Drain the swamp!

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How about this for swamp, Congress, which should hold the executive to account, instead decides to protect it from investigations, whatever the outcome of that investigation!

For the past 17 months, the investigations led by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) have looked to anyone with eyes like they’re chiefly about protecting President Trump. Now a new tape of Nunes speaking at a fundraiser, obtained by The Rachel Maddow Show, makes indisputably clear that that is indeed his aim — even, he says, if special counsel Robert Mueller finds presidential wrongdoing. “If Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones,” Nunes says on the tape, referring to his colleagues in the GOP-controlled House. “Which is really the danger.” He continues: “That’s why I keep — and thank you for saying it, by the way — I mean, we have to keep all these seats. We have to keep the majority. If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.” The logic is obvious, albeit cynical. Mueller really may find wrongdoing from Trump, Nunes effectively admits, and if he does, the president will need a House GOP majority to boldly look the other way. 

In a sense, it’s shocking that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee would reveal that his goal isn’t to get to the bottom of Russian interference in US politics, and find out whether President Trump or his associates were involved in it — but rather, to protect the president in case investigators refuse to “clear” him. But of course, Nunes has been doing this in public view for nearly a year and a half now. He’s seemed largely indifferent to questions of the Trump campaign and Russian interference. Instead, he’s has focused his work on trying to investigate the investigators themselves — aggressively aiming his subpoena power at the Justice Department, to try to find whatever documents and information he can that he can use to discredit the investigation.

Devin Nunes tape tells us what we knew: he’s all about protecting Trump - Vox

Indicted Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) spent more than $200,000 in campaign funds since mid-2017 to pay the law firm defending him against securities fraud and insider trading charges, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show. Collins's campaign paid law firm Baker Hostetler almost monthly for legal services related to the ethics inquiries into Collins, a spokesman for the lawmaker's legal team told The Hill.

Collins used campaign funds to pay for legal services for a year | TheHill

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And then we have this for swamp..

Russia isn’t the only foreign danger to our democracy. The trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, reveals another. It shows that Manafort hired a small army of American lawyers and lobbyists from both parties to influence U.S. lawmakers on behalf of Kremlin-connected former Ukrainian strongman, Viktor F. Yanukovych, These were essentially laundered bribes – from Yanukovych through Washington-based influence peddlers, then on to U.S. politicians through the political action committees run by those influence peddlers. 

A similar kind of laundered bribe from abroad occurred recently after the Chinese telecom giant ZTE was caught red-handed violating international sanctions on Iran. When the Commerce Department imposed penalties on the firm, ZTE hired the big Washington firm Hogan Lovells – which got Trump to lift the sanctions. The timing was curious. Just before Trump came to ZTE’s rescue, Chinese state enterprises agreed to give $500 million in loans to a project in Indonesia that included Trump-branded hotels, residences and golf courses – funneling millions of dollars into Trump’s pockets.

When Congress threatened to reinstate the penalties on ZTE nonetheless, Hogan Lovells turned its sights on lawmakers. The firm’s political action committee made fat donations to legislators who had the power to reduce the penalties. The strategy paid off. Last Wednesday, the Senate passed a bill containing far weaker sanctions on ZTE than lawmakers originally intended. The Trump administration is also ending the requirement that nonprofit groups that engage in political activity disclose the names of their large donors – another loophole through which foreign money can stream in to influence American politics. All this raises the fundamental question of what we mean by national security..

Robert Reich

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Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers have filed a request in federal court to halt a lawsuit surrounding President Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., while they file an appeal, a move that would stop the release of the property’s financial records on the property. The request was made to U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte, who last month ruled that the lawsuit — alleging that Trump was profiting from foreign governments spending money at his D.C. hotel in violation of the Emoluments Clause — could move forward.

DOJ lawyers seek to stop release of Trump financial records | TheHill

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And then this..

