Donald Trump

mickeyrat

WAPO Opinion piece...

Will the Supreme Court permit Trump to be above the law?
By Ruth Marcus
May 10 at 3:38 PM ET
“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” So said President Trump last year, and he has been doing his best ever since to embody that grotesquely inflated constitutional self-conception.

Thus, Trump blocked Anthony S. Fauci from testifying this week before the House. “The House is a setup,” Trump proclaimed. Yes, set up by the Constitution, as part of a coequal branch.

Thus, Trump announced that the administration, abandoning its duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, would not defend the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

Thus, administration lawyers urged the federal appeals court in Washington to declare that Congress has no right to go to court to enforce subpoenas of executive branch officials and, separately, no standing to sue over White House redirection — that is, hijacking — of appropriated funds to build the border wall.

And thus, Trump’s lawyers — both his private counsel and administration lawyers supposedly representing the presidency — will be before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, to argue against the legitimacy of subpoenas by Congress and a state grand jury for Trump’s financial records.

It’s important to fit these cases into the skewed architecture of his legal worldview: A sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted; the only remedy is impeachment. However, the president is free to direct officials not to testify or provide documents when he deems the impeachment a “hoax.” If the House wants the material, it should issue a subpoena, except it can’t; see the federal appeals court case, above.

Now, at the Supreme Court, the question isn’t whether Trump can be indicted or impeached — it’s whether he or his businesses can be investigated by anyone at all. Not for anything he’s done as president, but in his private life. Not by demanding documents or testimony from him, but from third parties — his company, accountants and bankers.

In the world according to Trump, Article II shields him from this vexatious nonsense. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said on the “Access Hollywood” tape. Trump’s Article II corollary: When you’re a president, you don’t have to let them do it.

The first two cases involve subpoenas issued by House committees to Trump’s accounting firm and the banks that lent him money for various projects. Trump argues that the subpoenas exceed the bounds of Congress’s investigative authority. The Justice Department asserts that courts should require extra justification for such subpoenas when the president is involved because this use of congressional power “poses a serious risk of harassing the President and distracting him from his constitutional duties.”

Pardon me while I guffaw — and flash back to the Whitewater inquiry, when conservatives seemed to have no such compunctions about subpoenas for documents and testimony from, yes, the sitting president’s personal accountants, and for Hillary Clinton’s law firm billing records. While an independent counsel was investigating the Clintons’ real estate investments.

Guffawing, too, over the Trump lawyers’ self-pitying lament that Democrats, upon retaking the House after the 2018 midterms, unleashed a barrage of subpoenas. Not only did Republicans do the same to a Democratic president when they regained control in 2010 but, over Democratic protests, they relaxed the subpoena rules to let the majority act unilaterally.

Every administration chafes at congressional investigations; of course there are political motivations. That is part of the checks and balances the Founders envisioned. Effectively dismantling congressional oversight, as Trump wants, would not further the arrangement the Founders envisioned; it would undermine it.

The third case involves a state grand jury investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The grand jury subpoenaed the Trump Organization and Mazars, Trump’s accounting firm, for tax and financial records. In arguing that the subpoena should be quashed, Trump goes far beyond contending that a sitting president can’t be indicted — he asserts that he can’t even be investigated. He is “absolutely immune” from “criminal process.”

His lawyers ignore that a unanimous Supreme Court ordered President Richard M. Nixon to turn over Watergate tapes to a federal grand jury. They ignore that a unanimous court allowed Paula Jones’s civil sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office. “Like indictment itself, criminal process of this kind will inevitably distract the President from his unique responsibilities and burden his ability to act confidently and decisively while in office,” the lawyers contend. “It also stigmatizes the President in ways that will frustrate his ability to effectively represent the United States in both domestic and foreign affairs.”

Oh, please. It would be a problem if multiple local prosecutors were besieging a president with subpoenas, but that’s not what’s going on here. Vance has ample reason to investigate the goings-on at the Trump Organization. That can be accomplished without “distracting” or “stigmatizing” the president. Preventing the prosecutor from doing his work would not only insulate the president, it would also shield others subject to investigation so long as Trump is in office. “No principle of constitutional law justifies that outcome,” Vance writes.

Unless it is the Trumpian principle, that Article II gives him “the right to do whatever I want.” It is up to the justices — Article III — to renounce this dangerous misconception.

Bentleyspop

Another example of how to be a mature adult man....

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1259499248598626305?s=19

kce8

^ Jezuz, miss this guy and I'm still shaken that your country has to endure this human joke. 
It is also deeply sad for the whole world that this couple is no longer able to show loving and caring leadership to people. Well, unfortunately we often only know afterwards how good we had it when it is too late ....
Still hoping things will get better soon!

Did the trumpet tweed about Mother's Day? I'm curious to see how he put it ...

ikiT

RoleModelsinBlood31 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

Anyone sick of winning yet?

Nope! I am loving this shit unraveling.  Word on the street is now there’s smoking gun documents going back to the Obama WH and the ensuing coverup that led to where we are today with illegal FISA tampering, spying, leaking of docs, and basic sleeze because they didn’t like trump and wanted another Clinton. I remember the last time a president spied on another candidate and what happened to him, do you?  Here’s a hint- he stepped down before he was impeached, and his last name was Nixon.

