RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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ADevilYouKhow
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Did you see about Erik Prince?
ADevilYouKhow
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Just wanted to lol about Trump losing the house again and Nancy haunting his very existence
ADevilYouKhow
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:ALERTRED:
Congressional Democrats’ emoluments lawsuit targeting President Trump’s private business can proceed, judge says
Carol D. Leonnig
Democrats in Congress can move ahead with their lawsuit against President Trump alleging that his private business violates the Constitution’s ban on gifts or payments from foreign governments, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The decision in Washington from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan adopted a broad definition of the anti-corruption ban and could set the stage for Democratic lawmakers to begin seeking information from the Trump Organization. The Justice Department can try to delay or block the process by asking an appeals court to intervene.
In a 48-page opinion, the judge refused the request of the president’s legal team to dismiss the case and rejected Trump’s narrow definition of emoluments, finding it “unpersuasive and inconsistent.”
The lawsuit is one of two landmark cases against Trump relying on the once-obscure emoluments clauses of the Constitution.
In a case brought in Maryland by the attorneys general of D.C. and Maryland, Justice Department lawyers representing the president have succeeded in temporarily blocking subpoenas for financial records and other documents related to Trump’s D.C. hotel.
The congressional case, brought by about 200 Democrats, extends beyond the hotel and provides a potential new avenue for the president’s challengers to gain access to a broader array of Trump’s closely held finances.
[D.C., Maryland begin seeking Trump financial documents in case related to his D.C. hotel]
Trump’s lawyers argued that the clause applies only to payments received for government action taken by a president in his official capacity. The clause, they argue, should not be considered a blanket prohibition on private business transactions with foreign governments.
Sullivan noted that without seeking permission from Congress, the lawsuit alleges the president has received payments for hotel rooms and events from foreign governments, as well as licensing fees paid by foreign governments for his show “The Apprentice” and intellectual property rights from China.
The emoluments cases, which could eventually end up at the Supreme Court, appear to mark the first time that federal judges have interpreted these clauses and applied their restrictions to a sitting president. The lawsuits were early arrivals to what is now a wide range of investigations and legal battles over the president’s business interests and what information he and his family will be required to provide about them.
While special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has wrapped up his inquiry on Russian interference in the 2016 election, a half-dozen House committees are seeking financial information related to the Trump Organization, its accountants and lenders. The president and his family filed suit late Monday in New York against their biggest lender and one of their banks, to try to stop the firms from complying with subpoenas from congressional committees.
[Trump Organization and family sue Deutsche Bank and Capital One to block congressional subpoenas]
Led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the Democrats filed their suit last year asking the court to force Trump to stop accepting payments they consider violations of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause. They say the provision was designed to guard against undue influence by foreign governments by barring any “emolument” — meaning a gift or payment — without prior approval from Congress.
Sullivan agreed, writing that dictionaries from the era of the Founding Fathers, as well as legal historians and government practice, point to the broader definition backed by the congressional Democrats that “ensures that the clause fulfills this purpose” of excluding the possibility of corruption and foreign influence. Sullivan described the record as “overwhelming evidence” from “over two hundred years of understanding the scope of the clause to be broad.”
“The Court is persuaded that the text and structure of the Clause, together with the other uses of the term in the Constitution, support plaintiffs’ definition of ‘Emolument’ rather than that of the President,” the judge wrote.
Although the president gave up day-to-day management of his businesses — including residential, office, hotel and golf properties in the United States, Europe and South America, he still owns them and can withdraw money from them at any time. A number of foreign embassies and leaders have stayed in or held events at Trump’s D.C. hotel.
Congressional Democrats and their attorneys from the nonprofit Constitutional Accountability Center have argued that the payments from foreign governments received by Trump through his extensive enterprises ought to be considered emoluments under the Constitution and thus deemed illegal.
Justice Department attorneys have argued that the case should be dismissed, saying that the payments Trump receives for market-rate transactions are not emoluments.
One government attorney described the issue as “a political dispute,” arguing in court that members of Congress had additional ways of pressuring the president to change his behavior, such as holding hearings, passing legislation or withholding funding.
“We will continue to defend the president in court,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kelly Laco said in statement Tuesday in response to the ruling.
A Trump Organization spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sullivan had already ruled in September that the legislators had legal standing to sue. After hearing arguments, he wrote that the case ought to be allowed to continue in part because the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause “requires the President to ask Congress before accepting a prohibited emolument.”
But Sullivan still needed to rule on questions that include whether the Founding Fathers’ definition of “emolument” was broad enough to include a foreign embassy paying the president to rent a hotel ballroom.
In his ruling, Sullivan acknowledged concerns from Trump’s lawyers, who said that allowing the case to move ahead would impose “significant burdens” on a sitting president.
