Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

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Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 07, 2018 4:14 pm

let the games begin!


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HAS THIS BEEN THE PLAN SINCE AUGUST 2017?

November 7, 2018/0 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
Maggie Haberman just observed that Jeff Sessions’ resignation letter is not dated. While some of the details in it — such as his claim to have “prosecuted the largest number of violent offenders and firearm deendants in our nation’s history” — seem to reflect the full 22 months of his tenure, nothing in it clearly marks it as having been written today. So I think that is what probably happened.

But there’s a scenario that makes me wonder whether this isn’t what Trump has been planning since July 2017, the last time Trump got really furious with Jeff Sessions.

Consider this timeline:

July 19, 2017: Maggie and Mike tee up a question (obviously working from the White House script) about how investigating Trump’s finances would represent crossing a red line.

July 26, 2017: In a CNN interview, Whitaker describes how you could defund the Special Counsel and thereby end his work.

I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced, it would recess appointment and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigations grinds to almost a halt.


August 6, 2017: Whitaker uses the Red Line comment Maggie and Mike teed up to describe Mueller pursuing Trump’s finances as improper.

On July 25 and 26, 2017, Trump took to Twitter to bitch about Sessions.

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On September 22, 2017, Whitaker was hired to be Sessions’ Chief of Staff.

In other words, Trump may have been pursuing this plan since July 2017.

If so, then Mueller may have already anticipated that, because he asked four questions about that episode in March, as well as questions about what he did in response to Sessions’ earlier recusal.

What did you think and do regarding the recusal of Mr. Sessions?

What efforts did you make to try to get him to change his mind?

Did you discuss whether Mr. Sessions would protect you, and reference past attorneys general?

What did you think and what did you do in reaction to the news of the appointment of the special counsel?

Why did you hold Mr. Sessions’s resignation until May 31, 2017, and with whom did you discuss it?

What discussions did you have with Reince Priebus in July 2017 about obtaining the Sessions resignation?

With whom did you discuss it?

What discussions did you have regarding terminating the special counsel, and what did you do when that consideration was reported in January 2018?

What was the purpose of your July 2017 criticism of Mr. Sessions?

Whatever it was, Trump obtained Sessions’ resignation before today’s press conference, so it’s possible Whitaker already tired to move against Mueller today, relying on the ground work he laid over a year ago.

The one thing that would suggest otherwise is the plea deal Manafort entered. I’ve argued that it is pardon proof, partly because it would include state charges and partly because Manafort would lose all his ill-gotten gains if Trump didn’t pardon him first. For reasons I won’t write up yet, I’m not sure that’s entirely true (though Manafort has provided a lot of information in the last several months).

That’d be way better planning than Trump has pulled off on any other thing. But then, protecting himself is the thing he’s best at.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/07/h ... gust-2017/


emptywheel

By forcing Jeff Sessions to resign, rather than firing him, Trump gets to put in Whittaker, who will start starving the Mueller investigation from a budget standpoint.

He probably can't prevent Mueller from unsealing anything he banked by Friday.
https://twitter.com/emptywheel



MATT WHITAKER CAN’T PREVENT MUELLER FROM UNSEALING ANY SEALED INDICTMENTS

November 7, 2018/0 Comments/in Mueller Probe /by empty wheel

After spending a 1.5 hour press conference denying he “colluded” with Russia, Trump just proved he did by forcing Jeff Sessions to resign. He announced Sessions’ Chief of Staff, Matt Whitaker, will be the Acting Attorney General. DOJ has already announced Whitaker will take over oversight of the Mueller investigation. Before he was even hired as CoS, Whitaker pointed to the Red Line Trump’s stenographers at the NYT teed up for him, suggested Mueller had crossed it, and that that represented going too far.

He has also laid out how to kill the Mueller investigation — by defunding it.

All that said, Mueller was surely expecting just such an eventuality. And the fact that they got Roger Stone attorney Tyler Nixon to testify Friday suggests they were prepping for it.

The only question is whether they got the grand jury to approve whatever indictments they were working on. I’d be surprised if Mueller didn’t (unless Rosenstein prevented him from doing so).

If that’s the case, then Whitaker is not going to help Trump get out of his legal troubles. That’s because Chief Judge Beryl Howell, not Whitaker, will make the decision about unsealing anything sealed in this grand jury investigation.

So if Mueller prepared for this very predictable eventuality, then Trump may have just fired a key player in his racist agenda for naught.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/07/m ... dictments/


The new acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, wrote this last year: "Mueller's investigation of Trump is going too far."


Incoming House Oversight Committee Chair RepCummings: “Congress must now investigate the real reason for this termination”

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If Trump Fires Mueller

The New Republic


Here’s what the post-midterms world might look like: Democrats control the House by a decent margin. But they pick up just one seat in the Senate, allowing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to exploit that more powerful legislative body to guard the White House. (Both electoral outcomes are likely, according to predictions.) Then, before special counsel Robert Mueller has the chance to reveal any of the work his team has been quietly doing during the campaign season, President Donald Trump finds a way to end or severely curtail Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump’s boldest move would be to fire Mueller himself. Shortly after Mueller was appointed in May 2017, Trump’s team claimed that the special counsel had conflicts of interest—claims that Trump might use to justify firing him. More recently, Trump has complained that the investigation—which by special counsel standards has barely begun—has gone on too long. If Trump is planning on firing Mueller, he’s most likely to do it right after the election, since it will take two months before the new Congress is sworn in and any political consequences will be delayed.

If Trump does not want to fire Mueller directly, he could derail the investigation in a couple ways. He could replace Mueller’s supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein has forced Mueller to spin off unrelated parts of the investigation, but for the most part has permitted Mueller to proceed as he wishes, much to the chagrin of the White House. If Rosenstein were fired and no other staff shake-ups were made, his automatic replacement would likely be Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who has previously accused the FBI of overreach and claimed that former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump over the Russia affair, had shielded Hillary Clinton from possible prosecution. Democrats worry that an empowered Francisco could fire Mueller himself.

Alternately, Trump could convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from the Russia investigation, to resign. Trump could replace him immediately with either Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar or Department of Transportation General Counsel Steven Bradbury, both Senate-approved officials who could take over temporarily under the Vacancies Reform Act. Both are reportedly under consideration to replace Sessions; both could fire Mueller if named attorney general.

Finally, Trump might even carry out a Wednesday Morning Massacre, working his way through the Department of Justice until someone decides they’ll back a claim that Mueller has engaged in misconduct—then use that accusation to justify firing him directly.

That would leave the new Democratic majority in the House as the chief means of carrying on the Mueller investigation. What could Democrats actually accomplish?

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There are three main elements to a Mueller-less Russia investigation: 1) what Democrats could investigate whether or not Mueller is fired; 2) what they would be missing if Mueller were to be axed; and 3) what Democrats can salvage from an aborted investigation. Let’s take them in turn.

Democrats can call a whole lot of witnesses.

In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, Rep. Adam Schiff of California promised that if he were to become chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under a Democratic majority, the committee would provide “a full accounting” of Russia’s entanglements with the Trump campaign and Trump White House.

He said the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, under Rep. Elijah Cummings’s leadership, would address how Trump “is profiting off the presidency,” indicating that that committee would investigate Trump’s possible violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the president from receiving payments from foreign governments. These payments may include those made to Trump’s inauguration committee, some of which came from Russian donors.

Schiff also suggested that the House Judiciary Committee would focus on “potential abuse of the pardon power [and] attacks on the rule of law,” which could include Trump’s daily attacks on the FBI, his tampering in FBI investigations, and the pardons he reportedly floated to his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and one-time campaign chief Paul Manafort, before both entered plea agreements and started cooperating with Mueller.


If Democrats win the House, Rep. Adam Schiff will likely play a central role in the House’s investigations into Russia’s role in the 2016 election.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Schiff suggested his own committee would examine Russian financial influence over the president, which could cover Trump’s various business dealings in Russia. But it’s also likely that the Financial Services Committee, under Rep. Maxine Waters of California, would conduct much of that work.

In March, Schiff and the other Democrats on the Intelligence Committee released a status report naming witnesses Republicans had refused to call in their own cursory probes into Russia’s ties to the White House. These witnesses included White House aides Stephen Miller and Keith Kellogg, as well as former administration officials like former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and K.T. McFarland, who served under Flynn.

Between them, these witnesses could provide more insight into the Trump campaign’s interest in pursuing a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as into whether Russians were offering stolen emails from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in exchange for such meetings. The witnesses could also shed light on Trump’s personal involvement in Mike Flynn’s reassurances to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition in December 2016, that the Trump administration would seek to reverse Obama-era sanctions on Russia.

Schiff said he could also call Roman Beniaminov, who worked with Rob Goldstone, the music promoter who first set up the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 in which Donald Trump Jr. sought to obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton. Beniaminov learned in advance that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya would be dealing “some negative information” on Clinton.


Democrats would also call witnesses related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the Trump-affiliated firm gained access to the data of millions of Facebook users. Those witnesses could provide insight into how the Trump campaign exploited Facebook’s personal data to suppress certain kinds of voters in 2016. The legal concern here is two-fold: first, whether Cambridge Analytica employees from the U.K. worked for Trump illegally in the United States; second, whether Trump’s PAC, where some of those employees worked, coordinated improperly with the campaign. Given reports that Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix had discussions with billionaire Trump supporter Rebekah Mercer about optimizing the release of the emails stolen by Russia, Democrats would also inquire whether Cambridge Analytica exploited data stolen by Russians.

Perhaps the most incendiary testimony could relate to how Russians Aleksandr Torshin and Maria Butina, with the assistance of Republican operative Paul Erickson, used the National Rifle Association as a vehicle to draw the Republican Party closer to Russia. While Butina was arrested in July and Erickson is reportedly under active investigation, court documents relating to Butina’s prosecution describe Rockefeller heir George O’Neill Jr.’s active cooperation in Butina’s operation, down to his learning about Putin’s personal approval for the effort to host a series of “friendship and dialogue dinners” at which Russians could foster pro-Russian policies. “[A]ll that we needed is <<yes>> from Putin’s side. The rest is easier,” Butina wrote O’Neill in March 2016.

In the March plan, Democrats also said they would compel more information and testimony from witnesses that Republicans had let off easy. For example, the report lays out how both Donald Trump Jr. and Trump’s former campaign chair Corey Lewandowski refused, in past appearances before the Intelligence Committee, to describe communications pertaining to the June 9 meeting in Trump Tower.

The report also calls for more materials from the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pertaining to a 2016 bid to brand a Trump Tower in Moscow that continued well into the election year. And it argues that Erik Prince, the former head of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, must fully explain his meeting in the Seychelles with the head of a Russian investment firm, Kirill Dmitriev. Reporting since Prince testified to the committee in November 2017 suggests Prince lied about the meeting being an effort to set up a backchannel between Trump’s team and Russia.

Democrats have also promised to subpoena Twitter, WhatsApp, Apple, and the Trump Organization to learn more about communications that might be part of a conspiracy. For example, they’d like to obtain records showing which people, including Trump associates, communicated with Russian military intelligence mouthpiece Guccifer 2.0 or WikiLeaks, the outlets that released the Clinton and DNC emails stolen by Russia. In addition, Democrats would like to learn whether Trump associates communicated using encrypted messaging applications—messages that might have been missed in prior records requests.

So Democrats have a fairly robust plan for the investigations they’ll conduct if they win a majority in the House. But even that would only scratch the surface.

Democrats don’t have Mueller’s investigative prowess.

The steps laid out by Schiff don’t account for what happens if Mueller is fired before finishing his investigation. That’s a problem because, at every step of his probe, Mueller has identified key players in Russia’s 2016 election operation that no one, including members of Congress, had yet discovered.

A few examples: A rural California man, Richard Pinedo, sold Russian internet trolls the identities they used to sow division among voters on Twitter and Facebook during the election—a role only disclosed when Mueller indicted the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm based in Saint Petersburg. That same indictment described, but did not name, three Trump campaign officials in Florida who interacted with Russian trolls organizing a “Florida Goes Trump” rally in August 2016. (Those three people have never been publicly identified, and if they’ve been interviewed by any congressional committee, that fact remains secret.)

Meanwhile, Sam Patten, a Republican lobbyist, started cooperating with federal prosecutors a good three months before it was publicly reported. Patten was the partner of the Russian-Ukrainian consultant and suspected Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik, who interacted with Paul Manafort during the Trump campaign.

The most visible signs of Mueller’s investigation since February pertain to longtime Trump hatchet man Roger Stone, and yet where that aspect of the probe might lead remains a mystery. Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg, Stone assistant John Kakanis, Stone social media adviser Jason Sullivan, Stone associate Kristin Davis, radio host Randy Credico, and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi—all appeared before Mueller’s grand jury.


