Tag: Trump abuse of power

There’s a reason Trump believes the Supreme Court will save his presidency from accountability

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case that should have been a slam dunk against the Trump administration. Secretary Wilbur Ross wants to modify the 2020 census form in a way that will depress responses from immigrant communities — effectively shifting congressional representation away from Latinos and towards white voters who are more likely to favor Republicans. In doing so, Ross broke numerous laws, ignored the Census Bureau’s own experts, and openly lied about his motives.

And yet, at Tuesday’s oral argument, the Supreme Court appeared likely to vote along party lines to endorse Ross’ lawbreaking.

So it’s probably not a coincidence that President Trump claimed less than a day after arguments in Department of Commerce v. New York that the highest court in the land is his personal team of fixers.

View the complete article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress website here.

Trump threatens to send armed soldiers to U.S.-Mexico border

President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a hawkish threat to Mexican law enforcement personnel and drug traffickers, warning them he is sending “ARMED SOLDIERS” to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump appears to have been agitated by special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s depiction of his White House as a dysfunctional place where top aides defy his orders. Political analysts from both parties have noted when Trump feels in political or legal hot water, he typically returns to an immigration-based message.

That issue, perhaps more than any other, revs up the conservative base he will need to again turn out in big numbers to secure a second term.

View the complete April 24 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Trump says he would challenge impeachment in Supreme Court

President Trump on Wednesday said that he would attempt to challenge impeachment in the Supreme Court if Democrats carried out such proceedings, though it’s unclear the high court would hear such a case.

“The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me. I DID NOTHING WRONG,” Trump tweeted.

“If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only are there no ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ there are no Crimes by me at all,” he continued.

View the complete April 24 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Why has Congress stalled on investigating money laundering allegations at Trump properties?

Stonewalled by the Trump administration, Congress seems to have lost interest.

When Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, two of his foreign projects — one in Panama and one in Azerbaijan — stood out for what appeared to be clear links to foreign money laundering operations. But with Trump’s presidency enveloped in an unprecedented number of scandals, congressional willingness to investigate the properties appears to have wilted — in no small part because of stonewalling by the current administration.

Both properties were closely associated with Ivanka Trump. Trump described the Trump Ocean Club property in Panama City, Panama, as Ivanka’s “baby,” while the Trump Tower Baku project, located in Azerbaijan’s capital, was something Ivanka herself claimed she “oversaw.” Both endeavors, however, have been swamped in controversy — not simply because of signs pointing to money laundering operations, but because both projects have since imploded, with neither any longer carrying Trump’s name.

In Panama, for instance, the indicators of money laundering at Trump Ocean Club Panama, which the Trump Organization helped manage, were impossible to miss. From purchases in cash to bulk sales, from sales to anonymous shell companies to purchasers using “bearer shares” — in which the company is owned by whoever holds a physical stock certificate, without any registry keeping track of ownership — the signs were all there. One of the property’s primary sales brokers, Alexandre Ventura Nogueira, admitted in a 2013 conversation secretly taped by a former business partner that he was “regularly laundering money”  across Panama.

View the complete April 11 article by Casey Michel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Schiff recites long list of Trump’s Russia contacts after Republicans call for his resignation

“I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic, and yes, I think it’s corrupt and evidence of collusion.”

A group of House Republicans on Thursday called on House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to resign from his post because he has repeatedly expressed concerns that President Donald Trump may have colluded with America’s political adversaries. In response, Schiff shot back with a detailed list of all of the times that Trump associates have had contact with Russians, admonishing his colleagues for normalizing that conduct, even if it stops short of a criminal conspiracy.

“I have always said that the question of whether this amounts to conspiracy is another matter,” Schiff said during the heated exchange. “But I do not think that conduct, criminal or not, is okay — and the day we do think that’s okay is the day we will look back and say, ‘that is the day America lost its way.’”

Reading a letter signed by nine Republican committee members calling for Schiff to step down as chairman, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) had claimed moments prior that Schiff’s “willingness to promote a demonstrably false narrative is alarming.”

View the complete March 28 article by Danielle McLean on the ThinkProgress website here.

Trump promises executive order that could strip colleges of funding if they don’t ‘support free speech’

A new executive order from the White House will aim to make federal research funding for colleges and universities contingent on their support for “free speech,” President Trump said Saturday.

The announcement, during Trump’s address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, appeared to target complaints by some university critics that institutions of higher education stifle right-wing viewpoints.

“If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they’ve got to allow people like Hayden and many great young people, and old people, to speak,” Trump said, bringing onstage a young conservative, Hayden Williams, who was physically attacked last month while tabling for a conservative organization at the University of California at Berkeley.

View the complete March 2 article by Brian Fung on The Washington Post website here.

Hill-HarrisX poll: 59 percent oppose Trump’s emergency declaration

Fifty-nine percent say they oppose President Trump‘s declaration of an emergency to build a wall on the Mexican border, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll released Wednesday.

The poll found that just 41 percent of registered voters support Trump’s decision, which has drawn lawsuits from 16 states and divided Republicans.

Trump announced the decision on Friday after Congress approved a new border security deal funding the Department of Homeland Security that fell well short of his demands for $5.7 billion in funding for border barriers

Trump declares national emergency at border

President Trump on Friday declared a national emergency to bypass Congress and spend roughly $8 billion on barriers along the southern border, a big step toward building his long-promised wall that also comes with significant political and legal risk.

Trump’s move, announced in a rambling, improvised address from the Rose Garden shortly after signing the declaration, will launch a fierce constitutional battle in the courts with lawmakers and outside groups who say the president overstepped his authority.

“I am going to be signing a national emergency,” Trump said after a long introduction that touched on trade, China, Syria and the caravans of immigrants that Trump made a political issue of ahead of last fall’s midterm elections.

View the complete February 15 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Trump: Being president is a ‘great loser’ because I can’t profit enough

Credit: Andy Buchanan, AFP, Getty Images

NOTE:  We remember during the 2016 campaign and during the Trump transition, how Mr. Trump spoke of how the businesses were being turned over to his sons to run and that he wouldn’t know what was happening there.  Sounds like that’s not happening, doesn’t it?  Anyone surprised?

Trump seems to think being president should work just like investing in real estate.

Trump described the office of the presidency itself like a real estate deal, calling it a “loser” because he claims he has been unable to make money from his position.

“I lost massive amounts of money doing this job,” Trump whined to the New York Times in a Thursday interview. “This is not the money. This is one of the great losers of all time. You know, fortunately, I don’t need money. This is one of the great losers of all time. But they’ll say that somebody from some country stayed at a hotel. And I’ll say, ‘Yeah.’ But I lose, I mean, the numbers are incredible.”

Trump’s comments aren’t just distasteful; they’re also false. He squeezes money out of the Oval Office and into his own pockets on a regular basis.