As I type this, Trump is in Salt Lake City announcing his plans to be the anti-Teddy Roosevelt. Trump’s actions are a dramatic departure from conventional interpretations of the 1906 Antiquities Act, on which the monument designations are based. The act, advocated by President Theodore Roosevelt, was designed to provide safeguards to exceptional historic, cultural, and natural landscapes across the … Read More
Corrections And Updates And Backtracks To Last Week’s Bombshells
As I posted here last week, Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition last December. Flynn is the fourth Trump associate to be charged in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. As I also posted, Flynn promised “full cooperation” with Mueller’s investigation and … Read More
Who Is In Charge Of The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau?
Richard Cordray. the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said that he would be leaving as head of the CFPB at the end of this month. Last Friday, November 24, he sent a letter to President Trump, declaring that he’s officially done leading the federal government’s controversial consumer watchdog agency once the clock strikes midnight. In a separate letter to … Read More
Document Dump: Federal Court Blocks Trump’s Travel Ban… Yet Again
Tired of winning…? UPDATE: A second federal court rules the same — A federal judge in Maryland early Wednesday issued a second halt on the latest version of President Trump’s travel ban, asserting that the president’s own comments on the campaign trail and on Twitter convinced him that the directive was akin to an unconstitutional Muslim ban.
Breaking: Mueller Empanels DC Grand Jury
In a piece by Del Quentin Wilber and Byron Tau of the Wall Street Journal, just published: Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase, according to two people familiar with the matter. The grand jury, which began … Read More
Document Dump: Protecting Mueller
This bill — from Sens. Lindsey Graham, Cory Booker, Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal — us actually one of two bipartisan bills designed to protect the special counsel from removal by the President or Attorney General. The other bill — by Sens. Thom Tillis and Chris Coons (both on the Senate Judiciary Committee) — does essentially the same thing: it says … Read More
Trump Really DOES Want To Get Rid Of Sessions
Trump was VERY busy this morning on his Twitter machine. It’s hard to deny that Trump does not want his AG Jeff Sessions to stay on when he disses him when you look at the second and third from the bottom tweets. Trump raised similar questions over the weekend days after telling reporters in an interview that he had second … Read More
Where The Rubber Meets The Road
I guess it was bound to happen — the ultimate constitutional question: What happened when the top law enforcement agency refuses to comply with the courts? It has happened on the state level — with desegregation. The governors refused to comply with Brown v Board of Education. So the federal government was sent in, in the form of the US … Read More
Verdict in on Philando Castile Killing
Remember this? I wrote about it last year. A Minnesota jury has reached a verdict in the manslaughter trial of Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop last year. Yanez is on trial for one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of intentional discharge of firearm that endangers safety because Castile’s girlfriend and … Read More
What’s This Tweet About?
Trump’s not busy enough. He’s got free time to watch TV and get defensive. His tweets this morning railed against the “fake news” media and how there was no proof that his campaign (or, in his phrasing, he himself) colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the election. (He also incorrectly claimed that the investigation had only been going … Read More
The Sessions Sessions
Ok, I’ll liveblog SOME of Sessions hearing before the Senate Intel Committee, but again, I expect he’ll talk about what he wants to talk about and then filibuster (or rely on executive privilege) when trapped in a corner. 2:56 pm Sessions has no recollection of meeting, talking to Russian ambassador or other Russian official at the Mayflower hotel. Here’s a notable … Read More
Can Trump Fire Mueller?
This is complicated and I don’t have much time. So hold on. Trump does not have the legal authority to fire special prosecutor Mueller directly, but that doesn’t mean Trump can’t TRY. For Trump to fire Mueller, he TECHNICALLY must order the Attorney General to fire Mueller. If Trump tried to fire Mueller directly, Mueller could (and probably would) choose … Read More
Maryland And DC Attorneys General File Lawsuit Against Trump Under Emoluments Clause
Although CREW currently has a lawsuit going, the attorneys general of Maryland and DC have filed a lawsuit today against President Trump, citing a constitutional violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. The damage? Well, they claim, the US is effectively not living up to the Constitution, a document that Maryland signed onto in part because of the Emoluments Clause. Also, … Read More
Ninth Circuit Strikes Down Trump Travel Ban
They write “Immigration, even for the president, is not a one-person show” and bring up last week’s tweets as evidence AGAINST his own lawyer’s argument (on page 40)
The Comey Memos — Part Two
So some idiot at Redstate is making the argument that the Comey Memos were leaked in contravention of the law: The documents leaked by Comey were official government records. Period. They were created by a government employee (Comey) while acting in his official capacity (FBI director) on a government-issued laptop while sitting in a government car driven by another government … Read More