Tag: Bill Clinton

Obama delivers call to action in eulogy for Lewis, likens tactics by Trump and administration to those by racist Southern leaders who fought civil rights

Washington Post logoFormer president Barack Obama delivered a call to action in his eulogy Thursday of late congressman John Lewis, urging Congress to pass new voting rights laws and likening tactics by President Trump and his administration to those used by racist Southern leaders who fought the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Obama, speaking for 40 minutes at the pulpit where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, tied Lewis’s early life as a Freedom Rider to the nationwide protests that followed the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. He compared today’s federal agents using tear gas against peaceful protesters, an action that Trump has cheered on, to the same attacks Lewis faced on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

“Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans,” the nation’s first Black president said at Lewis’s final memorial service. “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators. We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting.” Continue reading.

Three presidents embrace the struggle for rights. Trump suggests postponing the election.

Washington Post logoThree presidents spoke in poetry, paying tribute to a fallen hero who believed — often against evidence to the contrary, including the cracking of his skull by state troopers — that America was good, its people driven by love to do right by one another.

One president, the current commander in chief, did not attend the funeral of Rep. John Lewis but instead spoke of dark forces in the country and suggested that the United States not hold its next presidential election on time.

In a country cleaved by political differences, paralyzed by a pernicious virus and suffering from a plunging economy, Thursday presented painful contrasts. It was a day of soaring tributes to the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, offered from the pulpit of the mother church of the modern civil rights movement. And it was a day of pointed reminders that the nation is struggling, even after 244 years, to define itself, to decide what freedom and equality will mean. Continue reading.

An Open Memo On Impeachment: Nixon, Clinton, and Trump

Some commentators and politicians have suggested that any movement that leads to President Donald Trump’s impeachment will necessarily follow the straight and narrow political path of the Clinton impeachment in which the president’s popularity inexorably rose. President Bill Clinton’s case is widely assumed to set the terms for understanding Trump’s. But the facts and history instead indicate that the Clinton case bears little if any relevance to the Trump one, while the Nixon case shows similarity to Trump’s, including how President Richard Nixon, a far more popular president than the abysmally rated Trump, collapsed in public opinion as the drive to his impeachment unfolded.

In 1973 and 1974, the Democrats attacked a once-mighty but now badly weakened president with a strong case for impeachment. Nixon resigned.

In 1998 and 1999, the Republicans attacked a mightily popular president on a political upswing in his second term with a politically contrived and feeble case for impeachment. Republicans lost.

View the complete May 18 article by Sidney Blumenthal on the National Memo website here.

14 Republican senators are on-record holding a president accountable for obstruction: Bill Clinton

According to Congress, a president can obstruct justice. Just as long as that president is a member of the opposite political party. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

On Aug. 5, 1974, shortly after losing a case at the Supreme Court, the administration of Richard Nixon released an Oval Office recording that it had kept secret to that point. In the tape, Nixon and his aides discussed how to cover up the administration’s involvement in the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, determining that former CIA deputy director Vernon Walters could call acting FBI director Pat Gray and tell the FBI to back off any further investigations.

The release of the tape was definitive proof that Nixon himself was involved in an effort to coverup the break-in and block investigations. The House Judiciary Committee had already voted to advance articles of impeachment against Nixon to the full House, including one focused on obstruction of justice and Nixon’s having “engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation” into the Watergate incident. Nixon’s position was untenable and he resigned, preventing any impeachment from happening.

A few decades later, there was a president impeached for obstruction of justice: Bill Clinton. Clinton at one point faced four articles of impeachment, two centered on perjury (including lying under oath when offering testimony for an affidavit) and one on obstruction related to his efforts to prevent information about his affair with Monica Lewinsky from coming to light — including encouraging her to give false testimony.

View the complete January 18 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Presence Felt During Poignant Moments of Bush 41’s Funeral

Former presidents, vice presidents, first ladies and Pres. Trump attend the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush at the National Cathedral on Wednesday. Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

Hillary Clinton ignores president before George W. Bush’s emotional eulogy for father

President George H.W. Bush’s funeral, by design, was not about the sitting commander in chief, but there were moments when Donald Trump’s presence was paramount.

The 41st president’s son, George W. Bush, never mentioned the 45th president by name during his humorous and emotional eulogy for his father. But there were moments during his remarks that made clear the deep differences between the elder Bush and Trump.

