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US Politics: What Price Loyalty?


mormont

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39 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I wish. I gave up the good stuff years back. Now it's all Mari-gu-juana and Insulin.

:(

On the plus side:

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2018/04/13/cory-gardner-donald-trump-marijuana/

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Meanwhile, the interim president of MSU (a former governor of the state) tried to bribe a Nassar victim into dropping her civil suit against the school when she met with him under the impression they were going to discuss ways to improve the school's future handling of harassment claims.

She announced this at a school board meeting. And the board tried to silence her by abruptly announcing her 'time was up' and police even took steps to remove the girl from the podium before the crowd shouted their support for her ability to continue.

What a fine institution. Way to rep the Big Ten.....

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3 hours ago, Fez said:

Also, per Bloomberg...

And a New York Grand Jury probe is something Trump can't do anything about.

Also, I'm still uncertain whether Rosenstein is actually going to get fired today or if there's just a lot of speculation over nothing. By itself, firing Rosenstein does nothing; he is the DAG, but whoever gets named acting DAG has no authority over Mueller until they get confirmed by the senate. Rosenstein's authority over Mueller comes from being the acting AG on this matter (since Sessions is recused), and the acting DAG can't be the acting AG (no double acting is allowed). So the question becomes is the next in line to be acting AG (the SG since the AAG position is vacant) a Trump stooge? I don't know enough about SG Noel Francisco to say.

All we know is that last month Sessions, Rosenstein, and Francisco went out to dinner together; but that could literally mean nothing.

ETA: 

Could be that the news today will be that Rosenstein is also recusing himself now; which would mean Francisco is now in charge of Mueller anyway.

 

I don't think he is recusing. The DOJ ethics official cleared him.

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@Fez

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Also, I'm still uncertain whether Rosenstein is actually going to get fired today or if there's just a lot of speculation over nothing. By itself, firing Rosenstein does nothing; he is the DAG, but whoever gets named acting DAG has no authority over Mueller until they get confirmed by the senate. Rosenstein's authority over Mueller comes from being the acting AG on this matter (since Sessions is recused), and the acting DAG can't be the acting AG (no double acting is allowed). So the question becomes is the next in line to be acting AG (the SG since the AAG position is vacant) a Trump stooge? I don't know enough about SG Noel Francisco to say.

You sure about this? Literally every talking head I've seen or read has said that Trump can just keep firing and replacing the DAG until he finds someone who will fire Mueller. I haven't seen anyone say that an acting DAG would lack the power to fire Mueller. But regardless, it does not matter, as Trump can replace the person with a stooge who has already been confirmed by the Senate. 

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8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Fez

You sure about this? Literally every talking head I've seen or read has said that Trump can just keep firing and replacing the DAG until he finds someone who will fire Mueller. I haven't seen anyone say that an acting DAG would lack the power to fire Mueller. But regardless, it does not matter, as Trump can replace the person with a stooge who has already been confirmed by the Senate. 

I Just don't see Trump firing  Mueller . The resulting political fallout wouldn't be worth it to him. Im sure his advisers have reminded him of what happened  to  Richard Nixon when he made the mistake of firing  Archibald Cox.

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Extremely Ominous Rod Rosenstein Foreshadowing News Roundup

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/extremely-ominous-rod-rosenstein-foreshadowing-news-roundup.html

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Two people who spoke with Trump tell the Wall Street Journal they believe “it’s a matter of when, not if,” Trump fired Rosenstein. “Eventually, it will happen,” the second source add.

 

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2 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Just read my posts again.  If that is too much work, the TLDR point is that Mueller doesn't need to subpoena Trump to make his case because he already has everything he needs.

This conversation has become circular, so I'll leave it at this. I think there is an immense value in interviewing Trump. As Jace said, we've seen him self-incriminate himself with minimal pressure. What do you think would happen when a trained, highly skilled prosecutor gets him alone in a room without his lawyers to protect him? Furthermore, it's quite likely that he would also unintentionally incriminate others around him, chiefly his son and son-in-law. That's why his lawyers were trying to get him out of the interview. They knew exactly how dangerous the interview would be. 

