More Republicans, in fact, highlight it in hopes of heightening alarm among their own supporters. Yet with 9 in 10 Democratic voters disapproving Trump's performance as special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation closes in, leaders of a Democratic House could not prevent a 2019 impeachment drive even if they considered it counterproductive.

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by JimC » Thu Apr 12, 2018 6:27 am

Forty Two wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:You mean the more dirt he can dish the better it will be for him?
That's generally how leniency bribes work - the more he turns, the better it is for him.

It's an ugly side of American criminal law that prosecutors get one witness under their thumb, and squeeze him or her under threat of the risk of criminal penalties. Even if someone is innocent, they know and are advised by their defense attorney that to go to trial is a big risk.
But if the dirt he can dish is true, then justice is served...
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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Tero » Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:50 pm

Trump: make the pee pee tape go away!
CNN
The Post said it obtained a copy of the book, and that in the book, Comey wrote that Trump wanted him to prove the allegation was false in part to prove its falsehood to his wife, first lady Melania Trump.
"He brought up what he called the 'golden showers thing,'" the Post quotes Comey as writing.
The dossier was commissioned as opposition research by political opponents of then-candidate Trump and compiled by a former British intelligence agent.

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:52 pm

If he's lucky he's never asked her to piss on him. :lol: Poor Melania, the guy's the President of the US and still, you can't feel good about your choices....

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Tero » Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:53 pm

$$$$$$
CNN
With the U.S. deficit set to soar past $1 trillion, threatening to send the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio to a level not seen since the 1940s, Xi’s government is dropping not-so-subtle hints about calling its $1.2 trillion of loans to Washington. The first shot across Trump’s bow came from Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the U.S. In a March 23 Bloomberg interview, he hinted Beijing might scale back U.S. debt purchases, a step that would send shock waves through global markets. “We are looking at all options,” Cui said.

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Tero » Fri Apr 13, 2018 12:29 am

Trump, Mueller teams prepare to move forward without presidential interview
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... ew-n865421

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:38 am

NO COLLUSION!!!
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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:48 pm

I think this is fairly accurate, in that Ryan's agenda has made great progress under Trump. However in my opinion it wasn't so much a case of Trump 'selling out' as it was him being thoroughly dishonest on the campaign trail. Either way, the zombie-eyed granny starver can smirk on his way out the door.

'Donald Trump sold out to Paul Ryan, not the other way around'
I’m not a big Paul Ryan fan, but one particular kick in the pants the speaker of the House is getting on his way out the door is unfair. It’s simply not the case that he sold out to Donald Trump or compromised his principles in any way. If anything, it’s just the opposite — Trump abandoned his stated views on a wide range of policy issues in order to bring himself into close conformity with Ryan’s ideology and policy agenda.

Writers sending off Ryan, like Tim Alberta at Politico and Josh Barro at Business Insider, argue that the speaker’s career has had a tragic arc in which, in Albert’s words, “the battle for the GOP’s heart and soul is finished,” with Trump the victor and Ryan the loser.

The reality is the opposite. On substance, Trump has embraced Ryan’s vision of lower taxes on the rich and a stingier welfare state, even though he campaigned promising the opposite. Ryan has indulged Trump on a personal level without abandoning any of his longstanding policy views. It’s true that Ryan has had limited success in enacting his agenda, but the impediments there have uniformly been in the United States Senate, not the White House. If anything, the Trump administration is quite loyally plugging away at Ryan-esque goals that the president never articulated as a candidate.

But while it’s unquestionably true that the self-presentation of the GOP in 2018 and beyond looks a lot more like what Trump was doing in 2015 than what Ryan was up to three years ago, the policy agenda of the GOP hews much closer to Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” blueprint than to anything Trump said as a candidate.

The critique now, ironically, is rooted in the same style-over-substance pathologies that led so many journalists to overrate Ryan for so long — an inclination Ryan was shrewd to exploit. He is a substance guy who, as he told the Atlas Society in 2005, got into public life because of the inspiration he drew from Ayn Rand and who believes that “almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill ... usually comes down to one conflict: individualism vs. collectivism.” He’s never sold out on those core views and instead got Trump to swing over to his side on many key topics.

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:52 am

President Bogus pandering to the conservative media echo chamber and his base, as well as sending a signal to those involved in current investigations who have been convicted or are under scrutiny--a two-fer.

'Trump Pardons Cheney Aide Scooter Libby for Perjury in CIA Probe'
President Donald Trump pardoned I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for lying to investigators probing the leak of a CIA officer identity, offering official forgiveness to a conservative figure whom supporters have argued was unfairly swept up in a politically charged special counsel’s investigation.

“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Trump said in a statement, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”

Libby, who was an aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, was the “victim of a special counsel run amok,” White House aide Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Friday, echoing a portrayal that Trump has applied to himself in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by Tero » Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:12 pm

If I were president I would not pardon Libby but I might set him to serve the rest at house arrest with ankle bracelet. Why? Just for having to be Scooter his working years. Who named him?

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Re: Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:28 pm

Isn't it fairly widely held that he took the fall for Cheney?
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