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Official Trump Swamp Thread: Still Corrupt as Fuck

Your tax dollars at work...

 
PhDeac said:
Anybody come up with the term Rubepublicans?

And since Republicans only care about enforcing the law against Democrats, enforcing the law at all will be seen as partisan.
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Seen a lot more of Repugnicants
 
Yep. 2017 has told us just how full of it Republicans are.
 
Everyone knew he owned real estate and golf courses when they elected him. Are we really going to spend the next 3-7 years making mountains out of molehills because Trump raised his ticket prices $75 ?
 
 
This is a good read from Ben Wittes:

Why Trump’s War on the Deep State Is Failing—So Far

In May of 2016, when Donald Trump was still a long-shot candidate for president, I warned with some specificity about what he would try to do to the U.S. Department of Justice and the law enforcement apparatus of the United States:

The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice and the larger law enforcement and regulatory apparatus of the United States government. The first reason you should fear a Donald Trump presidency is what he would do to the ordinary enforcement functions of the federal government, not the most extraordinary ones.
. . .
A prosecutor—and by extension, a tyrant president who directs that prosecutor—can harass or target almost anyone, and he can often do so without violating any law. He doesn't actually need to indict the person, though that can be fun. He needs only open an investigation; that alone can be ruinous. The standards for doing so, criminal predication, are not high. And the fabric of American federal law—criminal and civil law alike—is so vast that a huge number of people and institutions of consequence are ripe for some sort of meddling from authorities.
. . .
The Justice Department has some institutional defenses against this sort of thing, but they are far weaker than the intelligence community's institutional defenses against abuses. They mostly do not reside in statute or in . . . complex oversight structures. . . . They reside in the Levi Guidelines, in certain normative rules about contacts between the Justice Department and the White House, in norms that have developed over the years in the FBI. And they reside in the hearts of a lot of replaceable people.
. . .
What would a president need to do to shift the Justice Department to the crimes or civil infractions committed—or suspected—by Trump critics and opponents? He would need to appoint and get confirmed by the Senate the right attorney general. That's very doable. He'd want to keep his communications with that person limited. An unspoken understanding that the Justice Department's new priorities include crimes by the right sort of people would be better than the sort of chortling communications Richard Nixon and John Mitchell used to have.
. . .
Certainly, a bunch of pesky, scrupulous AUSAs might have to go. But that's not a problem. Make the environment hostile enough, and law firm life will start to look very attractive to them.

Yes, Trump might develop a problem with our redoubtable FBI director, who doesn't leave with the outgoing administration and has stared down a president once before. But so what? . . . [James] Comey will not be there forever anyway. And even without the FBI, and even using only the discretion it lawfully has, the Justice Department has remarkable fangs to bare when it chooses to bare them. NSA can only spy on people. Why bother with that when you can sue them?

As a statement of Trump’s aspiration, I could not—unfortunately—have been more spot-on. In the near-year he has been president, he has done or tried to do all of the things I flagged:

He has demanded substantive outcomes from investigations.

He has demanded investigations of political opponents.

He has raged against the norms that prevent these wishes from being fulfilled.

He has attacked—publicly and by name—people who have acted honorably to defend those norms.

He fired the redoubtable FBI director whom I flagged as an inconvenient bulwark—for precisely the reason that James Comey was functioning as an inconvenient bulwark.

He has harassed Comey’s management team and demanded publicly their replacement.

He has made the environment for those assistant U.S. attorneys committed to their jobs so uncomfortable that one literally sat in my office and told me that he was going to resign because “I don’t want to stand up in court any more and say, I’m [his name] and I represent the United States.”

He has appointed an attorney general he specifically intended to protect him and go after his opponents.

This is banana-republic-type stuff. One year into Trump’s term in office, his character has not changed. The president of the United States—as John Bellinger warned as early as December 2015 and as I elaborated on in March of 2016—remains the principal threat in the world to the national security of the United States. His aspirations are as profoundly undemocratic and hostile to the institutions of democratic governance as they have ever been. He announces as much in interview after interview, in tweet after tweet. The president has not changed, and he will not change. Whether he has grown or will grow is not even an interesting question.

The interesting question, one year in, is how the apparatus of democratic government is weathering his onslaught. The answer to this question is complicated but, I think, ultimately encouraging.

Read More: https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-trumps-war-deep-state-failing—so-far
 
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palmab03 said:
Everyone knew he owned real estate and golf courses when they elected him. Are we really going to spend the next 3-7 years making mountains out of molehills because Trump raised his ticket prices $75 ?
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Yeah. It’s disturbing that his supporters are not demanding transparency and even support these conflicts of interest.
 
palmab03 said:
Everyone knew he owned real estate and golf courses when they elected him. Are we really going to spend the next 3-7 years making mountains out of molehills because Trump raised his ticket prices $75 ?
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Yes.
 
I was under the impression that relationships mattered in business as well. Was I wrong?
 
Trump Nominee to Lead Indian Health Services Faces Claims of Misrepresentation

The HHS spokeswoman sent the Journal a series of statements by tribal leaders, citing Mr. Weaver’s qualifications. Three of them said Mr. Weaver “has worked with the IHS system for nearly two decades.” Asked by the Journal what constituted his IHS experience, the spokeswoman said he had needed the system as a patient, especially when he was a child, and pointed to his career in health care.
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Asked what evidence of his St. John’s roles Mr. Weaver offered, Ms. Talhelm said, Mr. Weaver at first couldn’t recall his titles at the hospital and provided a “list of nonspecific positions.”

Rhonda Foust, who worked in finance at the Joplin hospital from 1981 to 2010, said she doesn’t recall crossing paths with Mr. Weaver. “I was the budget coordinator during that whole time,” she said.“If this person was over budgets, I would have known them.”
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Add another investigation to the mix. Nice work assholes.

 
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