January 12, 2019: Climate Change Still Real - Team Trump Rife with Felons

 

1/12/19: The U.S. government remains partially shut down, marking Day 22 of the Trump Tantrum Shutdown. 

Trump used to blame shutdowns on the president. Now he blames Congress.

 

Is there anything else that might be truly worrisome in the news? Yes, there is. Scientists warn that the oceans of the world are heating up faster than expected. Relying on 3,900 floats around the world, measuring water temperatures down to 6,600 feet, they report that the oceans were hotter in 2018 than ever before. “Global warming is here, and has major consequences already [emphasis added],” the authors note. 

“There is no doubt, none!”  

You know scientists are freaking out when they resort to exclamation points in an otherwise staid report. 

Unfortunately, if we get the big snowstorm predicted today, we can expect Trump to tweet something idiotic, where he mixes up weather and climate again. (See, for example: 11/21/18.)

 

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 “Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security.” 

The New York Times

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MEANWHILE, TRUMP is having a Louis XIV moment. “I am the government,” the French king once said. 

Currently, the president is in a royal snit because he has discovered that the Founding Fathers placed the “power of the purse” in the hands of the U.S. House of Representatives, so no president could ever act like Louis XIV – a man who spent a fourth of all government revenues on himself. 

Unless Trump can circumvent the U.S. Constitution, which we all know he’d love to try, he won’t get his way. 

Here are a few of his random authoritarian thoughts in recent days: 

·       He can declare a national emergency and do anything he wants. 

·       He can stop sending FEMA funds to California to pay for catastrophic damage from forest fires (drier forests = climate change). Nobody in California likes him anyway, so screw them. 

·       He can divert money meant to help California to building the Great Wall of Trump. 

·       If he can declare one national emergency, without having reason, he can declare as many national emergencies as he wants.

 

 

Since our main topic today is unlimited power, let’s consider what caused Trump to flip out this morning. He got off to a rousing start before the sun was up, labeling former F.B.I. Director James Comey a “sleaze.” 

Unlike the president, let’s examine these matters rationally, whether we like James Comey or not. Comey was a top law enforcement official for decades, not someone you would imagine lies with regularity. Trump’s former personal lawyer is now a nine-time convicted felon (or is it only eight?) and Trump’s former campaign manager has ten felonies to his name. Trump says Comey is a “sleaze?” Did Comey cheat on three wives? No. That was Trump. Did Comey boink a porn queen? And then pay big to cover the boinking up? 

Nope. 

As investigators continue to close in on his inner circle, the president tries laying down a smokescreen of furious tweets. By the time he’s done this morning (after four hours), Trump has howled about “the rigged & botched Crooked Hillary investigation.” He has complained that Clinton was guilty of the “Real Collusion,” even though he insists that “COLLUSION” is no crime. That doesn’t even make sense. He has insisted that, “My firing of James Comey was a great day for America.” Then he pegs him as “a Crooked Cop.” Finally, he screams about Comey’s “best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats,” and tries to brand that entire bunch as “leaking machines.” 

Again, it’s important to think rationally. Mueller is a decorated combat veteran, not a bone spurs pussy. 

He was once so highly thought of that the U.S. Senate confirmed his appointment to head the F.B.I. by a vote of 100-0. The “13 Angry Democrats,” which Trump sometimes calls the “17 Angry Democrats,” when he’s enraged, are 13 or 17 top legal minds at the Department of Justice. 

Plus, Mueller is a lifelong Republican. 

In a final morning tweet, the president blasted the F.B.I. and the people who led the investigation, citing, “Lyin’ James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S [Strzok] and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more” and calling them just “some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President.” 

 

Team Trump vs. Team Comey. 

Rationally, let’s consider “some of the losers” that figure prominently in the investigation, so far: 

You have Cohen, of course, who worked for Trump for a decade, and now faces three years in jail. Let’s keep track of the number of known felons: 

Team Trump 1          Team Comey 0

 

You have Felix Sater, a twice-convicted felon when he went to work for Trump, who, with Cohen, was directly involved on the Russian end in trying to broker a Trump Tower Moscow deal. 

Team Trump 2          Team Comey 0

 

Throw in General Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s first choice for National Security Advisor. He who took a $45,000 paycheck for a speech in Russia. Then lied to Vice President Pence about contacts with Russians, then lied to the F.B.I. 

Team Trump 3          Team Comey 0

 

Add in two more Trump campaign associates. We know George Papadopoulos, who Trump listed as a foreign policy advisor, lied about contacts with Russian agents. Then include Rick Gates, who worked for the campaign up through Inauguration Day. He now has multiple felonies. 

Team Trump 5          Team Comey 0

 

Paul Manafort? For sure! 

Team Trump 6          Team Comey 0

 

And we’re still not done. You have Roger Stone (who says he expects to be indicted soon). Stone initially told a congressional panel that he had never met with any Russians or even anyone who sounded Russian during the campaign. 

Then he remembered he did. 

The New York Times, which has caught Trump and his allies in repeated lies, broke the story that touched off the presidential tweet-blizzard today. The opening lines of the article should give any American pause; and if you are one who likes Trump, you pray the Times isn’t right (as it has been before).  

Reporters explain: 

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

 

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

 

It’s still unclear, who exactly provided this information to reporters. So, Trump can’t really know who the “leaking machines” are. In fact, much of the article rests on testimony before Congress. 

It’s not the sourcing that matters if what the sources indicate proves correct. It may not. The Times is careful to say as much. It’s unclear, they note, whether Mueller and his team are pursuing the “counterintelligence matter.” 

The story notes that critics feel law enforcement officials “overstepped” their bounds in opening this prong of the investigation. 

One iron fact remains. The potential danger to our country was clear and law enforcement officials had to be sure that a president would not shut down an investigation in order to protect himself. 

If that happened, 

“Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security [emphasis added],” Mr. [James A.] Baker [former F.B.I. general counsel] said in his testimony, portions of which were read to The New York Times. Mr. Baker did not explicitly acknowledge the existence of the investigation of Mr. Trump to congressional investigators.

 

Additional testimony by Lisa Page (who did indeed leave the F.B.I. under a cloud, primarily because of emails she wrote denigrating Candidate Trump) is also quoted, outlining the danger: 

“In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself, you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability, America’s ability and the West’s ability to spread our democratic ideals,” Lisa Page, a former bureau lawyer, told House investigators in private testimony reviewed by The Times.

 

“That’s the goal, to make us less of a moral authority to spread democratic values,” she added. Parts of her testimony were first reported by The Epoch Times [another, multi-lingual publication in New York City].

 

If you’re a Trump supporter, you can read what Giuliani says in response. “The fact that it [the investigation] goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing.”  

You can believe that if you prefer. 

Or you can try to think rationally again. Why wouldn’t Ms. Page criticize Trump in a raft of emails if she and other agents had cause to fear the candidate might be working to advance Russia’s interests? 

What do we know for sure by the time we reach the last sentence of this latest story in the Times? We know that “four of Mr. Trump’s associates” were under investigation before he was elected. We know all four lied about contacts with Russians. We know Mr. Giuliani is whistling “The Hymn of the Russian Federation,” when he says investigators have “found nothing.”

Cartoon added later: Stone gets convicted on seven felony counts.

Later still: Trump pardons him.