 I keep thinking this can’t get any more interesting but it’s all unraveling right before our eyes!! I just read text messages from Swalwell to Caputo where he is threatening the dude at 12:30 in the morning!  Lol, people are shaking in their damn boots because the old chickies have come home to roost!!

Literally "the okey doke". 
Subject changing is fun, and a tactic that's been worn the eff out by the Trumpito messaging machine.

Condemn (so the cheap seats know) those white supremes down in Georgia or STFU.  Seriously.

ikiT

ROUNDING up mf'ers at the airport?   What could possibly go wrong?

No thanks.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cdc-scientists-overruled-in-white-house-push-to-restart-airport-fever-screenings-for-covid-19/ar-BB13QhnH

Gern Blansten

ikiT said:

As of last night Judge Jeannie Pirro was pushing a Jim Comey Barack Obama Andrew McCabe alterna-story on Fox News. 
No mention of not 75k dead, or a TANKED economy, OR 3 quarantined Coronavirus task force members.

Head on a swivel cause the LIES keep coming.

There is discussion that Obama, Comey, even Biden will be arrested for interfering in the 2016 election.  These people are fucking insane.

Halifax2TheMax

Gern Blansten said:

ikiT said:

As of last night Judge Jeannie Pirro was pushing a Jim Comey Barack Obama Andrew McCabe alterna-story on Fox News. 
No mention of not 75k dead, or a TANKED economy, OR 3 quarantined Coronavirus task force members.

Head on a swivel cause the LIES keep coming.

There is discussion that Obama, Comey, even Biden will be arrested for interfering in the 2016 election.  These people are fucking insane.

Except, how did any of those deep staters interfere? Do the deplorables not know the timeline of when the Russian collusion delusion was made public? Including the allegations in the Steele Dossier?

Bentleyspop

Gern Blansten said:

ikiT said:

As of last night Judge Jeannie Pirro was pushing a Jim Comey Barack Obama Andrew McCabe alterna-story on Fox News. 
No mention of not 75k dead, or a TANKED economy, OR 3 quarantined Coronavirus task force members.

Head on a swivel cause the LIES keep coming.

There is discussion that Obama, Comey, even Biden will be arrested for interfering in the 2016 election.  These people are fucking insane.

Where is this "discussion" taking place?
infowars?
newsmax?
daily stormer?
daily caller?
breitbart?
rt?
oan?
focksnooze?

Gern Blansten

Bentleyspop said:

Gern Blansten said:

ikiT said:

As of last night Judge Jeannie Pirro was pushing a Jim Comey Barack Obama Andrew McCabe alterna-story on Fox News. 
No mention of not 75k dead, or a TANKED economy, OR 3 quarantined Coronavirus task force members.

Head on a swivel cause the LIES keep coming.

There is discussion that Obama, Comey, even Biden will be arrested for interfering in the 2016 election.  These people are fucking insane.

Where is this "discussion" taking place?
infowars?
newsmax?
daily stormer?
daily caller?
breitbart?
rt?
oan?
focksnooze?

yes...the normal non news sources for idiots

HughFreakingDillon

I saw obamagate trending on twitter last night. late last night. the right are frothing at the mouth, thinking their n***** is finally going to get lynched. 

everyone else who is sane and not a dirtbag racist knows this is just the trolls coming out. 

Bentleyspop

HughFreakingDillon said:

I saw obamagate trending on twitter last night. late last night. the right are frothing at the mouth, thinking their n***** is finally going to get lynched. 

everyone else who is sane and not a dirtbag racist knows this is just the trolls coming out. 

trolls, conspiracy theorists, racists, white supremacists, supporters of the currently elected president, all one and the same.

ikiT

VICE NEWS PHOTO 05112020 CAPTION As the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus closed in on 80,000, President Donald Trump spent Mother's Day on Twitter, boosting Qanon conspiracy theorists, and rage-tweeting about Barack Obama, Michael Flynn, the Russia investigation, and the media. 

Mike Pence has it.
They ALL about to get sick, and they still trying to change the subject.
I'm staying home.

Kat

This is the scorched earth campaigning we've been hearing was coming. It's extremely ugly and we need to make sure people vote these people out. I'm ready.

ikiT

vote

gimmesometruth27

that twitter rant yesterday was legit crazy.

this is what happens when his family does not want him around and he is alone with his phone.

The Juggler

gimmesometruth27 said:

that twitter rant yesterday was legit crazy.

this is what happens when his family does not want him around and he is alone with his phone.

125 tweets or something. Around 80 were before noon. 

HughFreakingDillon

The Juggler said:

gimmesometruth27 said:

that twitter rant yesterday was legit crazy.

this is what happens when his family does not want him around and he is alone with his phone.

125 tweets or something. Around 80 were before noon. 

and people are actually knee-deep in his bullshit and believing it. we have at least one active member here that honestly believes obama is going to prison, and trump isn't. like, wtf?

JimmyV

World would be a better place if this guy just went off and fell in love. 

gimmesometruth27

JimmyV said:

World would be a better place if this guy just went off and fell in love. 

he loves himself so much he is incapable of loving anybody else. not his wives, not his kids, aside from ivanka, and definitely not his support staff.

Halifax2TheMax

Team Trump Treason at the podium. He’s reading as fast as he can with the occasional ad lib that makes him sound, well, stoned. He’s a very stable genius of brilliant brilliance in all its brilliancy.