it's trump against the republican party
Mitch McConnell guy Billy Piper told trump to lay off or face impeachment
they had a big cursing yelling fight on the phone
sounds like trump might have told Mitch to stop the Russian investigation in the Senate
also breaking tonight .......
trump tried to block senate investigation into the Russia thing
yea that's a crime
McConnell Allies Warn Trump He’ll Be Impeached If He Keeps Attacking Republican Senators
By Jason Easley on Tue, Aug 22nd, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Mitch McConnell's allies sent a stern warning to Trump that if he knocks off Republican Senators and Democrats get control of the Senate, he'll be on the fast track to impeachment.
McConnell Allies Warn Trump He’ll Be Impeached If He Keeps Attacking Republican Senators
Mitch McConnell’s allies sent a stern warning to Trump that if he knocks off Republican Senators and Democrats get control of the Senate, he’ll be on the fast track to impeachment.
The New York Times reported:
But Mr. McConnell’s allies warn that the president should be wary of doing anything that could jeopardize the Senate Republican majority.
“The quickest way for him to get impeached is for Trump to knock off Jeff Flake and Dean Heller and be faced with a Democrat-led Senate,” said Billy Piper, a lobbyist and former McConnell chief of staff.
The interesting part of that quote from McConnell’s former chief of staff is that Democrats getting control of the Senate wouldn’t be enough to impeach Trump. If Democrats were to take back the Senate, they would at best have a slim two vote majority. It takes 67 votes to convict and remove a president from office. McConnell’s former chief of staff seems to be saying that there are enough Republican Senators who would join with Democrats to remove Trump from office.
It is possible that there are 15-16 GOP Senators who would vote to convict Trump. Guessing who those Senators are would make for an interesting game.
The threat to Trump was clear. If he keeps messing with Republican incumbent Senators, he’ll be risking getting thrown out of office. This the biggest omen yet that Senate Republicans are coming closer to turning on Trump.
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/08/22/ ... ators.html
McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency
By ALEXANDER BURNS and JONATHAN MARTINAUG. 22, 2017
Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has fumed over President Trump’s regular threats against fellow Republicans and criticism of Senate rules. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times
The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.
What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.
The rupture between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell comes at a highly perilous moment for Republicans, who face a number of urgent deadlines when they return to Washington next month. Congress must approve new spending measures and raise the statutory limit on government borrowing within weeks of reconvening, and Republicans are hoping to push through an elaborate rewrite of the federal tax code. There is scant room for legislative error on any front.
A protracted government shutdown or a default on sovereign debt could be disastrous — for the economy and for the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Yet Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell are locked in a political cold war. Neither man would comment for this story. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, noted that the senator and the president had “shared goals,” and pointed to “tax reform, infrastructure, funding the government, not defaulting on the debt, passing the defense authorization bill.”
Still, the back-and-forth has been dramatic.
In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, then berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.
During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.
Mr. McConnell has fumed over Mr. Trump’s regular threats against fellow Republicans and criticism of Senate rules, and questioned Mr. Trump’s understanding of the presidency in a public speech. Mr. McConnell has made sharper comments in private, describing Mr. Trump as entirely unwilling to learn the basics of governing.
In offhand remarks, Mr. McConnell has expressed a sense of bewilderment about where Mr. Trump’s presidency may be headed, and has mused about whether Mr. Trump will be in a position to lead the Republican Party into next year’s elections and beyond, according to people who have spoken to him directly.
While maintaining a pose of public reserve, Mr. McConnell expressed horror to advisers last week after Mr. Trump’s comments equating white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., with protesters who rallied against them. Mr. Trump’s most explosive remarks came at a news conference in Manhattan, where he stood beside Ms. Chao. (Ms. Chao, deflecting a question about the tensions between her husband and the president she serves, told reporters, “I stand by my man — both of them.”)
Mr. McConnell signaled to business leaders that he was deeply uncomfortable with Mr. Trump’s comments: Several who resigned advisory roles in the Trump administration contacted Mr. McConnell’s office after the fact, and were told that Mr. McConnell fully understood their choices, three people briefed on the conversations said.
Mr. Trump has also continued to badger and threaten Mr. McConnell’s Senate colleagues, including Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, whose Republican primary challenger was praised by Mr. Trump last week.
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Mr. Trump was set to hold a campaign rally on Tuesday night in Phoenix, and Republicans feared he would use the event to savage Mr. Flake again.
If he does, senior Republican officials said the party’s senators would stand up for their colleague. A Republican “super PAC” aligned with Mr. McConnell released a web ad on Tuesday assailing Mr. Flake’s Republican rival, Kelli Ward, as a fringe-dwelling conspiracy theorist.