You are correct though to suggest that Mueller doesn't need the interview if all he's going for is obstruction of justice. I'm not a lawyer (yet!), and even I could make a strong case against Trump based solely on his public comments. I'm sure Mueller has extracted a ton of information from Trumps peons that is going to be incredibly damaging for him. I've seen it reported that Mueller might act soon because he's got the goods. That, however, does not mean that the investigation will be over. I'm sure they'll keep digging, because as I've said all along, the ultimate goal is probably to get him on money laundering and racketeering, because it seems pretty obvious from afar that he's seriously guilty on both counts. 

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44 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Fez

You sure about this? Literally every talking head I've seen or read has said that Trump can just keep firing and replacing the DAG until he finds someone who will fire Mueller. I haven't seen anyone say that an acting DAG would lack the power to fire Mueller. But regardless, it does not matter, as Trump can replace the person with a stooge who has already been confirmed by the Senate. 

Yeah. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/firing-rosenstein/557891/

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And what about Rosenstein? What if he is fired, but Mueller is not? The idea here, of course, is that someone who replaced Rosenstein and is more loyal to Trump might limit the special counsel’s investigation—might, for example, tell him that he could no longer look at the financial records of the Trump Organization or might order him to stop all inquiries into the Trump Tower meeting between the Trump campaign and purported agents of the Russian government. This would be an effort to control the Mueller investigation indirectly, without actually firing him—and it might be that some would judge firing Rosenstein less politically tumultuous than firing Mueller himself

But even this is not likely to be as effective as the president would think. To see why, we have to unpack the situation a bit. It is complicated by the fact that today Rosenstein is actually wearing two hats—one as deputy attorney general and one as acting attorney general.

As the deputy, Rosenstein has certain institutional powers over all criminal investigations (for instance, the deputy can approve searches of an attorney’s office). Those institutional powers would go to whomever became acting deputy attorney general. If Trump did not appoint someone to replace Rosenstein on an acting basis, that role would fall to Rosenstein’s principal associate (a man named Edward O’Callaghan). Or, the president could name his own acting deputy if he wished.

But … and this is important … even if Trump were to appoint a loyalist to replace Rosenstein as acting deputy attorney general, until that person were confirmed by the Senate, he or she would not actually be the deputy. As a result, he or she could not be the acting attorney general for purposes of supervising the Mueller investigation. The acting attorney general can only be someone who has been appointed to and confirmed in a position of leadership by the Senate. To put it colloquially, there are no “double acting” appointments allowed.

And so, if Rosenstein were to be fired, the job of acting attorney general, and supervision over the Mueller investigation, would fall to the next in line of senatorially confirmed DOJ appointees. Normally that would be the Justice Department’s number three—the associate attorney general—but that post is currently vacant because the incumbent, Rachel Brand, left earlier this year. So the acting attorney general would be the number four in the Justice Department—the solicitor general, Noel Francisco. And there is no reason to think that Francisco (whom, full disclosure, I know slightly) would do the job any differently than Rosenstein has been doing it—with integrity and to the best of his ability. Thus, the firing of Rosenstein would appear to have little or no prospect of affecting Mueller in the slightest

 

 

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43 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

I Just don't see Trump firing  Mueller . The resulting political fallout wouldn't be worth it to him. Im sure his advisers have reminded him of what happened  to  Richard Nixon when he made the mistake of firing  Archibald Cox.

A couple things here: (i) The fallout would be less if Mueller really has the goods on him. Then firing him makes sense, and Trump is behaving like a guilty man. (ii) While things were getting polarized in Nixon's time, it's nothing like today. There's still a decent chance Congressional Republicans would shrug their shoulders and do nothing if Mueller recommends impeachment. 

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10 minutes ago, Fez said:

Interesting, so the talking heads have all been wrong? Also, what happens if Trump fires Francisco? Couldn't the person who is 5th in line fire Mueller? Regardless, it doesn't matter if Trump makes, say for the sake of argument, Rick Perry the new DAG. He's already confirmed, so he could fire Mueller. 

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1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I have made a Twitter, with the specific goal of harassing Trump people.

Anyone else around here do the Tweet thing? I think it could be some fun.

What's your twitter handle?

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1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I have made a Twitter, with the specific goal of harassing Trump people.

Anyone else around here do the Tweet thing? I think it could be some fun.

Tempting. I have an account but have never used it. I would like to get a million people to tweet #YouWillDieBrokeinPrison at him.

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