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While Trump has been fulminating with false accusations of “Treason” by Comey, McCabe, Strozk and Page for daring to investigate contacts by four people — three of whom had already left his campaign — and their hundreds of contacts with Russians, he’s also had Nancy Pelosi trying to herd the cats of the Democratic caucus into a coherent strategy that will ultimately reveal the depths of the Great Trump Cover-up.
Gradually, a few of the layers of that cover-up have begun to be peeled back as lawsuits by Trump attempting to block House subpoenas for his financial information have been knocked down one by one. Federal Judges have ruled against his attempts to block subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank and Capital One who have reportedly loaned TrumpCo over $2 Billion in the years since he apparently lost $1.1 Billion according to a set of tax returns from 1985-1994 obtained and released by the New York Times. NY Attorney General Letitia James now has copies of some of the Deutsche Bank documents.
Deutsche Bank has begun to provide records to New York Attorney General Leticia James in response to a subpoena for documents related to loans Deutsche Bank made to President Donald Trump, CNN reported Wednesday, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.
The subpoena followed testimony from former Trump fixer Michael Cohen to Congress that Trump inflated and deflated the valuation of his assets to suit his financial interests.
James issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank in early March. The New York Times reported at the time that the inquiry was civil in nature, rather than criminal. The subpoenas were for documents related to four Trump Organization real estate projects as well as Trump’s failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills, an effort Cohen mentioned in his testimony.
He’s also lost his suit to block his financial services firm Mazars USA LLP from complying with a House subpoena, that case is now being fast-tracked to the appeals court.
President Trump and the House appear to have reached a narrow agreement that would speed up an appeal in a case where the President is trying to stop a Congressional subpoena for information from his longtime accountant from being enforced.
In a late Wednesday filing in the D.C. circuit, Trump and the House jointly ask the D.C. appeals court to speed up its hearing of the case, which came after Trump hired personal attorneys to prevent his accountant from carrying out the subpoena.
Under the deal, Trump would get a stay of the subpoena’s enforcement until the case is decided, while House Democrats would get accelerated consideration of the case.
The motion came after D.C. federal judge Amit Mehta denied a request from Trumpto halt the subpoena’s enforcement on Monday, and after a federal judge in Manhattan denied a similar request on Wednesday regarding separate subpoenas to banks that had conducted business with Trump.
In addition to this the House Intelligence committee has reached an agreement that allows them to see all of the redacted portions of the Mueller report except those portions which involve the Federal Grand Jury without having to file charges of contempt of Congress against Attorney General Bill Barr.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) acknowledged Wednesday morning that he and the Department of Justice have reached a temporary accord as the DOJ agrees to provide counterintelligence information, and he cancelled a meeting to recommend that Attorney General William Barr be held in contempt.
However, Schiff was quick to add, the temporary cooperation has not made him forget that he still wants Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify.
“This, I should also mention however, is no substitute in any way, shape or form for the appearance of Bob Mueller before our committee and the Judiciary Committee,” he told reporters. “It’s no substitute for the appearance of Don McGahn and the other witnesses that have been subpoenaed to come into committee, but we are pleased that we are finally going to start receiving documents that we are entitled to from the Department of Justice.”
Step by step we are moving to a point where Mueller will likely testify before Congress but not before cameras, although he will be providing a written opening statement which should be interesting if it details exactly why he sent two letters complaining about Bill Barr “essential conclusions letter and also called him about it.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said Thursday night that special counsel Robert Mueller wants to testify privately and provide transcripts.
He told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Mueller is willing to give an opening statement, but that he wants the rest of his comments to be given in a closed-door session.
“He envisions himself correctly as a man of great rectitude and apolitical and he doesn’t want to participate in anything that he might regard as a political spectacle, especially if Republicans on the committee start asking him questions about about this stuff, the beginning of the investigation,” Nadler said by way of explanation. “I’m speculating really.
The key piece of information needed from Mueller of course is if not for the OLC opinion blocking the DOJ from indicting a sitting White House Resident, would he have indicted Trump? Michael Wolff is reporting in his upcoming book that Mueller had a 3 count obstruction indictment for Trump ready to go in his desk for a year, before he ultimately decided to shelve it, although other members of his team say that isn’t true.