"ChemtrailKelli," an attack ad released by a Republican “super PAC” aligned with Mr. McConnell. Video by Senate Leadership Fund
“When it comes to the Senate, there’s an Article 5 understanding: An attack against one is an attack against all,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has found himself in Mr. Trump’s sights many times, invoking the NATO alliance’s mutual defense doctrine.
The fury among Senate Republicans toward Mr. Trump has been building since last month, even before he lashed out at Mr. McConnell. Some of them blame the president for not being able to rally the party around any version of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, accusing him of not knowing even the basics about the policy. Senate Republicans also say strong-arm tactics from the White House backfired, making it harder to cobble together votes and have left bad feelings in the caucus.
When Mr. Trump addressed a Boy Scouts jamboree last month in West Virginia, White House aides told Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from the state whose support was in doubt, that she could only accompany him on Air Force One if she committed to voting for the health care bill. She declined the invitation, noting that she could not commit to voting for a measure she had not seen, according to Republican briefed on the conversation.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told colleagues that when Mr. Trump’s interior secretary threatened to pull back federal funding for her state, she felt boxed in and unable to vote for the health care bill.
In a show of solidarity, albeit one planned well before Mr. Trump took aim at Mr. Flake, Mr. McConnell will host a $1,000-per-person dinner on Friday in Kentucky for the Arizona senator, as well as for Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who is also facing a Trump-inspired primary race next year, and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska. Mr. Flake is expected to attend the event.
Former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican who is close to Mr. McConnell, said frustration with Mr. Trump was boiling over in the chamber. Mr. Gregg blamed the president for undermining congressional leaders, and said the House and Senate would have to govern on their own if Mr. Trump “can’t participate constructively.”
“Failure to do things like keeping the government open and passing a tax bill is the functional equivalent of playing Russian roulette with all the chambers loaded,” Mr. Gregg said.
Others in the party divide blame between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell. Al Hoffman, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee who has been supportive of Mr. McConnell, said Mr. McConnell was culpable because he has failed to deliver legislative victories. “Ultimately, it’s been Mitch’s responsibility, and I don’t think he’s done much,” Mr. Hoffman said.
But Mr. Hoffman predicted that Mr. McConnell would likely outlast the president.
“I think he’s going to blow up, self-implode,” Mr. Hoffman said of Mr. Trump. “I wouldn’t be surprised if McConnell pulls back his support of Trump and tries to go it alone.”
An all-out clash between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell would play out between men whose strengths and weaknesses are very different. Mr. Trump is a political amateur, still unschooled in the ways of Washington, but he maintains a viselike grip on the affections of the Republican base. Mr. McConnell is a soft-spoken career politician, with virtuoso mastery of political fund-raising and tactics, but he had no mass following to speak of.
Mr. McConnell, while baffled at Mr. Trump’s penchant for internecine attacks, is a ruthless pragmatist and has given no overt indication that he plans to seek more drastic conflict. Despite his private battles with Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has sent reassuring signals with his public conduct: On Monday, he appeared in Louisville, Ky., with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, for a discussion of tax policy.
Mr. McConnell’s Senate colleagues, however, have grown bolder. The combination of the president’s frontal attacks on Senate Republicans and his claim that there were “fine people” marching with white supremacists in Charlottesville has emboldened lawmakers to criticize Mr. Trump in withering terms.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee rebuked Mr. Trump last week for failing to “demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” required of presidents. On Monday, Senator Susan Collins of Maine said in a television interview that she was uncertain Mr. Trump would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2020.
There are few recent precedents for the rift. The last time a president turned on a legislative leader of his own party was in 2002, when allies of George W. Bush helped force Trent Lott to step down as Senate minority leader after racially charged remarks at a birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina.
For the moment, Mr. McConnell appears to be far more secure in his position, and perhaps immune to coercion from the White House. Republicans are unlikely to lose control of the Senate in 2018, and Mr. Trump has no allies in the Senate who have shown an appetite for combat with Mr. McConnell.
Still, some allies of Mr. Trump on the right — including Stephen K. Bannon, who stepped down last week as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist — welcome more direct conflict with Mr. McConnell and congressional Republicans.
Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican strategist who has advised Mr. Trump for decades, said the president needed to “take a scalp” in order to force cooperation from Republican elites who have resisted his agenda. Mr. Stone urged Mr. Trump to make an example of one or more Republicans, like Mr. Flake, who have refused to give full support to his administration.
“The president should start bumping off incumbent Republican members of Congress in primaries,” Mr. Stone said. “If he did that, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would wet their pants and the rest of the Republicans would get in line.”
But Mr. McConnell’s allies warn that the president should be wary of doing anything that could jeopardize the Senate Republican majority.