Last February, shortly after Peter O’Rourke became chief of staff for the Department of Veterans Affairs, he received an email from Bruce Moskowitz with his input on a new mental health initiative for the VA. “Received,” O’Rourke replied. “I will begin a project plan and develop a timeline for action.” O’Rourke treated the email as an order, but Moskowitz is not his boss. In fact, he is not even a government official. Moskowitz is a Palm Beach doctor who helps wealthy people obtain high-service “concierge” medical care.

More to the point, he is one-third of an informal council that is exerting sweeping influence on the VA from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. The troika is led by Ike Perlmutter, the reclusive chairman of Marvel Entertainment, who is a longtime acquaintance of President Trump’s. The third member is a lawyer named Marc Sherman. None of them has ever served in the U.S. military or government. Yet from a thousand miles away, they have leaned on VA officials and steered policies affecting millions of Americans. They have remained hidden except to a few VA insiders, who have come to call them “the Mar-a-Lago Crowd.”

The Shadow Rulers of the VA — ProPublica

Substantial article from ProPublica

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It turns out Mueller is a much better swamp drainer than Trump..

The thought that must keep Michael Cohen up at night as he surrenders to the FBI in advance of pleading guilty to $20 million in bank fraud and other crimes is the knowledge that it’s almost inconceivable he’d have faced prosecution if not for the fact that his former boss got himself elected president of the United States. The same is true, of course, of Paul Manafort, another former employee of Trump’s. Indeed, Manafort’s attorneys made the argument in court — and the judge seemed somewhat sympathetic — that in effect, the whole prosecution was illegitimate because everyone knew special counsel Robert Mueller was only bringing the case because he was hoping to turn Manafort into a cooperating witness.

Perhaps for that reason, Mueller’s team has had nothing to do with the Cohen prosecution, simply turning over evidence it uncovered to the US attorney’s office in New York and letting them handle it. Still, the fact remains that the initial inquiry only came to light because of Cohen’s association with Trump. All of which is to say that while the first-order political upshot of the Cohen and Manafort cases is that Trump seems to associate with an awful lot of criminals, the more disturbing implication is that there are a lot of white-collar criminals out there who aren’t being prosecuted because their lives don’t happen to intersect with a special counsel investigation.

Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and a failure to act on white-collar crime - Vox

And then of course there is Trump himself..

Trump himself got his start as a junior partner in his father’s real estate business, operating in the outer boroughs of New York City. And he got his start as a celebrity with a New York Times article detailing federal housing discrimination charges brought against him and his father. The charges were, ultimately, settled without admission of fault — something that would be a pattern for Trump over the years. That his first foray into the real estate business involved criminal acts didn’t stop him from continuing in that business. When he later branched out into casinos, he got caught accepting an illegal loan from his father to stay afloatand got off with a slap on the wrist and was allowed to continue in that business as well.

From his empty-box tax scam to money laundering at his casinos to racial discrimination in his apartments to Federal Trade Commission violations for his stock purchases to Securities and Exchange Commission violations for his financial reporting, Trump has spent his entire career breaking various laws, getting caught, and then essentially plowing ahead unharmed. When he was caught engaging in illegal racial discrimination to please a mob boss, he paid a fine. There was no sense that this was a repeated pattern of violating racial discrimination law, and certainly no desire to take a closer look at his various personal and professional connections to the Mafia. Even as late as the post-election transition period, Trump was allowed to settle a lawsuit about defrauding customers of his fake university (interestingly, the fact that the university was fake was not, itself, actionable fraud at all) rather than truly face the music.

Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and a failure to act on white-collar crime - Vox

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Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and his wife have been indicted on charges of using $250,000 in campaign money for personal expenses and for falsifying campaign finance records. The big picture: The Department of Justice had been investigating Hunter for more than a year, after hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditures ranging from an Italian vacation to dental work to bar tabs were discovered on his campaign credit card. Hunter served as co-chair of the Trump campaign’s U.S. House Leadership Committee with Rep. Chris Collins, who was arrested on charges of securities fraud earlier this month.

Axios

And then there is this:

   

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Some of this stuff is just plain weird..

