monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

...when it comes to jaw-dropping gall, nothing else McConnell said approached this:

Quote:

Maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened. Maybe tampering with our democracy wouldn’t have seemed so very tempting. Instead, the previous administration sent the Kremlin the signal they could get away with almost anything.

That’s right: Russia’s comprehensive campaign to help Trump get elected was … President Barack Obama’s fault. That would be absurd even if you didn’t know McConnell’s particular history on this issue. But his words are even more appalling because no one did more to hinder reaction to Russia’s attack on our election system than McConnell himself.

Let’s recall what happened in September 2016: The Obama administration gathered congressional leaders from both parties together to explain what Russia was doing. Here’s what happened next:

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.


So a joint statement never happened. You can argue that it wouldn’t have made much difference, or that there was more the Obama administration could have done. But McConnell doesn’t care about that; it’s not like he’s advocating strong measures now to deter Russian involvement in the 2020 election.

He has one goal today, just as he did on that day in 2016: Protect Trump. That means fighting against anything resembling a full accounting, let alone accountability.

...when it comes to jaw-dropping gall, nothing else McConnell said approached this:

Quote:

Maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened. Maybe tampering with our democracy wouldn't have seemed so very tempting. Instead, the previous administration sent the Kremlin the signal they could get away with almost anything.

That's right: Russia's comprehensive campaign to help Trump get elected was ... President Barack Obama's fault.

Quote:

"Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice."

This letter written by former federal prosecutors now has over 700 signatories.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Months before evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s game-changing presidential endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, Falwell asked Trump fixer Michael Cohen for a personal favor, Cohen said in a recorded conversation reviewed by Reuters.

Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what Cohen described as racy “personal” photographs -- the sort that would typically be kept “between husband and wife,” Cohen said in the taped conversation.
According to a source familiar with Cohen’s thinking, the person who possessed the photos destroyed them after Cohen intervened on the Falwells' behalf.

The Falwells, through a lawyer, declined to comment for this article.
Cohen, who began a three-year prison sentence this week for federal campaign violations and lying to Congress, recounted his involvement in the matter in a recording made surreptitiously by comedian Tom Arnold on March 25. Portions of the recording -- in which Cohen appeared to disavow parts of his guilty plea -- were first reported April 24 by The Wall Street Journal.

The Falwells enlisted Cohen’s help in 2015, according to the source familiar with Cohen’s thinking, the year Trump announced his presidential candidacy. At the time, Cohen was Trump’s confidant and personal lawyer, and he worked for the Trump Organization.

The Falwells wanted to keep “a bunch of photographs, personal photographs” from becoming public, Cohen told Arnold. “I actually have one of the photos,” he said, without going into specifics. “It’s terrible.”
Cohen would later prove successful in another matter involving Falwell, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Cohen helped persuade Falwell to issue his endorsement of Trump’s presidential candidacy at a critical moment, they said: just before the Iowa caucuses. Falwell subsequently barnstormed with Trump and vouched for the candidate’s Christian virtues.

Reuters has no evidence that Falwell’s endorsement of Trump was related to Cohen’s involvement in the photo matter. The source familiar with Cohen’s thinking insisted the endorsement and the help with the photographs were separate issues.

Cohen’s connection to the Falwells sheds light on the formidable alliance between Trump and a man who, through his university, is one of the most influential evangelical figures in America. Falwell’s backing helped galvanize evangelicals and persuaded many Christians concerned about Trump’s past behavior to embrace him as a repentant sinner.

Falwell’s support for Trump has not wavered throughout the New York celebrity-politician’s own tribulations, including the Access Hollywood recording of Trump talking about grabbing women’s genitals and payoffs made by Cohen to hide Trump’s extramarital affairs. This past weekend, Falwell tweeted that “Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term” to make up for the two years of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

BLOCKBUSTER ENDORSEMENT

Falwell’s endorsement of Trump, however, did surprise some students and staff at Liberty University, the school in Lynchburg, Virginia, founded by Falwell’s father, Jerry. It was at Liberty where fellow Republican presidential candidate and major Trump rival Ted Cruz had chosen to launch his campaign the previous year. Cruz’s father was an evangelical preacher, much like Falwell’s father; Trump has been married three times and divorced twice. For years, prior to running for president, Trump boasted of his sexual exploits and supported a host of social positions, such as abortion rights, that run counter to beliefs espoused by Falwell.