“The quickest way for him to get impeached is for Trump to knock off Jeff Flake and Dean Heller and be faced with a Democrat-led Senate,” said Billy Piper, a lobbyist and former McConnell chief of staff.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/us/p ... trump.html
Fusion GPS guy that hired Steele to do the dossier ...
40,000 documents handed over to Senate
10 hour meeting with Senate Intel Committee today
Steele has talked to the FBI
British spy Christopher Steele tells FBI sources for Trump 'dossier': report
CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Tuesday, August 22, 2017, 4:31 PM
The British spy behind a salacious “dossier” on President Trump has told the FBI about his sources for the document, according to a report.
Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele authored the 35-page unsubstantiated report published online in January, which alleged that blackmail against Trump was being used by Kremlin officials in an election interference plot.
Investigations into that alleged meddling have been trying to talk to Steele, who has experience in the former Soviet Union and disappeared after his dossier became public,with ABC News reporting that he has now met with the FBI.
He reportedly told investigators about the names of his sources, identified only by letters in the dossier.
Trump dossier author Christopher Steele fights deposition
It was not immediately clear what other information he gave.
A Washington Post report from earlier this year said that the FBI once planned on paying Steele to continue his work looking into potential Trump-Russia connections after an intermediary brought them his alleged findings after the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails.
The U.S. intelligence community later jointly found that hack to be part of an effort by Moscow to tilt the election toward Trump.
Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, reportedly met with Senate Judiciary Committee staff on Tuesday. (FACEBOOK)
Steele’s reported meeting with the FBI comes as the agency, the House, the Senate and special counsel Robert Mueller all investigate the alleged meddling, with the spy’s testimony also requested in a Florida defamation suit by a Russian businessman listed in the dossier.
Trump regrets hiring Sessions after Russia recusal
The man who hired the Brit to look into Trump, investigative firm Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, reportedly spoke with staff for the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Simpson was interviewed for hours and gave the committee more than 40,000 documents, Fox News reported.
The committee had wanted the businessman to testify publicly last month, but took back a subpoena after he agreed to talk in private.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3433372
"Fusion GPS is proud of the work it has conducted and stands by it," Levy, Simpson's lawyer, said in a statement.
He said the "investigation into Mr. Simpson began as a desperate attempt by the Trump campaign and its allies to smear Fusion GPS because of its reported connection to the Trump dossier."
Committee Hears From Founder of Firm Tied to Trump Dossier
The co-founder of a Washington opposition research firm that produced a dossier of salacious allegations involving President Donald Trump met for hours with congressional investigators Tuesday in a closed-door appearance that spanned into the evening.
Aug. 22, 2017, at 8:47 p.m.
Committee Hears From Founder of Firm Tied to Trump Dossier
By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The co-founder of a Washington opposition research firm that produced a dossier of salacious allegations involving President Donald Trump met for hours with congressional investigators Tuesday in a closed-door appearance that spanned into the evening.
Glenn Simpson's lawyer emerged from the daylong private appearance and said his client had "told Congress the truth and cleared the record on many matters of interest."
The lawyer, Josh Levy, noted that Simpson appeared voluntarily and has so far been the only witness to be interviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as it looks into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The sheer length of Simpson's appearance — far longer, for instance, than Trump's son-in-law spent earlier this summer with Senate and House intelligence committees — reflected the intrigue on Capitol Hill surrounding the dossier and the origins of the document.
Simpson's firm, Fusion GPS, hired a British intelligence officer who produced a dossier containing allegations of ties between Trump and his associates and Russia. Simpson kept the identities of the firm's clients confidential during his appearance before Congress, his lawyer said.
The document attracted public attention in January when it was revealed that FBI Director James Comey had briefed Trump about its existence soon before he was inaugurated as president. It's unclear to what extent the allegations in the dossier have been corroborated or verified by the FBI since the bureau has not publicly discussed it.
"Fusion GPS is proud of the work it has conducted and stands by it," Levy, Simpson's lawyer, said in a statement.
He said the "investigation into Mr. Simpson began as a desperate attempt by the Trump campaign and its allies to smear Fusion GPS because of its reported connection to the Trump dossier."
Leaders of the Judiciary Committee said last month that they were negotiating private appearances for Donald Trump Jr., who has attracted scrutiny for accepting a June 2016 meeting with Russians at which he expected to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton, and for Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman. Yet no dates have been announced for their appearances.
"Following up on comments from certain Senate Judiciary Committee members who have noted Mr. Simpson's cooperation with this investigation," Levy said, I would like to add that he is the first and only witness to participate in an interview with the Committee as it probes Russian interference in the 2016 election."
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https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/ar ... mp-dossier
Inspector General opens ethics investigation into trump's Interior Secretary Zinke