The Guardian reports that Wolff’s upcoming book will claim that Mueller “drew up a three-count obstruction of justice indictment against Donald Trump before deciding to shelve it.”
olff claims that his knowledge of this supposed draft indictment is “based on internal documents given to me by sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel.”
According to Wolff, Mueller kept a copy of the indictment — which was purportedly titled, “United States of America against Donald J Trump, Defendant” — on his desk for a year. Wolff writes that the document shows Trump’s obstructive efforts “began on the seventh day of his administration,” starting with “national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russian representative[s], to the president’s efforts to have [former FBI director] James Comey protect Flynn, to Comey’s firing, to the president’s efforts to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation, to his attempt to cover up his son and son-in-law’s meeting with Russian governmental agents, to his moves to interfere with Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe’s testimony.”
However, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr tells the Guardian that the documents described in Wolff’s book “do not exist.”
Knowing Wolff, who’s previous book Fire and Fury has been pretty much proven correct about the atmosphere inside the White House over the last year, he either has the documents or he doesn’t. I think he has them, which puts things in an entirely differently light.
A few dozen House Democrats have recently called an official Impeach Inquiry because that would apparently give House subpoena’s more leverage and urgency in the courts — but as these cases have shown, that isn’t strictly necessary, yet. We’ll have to see when it comes to compelling the testimony of former White House Counsel Don McGahn on why he threatened to quit when Trump asked him to tell Jeff Sessions to “get rid of Mueller.”
Even though Trump has tried desperately to keep his taxes, financial records and various acts of obstruction under wraps with the ample help of Bill Barr who has decided to yet again re-re-re-investigate the circumstances of the entire Russia investigation yet again — that plan isn’t working.
They may try using bogus legal claims and executive privilege to delays matters, they may attempt to use the selective release of classified materials to again vilify the Obama DOJ and FBI for something, something and so-called “spying” but this plan is not going to work.
As Nancy Pelosi stated; Trump is part of a cover-up. It’s fun that her saying that gets under his skin, but the important thing is that it’s absolutely true. He’s been implementing the cover-up in plain sight. He’s been the beneficiary of Russia funding for decades, and he’s been willing to accept gifts including stolen emails and inside information for nearly as long. The person who committed anything like “Treason” here isn’t James Comey, Andrew McCabe or Peter Strozk who were investigating the Russians and his campaign, the person closest to a Traitor — is Trump.
Multiple Senate Republicans have announced that they’ll shutdown any attempt to Impeach and Remove Trump quickly because they are apparently too far in the tank to see the truth or do their constitutional duty. Democrats are going to have to keep digging, keep yanking out the truth and displaying it to the American people bit by bit. I think they should ultimately vote to Censure Trump based on what we already know and what else they find if only to put the official stamp of Congressional disapproval on this administration for the corruption and malfeasance.
In the end, they have to do enough damage to Trump’s campaign to ultimately make him completely unelectable in 2020, while also pointing out that they have passed over a hundred bills that the nation wants and need, but Republicans have been blocking them all. Trump needs to go, but so does McConnel, Lindsay Graham, John Cornyn and the Republican Senate Majority.
Here are the daily updates for the last week.
May 22nd —
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An IRS legal memo on Trump’s taxes was leaked to the Washington Post. The 10-page memo says turning over the documents “is mandatory, requiring the Secretary to disclose returns, and return information, requested by the tax-writing Chairs.”
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House Dems have a meeting and even the most frustrated who are demanding to start an Impeachment inquiry essentially agree with Pelosi’s plan to keep with investigations — for now — until they turn up something that could build a bipartisan consensus. [Nothing will do that IMO, but it could bring some more of the public around to Censure, him losing in 2020 and then getting prosecuted.] Afterward she states that “we believe Trump is engaged in a cover-up.”
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Schiff backs off on his contempt threat as DOJ agrees to allow House Intel access to the background intelligence sources behind the Mueller report, but still says he wants Mueller to testify.
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Amash responds to Trump calling him a “Loser.” “Okay.”
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Mnuchin dodges question on the IRS memo and ridiculously claims it “doesn’t contradict him.” He also apparently has pushed back the date on placing Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill which was setup by Obama.