Longtime Trump aide Roger Stone is an integral, if mysterious, figure in Mueller’s probe.John Sciulli/Getty Images for Politicon
Mueller’s team also interviewed Ted Malloch, an associate of the British anti-immigration firebrand Nigel Farage. They questioned Trump aide Michael Caputo, while Stone aide Andrew Miller is currently fighting a grand jury subpoena in the District of Columbia Circuit Court. By May 25, at a time when just four of his associates had publicly revealed their testimony, Stone said eight of his associates had already been contacted by Mueller’s team. (Another witness against Stone received a subpoena but has never been publicly identified.)

While public reports have focused on questions about Stone’s interactions with Guccifer 2.0 or WikiLeaks, some of the Mueller team’s activity may relate to Stone’s dirty election tricks, which were funded by dark money groups. It’s unclear how such fundraising might relate to allegations that Stone cooperated with Russia. So even for the part of the Mueller investigation that has been most public, there are big gaps in the public record—gaps that committees in the House might not be able to close.

And that’s just witnesses. Mueller has also obtained a great deal of records and communications that no committee in Congress is known to have obtained. As one example, on March 9, Mueller obtained search warrants for five AT&T phones, having shown probable cause those phones included evidence of a crime. At least one of those phones belonged to Paul Manafort (which is how details of the warrant became public), but the identities of the other people who had their phones searched remain undisclosed.

Then there’s the money angle. Buzzfeed has done great reporting on Suspicious Activity Reports on bank transfers associated with the Russian investigation. It has also raised questions about whether Treasury has cooperated with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the one committee that requested financial records relating to the investigation. But there’s no sign any committee in Congress has examined Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transfers—financial flows that have figured prominently in Russia’s campaign disruption efforts. If the Mueller investigation is sidelined, congressional investigators might need to access the secret connections Mueller’s team has spent 18 months discovering.

How would they go about doing that?

Democrats can use a Watergate playbook.

House Democrats might follow the precedent set during Watergate—the last time that a president tried to thwart an investigation into election corruption by firing the Department of Justice officials conducting it.

Mueller’s activities thus far have been laid out in plea deals and highly detailed “speaking” indictments, which provide far more information about the actions involved than strictly necessary for legal purposes. But according to the regulation that governs his appointment, at the end of his investigation Mueller must also provide the attorney general with “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the special counsel.” Also upon completion of the investigation, if the attorney general overrules an action Mueller wanted to take, he or she must notify the chair and ranking members of the Judiciary Committee.

It’s not clear what, within the scope of the regulations, would happen to such a report in the scenario laid out here, where Mueller got fired on some trumped-up claim of improper action. The only thing that would necessarily get shared with Congress is the report on why the attorney general had overruled Mueller, which wouldn’t necessarily include details of what else Mueller had discovered. Indeed, Neal Katyal, the former Obama administration lawyer who wrote the special counsel regulation under which Mueller operates, recently advised Rosenstein to provide a report to Congress before a meeting with Trump at which he might have been fired.

But Rosenstein might not permit such reports under department regulations. Rosenstein has refused to share information on the investigation in the past, citing the Department of Justice policy on not confirming names of those being investigated unless they are charged. And thus far, even Republicans attempting to undermine the investigation have not sought investigative materials from Mueller, instead focusing on the FBI investigation up to the time when Mueller was hired on May 17, 2017. That’s partly because under rule 6(e) of grand jury proceedings, information can only be shared for other legal proceedings (such as a state trial or military commission).

Yet a Watergate precedent suggests the House could obtain the report if Mueller were fired.


A Watergate precedent may be the key to protecting the Mueller investigation.Pierre Manevy/Express/Getty Images
Some Freedom of Information Act requests have recently focused attention on—and may lead to the public release of—a report similar to the one Mueller is mandated to complete. It was the report done by Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, referred to as the “Road Map.” The Road Map consists of a summary and 53 pages of evidentiary descriptions, each citing the underlying grand jury source for that evidentiary description. In 1974, Jaworski used it to transmit information discovered during his grand jury investigation to the House Judiciary Committee—which then used the report to kickstart its impeachment investigation.

Before Jaworski shared the Road Map, however, he obtained authorization from then-Chief Judge John Sirica of the D.C. Circuit Court. In Sirica’s opinion authorizing the transfer, he deemed the report to be material to House Judiciary Committee duties. He further laid out how such a report should be written to avoid separation of powers issues. The report as compiled by Jaworski offered “no accusatory conclusions” nor “substitute[s] for indictments where indictments might properly issue.” It didn’t tell Congress what to do with the information. Rather it was “a simple and straightforward compilation of information gathered by the Grand Jury, and no more.” Per Sirica, that rendered the report constitutionally appropriate to share with another branch of government.

If Mueller—whose team includes former Watergate prosecutor James Quarles—were fired and he leaves any report behind that fits the standards laid out here, this Watergate precedent should ensure it could be legally shared with the House Judiciary Committee.

Can Trump do anything to stop them?

The D.C. Circuit Court recently heard a case, McKeevy v. Sessions, on whether judges can release historic grand jury materials. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who is presiding over the Road Map FOIAs as well as the Mueller grand jury, has stayed the Road Map FOIA to await its results. But McKeevy is a request for public release of grand jury materials, rather than disclosure to a government body with the constitutional duty to conduct its own investigations. As such, it probably wouldn’t affect the Watergate precedent.

So if Trump challenges the conveyance of Mueller’s report to the House Judiciary Committee, he would be making an argument not even Richard Nixon made. It is also an argument that the U.S. v. Nixon precedent—which held that due process limits the president’s claims of privilege—likely would not support.

Still, Trump will have one more way to stall, though probably not kill, House efforts to pick up where a fired Mueller left off. Under current House rules, committee chairs have the authority and the majority votes to issue subpoenas; if Democrats win a majority, they could even set new rules in the new Congress permitting committee chairs to issue subpoenas by themselves. But because the Department of Justice traditionally enforces subpoenas, congressional committees led by the opposition party have traditionally struggled to enforce subpoenas they do issue, especially for White House officials. That would be doubly true if Trump replaced Sessions with someone even more interested in obstructing real accountability for the president.

Even under Republican control of Congress, Trump officials have avoided or sharply limited their testimony by suggesting executive privilege might cover their testimony—without actually making Trump invoke it. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and then-Director of National Security Agency Mike Rogers dodged testimony in this fashion, before ultimately testifying in a session closed to the public. More egregiously, former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and Lewandowski refused to answer some of the questions posed by the House Intelligence Committee, notably declining to share information on the presidential transition.

Given two recent precedents—forcing the testimony of George Bush’s White House Counsel Harriet Miers (and consigliere Karl Rove) in the investigation into the firing of U.S. Attorneys and the cooperation of Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in the investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal—a Democratic House will likely be able to compel cooperation from witnesses, even if it might take a while.

At a fundraiser in July, Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican who thwarted all of Schiff’s investigative ambition on the House Intelligence Committee, explained that unless the Russian investigation were stopped, then the only way to thwart it would be for Republicans to retain the majority in the House. “We have to keep the majority,” he said. “If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.”

It might take time and a whole lot of litigation for the Mueller investigation to come to light. But Nunes may well prove to be right.
https://newrepublic.com/article/151929/ ... es-mueller


Trump Is Provoking a Full-Blown Constitutional Crisis

We must resist his vow to end birthright citizenship by massive, militant, coordinated action.

By Sasha Abramsky November 1, 2018
14th Amendment

Trump’s chaos strategy, which involves throwing so much filth into the air with such frequency that it becomes almost impossible to focus on the bigger picture, has been in overdrive the past few days.

He has tweeted that we face a “National Emergency,” and that a caravan of destitute, desperate asylum seekers from Central America are coming to “invade” the United States. And he has promised that they will be met by a military response. To this end, Trump has activated more than 5,000 armed, active-duty military personnel, with many more on standby, along the US-Mexico border—and on Wednesday he announced he might increase the deployment to 15,000—thus putting the US armed services at risk of violating the Posse Comitatus Act. Their deployment—a naked stunt, grotesquely named Operation Faithful Patriot, which in an era of poisonous political fearmongering risks a border bloodbath—begins just days before the midterm elections.

Trump has pledged to build huge tent cities in the desert to detain indefinitely vast numbers of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, despite the Flores settlement, which specifically bars the indefinite detention of children, and in the face of America’s international obligations to hear all asylum cases. Trump will likely use the same sham national-security arguments that he used in imposing his travel ban against large numbers of Muslims in his determination to completely shut the US border to Central American refugees. And now he is promising to sign an entirely unconstitutional executive order designed to wipe out, with a signature, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

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This isn’t just chaos-as-normal. This is a full-frontal assault on the notion of constitutional, democratic governance. If he gets away with it—if Congress tolerates an executive order, or if senators such as Lindsey Graham introduce legislation to dilute the birthright-citizenship principle, and the electorate turns a blind eye to such blatantly unconstitutional governance—then the American Republic as we have known and lived it will have died.

That sounds hyperbolic. But this is a moment that historians in the future will examine and judge us on. They will either applaud us for having the courage to resist with all of our moral energies, to generate what Martin Luther King Jr. called “soul force” in the face of tyranny, and in doing so to force Trump’s ethno-fascism into retreat; or they will condemn us for sitting on the sidelines and waiting for congressional saviors who never came, while Trump and his nationalist friends put a torch to the constitutional structures of this extraordinary Republic.

Don’t expect mass resignations from Trump’s cabinet over this; for, although they have all sworn to uphold the Constitution, in reality they are behaving far more as if they have sworn a personal loyalty oath to The Boss. If this insanity is to be stopped, the stopping will have to come from us, the people, not from a morally neutered cabinet or an utterly degraded Republican Party.

Never, in my 46 years, have I so keenly felt that the eyes of history were upon us. My great-great-grandparents and my great-grandparents fled pogroms and poverty in Eastern Europe. Some sought salvation in the United Kingdom, others in America. They arrived in the United States and were processed through Ellis Island, near the great torch of freedom that is held aloft by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. They came here and made new lives, as peddlers and office workers. Their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren became dancers and musicians, businessmen, scientists, doctors, lawyers, union members, civil servants, laborers, writers. Some succeeded financially; others just made do. Some lived happy lives, others sad ones. In other words, they became Americans—with all the hopes and fears, successes and failures, of every other American story.

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They came to America, as did my wife’s family, as did the families of all of my friends, as did the families of my readers, as did the families of my colleagues and my students, as did the families of Donald Trump, White House adviser Stephen Miller, and all the other architects of today’s nationalist nightmare, because this country represented something better. This country represented something new. This country had let the world know that its arms were open to strangers, and that it was a big enough place emotionally to make room for those who spoke different languages, ate different foods, worshiped (or chose not to worship) different gods. They came, as immigrants throughout history have done, because they wanted something better, safer, for their children. And they came because here, in this wondrous land, they could become citizens, and their children could become citizens: They would no longer be regarded as second class, as Jews were in Eastern Europe and Russia, internally exiled in a land of pogroms, in a purgatory of state-sanctioned violence.

What Trump is proposing, in his extraordinary assault on the 14th Amendment, would unravel not just a complex set of citizenship rules but the dream that anyone, from anywhere, can become an American. It is clearly designed to reinject racial and cultural criteria into citizenship status, and to further dehumanize brown and black migrants who have, throughout Trump’s vicious presidency, been continually described as “criminals” and “infestations.” It puts at risk not only new immigrant families, but the democratic fabric of post–Civil War America; for the 14th Amendment, at its core, was designed to protect the rights of African-Americans.

And, once birthright citizenship for the children of future immigrants is denied, what’s to stop this awful administration from taking the next step and revoking the citizenship of the children of those who came here without papers, or to others it deems undesirable? This step-by-step dismantling of citizenship protections is a policy reminiscent of the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws—which themselves were at least partly inspired by racist US anti-miscegenation statutes and race-based immigration quotas.

More generally, if Trump is successful in dismantling birthright citizenship, it would endanger the status of every other constitutional amendment. If he gets away with shredding an amendment that clearly guarantees birthright citizenship to all those born here, what legal theory could then stop him or a subsequent leader from, say, overturning by fiat the 19th Amendment, which guarantees all women the right to vote? Or the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech? Or the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two full terms in office?

How should we respond? We should not simply hope that sanity will prevail and that this idea will be canned when Trump somehow has a “road to Damascus” awakening. He won’t. And we cannot wait for Congress, or a now hyper-conservative Supreme Court, to grow a spine. They likely won’t either. And we cannot just repeatedly click the “sad” or “angry” emojis on Facebook. That doesn’t do anything except help us blow off steam.