Research proposals are being reviewed by Zinke’s old buddy Steve The person who has been assigned to lead this political review of research proposals is Steve Howke, technically a senior adviser to Acting Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management, and Budget Scott Cameron at DOI. If you are the naive sort, not yet thoroughly given over to cynicism, you might reasonably ask: What sort of qualifications does Howke have to be reviewing scientific research proposals? Is he a scientist himself? A researcher? A staffer familiar with grant proposals? Someone who has literally ever worked in government?

Ha ha, no. Howke is — and I am not making this up — an old football buddy of Zinke’s. He went to school with Zinke from kindergarten through Whitefish High School in Montana, where they played on the team together. He considers Zinke a “close friend” and supported his campaign for House. And as for his qualifications, “Howke’s highest degree is a bachelor’s in business administration,” Pickett reports. “Until Zinke appointed him ... Howke had spent his entire career working in credit unions.”

Ryan Zinke’s old football buddy is reviewing climate research at Interior. Seriously. - Vox

The purpose, apart from the crony aspect of it is to decrease funding for climate research.

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Duncan Hunter and his wife are accused of campaign fund fraud and even House speaker Paul Ryan had to remove him from his duties in the House. There is also a large paper trail of the fraud. But what is Hunter saying himself? Well, predictably:

"This is modern politics and modern media, mixed in with law enforcement that has a political agenda," Hunter said to the local ABC News affiliate KGTV on Wednesday. "This is the new Department of Justice. This is the Democrats' arm of law enforcement," Hunter said, incorrectly linking a political party to an independent, nonpartisan branch of government. "That's what's happening right now, and it's happening with Trump, it's happening with me, and we're going to fight through it and win when the people get to vote in November."

Duncan Hunter claims Justice Department used 'every dirty trick in the book' - Business Insider

That's what's happening when the president attacks institutions for his own benefit.. Soon more will follow.

[Admin]

Swamp, no swamp here..

Senate Republicans will tell you that the news this week implicating President Donald Trump in a campaign finance felony is serious — and it looks like they intend to do absolutely nothing about it. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations related to hush money payments he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election cycle — and said Trump directed him to do it. On Wednesday, Trump confessed to knowing about the payments in an interview excerpt from Fox & Friends, and confirmed that it was his money — not the campaign’s — which is what makes the payment a felony.

Michael Cohen guilty plea: Republican senators don’t want to investigate Trump’s role in campaign finance violations - Vox

[Admin]

Hmm..

Prosecutors wrote that they could back up Cohen's admissions through evidence obtained from the FBI's April raids on Cohen's home, office, and hotel room that included documents, electronic devices, audio recordings, text messages, messages sent on encrypted apps, phone records, and emails.

Trump misunderstands campaign-finance law related to Cohen, women - Business Insider

Nobody ever knew campaign finance law could be so complicated...

Based on Trump's interview on Fox, he seems to think that a campaign-finance violation would have occurred if campaign funds were used to pay off Daniels and McDougal, rather than his personal cash, which was used to reimburse Cohen for the initial Daniels payment. The reverse of this is true, as The Huffington Post first reported. If Trump had routed money through his campaign to pay off women, it would be legal. Campaigns can spend unlimited amounts of money and for whatever purposes it deems necessary. The problem would have been that if Trump did use his campaign to pay off any women, it would have defeated the purpose of making the payment, which was to ensure silence. Such an expenditure would have had to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and publicly disclosed.

Trump misunderstands campaign-finance law related to Cohen, women - Business Insider

And then there is this..

Trump's best defense is one that Cohen claimed was true earlier this year, and one that Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has also latched onto: That the arrangement was made not to boost Trump's candidacy but to shield his family, particularly his wife, Melania Trump, from the embarrassing information. That argument was what helped former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina in a similar case. But Cohen's testimony, backed up by what the government says is evidence that corroborates it, hurts that narrative.

Trump misunderstands campaign-finance law related to Cohen, women - Business Insider