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SHuckabee says Ben Carson is “doing a tremendous job.” [How exactly would she know?] He defends his “Oreo” gaffe claiming he just couldn't hear very well. [You don't talk very well either.]
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Trump — now mad about Pelosi’s “cover up” comment — walks into a planned infrastructure meeting with Chuck and Nancy but instead doesn’t sit down, gives them a harangue about her cover-up comment and storms out, then goes into the Rose Garden where again harangues the press about “No collusion, No obstruction” with a pre-positioned podium and a pre-made sign about Mueller’s report that says the same thing, that it cost too much, and he’s been the most harassed, most transparent WH Resident Evah! [Cheap Stunt Tantrum much? And no he hasn’t on either count, not compared to Watergate, Iran-Contra or Whitewater which cost ($72 Million) twice as much as Mueller’s report at $36 Million.] He demands that he won’t work with Congress until they stop investigating him.
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On the way out the WH Pelosi ran into Kellyanne who asked if she had a “direct response” to Trump’s litany of complaints, to which she said she would respond to Trump and that she doesn’t communicate through staff. So Kellyanne says “That's very pro-woman of you.” [Actually, it’s how things are done between Constitutional leaders — they don’t pass notes like 4th graders in class.]
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Pelosi says that Trump “lacks confidence” to make the Infrastructure deal,
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Trump sarcastically thanks Pelosi for her prayers. “I’m sure you mean it.” [Yeah, she did, because she actually also said she was praying for our nation with you in the White House.]
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Huffington Post reports that Trump’s nearly weekly Golf Trips have cost tax-payers $106 Million — which is 3 times the cost of the Mueller investigation.
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NY Legislature passes a bill to allow release of Trump State Tax returns to Congress.
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A Federal Judge slaps down Trump’s attempt to block the subpoena for his financial information from Duetsche Bank and Capital One saying in his ruling that their case “isn’t serious.”
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The Devos family pulls their support for Justin Amash, but they say it’s not because he called for Trump to be Impeached, they claim it’s because of a “lack of representation for their district” in Michigan.
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Jeff Toobin calls the Duetsche Bank ruling a “very important win for Dems.”
May 23rd —
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Pelosi says that Trump had a “temper tantrum” in the infrastructure meeting. [Actually this was his second after he stormed out of the Immigration funding meeting then shut down the Government in December.]
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WaPo reports that there is bipartisan anger over a memo by Acting SecDef Shanahan which restricts info that can be shared with Congress.
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Trump rants in response to Tillerson saying that he was “totally ill-prepared to be Secretary of State.” [Yes, he is a four-year-old. This adds Tillerson to a long list of former Trump employees who he later trashed, after they quit or were fired.]
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Trump and House lawyers agree to ask the Judge to speed up the appeal for the Mazars USA subpoena lawsuit.
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Bank CEO Stephen Calk has been charged with financial institution bribery for $16 million in loans he extended Paul Manafort in late 2016 and early 2017, allegedly in the hope that Manafort would secure him a position in Trump’s cabinet as Undersecretary of the Army.
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Lindsey Graham laments poor Trump and his 2-year “political rectal exam.” [Oh, we have yet to get to the real political colonoscopy.]
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Trump plans another $16 Billion Bail Out for farmers suffering from his trade war, which is basically giving some of the tariff tax money back to them.
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Kellyanne whines that Pelosi treats her “like a maid.” [Well, you are constantly trying to sweep Trump’s trash under the rug.]
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Pelosi does a press conference about yesterday’s flap. She refuses to answer questions about Kellyanne, that Trump threw a temper tantrum, that he perhaps needs his staff or family to give him an intervention.
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Trump responds by saying that “Pelosi has lost it” claiming “she’s not like she used to be” and then goes around the room of his staffers asking them if he was “very calm” as he acted like a petulant child. Naturally they all say he was calm.
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Justin Amash lays out the case for Impeachment in 20 Tweets.
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Suddenly a faked edited video appears on Youtube and social media of Pelosi’s comments which makes her sound like a stammering drunk. Trump and Giuliani both retweet it.
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CNN reports that the FBI has grown alarmed by the rise in White Supremacist Violence in recent months. [Yeah, no shit.]