“Of course, dad taught me another special lesson; he showed me what it means to be a president who serves with integrity, leads with courage and acts with love in his heart for the citizens of our country,” the 43rd president said in his familiar Texas drawl.

View the complete December 5 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call article here.

Brett Kavanaugh memo proposed explicit questions for President Bill Clinton

The following article by Michael Kranish was posted on the Washington Post website August 20, 2018:

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh listens during a meeting with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on Capitol Hill on July 11. Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP

A 1998 memo written by Brett Kavanaugh proposed a series of tough, sexually explicit questions for President Bill Clinton to answer about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, shedding new light on the Supreme Court nominee’s moralistic outlook and his view of presidential power.

Kavanaugh, as associate counsel in the office of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, wrote in the memo that he was “strongly opposed” to giving Clinton any “break” and suggested 10 questions, including: “If Monica Lewinsky says that you inserted a cigar into her vagina while you were in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?”

The memo provides a contrast to the genial, soft-spoken nominee who chooses every word carefully as he makes the rounds of the Senate before his Sept. 4 hearing before the Judiciary Committee. It reveals a hardball tactician who argued forcefully that Starr had the right to press the president for answers, a view he later shifted, saying presidents are too busy to be subject to such investigations while in office.

View the complete article here.

Then and now: How Congress reacted to impeachment threats against Presidents Clinton and Trump

The following article by J.M Rieger was posted on the Washington Post website May 4, 2018:

According to Congress, a president can obstruct justice. Just as long as that president is a member of the opposite political party. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

On April 27, 1998, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) laid out what would soon become one of the four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

“What you have lived through, for two-and-a-half long years, is the most systematic, deliberate obstruction of justice, coverup and effort to avoid the truth, we have ever seen in American history,” he said. Continue reading “Then and now: How Congress reacted to impeachment threats against Presidents Clinton and Trump”

Yes, The President Must Testify — Just Like Bill Clinton Did

The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the National Memo website January 31, 2018:

Donald Trump tells reporters that he is eager to chat with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating his campaign’s suspected collusion with the Kremlin and his attempts to obstruct that investigation, but his sincerity is in doubt. When he proclaims his willingness to let Mueller question him, “under oath,” it sounds like typical Trump bluster.

Still, as one of the most successful liars in modern history — with a talent for prevarication that has seen him through many civil lawsuits and a presidential campaign — the former casino mogul may believe he can slither past Mueller verbally. His lawyers feel no such confidence, however; they reliably show up to cancel his reckless offers to testify, as they did recently under some feeble pretext. Continue reading “Yes, The President Must Testify — Just Like Bill Clinton Did”

Trump says he’s a genius. A study found these other presidents actually were.

The following article by Av Selk was posted on the Washington Post website January 7, 2018:

At a news conference at Camp David Jan 6., President Trump responded to a question from a reporter about a tweet he posted on his mental state earlier that day. (The Washington Post)

President Trump says he’s a genius. Sometimes people even say it for him.

“You’re an F-ing genius,” someone wrote to him on Twitter in 2013. “I.Q. tests confirm!” Trump replied. In fact, he wrote this weekend, his lifetime of success in business, TV and politics “would qualify as not smart, but genius . . . and a very stable genius at that!” Continue reading “Trump says he’s a genius. A study found these other presidents actually were.”

FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for months

The following article was posted on the Washington Post website January 5, 2018:

The FBI is again investigating the Clinton Foundation for potentially giving donors special political access and favors — either resuming or starting a new probe that was once considered dead, according to two officials familiar with the matter. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

The FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for months, reviving a probe that was dialed back during the 2016 campaign amid tensions between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents about the politically charged case, according to people familiar with the matter.

The inquiry resumed about a year ago. Agents are now trying to determine if any donations made to the foundation were linked to official acts when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, these people said. The people did not identify what specific donations or interactions agents are scrutinizing.

Word of the investigation comes at a particularly fraught time for the Justice Department and FBI, as it tries to navigate several polarizing issues, including an ongoing special-counsel probe of President Trump and his associates, as well as demands from Republicans in Congress that Clinton be reinvestigated on a host of issues. Among those is the foundation case.

On Friday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the Justice Department to investigate whether a key figure in the special-counsel probe, a former British spy who authored a dossier of allegations, may have lied to the FBI. Continue reading “FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for months”