This moment cries out for coordinated action.

The people, in their millions, are slow to arouse. But when aroused, the force of the many is unstoppable. That is one of the signature lessons of history. If the 14th Amendment is overturned by fiat, we, The People, should coordinate massive and militant strikes and work stoppages. There are tens of millions of immigrants in this country, and millions more who are the children of immigrants. Together, we are a vast, powerful, force. Elected officials in states and cities should pledge to uphold the Constitution and defend citizenship by refusing to cooperate with a federal government held hostage by extra-constitutional extremists, and by ordering state and city agencies in turn to engage in active non-cooperation. We should be protesting in Washington and in every state capital, in numbers that simply cannot be ignored. Forget about a million-person march. This assault on citizenship rights needs to be met by tens of millions saying “not in our name.”

As the free-speech advocate Mario Savio famously put it in 1964, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

California, with close to 40 million people, is in a particularly strong situation to lead on this. If Trump can simply walk away from the 14th Amendment, California, with its millions of immigrants, should make clear that it, too, is willing to walk away from the absurd constitutional framework that gives all states two senators. Since California has roughly 70 times the population of the smallest state, it should quite simply refuse to continue to abide by a rigged system that is producing ethno-nationalist results increasingly intolerable to modern, democratic, human-rights-oriented values, and increasingly at odds with the beliefs held by the great majority of Americans. That’s not so outlandish a concept: After all, if constitutional provisions really are up for grabs, as Trump now says they are, if the talismanic power of that 230-year-old document really is waning, let’s put the monstrously antidemocratic Senate structure into the mix as well.

If this constitutional crisis intensifies—and make no mistake, the shredding of a constitutional amendment by executive action would be a full-blown constitutional crisis—the three West Coast blue states, along with any others that care to join them, ought to be willing to coordinate a response involving the granting of birthright state citizenship. To protect basic US constitutional rights, they should be prepared, as a last resort, to issue a “True United States passport” operative within the geographic boundaries of those states that join in, and guaranteeing protection of status and social benefits to any state-born child of immigrant residents. That wouldn’t be sedition; that would simply be the states following the US Constitution rather than the illegal Führerprinzip that Trump now seems to advocate in its place.

Let California and other progressive states dare the US government to come into our communities and illegally try to strip our neighbors and friends of their constitutionally guaranteed citizenship.

For short-term political gain, Trump-the-demagogue is stoking a potentially vast constitutional crisis. Our democracy itself is now very much on the line. We must meet that challenge head on.
https://www.thenation.com/article/trump ... al-crisis/


Donald Trump Is Setting Up A Lame-Duck Crisis | Crooked Media

President Trump is preparing to thrust the country into a crisis as soon as the midterm elections are behind him—irrespective of which party wins the race for control of Congress—and Republicans are lining up to make sure he gets away with it, on the condition that he takes no disruptive steps until after they confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

It’s hard to interpret the events that have transpired over the past several weeks any other way. The exact contours of the crisis he will ultimately provoke aren’t entirely clear, but the basic shape of it is: He has concluded that he can only escape serious personal and legal consequences—from a number of threats, but particularly from Special Counsel Robert Mueller—with brazen abuses of power, and is laying groundwork to take those steps as soon as he can get away with them, aware that a change in partisan control of the House could stymie him just after the new year.

The most alarming thing about it is there may be no way to stop him.

Trump has been tempted to place himself above the rule of law since the beginning of his presidency, and increasingly so since Mueller took over the Russia investigation. What’s remarkable about the current moment is that Republican efforts to discourage Trump’s most corrupt instincts are faltering as Trump’s determination to follow through hardens.

Over the course of his presidency, Trump has sought to fire Mueller and to make his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation. He has explored ways to pardon his way clear of legal jeopardy. According to multiple reports, he has been thwarted by his White House counsel, Don McGahn, and by Sessions himself, both of whom, in turn, enjoyed institutional backing from Senate Republicans.

Just a few months ago, Senate Republicans warned Trump that they would not confirm a new attorney general if he endeavored to fire Sessions for corrupt reasons, and have made their loyalty to McGahn abundantly cleared.

On Wednesday, Trump essentially fired McGahn. Yes, McGahn reportedly wanted to step down later this year anyhow, but Trump made his departure a foregone conclusion, without consulting him, amid a swirl of important revelations—including that McGahn spent much more time voluntarily answering Mueller’s questions than Trump’s personal lawyers knew, and has intervened to stop Trump from pardoning his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

As he maneuvered to knock out that guardrail, he simultaneously brought pressure to bear on key Republican senators, who have suddenly come around to the view that Trump will, or even should, fire Sessions—just so long as he waits until after Kavanaugh has been confirmed—which in effect means until after the election. “The fix is in,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN).

This is the backdrop against which we should interpret the Republicans’ urgency to confirm Kavanaugh, marked most importantly by their abrupt reversal on the question of whether the Senate should insist upon reviewing Kavanaugh’s paperwork from his service as George W. Bush’s staff secretary—records that comprise the vast majority of Kavanaugh’s correspondence. That reversal followed a private meeting between key Senate Republicans and McGahn, who is the White House point man for judicial nominations, and whose personal lawyer—Kavanaugh’s former colleague Bill Burck—is managing Kavanaugh’s document production.

Democrats see these unorthodox machinations as part of an effort to bury damaging information in Kavanaugh’s records, and they may well be. But they could just as easily constitute an effort to make sure Kavanaugh is confirmed more quickly than a thorough review of his paper trail would otherwise allow.

Yes, it’s possible that Republicans will lose control of the Senate in January, so they naturally feel a bit hurried. But they are intent on confirming Kavanaugh before the election in November, foreclosing on the possibility of using the lame duck session to more completely review Kavanaugh’s public-service record. Their haste looks fairly arbitrary, unless we interpret it as an effort to lock in another Supreme Court justice before Trump takes drastic steps to protect himself from Mueller—steps that might otherwise place the Supreme Court seat itself at risk, harm Republicans in the midterms, or both.

The implication of recent reporting is that those steps will include, at a minimum, pardoning Manafort and firing Sessions. We can see his intentions both in overt and behind-the-scenes steps he’s taken against McGahn and Sessions in recent days, and in reports that he has consulted with his personal, criminal lawyers about both pardoning Manafort, firing Sessions, and impeachment.

Depending upon how willingly Republicans in the Senate will go along with Trump’s designs, Trump may also seek to rush a new, unrecused attorney general through the confirmation process, or abuse the vacancies act to install an acting attorney general who might corruptly interfere with the Mueller investigation.

If Republicans do well in the elections, all this scheming will have proved unnecessary, and Trump will be given a free hand to obstruct any investigation he’d like. But if Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress, the lame-duck period will be the critical window during which Trump can take corrupt steps to insulate himself from justice. By the time Democrats took control, their ability to set things right would be limited. They could conduct oversight, which would damage Republicans politically, but Republicans would at the very least have the power to block impeachment and the restoration of the Mueller investigation.

Ironically, Democrats may be better positioned to preempt a series of events like this now, from the minority, than after the election. They could align belatedly against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which would shift the spotlight on to vulnerable Senate Republicans—all of whom would have to vote for Kavanaugh without access to his complete record to see him confirmed. House Democrats could announce that they will subpoena those records, and call McGahn to testify about his meeting with Senate Republicans, if they win control of the House. If steps like these successfully pushed the Kavanaugh confirmation into the lame duck session, Trump’s window to bring about a crisis would shrink. Additionally, Trump’s best laid plans could come undone if Mueller secures more indictments between now and the election. But on the current course, a crisis appears inevitable.
https://crooked.com/articles/donald-tru ... ck-crisis/



Jeff Sessions has already proven he has no interest in protecting trump, and now Sessions has every reason to cut a plea deal or immunity deal with Robert Mueller, if he hasn’t already. And Mueller, who is already basically at the finish line, may now be motivated to make his big move against Trump sooner than he’d planned.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:16 pm

Matthew Whitaker, the New Acting Attorney General, Was Obsessed With Clinton’s Emails

He pitched a list of questions for Clinton to answer during a presidential debate. Nearly all were about her emails.

Noah LanardNovember 7, 2018 6:03 PM

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Then-Iowa Republican Senate candidate Matthew Whitaker before a debate in 2014.Charlie Neibergall/AP

In January 2016, Matthew Whitaker drew up a list of eight questions he wanted NBC’s Lester Holt to ask Hillary Clinton at a Democratic presidential debate. Seven of them were about her emails. “How can people trust you to ensure their personal safety and security…when you’ve admittedly been ignorant about security risks with your own email and those risks have been shown to be serious?” he suggested Holt ask Clinton. Two months later, Whitaker argued there was an “urgent need” to “immediately” appoint a special counsel to investigate Clinton’s emails.

On Wednesday, Whitaker became the acting attorney general after Jeff Sessions resigned at President Donald Trump’s request. Sessions had recused himself from the Russia probe, but Whitaker will have oversight of Mueller’s investigation into misconduct far more serious than Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Before joining the Justice Department, Whitaker ran the Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust, a conservative nonprofit ostensibly “dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency.” But FACT does not reveal its donors and almost exclusively targets Democrats. Whitaker was the organization’s only full-time employee in 2015 and 2016, according to tax filings.

The filings show that FACT paid more than $260,000 to CRC Public Relations between 2015 and 2016. CRC had made a name for itself by helping spread the inaccurate Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign. It recently guided conservative activist Ed Whelan as he spread a conspiracy theory suggesting that Christine Blasey Ford was actually assaulted by a classmate who looked like Brett Kavanaugh.

During the 2016 campaign, FACT focused on a wide range of alleged misconduct by Clinton. In June 2015, FACT filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, asking it to investigate interactions between Clinton’s campaign and a PAC promoting her candidacy. In October, Whitaker followed up with a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service based on allegations that the Clinton Foundation had made improper payments to Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. In December, Whitaker’s organization called for a “federal probe” into whether Clinton had given special treatment to a mining company affiliated with her son-in-law.

In January 2016, FACT published the questions Whitaker hoped Clinton would have to answer at the debate. They included:

Your own emails reveal that you routinely gave preferential treatment to people with which you had financial and family ties, including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates and your son-in-law. Average Americans don’t get this kind of access to the State Department, so why did you give such access to these individuals?
Providing special access to political and other donors is a blatant violation of ethics rules. As a lawyer you understand this. Why did you not comply with these rules?
If you were President, would you ever let anyone in your administration use a personal email or private server?
After Trump defeated Clinton, Whitaker was much more generous in his assessment of Trump’s ethical issues. In an August 2017 CNN appearance, he defended Trump’s decision to maintain ownership of his Washington, DC, hotel, saying that “the ethics laws and the conflicts of interest rules to do not apply to the president or the vice president.”

Whitaker wrote on CNN.com in August 2017 that Mueller’s investigation risked becoming a “witch hunt” and urged Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to limit the scope of the investigation. “It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign,” he wrote. Whitaker retweeted a Philadelphia Inquirer article the same day titled “Note to Trump’s lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller lynch mob.” He added, “Worth a read.” Two months later, Whitaker became Sessions’ chief of staff.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ns-emails/


Joshua Benton

A short list of Democrats that new acting attorney general Matt Whitaker called for investigations of while he was at the "Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust":

Hillary Clinton
John Lewis
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Hank Johnson
Alcee Hastings
Keith Ellison
Evan Bayh (1/2)
John Kerry
Joe Sestak
Patrick Murphy
Bill de Blasio
Tom Carper
Claire McCaskill
Catherine Cortez Mastro
Ted Strickland
Katie McGinty
Sidney Blumenthal
All Democratic Senators (2/2)
https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/1060287103936970758



Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Has A Disturbingly Anti-LGBTQ Past

07 Nov 2018
On Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions submitted his resignation at President Trump’s request. The move had been expected, largely due to the president’s concerns over the Special Counsel investigation and anger at Sessions for having recused himself.

The new Acting Attorney General, Trump announced in a tweet, is Sessions’ former chief of staff Matthew Whitaker, a conservative Republican and former tight end for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team.

We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018

With Whitaker suddenly in charge of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, and poised to disrupt investigations into President Trump’s possible collusion with Russia to steal the presidential election (among other things), we need to know as much as possible about who he is and what he believes.

In 2004, Whitaker was appointed by former President George W. Bush to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. While serving as U.S. Attorney, Whitaker helped launch an extortion investigation into state senator Matt McCoy — then Iowa’s highest-ranking gay official.