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Trump again says that Comey, McCabe, Page and Strozk are “Traitors” for trying to investigate Russia’s contacts with his campaign, [Ok, well, technically he said for “trying to get him out of office” and something about making a the mistake of “not using their private server” — when he wasn’t in office when they said that, Strozk was talking about him losing in the election which is what he testified to the IG and to Congress, and they didn’t have a “private server”, they were using text messages on their FBI issued phones] and even though they’ve all already been investigated by the IG once over the Clinton case, and are currently being looked at by both the IG, US Attorney John Huber in Utah and US Attorney John Durham in Connecticut.
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Trump tweets ““Their heart is not into Infrastructure, lower drug prices, pre-existing conditions and our great Vets,” Trump tweeted. “All they are geared up to do, six committees, is squander time, day after day, trying to find anything which will be bad for me.” However, they’ve pass bills in the House on nearly all these subjects already.
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Shuckabee claims this Congress has “Done Nothing” so far, a bogus claim which is echoed by Kayleagh McEnany on CNN, except that they've passed 148 Bills so far. McEnany claims after she’s corrected that the last Congress passed “twice as many” however they passed a total of 721 bills over two years. If you extrapolate 148 bills in four months to two years it comes to a projection of 888 if they maintain this pace. The problem is really that the Senate is ignoring all the Bills the House passes.
May 24th —
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NYTimes argues that Pelosi sparked this argument with Trump as part of her long-term Impeachment strategy by goading Trump into acting like a petulant asshole, but then that’s his default setting.
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Deutsche Bank begins to comply with the Congressional Subpoena for Trump’s financial and tax information.
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British PM Theresa May admits defeat on Brexit and resigns.
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Judiciary Chairman Nadler says that Meuller wants to testify privately instead of in front of cameras, but he is willing to provide an opening statement.
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Scarborough says people close to Trump are worried that he’s “pre-dementia.”
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Trump announces that he is declassifying all of the underlying intelligence data behind the Mueller report for AG Barr to review and release to the public and his team continues to attempt to weaponize the faked Pelosi video in the same way they did with the video of Hillary Clinton passing out because of the flu at the 9/11 memorial in 2016.
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Trump keeps asking the Pentagon the give the Wall Construction contact to Fisher Industries, a company owned by a prominent GOP donor and Fox News Guest. His Admin also implement rules that would roll back protections for Trans-gender persons under the ACA for “religious reasons.”
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Planned Parenthood and the ACLU sue over the new abortion ban in Alabama.
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Fox’s Pete Hegsworth keeps up the pressure for Trump to pardon War Criminals.
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Trump attorneys plan to appeal the Duetsche Bank ruling.
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis has ordered J. Christian Adams — a former member of Trump’s voter fraud commission who has been sued for defamation for his reports claiming mass fraud — to sit for another deposition in the case, after a last-minute discovery dump raised new questions about how the reports came together.
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Trump continues his attacks on Pelosi claiming he was “just responding in kind" and “You think Nancy is the same as she was, she’s not!” [How would the right-wing know, they never dealt with her only the bogey-woman version of her?] Then he hints that he might pardon convicted War Criminals because “they’ve been treated very unfairly.” [I think the unarmed people they murdered were treated worse.]
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Trump loyalist are ecstatic about his declassification order for AG Barr. “He’s unleashed the Kraken!” [I think they’re going to find he’s unleashed a Nothing-Burger Royal with Cheese, but Barr will undoubtedly try to make some Molehill Mountains out of obscure irrelevant trivia along the way.]
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DNI Coats pretends he has confidence in Barr: “I am confident that the Attorney General will work with the [intelligence community] in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk,” [Yeah right, sure he will. We already know that isn’t true because they’ve outed the ID of two confidential informants who had tried to question Papadopoulos about his contacts with Russia.]
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Adam Schiff says: “The potential selective release of material that implicates sources and methods will undermine the Intelligence Community’s efforts to gather intelligence, including on future attacks on our elections as well as other key intelligence targets, putting not only sources at risk, but the nation’s security along with them,” [Yep, but who cares about that when they’ve got to get Trump’s fat arse out of the embers of the Mueller fire?]
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Federal Judge blocks Mississippi abortion ban. [That’s two so far.]
May 25th —
May 26th —
May 27th —
May 28th —