But clarifying the definition of the clause, the judge wrote, should ensure that the president can abide by his oath of office.
The president’s argument “regarding the ‘judgment’ and ‘planning’ needed to ensure compliance with the clause is beside the point,” the judge wrote. “It may take judgment and planning to comply with the clause, but he has no discretion as to whether or not to comply with it in the first instance.”
Sullivan did not rule Tuesday on the Justice Department’s previous request to make an immediate appeal of his finding on standing. He asked the president and Congressional Democrats to file additional briefings before the end of May.
Recent academic research appears to bolster the plaintiffs’ position. During the past 150 years, the Justice Department issued more than 50 opinions interpreting the foreign emoluments clause as prohibiting federal officials from accepting any benefit from foreign governments, “even if the benefit is small in size, if it is part of an arms-length transaction, if the benefit is funneled through an intermediary, or if the official’s government responsibilities don’t affect the foreign government,” according to new research from Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
Under Trump, that changed, with the Justice Department deciding in 2017 to side with Trump’s personal lawyers in arguing that the clause permits the president and all federal officials to accept unlimited money from foreign governments “as long as the money comes through commercial transactions with an entity owned by the federal official,” Clark wrote.
In his opinion Tuesday, Sullivan quoted extensively from the similar ruling by U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in the emoluments case against Trump in Maryland. Justice Department attorneys and the president’s personal lawyers have appealed the ruling from Messitte, who had allowed the attorneys general to begin issuing subpoenas. That case is narrowly focused on transactions involving Trump’s D.C. hotel.
But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit appeared skeptical during a March 19 hearing that Trump is illegally profiting from his D.C. hotel. The appeals court did not say when it would issue a ruling.
@88m3 @ADevilYouKhow @wire28 @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @dza @wire28 @BigMoneyGrip @Dameon Farrow @re'up @Blackfyre @Cali_livin @NY's #1 Draft Pick
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SUBPOENA TIME
Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of Trump probe
Matt Zapotosky
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.
At the time the letter was sent on March 27, Barr had announced that Mueller had not found a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.
Days after Barr’s announcement , Mueller wrote a previously unknown private letter to the Justice Department, which revealed a degree of dissatisfaction with the public discussion of Mueller’s work that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials.
Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page letter to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.
In his letter, Mueller wrote that the redaction process “need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation.”
Barr is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee — a much-anticipated public confrontation between the nation’s top law enforcement official and Democratic lawmakers, where he is likely to be questioned at length about his interactions with Mueller.
A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.
In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that news coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.
When Barr pressed him whether he thought Barr’s letter was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not, but felt that the media coverage of the letter was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.
In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his letter a “summary,” saying he had never meant his letter to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of the top conclusions, officials said.
Justice Department officials said in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but they did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.
Barr said he did not want to put out pieces of the report, but rather issue it all at once with redactions, and didn’t want to change course now, according to officials.
Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.
“After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday. “In a cordial and professional conversion, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. They then discussed whether additional context from the report would be helpful and could be quickly released.
“However, the Attorney General ultimately determined that it would not be productive to release the report in piecemeal fashion,” the spokeswoman’s statement continues. “The Attorney General and the Special Counsel agreed to get the full report out with necessary redactions as expeditiously as possible. The next day, the Attorney General sent a letter to Congress reiterating that his March 24 letter was not intended to be a summary of the report, but instead only stated the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions, and volunteered to testify before both Senate and House Judiciary Committees on May 1 and 2.”
Some senior Justice Department officials were frustrated by Mueller’s complaints, because they had expected that the report would reach them with proposed redactions the first time they got it, but it did not. Even when Mueller sent along his suggested redactions, those covered only a few areas of protected information, and the documents required further review, these people said.
Wednesday’s hearing will be the first time lawmakers will get to question Barr since the Mueller report was released on April 18, and he is expected to face a raft of tough questions from Democrats about his public announcement of the findings, his private interactions with Mueller, and his views about President Trump’s conduct.
Republicans on the committee are expected to question Barr about an assertion he made earlier this month that government officials had engaged in “spying” on the Trump campaign — a comment that was seized on by the president’s supporters as evidence the investigation into the president was biased.
Barr is also scheduled to testify Thursday before a House committee, but that hearing could be canceled or postponed amid a dispute about whether committee staff lawyers will question the attorney general.
Democrats have accused Barr of downplaying the seriousness of the evidence against the president.
In the report, Mueller described ten significant episodes of possible obstruction of justice, but said that due to long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted, and because of Justice Department practice regarding fairness toward those under investigation, his team did not reach a conclusion about whether the president had committed a crime.