But according to McCoy, the extortion charges were nothing but an excuse to target him for his gay rights advocacy in office, which included passing a school anti-bullying measure, fighting a state ban on same-sex marriage, and working to pass anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people in housing and employment. In a 2007 interview with the Advocate, McCoy said Whitaker was behind a campaign to smear him with extortion charges because he was a tireless proponent of LGBTQ rights measures, whereas Whitaker wanted to prove his conservative loyalties.

“Since coming out as an openly gay man, I have been a continuous target of groups targeting gays to advance their own agendas of intolerance and hate,” McCoy told the Advocate. “Clearly, there is significant speculation about what has motivated federal officials to take this action against me.”

Whitaker made his anti-LGBTQ views known most prominently during his 2014 run for Iowa Senate. In an interview with the conservative Christian news site Caffeinated Thoughts, then-candidate Whitaker decried President Obama’s handling of same-sex marriage — which the Supreme Court did not make legal nationwide until June 2015.

“I believe marriage is between one man and one woman,” Whitaker told Caffeinated Thoughts. “Throughout history, it’s traditionally been up to the churches and to God to define that. I don’t have an omnibus solution. Certainly, it’s affecting all sorts of parts of our country. Here in the state of Iowa, we can’t even get our elected officials to do anything about it and that’s really frustrating. It’s affecting our military. There are chaplains in the military under a lot of pressure to go against their religious beliefs. But what can I do as one freshman senator in the U.S. Senate? Give me the bills and I’ll vote for them, but the president has done significant damage all over the country. There will be an unbelievable, long-term negative impact he’s leaving.”

Whitaker also told an audience at the April 2014 U.S. Senate Family Forum (hosted by extremist homophobe and conservative pundit Erick Erickson) that he believes that federal judges should have a Biblical — specifically, New Testament — view of justice.

“And what I know is as long as they have that worldview, that they’ll be a good judge,” Whitaker said, as the Des Moines Register reported in 2014. “And if they have a secular worldview, where this is all we have here on Earth, then I’m going to be very concerned about that judge.”

At a 2014 fundraiser for the Iowa Republican Party, Whitaker said religious liberty was “under attack” by the Obama administration, and pledged to protect religious freedom — a phrase LGBTQ advocates often say is code for continuing discrimination against LGBTQ people.

The website On The Issues, which collects policy platform statements from the vast majority of candidates for elected office, lists Whitaker as against same-sex marriage. He is quoted as saying in 2013, “My faith requires me to support traditional marriage.”
https://www.intomore.com/impact/acting- ... lgbtq-past


In July 2017 tweet, Whitaker opposes Graham's proposal to protect the Special Counsel and implies that WH pressure on the independent investigation is appropriate. @emptywheel has assembled a summer 2017 timeline:
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Whaddaya know: Mark Whitaker, now in charge of the Mueller investigation, chaired the 2014 campaign of Sam Clovis, a grand jury witness in that investigation.
Image

New acting AG Matt Whitaker said he wanted 'biblical view of justice' in federal judiciary: report

Newly appointed acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker put forth religious requirements for federal judges while running as a Republican for the United States Senate, the Des Moines Register reported in 2014.

During an Iowa Family Leader debate moderated by Erick Erickson, Whitaker gave his views on the federal judiciary.

“If they have a secular world view, then I’m going to be very concerned about how they judge,” he explained.

“Natural law often times is used from the eye of the beholder and what I would like to see — I’d like to see things like their world view, what informs them. Are they people of faith? Do they have a biblical view of justice? — which I think is very important because we all know that our government …”

Erickson, the moderator, interrupted his answer with, “Levitical or New Testament?”

“I’m a New Testament,” Whitaker replied. “And what I know is as long as they have that world view, that they’ll be a good judge. And if they have a secular world view, where this is all we have here on Earth, then I’m going to be very concerned about that judge.”

In 2014, the new acting AG Matt Whitaker said he would only support federal judges who hold a biblical view of justice. https://t.co/eZEQhzC3mC pic.twitter.com/wcoESxNkSx

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/new-ac ... ry-report/


Image


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Mark Whitaker, now in charge of the Mueller investigation, chaired the 2014 campaign of a grand jury witness in that investigation – Sam Clovis, who was co-chair of the 2016 Trump campaign and encouraged Papadopoulos to seek meeting with Russian officials.

Recap: Clovis was a co-campaign chair of 2016 Trump campaign and encouraged foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, to seek meeting with Russian officials. "Make the trip, if it is feasible," Clovis wrote in an Papadopoulos, according to court papers.

Whaddaya know: Mark Whitaker, now in charge of the Mueller investigation, chaired the 2014 campaign of Sam Clovis, a grand jury witness in that investigation.
https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2014/07 ... treasurer/

Image

Adam Klasfeld


Whitaker's @Wikipedia page has been feverishly revised since the Sessions' firing became public, and the section on his ties to World Patent Marketing appear much shorter than earlier.

(History page shows users keep futzing with it.)

Wish Twitter didn't suspend @CongressEdits.



Heidi Przybyla
Heidi Przybyla
@HeidiPrzybyla
Following WH meeting today:
DAG Rod Rosenstein has canceled a speech scheduled for Thursday in San Francisco, the Aspen Institute says.
Rosenstein was scheduled to speak to the organization's cybersecurity summit.
The institute says it wasn't given a reason for the cancelation
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:24 am

Dark Money Paid New Trump Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s Salary for 3 Years

By Sharon Kelly • Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - 14:58

Matthew Whitaker
Today, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Matthew G. Whitaker, who served as chief of staff for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would replace his boss. Sessions was forced from office a day after the midterm elections, which were rough for climate and anti-fracking measures around the country.

Whitaker was appointed as Session’s chief of staff on September 22, 2017. Before that, he served for three years as the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), which describes itself as “a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas.”

FACT has come under fire for its own lack of transparency, with the Center for Responsive Politics calling attention to FACT’s funding, which in some years came entirely from Donors Trust, an organization also known as the “Dark Money ATM of the Conservative Movement” and whose own donors include the notorious funders of climate denial, Charles and David Koch.

“In other words, an organization ‘dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency’ gets 100 percent of its funds from a group that exists mainly as a vehicle for donors to elude transparency,” the Center for Responsive Politics wrote in 2016.

In 2014, FACT received $600,000 from Donors Trust — the only donation it reported that year, according to OpenSecrets.org. An additional $500,000 flowed from Donors Trust to FACT in 2015. And in 2016, Donors Trust gave $800,000 to FACT, tax records show.

In 2016, Whitaker earned $402,000 as FACT’s director and president, according to the organization’s tax filings. That followed reported compensation from FACT for Whitaker of $63,000 in 2014, and $252,000 in 2015.

His work included advocacy for causes backed by the fossil fuel industry.

As FACT’s executive director, Whitaker sought documents from the Attorneys General United for Clean Power Coalition, alleging in a 2016 op-ed that the Coalition “launched a campaign to silence many public policy organizations and even individuals for their work challenging liberal views on climate change, as well as private companies like ExxonMobil.”

That coalition, representing attorneys general from 17 states, included Eric Schneiderman, then attorney general for New York state, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, and Claude Walker of the Virgin Islands, who were all reportedly investigating ExxonMobil for failing to disclose what it knew about climate change to its investors for decades.

Whitaker labeled the probe of ExxonMobil, which has funded climate denial efforts to the tune of at least $33 million, “both unconstitutional and unethical” — but it recently led to charges against the company.

Last month, following three years of investigation, Schneiderman’s successor Barbara Underwood filed a 91-page lawsuit alleging that ExxonMobil had engaged in four counts of fraud.

“Investors put their money and their trust in Exxon — which assured them of the long-term value of their shares, as the company claimed to be factoring the risk of increasing climate change regulation into its business decisions,” Underwood said in a statement, according to Courthouse News. “Instead, Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations.”

FACT has also come under fire for its right-wing partisan bent.

“It’s perhaps worth noting that although FACT describes itself as a ‘non-partisan ethics watchdog,’ its ethics complaints are targeted overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) at Democrats, and it is funded entirely by an anonymous trust fund (a so-called ‘pass-through) favored by ultra-wealthy conservative donors, including Charles Koch,” the Global Anti-Corruption Blog wrote in September of this year.

As Acting Attorney General, Whitaker will replace Jeff Sessions, described as a “climate change skeptic” by the Washington Post for saying on the floor of Congress in 2015 that “Carbon pollution is CO2, and that’s really not a pollutant; that’s a plant food, and it doesn’t harm anybody except that it might include temperature increases.”
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/11/07/d ... f-sessions


In a radio interview, Whitaker described Michael Flynn’s phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition as potentially “friendly get-to-know-you” conversations. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the feds two months later.

Mueller’s New Boss Led Secretive Anti-Dem Group

Betsy Woodruff, Asawin Suebsaeng

Acting Attorney General Mark Whitaker, named to head the Justice Department after Jeff Sessions was fired Wednesday, has a close relationship with President Trump and has expressed hostility toward special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe—which he may now oversee.

“Whitaker is on record as being more interested in propping up Trump than in upholding the rule of law,” one DOJ trial attorney told The Daily Beast. “It’s hard to have confidence that he’ll do anything other than what the president had said in his tweets.”

It’s been a meteoric rise for the 48-year-old Republican, an ex-prosecutor and failed political candidate who less than two years ago was the head of a little-known conservative nonprofit with designs on a judgeship in his home state of Iowa.

Through that nonprofit, and with the help of a PR firm later tied to a bizarre conspiracy theory, Whitaker ran interference for Sessions at one of the most fraught moments in his tumultuous time as attorney general.

In March 2017, The Washington Post reported that Sessions had neglected to tell the Senate at his confirmation hearing about prior conversations he had with the Russian ambassador.

The attorney general came under blistering criticism, especially as he had not yet recused himself from supervising the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Then Whitaker spoke up. As executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, an organization that served primarily to level ethics complaints against Democrats, he released a statement defending Sessions.

“If we are going to have a national discussion about Senators meeting with ambassadors it is appropriate for all Senators to disclose who they met with so the public, and apparently the media, understand that all Senator Sessions did was his job,” Whitaker said in the statement.

The statement was blasted out to reporters by CRC Public Relations, a conservative group based in Alexandria, Virginia, which represented FACT and Whitaker throughout 2017, according to press releases.

More recently, CRC faced scrutiny and criticism during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process for reportedly stoking media interest in a discredited conspiracy theory about Kavanaugh’s chief accuser.

Two people familiar with CRC’s communications at the time told The Daily Beast that people at the firm tipped off reporters that conservative activist Ed Whelan would be tweeting interesting material relevant to Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Whelan then posted a tweetstorm claiming that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, mistook him for a similar-looking high school classmate. Whelan, who even posted house blueprints and yearbook photos to support his theory, later had to apologize for accusing the other man of sexual assault.

By then, Whitaker had left FACT and become Sessions’ chief of staff.

At Justice, Whitaker was seen as Sessions’ right-hand man but often disagreed with the now former attorney general on a range of policy issues, according to two current DOJ officials.

Integral to the day-to-day operations of the department, Whitaker sat in on most high-level meetings and frequently visited the White House, where he developed a close rapport with Trump, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials in the department.

Whitaker and Sessions often disagreed on policy matters, officials said, and sparred in particular over the chief of staff’s increasingly close relationship with Trump and his staff.

In his new role, Whitaker is poised to assume oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. That’s raised questions about whether Whitaker might interfere with the probe, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.

“We have had so many leaks from everywhere, including the Mueller team and those in the Department of Justice, that I think we would know if there was a smoking gun or any gun or any smoke.”

— Matthew Whitaker

Whitaker has previously expressed serious reservations about the Mueller probe, criticizing its direction in numerous cable news interviews over the past year.

He has called the investigation a drain on the department’s resources and claimed Mueller’s team leaked information to make the special counsel “look productive and on top of things.”

“We have had so many leaks from everywhere, including the Mueller team and those in the Department of Justice, that I think we would know if there was a smoking gun or any gun or any smoke,” he said in an August 2017 radio interview.

In a radio interview in May 2017, he described former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition as potentially “friendly get-to-know-you” conversations. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the feds two months later.

In July 2017, Whitaker tweeted that it would be a “mistake” for Congress to pass legislation to protect Mueller from the White House, claiming Mueller was “already protected enough.”

A month later, he wrote an op-ed for CNN saying the Mueller investigation had gone too far.

“It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else,” Whitaker wrote. “That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.”

Whitaker, who is from Iowa, played football for the University of Iowa and graduated from its law school. He started his career in politics in 2002, when he ran unsuccessfully for Iowa state treasurer. Whitaker later headed Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presidential bid in Iowa before working as the state co-chairman of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 White House bid.