Although Falwell declined interview requests for this story, he has said repeatedly that he endorsed Trump because Trump was the strongest candidate, had significant experience running a business, and had the right vision for the country.

The connection between Trump and Falwell goes back years. In 2012, Trump gave the convocation at Liberty University. One link between Trump and the couple appears to have been Cohen, a now-disbarred New York lawyer who formed a close bond with the Falwells.

During the campaign, Cohen worked closely with Liberty University to help promote Trump’s candidacy. It was around that time that Cohen heard from the Falwells about the photographs, said the source familiar with Cohen’s thinking.

The Falwells told Cohen that someone had obtained photographs that were embarrassing to them, and was demanding money, the source said. Reuters was unable to determine who made the demand. The source said Cohen flew to Florida and soon met with an attorney for the person with the photographs. Cohen spoke with the attorney, telling the lawyer that his client was committing a crime, and that law enforcement authorities would be called if the demands didn’t stop, the source said.

The matter was soon resolved, the source said, and the lawyer told Cohen that all of the photographs were destroyed.

Months later, in early 2016, Trump faced what seemed like an enormous challenge. The Iowa caucus was coming up, and Cohen -- then deeply loyal to Trump -- was concerned about how Trump would fare, the source said.
Cohen felt Trump “was being slaughtered in that community,” and “didn’t want to see him embarrassed or, you know, without support,” said the source familiar with Cohen’s thinking. Cohen repeatedly reached out to Jerry Falwell, and pleaded with him to back Trump, the source said.

Soon after, according to this account, Falwell made his historic announcement. “I am proud to offer my endorsement of Donald J. Trump for President of the United States,” Falwell was quoted saying in a statement issued by the Trump campaign. “He is a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again.”

Decade in the Red: Trump Tax Figures Show Over $1 Billion in Business Losses

Newly obtained tax information reveals that from 1985 to 1994, Donald J. Trump’s businesses were in far bleaker condition than was previously known.

By RUSS BUETTNER and SUSANNE CRAIG

May 7, 2019
By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career — an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

...Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family.

...But the prospect of President Trump terrified him. It wasn’t because of Trump’s ideology—Schwartz doubted that he had one. The problem was Trump’s personality, which he considered pathologically impulsive and self-centered.

...If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”

Jane Mayer's

Isaac Arnsdorf, Lena Groeger, and Daniela Porat went through Trump’s claims about how his personal intervention with individual companies would create jobs, a total of 8.9 million. The actual number of jobs created? Fewer than 800.

As Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham once said of impeaching President Nixon: “the day Richard Nixon failed to answer that subpoena is the day that he was subject to impeachment because he took the power from Congress over the impeachment process and he became the judge and jury.” A subpoena is a tool that helps ensure Congress can gather information for the American people.

Two students opened fire Tuesday inside a Colorado charter school near Columbine High School, killing one classmate and injuring eight others before being taken into custody, authorities said.

Administrators at STEM School, a K-12 charter in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, reported hearing gunshots fired at 1:53 p.m. Deputies from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office arrived on the scene two minutes later and engaged two suspects.

Sheriff Tony Spurlock said the suspects, one adult man and one juvenile boy, were taken into custody. Both are students at the school, and officials do not believe there were any additional suspects.

In Nixon's case there was a crime. They were not searching for one.

I respectfully dissent.

The hysterics from the left is comical.

A monument to a Lithuanian hero in the US city of Chicago has prompted a row over World War Two after criticism from Russia and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas commanded Lithuania's resistance to Soviet occupation after World War Two.

But the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which researches the Holocaust, says he also led a vigilante gang that persecuted Jews after the 1941 Nazi invasion.

Lithuania has accused Russia of making false statements.

The foreign ministry said on Tuesday it had summoned the Russian embassy representative in Vilnius in protest and called on Moscow to stop spreading disinformation about Ramanauskas's "impeccable reputation".

It has also accused the Simon Wiesenthal Center of making false accusations.

But Efraim Zuroff, the Center's head in Jerusalem, said that Lithuania had to confront its history. "They're not telling the people the truth and they're not facing the truth," he told the BBC.

You're getting crazier by the minute... what a bunch of bull.