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They set Barr ass up, he gotta appear tomorrow before congress and now with this Mueller letter they daring him to back out from testifying
Rep Sawell said if Barr don’t appear tomorrow they will subpena him and if he disobey the subpena they going to hold him in contempt and impeach him
Rep Sawell said if Barr don’t appear tomorrow they will subpena him and if he disobey the subpena they going to hold him in contempt and impeach him
Mueller Objected to Barr’s Description of Russia Investigation’s Findings
By Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt
April 30, 2019
BREAKING
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, leaving Easter services in April. He ended his investigation and delivered his 448-page report to the attorney general in March.Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, leaving Easter services in April. He ended his investigation and delivered his 448-page report to the attorney general in March.Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department and three people with direct knowledge of the communication between the two men.
The letter adds to the growing evidence of a rift between them and is another sign of the anger among the special counsel’s investigators about Mr. Barr’s characterization of their findings, which allowed Mr. Trump to wrongly claim he had been vindicated.
It was unclear what specific objections Mr. Mueller raised in his letter. Mr. Barr defended his descriptions of the investigation’s conclusions in conversations with Mr. Mueller over the days after he sent the letter, according to two people with knowledge of their discussions.
Mr. Barr, who was scheduled to testify on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation, has said publicly that he disagrees with some of the legal reasoning in the Mueller report. Senior Democratic lawmakers have invited Mr. Mueller to testify in the coming weeks but have been unable to secure a date for his testimony.
“The special counsel emphasized that nothing in the attorney general’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading,” a Justice Department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said in response to a request for comment made on Tuesday afternoon. “But he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the special counsel’s obstruction analysis.”
A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
A central issue in the simmering dispute is how the public’s understanding of the Mueller report has been shaped since the special counsel ended his investigation and delivered his 448-page report on March 22 to the attorney general, his boss and longtime friend. The four-page letter that Mr. Barr sent to Congress two days later gave little detail about the special counsel’s findings and created the impression that Mr. Mueller’s team found no wrongdoing, allowing Mr. Trump to declare he had been exonerated.
But when Mr. Mueller’s report was released on April 18, it painted a far more damning picture of Mr. Trump and showed that Mr. Mueller believed that significant evidence existed that Mr. Trump obstructed justice.
Over the past month, other signs of friction between the attorney general and the special counsel have emerged over issues like legal theories about constitutional protections afforded to presidents to do their job and how Mr. Mueller’s team conducted the investigation.
Read the Mueller Report: Searchable Document and Index
The findings from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, are now available to the public. The redacted report details his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In congressional testimony in April before the report was released, Mr. Barr demurred when asked whether he believed that the investigation was a “witch hunt” — Mr. Trump’s preferred term. It “depends on where you’re sitting,” Mr. Barr replied.
“If you are somebody who’s being falsely accused of something, you would tend to view the investigation as a witch hunt,” he said, an apparent reference to the president.
His testimony stood in contrast to comments he made during his confirmation hearing in January. “I don’t believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt,” he said then.
A rift between the men appeared to develop in the intervening months as the special counsel wrapped up his inquiry.
Mr. Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr. Mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussions and another person briefed on the matter.
They expressed irritation that Mr. Mueller fell short of his assignment by declining to make a decision about whether Mr. Trump broke the law. That left Mr. Barr to clear Mr. Trump without the special counsel’s backing.
The senior department officials also found Mr. Mueller’s rationale for stopping short of deciding whether Mr. Trump committed a crime to be confusing and contradictory, and they concluded that Mr. Mueller’s report showed that there was no case against Mr. Trump.
government officials and others have said, and that their conclusions were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated in his four-page letter. That proved to be the case.
In one instance, Mr. Barr took Mr. Mueller’s words out of context to suggest that the president had no motive to obstruct justice. In another instance, he plucked a fragment from a sentence in the Mueller report that made a conclusion seem less damaging for the president.
Investigators wrote, “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Mr. Barr’s letter only quoted the passage that the investigation had found no conspiracy or coordination.
It is not clear whether members of Mr. Mueller’s team were angered by these points in particular, or whether Mr. Mueller’s letter cited them.
Despite the disagreement about the report, members of Mr. Mueller’s team worked alongside senior Justice Department officials to redact sensitive information from the report before it was released.
Hours before the public release of the Mueller report, Mr. Barr said during a news conference that he had “disagreed with some of the special counsel’s legal theories” about what constitutes presidential obstruction of justice. He also said repeatedly that the special counsel had found “no collusion” between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. President Trump often uses the term, but Mr. Mueller’s investigators pointed out it had no legal standard and left it out of their judgments.
Instead, investigators wrote that they had not found evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russians.
Mr. Barr also said during the news conference that some of Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation needed to be put in “context.”
“There is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” he said.
Complete coverage of Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
Set Barr ass the fukk up 