In 2014, Whitaker unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat that was won by Joni Ernst. That same year, he was the chairman of Sam Clovis’ campaign for Iowa state treasurer. Clovis, whom Mueller’s team questioned last year, is the former Trump campaign official who oversaw George Papadopoulos, an aide who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contact with individuals tied to Russia in 2016.

In the years after Whitaker ran for Senate, he built up his political connections, often meeting with influential lawmakers and think-tank leaders, two individuals who worked alongside him in the Department of Justice said.

St. John’s University law professor John Q. Barrett said he met Whitaker several times in the “green room” at CNN when both were appearing to discuss Mueller’s investigation.

He said Whitaker told him he was shuttling back and forth to New York to raise his profile in the hopes the White House would notice him.

“I said, ‘What are you interested in? And he said, ‘A judgeship,’” Barrett said, adding that he got the impression he wanted an appointment in Iowa.

A few months later, Whitaker became chief of staff to Sessions. “I guess something led to something,” Barrett said.

Whitaker told me in June 2017 that he was flying out from Iowa to NYC to be on CNN regularly because he was hoping to be noticed as a Trump defender, and through that to get a Trump judicial appointment back in Iowa.

— John Q. Barrett (@JohnQBarrett) November 8, 2018
Whitaker’s TV appearances were in his role as head of FACT. The organization’s funding is opaque: In 2014, it received $600,000 from a fund called DonorsTrust, whose donors are mostly anonymous, but for Charles Koch. But in 2016, Open Secrets could only find one example of FACT targeting a Republican.

At FACT, Whitaker often accused Hillary Clinton of ethics violations, and in 2017, said he believed her handling of classified emails amounted to a “strong” case against her.

“She should be extremely grateful that has not happened,” Whitaker said.

Despite his ambition, those close to him say Whitaker was approachable and collaborative, even if they had different political views.

“My impression of Matt is that he is a very normal guy,” said one former official from the Department of Justice. “He is a pretty nice way about him.”

“Matt is a conservative Republican. That is who he is. No doubt about that.”

— Former U.S. Attorney

Whitaker is also known for his deeply conservative views of the law. He wrote several opinion pieces in the national media, including one that said he would have indicted Clinton for her emails. In an interview while campaigning in Iowa, he said he thought Marbury vs. Madison—a landmark decision that gives courts the power to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional—was a “bad ruling.”

“Matt is a conservative Republican. That is who he is. No doubt about that,” said one former U.S. attorney who has known Whitaker for years.

Whitaker’s appointment follows months of speculation that Trump was set to make major changes in his Cabinet after the midterms. Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Justice and Mueller.

Over the past year, he has repeatedly mused to lawyers, confidants, and West Wing aides about his desire to sack Sessions, whom he felt failed to protect him from the Russia probe.

Sessions indicated he wanted to stay at Justice, writing to Trump, “At your request, I am submitting my resignation.” The White House didn’t respond to questions on why Trump and his team are not saying Sessions was fired.

Justice Department staffers gathered in the courtyard Wednesday to say goodbye to Sessions as he left the office for the last time. Whitaker shook his predecessor’s hand before Sessions was driven off amid a standing ovation.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeff-sess ... up?via=ios



Wendy Siegelman


Another site where the World Patent Marketing video featuring Trump was posted /4

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32fh54

Image

Here’s a 2015 press release “Foundation Spotlight: The Cooper Idea Foundation and World Patent Marketing Dedicate The Cooper Kindergarten To At Risk Children” that features a link to the video with images of Donald Trump at the bottom /3
https://www.prweb.com/releases/worldpat ... 918946.htm
Image

There's no indication Trump authorized use of these images, but the video was featured regularly by the company - the World Patent Marketing LinkedIn page lists ‘Donald Trump - What World Patent Marketing’s Customers Can Learn’ in the About us section / 2
https://www.linkedin.com/company/world- ... marketing/

Image


SCOOP: World Patent Marketing, the FL patent company the FTC called a scam and shut down, that bilked customers out of millions, and was advised by Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker - released a 2015 promo video featuring images Donald Trump /1
https://vimeo.com/136890818
Image
https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman



Watergate's John Dean Explains How Trump Planned Sessions' Firing 'Like a Murder' — And Details How Mueller Could Protect the Probe


John Dean, President Richard Nixon's White House counsel who eventually turned against his boss in the Watergate scandal, has a unique perspective on investigations of presidents.

After President Donald Trump announced the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday, to be replaced by a person who had been publicly critical of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, Dean called in to CNN to give his opinion.

Dean said the firing of Sessions was "planned like a murder. I say that given that the president was asked a question at the press conference this morning, he brushed it off, said 'We'll deal with it later.' And he's clearly been thinking about it — and 'later' meant he's not necessarily going to fire Mueller, he's going to undercut him by the people around him."

Asked if he sees this move as an attempt to undermine the investigation, Dean said yes.

"It's almost impossible to interpret this any other way than, in effect, to undercut Mueller," he said. "But I also think Mueller has been well aware of that and probably has planned for that contingency."

One of the key ways Mueller could have planned for this eventuality was by sealing indictments, Dean explained. They wouldn't be subject to public view, and the targets would not even be aware of them, but they would be filed officially through the grand jury and could be made public at a later date.

"Theoretically, I think the foreman of the grand jury could take them in to the judge, or they would be filed with the judge already, and this would be the basis to unseal them," he said. "It could be one of the president's children, it could be somebody else very high in the pecking order."

Dean also added that, despite the obvious perils, he has a lot of confidence in the judicial system to handle what is coming.

Watch the clip below:
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-polit ... nd-details
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby Rory » Thu Nov 08, 2018 12:52 pm

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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 08, 2018 12:53 pm

white vegans log off
@bell_shakur
Decolonization ain't a metaphor | Geneva or Gail | Black | Marxist-Leninist | any pronouns


sorry you don't like Greenpeace white vegans log off.....that's a shame....I think they are FANTASIC!

Is that you Tinoire/Catherina? :lol: :lol: :lol:

I think she belongs here....the people that took over Progressive Independent and started Jack Pine Radicals .....I guess you can link to the likes if you wish...they really like spreading their crap...been working at it for years...sly little devils ....they even had a couple members posting here...thank god they were unable to take over this place....funny that their place looks a lot like another place that shall not be mentioned

The Bell is a merger of three websites: Progressive Independent, Populist Independent, and Socialist Independent.
http://www.thebellforum.net


Norm Eisen

Norm Eisen Retweeted Rafael Shimunov
This is shocking. White House is manipulating images to rewrite reality. Modern version of Stalin‘s practice of altering photos to remove his enemies.

Rafael Shimunov

1) Took @PressSec Sarah Sanders' video of briefing
2) Tinted red and made transparent over CSPAN video
3) Red motion is when they doctored video speed
4) Sped up to make Jim Acosta's motion look like a chop
5) I've edited video for 15+ years
6) The White House doctored it
https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/stat ... 7817708544



helpful hint to the Marxist....THIS AIN'T ABOUT SESSIONS





sorry Rory the resistance is not paid for or organized by Rachel :lol:

or George Soros :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I'll be at one of the 900+ ----- 400,000+ people protests and post pics when I return


"Two years ago we called on people to RESIST, and we saw people from all walks of life resisting policies and decisions that hurt ordinary people," Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard said in a statement. "Now, we must build on that resistance and bring double the energy and double the hope to rebuild a country based on shared values of justice and equality. That's why we're encouraging people to join the Trump Is Not Above the Law network to protest tomorrow at 5 PM across the country."

'Trump Is Not Above the Law': 400,000+ People Await Word of Rapid-Response Protests as Sessions Firing Sparks Fear Rosenstein, Mueller Next
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/ ... ons-firing
Image


'A Red Line Crossed': Nationwide Protests Declared for Thursday at 5PM After Jeff Sessions Fired
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/ ... ions-fired

Image
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Thu Nov 08, 2018 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 08, 2018 1:48 pm

emptywheel


Two interesting details about preservation request Dems just sent in wake of Sessions resignation:

1) They refer to it as a firing, not a resignation (the letter says "removed at request of POTUS"). Suggests they may challenge VRA appointment.
Image

2) The scope is fairly broad: WHCO, FBI, DNI, SDNY, Treasury, NSA, IRS, and AAG.

The language they use in the actual letters is . . . interesting.
Image
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1 ... 3292930048



emptywheel Retweeted David Gura
The other things to remember about Whitaker's Sam Clovis ties: He is represented by Victoria Toensing, who 1) considered representing Trump for about a week after Dowd left 2) drove a lot of the factually sketchy pushback on Mueller in first half of this year.emptywheel added,



Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional

Nov. 8, 2018
The president is evading the requirement to seek the Senate’s advice and consent for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and the person who will oversee the Mueller investigation.

By Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III

Mr. Katyal and Mr. Conway are lawyers.


Matthew Whitaker, named acting attorney general on Wednesday after the forced resignation of Jeff Sessions, was Mr. Sessions's chief of staff.Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press
What now seems an eternity ago, the conservative law professor Steven Calabresi published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May arguing that Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. His article got a lot of attention, and it wasn’t long before President Trump picked up the argument, tweeting that “the Appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”

Professor Calabresi’s article was based on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. Under that provision, so-called principal officers of the United States must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate under its “Advice and Consent” powers.

He argued that Mr. Mueller was a principal officer because he is exercising significant law enforcement authority and that since he has not been confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was unconstitutional. As one of us argued at the time, he was wrong. What makes an officer a principal officer is that he or she reports only to the president. No one else in government is that person’s boss. But Mr. Mueller reports to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. So, Mr. Mueller is what is known as an inferior officer, not a principal one, and his appointment without Senate approval was valid.

But Professor Calabresi and the president were right about the core principle. A principal officer must be confirmed by the Senate. And that has a very, very significant consequence today.

It means that President Trump’s installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It’s illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid.

Much of the commentary about Mr. Whitaker’s appointment has focused on all sorts of technical points about the Vacancies Reform Act and Justice Department succession statutes. But the flaw in the appointment of Mr. Whitaker, who was Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff at the Justice Department, runs much deeper. It defies one of the one of the explicit checks and balances set out in the Constitution, a provision designed to protect us all against the centralization of government power.

If you don’t believe us, then take it from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom President Trump once called his “favorite” sitting justice. Last year, the Supreme Court examined the question of whether the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board had been lawfully appointed to his job without Senate confirmation. The Supreme Court held the appointment invalid on a statutory ground.

Justice Thomas agreed with the judgment, but wrote separately to emphasize that even if the statute had allowed the appointment, the Constitution’s Appointments Clause would not have. The officer in question was a principal officer, he concluded. And the public interest protected by the Appointments Clause was a critical one: The Constitution’s drafters, Justice Thomas argued, “recognized the serious risk for abuse and corruption posed by permitting one person to fill every office in the government.” Which is why, he pointed out, the framers provided for advice and consent of the Senate.

What goes for a mere lawyer at the N.L.R.B. goes in spades for the attorney general of the United States, the head of the Justice Department and one of the most important people in the federal government. It is one thing to appoint an acting underling, like an acting solicitor general, a post one of us held. But those officials are always supervised by higher-ups; in the case of the solicitor general, by the attorney general and deputy attorney general, both confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Whitaker has not been named to some junior post one or two levels below the Justice Department’s top job. He has now been vested with the law enforcement authority of the entire United States government, including the power to supervise Senate-confirmed officials like the deputy attorney general, the solicitor general and all United States attorneys.

We cannot tolerate such an evasion of the Constitution’s very explicit, textually precise design. Senate confirmation exists for a simple, and good, reason. Constitutionally, Matthew Whitaker is a nobody. His job as Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff did not require Senate confirmation. (Yes, he was confirmed as a federal prosecutor in Iowa, in 2004, but President Trump can’t cut and paste that old, lapsed confirmation to today.) For the president to install Mr. Whitaker as our chief law enforcement officer is to betray the entire structure of our charter document.

In times of crisis, interim appointments need to be made. Cabinet officials die, and wars and other tragic events occur. It is very difficult to see how the current situation comports with those situations. And even if it did, there are officials readily at hand, including the deputy attorney general and the solicitor general, who were nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Either could step in as acting attorney general, both constitutionally and statutorily.

Because Mr. Whitaker has not undergone the process of Senate confirmation, there has been no mechanism for scrutinizing whether he has the character and ability to evenhandedly enforce the law in such a position of grave responsibility. The public is entitled to that assurance, especially since Mr. Whitaker’s only supervisor is President Trump himself, and the president is hopelessly compromised by the Mueller investigation. That is why adherence to the requirements of the Appointments Clause is so important here, and always.

As we wrote last week, the Constitution is a bipartisan document, written for the ages to guard against wrongdoing by officials of any party. Mr. Whitaker’s installation makes a mockery of our Constitution and our founders’ ideals. As Justice Thomas’s opinion in the N.L.R.B. case reminds us, the Constitution’s framers “had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked.” He added “they knew that liberty could be preserved only by ensuring that the powers of government would never be consolidated in one body.”

We must heed those words today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/opin ... ional.html
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby thrulookingglass » Thu Nov 08, 2018 3:21 pm

The scandal grew to involve a slew of additional allegations against the President, ranging from the improper use of government agencies to accepting gifts in office and his
personal finances and taxes; Nixon repeatedly stated his willingness to pay any outstanding taxes due, and paid $465,000 in back taxes in 1974.

As the Watergate saga unfolded, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) became the first national organization to call for Nixon's impeachment. Civil rights attorney Charles Morgan, Jr. was involved in the ACLU's effort to have President Nixon impeached from office; in fact, he led the effort. This, following a resolution opposing the Vietnam War, was controversial as it was the second major decision that caused critics of the ACLU, particularly conservatives, to claim that the ACLU had evolved into a liberal political organization.


Article One of Impeachment - On June 17, 1972, and prior thereto, agents of the Committee for the Re-election of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing political intelligence. Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.

Fact: Donald J Trump's electoral campaign colluded with Russian operatives that offered intelligence regarding Hillary Clinton in full knowledge of the Trump campaign. It is illegal (a federal offense) to receive clandestine electoral assistance from international sources.

Article Two of Impeachment - repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

Fact: The executive office has been less than forthright in the efforts to assist Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign. Trump duties as head of the executive office states that he is bound to uphold all treaties of international law, thereby, President Donald J Trump by creating circumstances to make it ever more difficult to allow citizens of the world to seek asylum due to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion here in the United States has betrayed the duties of the executive office and thereby the American citizenry and the laws he swore to uphold.

Article Three of impeachment - failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas

Fact: President Donald J Trump has failed to produce tax returns to the American public, failed to divest himself of holdings that he profits from by acting as president of the united states which is a violation of the duties of the executive office, colluded with Russian operatives during the campaign of 2016 and has made efforts to obscure his knowledge of his campaigns willingness to violate law regarding conduct of parties seeking the office of the president.

WOULD SOMEONE SEND THIS FUCKING ASSHOLE A SUBPOENA!
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby Rory » Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:55 pm

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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 08, 2018 11:20 pm

trump’s acting AG appointment is ‘unconstitutional’


No one has to take orders from him......hopefully they won’t

Image


Acting AG Whitaker's hostility to the Special Counsel’s investigation disqualifies him from overseeing Robert Mueller. We are leading 18 state attorneys general in calling on Whitaker to recuse himself immediately.

Image
Image
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 09, 2018 12:40 pm

Neal Katyal


Wow. The Court of Appeals, in a case challenging Mueller, now orders briefing on impact of the Sessions firing & installation of Whittaker. It is possible for parties to take the view that his boss is the legitimate Rosenstein, not the pretend-Attorney General Trump wants to have

Image
https://twitter.com/neal_katyal
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 09, 2018 6:55 pm

Large Payments to Trump AG Pick Found in Scam Firm’s Records
November 9, 2018 ADAM KLASFELD

(CN) – Shut down by the Federal Trade Commission for defrauding thousands of hopeful inventors, World Patent Marketing paid a judgment of more than $25 million this past May.


Then-Iowa Republican senatorial candidate and former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker watches before a live televised debate in Johnston, Iowa, on April 24, 2014. President Donald Trump announced in a tweet that he was naming Whitaker as acting attorney general after Attorney General Jeff Sessions was pushed out on Nov. 7, 2018, following more than a year of blistering and personal attacks from Trump over his recusal from the Russia investigation. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
As civil litigation over the now-defunct company trudges on, however, court records in more than 10 lawsuits show that acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker may have profited handsomely from his former role as a World Patent Marketing board member.

Known as WPM for short, the company paid at least $9,375 to Whitaker between October 2014 and late February 2016, and its financial records indicate that the company owed him $7,500 more for work between May 2016 and February 2017.

Ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom President Trump fired on Wednesday, tapped Whitaker as his chief of staff in September 2017, some seven months after that last scheduled payment.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on whether Whitaker returned what WPM paid him for his role on the 12-member “Invention Team Advisory Board.” A receiver in charge of the court-ordered investigation of WPM found this board to be a sham designed to “impress customers and foster sales.”

“In addition to deceptive and unfair sales practices detailed by the FTC in its papers, the receiver’s investigation has confirmed that WPM continued deceptive sales acts through March 2017, including falsely telling customers that their idea had been reviewed and approved by a ‘board,’” attorney Jonathan Perlman wrote in his receiver’s report last year.

Perlman did not respond to an email that sought elaboration on Whitaker’s role in the scheme.

Attorney Norm Eisen, the former ethics czar under Obama who heads an anti-corruption watchdog, said Whitaker has an ethical obligation to pay back his money to benefit those who were defrauded.

“What he knew about this company and when he knew it may turn out to be yet another reason he is not fit to serve,” Eisen said in an interview. “Even if he too was fooled, what does that say about his ability to oversee investigations as acting AG? As for repayment, that’s an intricate legal question, turning upon his knowledge, as well as on which state and federal laws may apply.”

Ironically, Whitaker’s profile in the archives of WPM’s now-defunct website touts his work sniffing out “scams” at his former post in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Iowa between 2004 and 2009.

An email uncovered from the FTC litigation appears to show Whitaker threatening an unhappy WPM customer named A. Rudsky.

“I am a former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and I also serve on World Patent Marketing’s advisory board,” the Aug. 21, 2015, email states. “Your emails and message from today seem to be an apparent attempt at possible blackmail or extortion.”

The recipient, whose email address is shielded in court documents, called out Whitaker for his “scare tactics.”

“You are party too [sic] a scam that is driving allot [sic] of traffic to WPM site,” A. Rudsky wrote four days later. “You will be exposed…. I hope I make myself clear Mr. Whitaker.”

Two years later, the FTC would echo this heated language in a federal complaint, which does not mention Whitaker’s name.

“For the last three years, defendants have operated an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars,” the 17-page document states.

Whitaker’s email address, which was still live as of Thursday, links to his former Des Moines-based firm Whitaker Hagenow & Gustoff, now Haganow & Gustaff.

An email request for comment sent to that address was ignored.

Other ties to the Trump administration abound. Three years ago WPM released a promo video titled “Donald Trump – What World Patent Marketing Customer’s [sic] Can Learn.” Republican Rep. Brian Mast, an enthusiastic Trump-backer from Florida, also was listed as a WPM advisory board member.

Mast’s name is not listed on the same WPM financial ledger showing Whitaker’s payment, but the congressman returned a $5,400 donation to his campaign from the company’s CEO Scott Cooper. He denied association with the company.

For his part, Trump denied even knowing Sessions’ replacement at a press conference this morning.

“I don’t know Matt Whitaker,” the president told ABC News on Friday morning. “He was very, very highly thought of, and still is highly thought of. But this only comes up because anybody that works for me, they do a number on them.”

At the press conference, Trump was not asked about Whitaker’s ties to WPM. Instead the president was grilled about the new attorney general’s open opposition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

Aside from FTC litigation, the Courthouse News database shows that WPM had been a party in 16 cases in Florida, Illinois and New York. WPM, which was headquartered in Miami, is the business name of Desa Industries, a company organized in Delaware and based in New York.

Chicago-based attorney Scott Verhey, who sued WPM on behalf of one of its creditors, noted that the company’s former CEO Scott Cooper had a reputation for telling tall tales.

“I think he had on there at one point that his security team included Israeli soldiers,” Verhey said in a phone interview.

A federal class action filed in the Southern District of New York noted that Cooper bragged about these “commandos” in an article posted on WPM’s website.

“Cooper has even taken the unprecedented step of hiring a World Patent Marketing Security Force, made up of former Israeli commandos that previously protected the Prime Minister of Israel,” the article said, according to the lawsuit.

Cooper ultimately agreed to pay $976,330 to the commission, which did not respond to a request for comment.

The class action against WPM, Desa and Cooper remains pending in Manhattan.

Cooper’s attorney in that case, Kenneth Robinson in the Florida-based firm Rice Pugatch Robinson & Schiller, did not respond to a request for comment.

Representing an estimated class of 1,400 WPM customers, attorney Joseph LoPresti said in an email that his allegedly defrauded named clients – Steven Harris and Crystal Carlson – did not have any personal brush with the new attorney general.

“Although my clients received threatening letters from WPM lawyers, none were from Whitaker,” LoPresti said in an email.

Discovery has not yet begun in the’ case, which U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff stayed until Jan. 30, 2019.

Their 34-page complaint details how WPM lured would-be inventors with grandiose promises.

Harris, a North Carolina resident, says he paid the firm close to $20,000 for his invention “Teddy’s Ballie Bumper,” described as an inflatable bladder-type device used as a bumper for small objects. WPM advertised his invention as a “success story,” even though Harris claims they never even got him a patent.

Touted as another WPM “success,” Arizona resident Carlson said she forked over more than $34,000 for the company to help her patent and promote a baby car seat monitoring system. She said that WPM promised to run her invention by a so-called “Ivy League Research Lab,” which rated her invention on a deceptive “Marketability Study.”

“Carlson’s invention scored a 72, which fell into the ‘Probably Successful’ range,” the complaint states.

Though she believed her baby car seat monitoring system was unique, Carlson said that she learned it was not and never got a patent.

https://www.courthousenews.com/large-pa ... s-records/


Polly Sigh


A court-appointed receiver for World Patent Marketing [under FBI criminal investigation] said other advisory-board members returned fees they received from the company, but that Matt Whitaker didn’t respond to a demand notice sent by the receiver.



FBI investigating Florida company Trump's acting AG was involved in: report

Justin Wise11/09/18 04:59 PM EST

The FBI is reportedly conducting a criminal investigation into a company accused by the federal government of scamming aspiring inventors while new acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker served on its advisory board.

The Wall Street Journal, citing an alleged victim who was contacted by the FBI and other people familiar with the investigation, reported on Friday that the probe was launched by the Miami office of the FBI and by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The newspaper reports that the case remains active.

President Trump announced on Wednesday that Whitaker would serve as the acting attorney general after Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned at the president's request. Whitaker had served as Sessions's chief of staff since September 2017.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment to the Journal. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

Whitaker will oversee the FBI in his new role, which would require him to avoid being involved in any matters related to the case, an ethics expert told The Journal.

The FBI’s investigation is related to the company World Patent Marketing, which was shut down in 2017 after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused it of operating “an invention-promotion scam" that tricked "thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars."

It was ordered to pay a $26 million settlement in May after federal authorities said it duped aspiring inventors.

Court filings indicate that Whitaker received regular payments of $1,875 from the company while serving as a member of its advisory board.

It’s also been reported that Whitaker sent a threatening email to a former customer who had complained about the company in August 2015.

Whitaker has not been named a defendant in the case against the company.

The Journal noted that the FTC’s action agains the firm was a civil proceeding and that an FBI investigation indicates authorities may be looking into possible criminal charges.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... nvolved-in



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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 13, 2018 11:02 am

Maryland expected to ask for injunction saying Whitaker is not legitimate acting attorney general: report

The state of Maryland is expected to ask for an injunction on Tuesday saying Matt Whitaker is not the legitimate acting attorney general, claiming instead that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should have been promoted to the position, The New York Times reported.

The injunction will come as part of the state's lawsuit against former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to the Times, who resigned at President Trump's request last week. A federal judge in Maryland will now have to name Sessions's successor in the lawsuit, and the state is planning to argue Whitaker's appointment to the role was not constitutional, according to a draft filing obtained by the newspaper

"[Trump may not] bypass the constitutional and statutory requirements for appointing someone to that office,” the plaintiffs reportedly wrote in the draft filing.

Since Whitaker's appointment last Wednesday, Democrats have called on him to recuse himself from Robert Mueller's Russia probe, citing his public comments criticizing the special counsel.

Whitaker once declared there "no collusion" between Trump and Moscow and said the special counsel's investigation was a waste of time that could be undercut by denying it funding.

Maryland will reportedly ask Ellen Hollander of the Federal District Court for the District of Maryland to rule Whitaker's appointment unlawful, pointing to the president's use of the Vacancies Reform Act to fill the vacancy left by Sessions. The state will argue that Trump's invocation of the statute was atypical, as it is intended for routine positions and not the Department of Justice's (DOJ) highest post, the Times reported.

Another statute specifically says the deputy attorney general should be appointed if the attorney general leaves the position, the filing says.

"[The position of attorney general] calls for the highest levels of integrity and personal judgment, prerequisites safeguarded by the Constitution’s command that principal officers be subject to the oversight and check provided by Senate confirmation,” the filing says, according to the Times.

Some Democrats have raised concerns that Whitaker's appointment is an attempt by Trump to undermine the Mueller investigation, which he has criticized as a "witch hunt" for more than a year.

Democratic leaders on Sunday sent a letter requesting a formal update from the DOJ's ethics office on whether Whitaker should recuse himself from overseeing Mueller's investigation.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ker-is-not
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 13, 2018 4:31 pm

The now-defunct Florida company where Matthew Whitaker served as a paid advisory-board member once posted a promotional video featuring...Donald trump.

The company shut down last year after the FTC accused it of scamming $26M from consumers.
Defunct Patent Firm That Matthew Whitaker Advised Posted Video Featuring Trump
im-36741.jpeg


World Patent Marketing, Inc. shut down last year after Federal Trade Commission accused it of scamming $26 million from consumers

By Mark Maremont and James V. Grimaldi
Nov. 13, 2018 3:00 p.m. ET
A video posted in 2015 by World Patent Marketing, Inc., featured then presidential candidate Donald Trump.
It is the latest twist in the story of World Patent Marketing Inc., which has attracted a sudden spotlight since Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Whitaker to lead the Justice Department last week after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was ousted. The Trump Organization, which licenses Mr. Trump’s name, wasn’t aware of World Patent Marketing or the video, according to a person familiar with the matter, suggesting the video wasn’t authorized.

The video, titled “Donald Trump—What World Patent Marketing Customer’s [sic] Can Learn,” was posted in August 2015. The video, which remains online, is about three minutes long and includes still photos of Mr. Trump along with general business-advice quotes attributed to him.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

World Patent Marketing shut down last year after the Federal Trade Commission accused it of scamming $26 million from consumers. The company offered to patent and promote inventions, but instead delivered little and threatened customers who complained, the FTC charged.

Mr. Whitaker was paid $9,375 by the company as an advisory board member and wrote a threatening letter to at least one unhappy customer, according to FTC court filings. He also appeared in two videos the company used to promote itself.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation—which Mr. Whitaker now oversees— is conducting a criminal investigation of World Patent Marketing, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

“Acting attorney general Matt Whitaker has said he is not aware of any fraudulent activity,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said last week. “Any stories suggesting otherwise are false.” The Justice Department declined to comment on the video of Mr. Trump.

The promotional Trump video was cited in at least one court document filed by the FTC, in a declaration from an unhappy customer who said he saw the video and believed Mr. Trump was recommending the company.

The customer, Ralph Dyer, of Boynton Beach, Fla., said in an interview Monday that the Trump video helped the company “seem like it was legit.” A retired police officer, Mr. Dyer said he had read one of Mr. Trump’s books years earlier and long admired him.

Mr. Dyer said he took out a high-interest loan to pay the company $14,000 to patent and promote a GPS-location idea, but he never obtained a patent and nobody from the company would return his calls. “It was definitely a scam,” said Mr. Dyer, who said he was still paying off the loan on a fixed income.

Neither Scott Cooper, founder of World Patent Marketing, nor his attorney responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Trump (who doesn’t speak on the video) never mentions World Patent Marketing by name in the video, which the company promoted in news releases and on platforms like Twitter and Facebook .

A logo for World Patent Marketing appears in the upper right-hand corner of the screen throughout the video.

There is no indication that the Trump Organization, which is known for aggressively protecting the Trump brand, knew about or challenged the use of Mr. Trump’s image and statements in the video.

The video said it was funded by the Cooper Idea Foundation, a nonprofit run by the founder of World Patent Marketing. A tax filing by the foundation for 2015—the year the video was posted—didn’t mention any payments to Mr. Trump’s company.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/defunct-pa ... 1542139220



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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:40 pm

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NEW: Cointelpro Gothic: Acting Attorney General Whitaker Linked to RNC Terrorism, Grand Jury Probes https://unicornriot.ninja/2018/cointelp ... ry-probes/ … - hundreds of pages of FOIA documents link America's top law enforcement officer to operations against the left in Iowa (2004-2009)

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Cointelpro Gothic: Attorney General Whitaker Linked to Probes on 2008 RNC, Grand Juries

By Dan Feidt, Unicorn Riot November 16, 2018
Southern District of Iowa – Acting US Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, formerly Jeff Sessions’ Chief of Staff, served as US Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, from June 15, 2004 to November 25, 2009. During this tenure, his office engaged with FBI investigations around the 2004 and 2008 Republican National Conventions, and a Davenport grand jury probe that incarcerated a Minneapolis resident for four months without charges.

Hundreds of pages of FBI investigation documents, including multiple covert surveillance campaigns, turned over in two separate FOIA requests, showed that the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa (USAO – SDI) was involved with these cases.

Eight years after these FOIA requests came back from the FBI, David Goodner of Iowa City, Iowa, who released many of the confidential FBI documents about the 2008 RNC that he obtained to the public, told Unicorn Riot,

“Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is a scumbag who built his career orchestrating political witch hunts against gay Democrats, animal liberation activists, and antiwar anarchists. We should expect the same strategy on steroids now that he’s the top cop for the Fascist-in-Chief Donald Trump.” – David Goodner, Iowa City, Iowa

A detailed report published September 20, 2010 by the Des Moines Register quoted Whitaker on the 2008 RNC investigations:

The Iowa City investigation, directed by the FBI’s Omaha office, was conducted with the knowledge of then-U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker of Des Moines. […] Whitaker, now in private law practice in Des Moines, said last week that he was aware the FBI was looking into potential criminal acts relating to the 2008 Republican National Convention, “but I don’t remember any specifics at all.”

“We worked very closely with the FBI on a lot of different things and interacted. They would ask us if we would work with them to investigate potential crimes. That happened all the time,” Whitaker added. Asked whether the FBI’s Iowa City investigation amounted to overkill, he declined to comment, saying he was not involved on a day-to-day basis in the investigation. – Des Moines Register, September 20, 2010

All of Iowa lies within the Omaha, Nebraska, FBI field office’s turf; Smaller “Resident Agencies” (RA) FBI offices include Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Grand Island, Lincoln, North Platte, Quad Cities, Sioux City, and Waterloo. The Cedar Rapids RA is mentioned in the FOIAs, including for stacking up
“accomplishments“.

These documents were reported on in 2010 and 2012 by this writer, who obtained them from Goodner, in a two-part series, Cointelpro Gothic Part I & Part II; the documents are re-released and summarized in this report, with reprocessed OCR for searchability.

Grand jury investigations and prosecutions were a major feature of the Green Scare. A federal grand jury can demand a wide range of information and imprison people without charges for unspecified time periods if they don’t talk — including at the river city of Davenport, a key event at the end of Whitaker’s tenure as US Attorney during the first year of the Obama Administration.

2008 Wild Rose Rebellion / 2008 RNC

This 2010 FOIA gives details about the 2008 Republican National Convention related investigations in Des Moines. Case file 100A-OM-51967, eventually bearing the dramatic title “WILD ROSE REBELLION – A RESISTENCE BETWEEN TWO RIVERS – TERRORISM ENTERPRISE INVESTIGATION“, was a “captioned Terrorism Enterprise Preliminary Investigation” that started February 26, 2008.

The most detailed remarks related to the US Attorneys Office led by Whitaker are found here (part 2, p53-54):

“Representatives from the United States Attorneys Office (USAO) for the Southern District of Iowa (SDI) have been briefed on the investigation, the intended goals, objectives and strategies to be carried out in order to detect, prevent and prosecute the criminal activities of the WRR and its members. Based upon the information developed thus far and through consultation with the USAO representatives, the potential federal criminal statutes which may be most feasible to pursue have been identified as Title 18, USC 241 – Conspiracy Against Rights and Title 18, USC 245 – Federally Protected Activities. The USAO / SDI has stated their support of opening a criminal investigation into this matter and their assistance with the use of all appropriate investigative techniques to identify any criminal activity.” – Omaha Squad 6/ Cedar Rapids Iowa FBI Resident Agency, June 3, 2008

This FOIA is divided into three parts.

2008 Wild Rose Rebellion Part 1 (150 pages)

One of the first entries, on March 12, 2008, is a claim of statistical accomplishment by Omaha Squad 6 / Cedar Rapids Resident Agency, for talking to the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety about someone they found suspicious, and some graffiti (p12-13), as “positive terrorism (disseminated outside FBI)“.

The investigation officially begins on a memo dated March 14, 2008 (p14-25). After handing out copies of an FBI pamphlet titled “Extremist Symbols, Tattoos and Terminology” to the JTTF officers – Squad 6 requests statistical accomplishment again on March 31. However on an “OMAHA FIG” stamp there is an initial by “NO“, so it seemingly didn’t count as “positive intelligence (disseminated outside FBI)” in “Liaison with other agency“.

On an unknown day, an FBI special agent determined the garbage schedule in Iowa City to better plan when to search people’s garbage (p41-42), and gained approval on April 15, 2008, for “multiple trash covers” (p43-44). More statistical accomplishments get claimed on April 21 (p50-52) by Squad 6, this time approved by FBI Omaha FIG two days later.

A lot of intelligence gathering on the Iowa City Public Library schedule is presented in this FOIA (p72-75). Hand-written street surveillance notes and the covers of CDs and a videotape fill the rest of the file (p79-150).

Download Part 1 of the Wild Rose Rebellion FOIA here.
2008 Wild Rose Rebellion Part 2 (62 pages)

A large block of typewritten physical surveillance (FISUR) summaries form the bulk of this file (p1-46), written by Squad 6 in Cedar Rapids Resident Agency, as well as monitoring the calendar events at the local library.

A long and heavily redacted report (p47-57) includes the large reference to Whitaker’s office’s possible prosecution strategy noted above. Its case ID is 266H-OM-NEW (pending), meaning a new “preliminary inquiry” is being opened here but has no serial number yet. Handwritten below on the cover sheet is 266H-OM-52112 near a “YES” initialed by OMAHA FIG (p47).

Some subjects get entered into the terrorist watch-list system, known as “VGTOF” and “TREX” (p58). They later seem to get cleared as the investigation gets closed without any actual criminal activity detected.

Download Part 2 of the Wild Rose Rebellion FOIA here.
2008 Wild Rose Rebellion Part 3 (81 pages)

A heavily censored narrative written August 16, 2008 (p12-13) claims that Wild Rose Rebellion developed at “The Caucus of the Future” in Des Moines in January, 2008. The Ramsey County Sheriffs Office, led at the time by Bob Fletcher (who will be re-entering that office in 2019), was used as a data mining source (p23).

An officer from Squad 6 / Cedar Rapids Resident Agency claims credit for “POSITIVE TERRORISM” statistical accomplishment (p31-32). A large block of physical surveillance records includes photos, “drive-by surveillance,” handwritten observation notes, Iowa Department of Transportation records, garbage searches and at least one video of a “direct action skill share event” (p41-42).

On October 24, 2008, almost two months after the RNC had ended, the Cedar Rapids Resident Agency (Omaha Squad 6) requests help from the Omaha Field Intelligence Group (FIG) under a domestic terrorism heading (DT) heading — and a Case ID number that is still censored. It’s part of a new “spin-off” investigation of the previous one, an “anarchist extremist group based in the Iowa City, Iowa area, the WILD ROSE REBELLION (WRR)” (p43-46).

The Oklahoma City-based Squad 4 of the JTTF submits a report on November 14, 2008, on Case ID 266H-OM-52112 (p47-52) with what appears to be identification of two people.

The JTTF Omaha Squad 9 Field Intelligence Group/Des Moines Resident Agency reports analyzing four phone numbers on November 25, 2008, for case 266H-OM-52112 and found “two links to domestic terrorism” (p53-75). The information came from “Investigative Data Warehouse, FBI Telephone Application, Lexis-Nexus, [redacted] and Google searches[…]“.

On December 2, 2008, Squad 6/Cedar Rapids Resident Agency writes to several significant FBI sections, including “DT-OPS 5” and “Anarchists Team” in the Counterterrorism section (p76-77) closing out the investigation with little fanfare. “No specific criminal activities were identified as being attributable to [redacted] or the WRR at the RNC or otherwise (p79).” The writer claims that the investigation “did not focus solely on the constitutionally protected activities of captioned subjects [nor] the WRR group as a whole. […] No evidence has been retained in captioned matter and no leads remain outstanding.”

Significantly, acting Attorney General Whitaker’s office turns up here (p79):

“AUSA [redacted] of the Southern District of Iowa whose office opened a file to assist with this matter was telephonically contacted on 12/16/2008 and agreed with the closing of captioned matter.” – FBI Omaha Squad 6, Cedar Rapids Resident Agency – dated December 2, 2008

It’s not clear why the document indicates Whitaker’s office was contacted on December 16 but the memo itself is dated December 2 in several places. The cover also has markings “Received” on December 30 and an “OMAHA FIG” stamp seems to be initialed “YES” on December 31.

Download Part 3 of the Wild Rose Rebellion FOIA here.
2004-2007 Crimethinc Iowa & Minnesota investigations (525 pages)

This 2010 FOIA gives 525 pages covering the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, and FBI Case IDs 266A-OM-49939, 66F-HQ-C1384970, 66F-OM-A49378. On August 3, 2004, a “full investigation” was “opened“, meaning all the tools including wiretaps, opening mail, covert searches, and tracking cars are available to the agents.

The FBI claimed the investigation was justified “to take proactive steps to deter any possible criminal activities being commited by logical domestic terrorist targets within Iowa and to obtain intelligence/evidence regarding any planned criminal activity carried out” (p8).

The main target of this investigation involved the anarchist publishing network Crimethinc, or people suspected to be involved with Crimethinc (p9). Today Crimethinc defines itself as “a think tank producing inflammatory ideas and action, a sphinx posing questions fatal to the superstitions of our age“.

FBI Omaha says they became suspicious of Crimethinc after a 2002 event in Des Moines (case 100-OM-C43559), and blamed people involved with those meetings as likely involved with a mink farm release August 18 that year, and tagging the sign of an insurance company that worked with notorious animal testing company Huntington Life Sciences on August 21. FBI Omaha claimed so-called “domestic terrorism” (DT) groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) could be involved. (p9)

FBI Omaha aimed to surveil a Crimethinc gathering scheduled for August 20-26, based partly on information provided by a “private industry watchdog group” called The Fur Commission, which monitored what the FBI called “animal extremists“. They honed in on a “purported independent video store” in Des Moines. A part time Iowa Division of Criminal Intelligence (IDCI) Joint Terrorism Task Force member tipped FBI Omaha the event was happening. (p10)

This FOIA also points to related investigations (such as 300A-NY-284132 with a Miami source (p11)) forming a kind of operational mesh directed at leftist organizing nationwide. FBI Chicago had its own file, 266A-CG-118232, investigating people organizing against the Iraq war. In this investigation FBI Omaha aimed to “prevent any planned domestic terrorism” and “conduct appropriate outreach” with private businesses, and “obtain FBI source coverage” of the convergence. (p13)

A sprawling surveillance campaign starts on page 19. Iowa’s drivers license database and JTTF officials are leveraged to snoop on people they believed were involved in the convergence. Handwritten minute-by-minute notes of an FBI surveillance team follow (p30-75).

An alert for possible denial of service or other electronic attacks sent out widely to FBI offices dated August 11 follows (p89-94), connected to 300A-NY-284132, this Omaha investigation, 66F-HQ-A1275997, and 66F-HQ-C1384970. Discussed was a Crimethinc presentation at DEFCON called “Electronic Civil Disobedience and the Republican National Convention” (FBI file 266A-CG-118232 again).

On August 10, a detailed report (p95) covers the attempt to run an inter-city informant operation and manage other coordination. The FBI Miami office offers to arrange to have an informant from the Miami area fly up to Des Moines on August 10. On the next page (p96), an Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) from Whitaker’s Southern District of Iowa US Attorney Office is mentioned in the case updates:

“Presently, on 8/11/2004, a local briefing will be held by the FBI JTTF in Des Moines, IA, with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and AUSA [redacted] U.S. Attorney’s office, Southern District of Iowa, in order to raise the awareness of the potential for criminal activities during the scheduled Crimethinc convergence.” – FBI Omaha, August 10, 2004

The file then notes that the Des Moines RA is supposed to coordinate with FBI Miami to send an informant (p100). The plan specifies managing the informant’s data through the JTTF after they infiltrate, managed by a Special Agent from Miami (p104).

The FOIA covers more particulars of the surveillance campaign in detail, including aerial photography of a campground on August 22 (p184).

While this investigation 266A-OM-49939 didn’t produce any serious criminal charges, included with the FOIA are several “Accomplishment Report” forms and registrations of “statistical accomplishments“. The ones on p255-271 claim credit for an FBI agent on the JTTF in contributing to a misdemeanor plea bargain in Polk County (Des Moines area), which is asserted to have “disrupted” “CrimeThinc (Anarchist DT Group)” (p263). Similarly (p386-387) reports to “Claim statistical accomplishments” including “Terrorist group identified – liason within FBI” netted credit for someone on FBI Omaha “Squad 8” because they wrote up “Intelligence Information Reports” (IIR’s).

A report closing out the investigation (p283-291) brags about three people catching small local charges, and claims that via an internet posting in Las Vegas, everyone lost their ride to New York due to FBI interference.

On August 18, 2005, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General contacted FBI Omaha to get all interviews conducted by FBI Omaha around the 2004 national conventions (p359-363). On p379 a separate investigation of a Crimethinc convergence in Des Moines around July 11 2005 starts. More statistical accomplishments for Squad 7 / Des Moines RA / JTTF are netted for FBI Omaha agents (p389-390) for “Positive intelligence (disseminated outside FBI),” including liaison with other agency, within FBI, and performing physical surveillance.

A preliminary investigation by FBI Minneapolis into a Winona, Minnesota summer Crimethinc convergence (p. 400) was opened on July 21, 2006. Reports from the Winona police using drivers license records and physical surveillance notes follow. (case 266I-MP-67951, linked to 266I-NY-C268023 and 266I-NY-283240, p478). More statistical accomplishments for FBI Minneapolis Squad 4/Domestic Terrorism are requested (p495-497) including “Positive intelligence (disseminated outside FBI)” in “Liaison with other agency“; again (p. 499-500) for “non-lookout platform intelligence” in “Liaison with other agency“.

On January 26, 2007, the preliminary investigation run by Minneapolis got expanded to a full investigation (p510), long after the convergence had ended. On February 9, 2007, again someone from FBI Minneapolis Squad 4 claims statistical accomplishment by calling the Rochester, Minnesota, RA and “several railroad representatives” to tell them there will be another “anarchist convergence” in Winona on March 29, 2007 (p512-513), claiming “Positive terrorism (disseminated outside FBI)” in “liaison with other agency“. Similarly someone from Squad 4 claims statistical accomplishment for calling the Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin, across the Mississippi River from Winona, to tell them the same (p514-515).

On March 23, 2007, Minneapolis Squad 4 requests that the investigation be changed from 266I to 266H which “more clearly identifies Crimethinc as an anarchist extremist group rather than an Animal Rights/Eco-terrorism extremist group” (p520). On April 20, 2007. the investigation 266I-MP-67951 is closed after the spring convergence is canceled and “there is no information suggesting that this local cell will be sponsoring any future anarchist events.”

The common factor among the FBI Omaha investigation which Whitaker’s office attended at least one meeting, and the later FBI Minneapolis investigation (which has no Whitaker link), is that Crimethinc’s network is considered by the FBI as a “domestic terrorist” (DT) organization, and anything that ‘disrupts’ that organization is a worthy goal which can grant statistical accomplishments for the agents involved. Similarly, calling local police or private businesses about these supposed domestic terrorists can also generate statistical accomplishments.

Download the full 2010 FOIA on Crimethinc here – 525 pages (75MB).
Davenport Grand Jury: Southern District of Iowa Imposes Imprisonment without Charges (2009)

In the final weeks of Whitaker’s tenure leading the Southern District of Iowa, another spinoff of the 2008 Republican National Convention was the late 2009 grand jury harassment and prosecution his office led around two animal rights-related incidents, thought to be spurred by evidence obtained in the series of raids on political activists in the days just before the national event in the Twin Cities.

According to the Davenport Grand Jury / Scott and Carrie Support Committee, in October 2009, Carrie Feldman was subpoenaed by the Southern District of Iowa US Attorney’s office to a grand jury investigating an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) raid that occurred at the University of Iowa in 2004, when she was a high school student in Minnesota. She told the federal prosecutor and jurors “that she would not be testifying, citing the historical use of grand juries to repress political movements.”

In November 2009, Scott DeMuth was also subpoenaed. A few days later, both traveled to Davenport and refused to testify, and were brought to a judge who “found cause to jail them for civil contempt of court because of their refusal to cooperate.” This type of incarceration is not a charge, a pretrial detention or a sentence — it’s a tactic to hold people indefinitely and force them to talk.

On November 18, 2009, just a week before Whitaker left office, DeMuth was indicted for conspiracy under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) (pdf). He was released two weeks later with an ankle bracelet before trial. At pretrial hearings, Whitaker’s subordinate, Assistant US Attorney Clifford Cronk, claimed that DeMuth is “an anarchist and therefore a domestic terrorist,” which as seen in the FBI documents above was a common assumption among Iowa’s federal law enforcement circles at that time. The support committee argued that “Cronk’s vague indictment relied almost exclusively on DeMuth’s political beliefs, such as his support for other political prisoners, rather than evidence that would actually connect him to the 2004 ALF raid at the UofI.”

Feldman was incarcerated for four months without charges, and suddenly released on March 19, 2010, after refusing to cooperate with the grand jury the whole time. Cronk issued a new indictment that seemed to link the 2004 ALF raid with a separate ALF action that happened in Minnesota in the spring of 2006. Cronk offered a plea that DeMuth could plead guilty for the 2006 Minnesota action and serve a short sentence (ultimately six months), while “eliminating the risk that he might be falsely convicted of involvement in the 2004 UofI action and serve three years in prison“. DeMuth took the plea bargain, at the same time sparing Feldman and another alleged witness of possible criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify at a trial.

Reporters and researchers continue to explore more about the background of acting Attorney General Whitaker, currently the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the United States. Other stories from his tenure are attracting more attention from reporters, including the 2006 investigation of Iowa State Senator Matt McCoy, who recounted his experiences days ago in Politico.

Eleven years before Whitaker became acting US attorney, in 2007, David Yepsen, a writer at the Des Moines Register observed,

“it appears the U.S. attorney, Matt Whitaker, is aggressively going after the city’s south-side Democratic organization and the way it does business. […] Whitaker is a Republican. And not just any Republican, but a socially conservative one who ran unsuccessfully for state treasurer in 2002 and could well be a candidate for office again. He recently was in the news when he was scheduled to emcee an event for the Iowa Christian Alliance, a successor group to the Iowa Christian Coalition.

After first granting him permission to host the event, Whitaker said the Justice Department revoked it after objections from liberal groups. Instead, he just attended the meeting. Active involvement in ideological political action groups like that is rare for U.S. attorneys in Iowa — and even the Justice Department higher-ups seemed to think better of it. For good reason. McCoy is a Democrat. And not just any Democrat but an openly gay one. So we now have the specter of a politically ambitious, evangelical Republican with ties to the religious right going after a gay Democrat. Does this seem fair? Even if Whitaker has the goods on a south-side political kingpin like McCoy, there will always be those who wonder whether his actions are driven more by his desire to ferret out public corruption, his own political ambition or a dislike for McCoy’s sexual orientation.”

Whitaker subsequently ran for US Senate in 2014. Whitaker and Sam Clovis both lost the 2014 Republican US Senate Primary in Iowa and Whitaker chaired Clovis’ run for Iowa state treasurer later that year. According to a Washington Post report Thursday, Whitaker has faced calls to recuse himself from managing the investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller due to his friendship with Clovis, a key witness, who led presidential candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy team in 2016. During that time Clovis was a key contact for George Papadoupolos, who later pled guilty to lying to the FBI, and Carter Page, who had a secret intelligence warrant placed on his communications.

After a stint in the private sector involving the marketing of “alleged Bigfoot, toilet, [and] time travel scams“, Whitaker has now found himself in charge of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).

These documents shed some light on important questions. As acting Attorney General, what tactics against left-wing and anarchist political activity is Whitaker likely to sign off on?

Given the critical role of FBI career advancement “statistical accomplishments” in these documents, does that shed any light on how acting AG Whitaker will make decisions about FBI and DOJ promotions? As these FOIAs illustrate, by falsely labeling swaths of people as “domestic terrorists,” FBI agents can collect career “statistical accomplishments” simply by calling local law enforcement and private businesses about activities supposed to be protected by the First Amendment. Will this kind of activity, which happened within SDI during his term in office there, recur on a national scale?

People involved in the massive ‘J20’ Trump inauguration protest trials have pointed out the question of what will happen in the DOJ’s career advancement system to federal prosecutors like Jennifer Kerkhoff at the federal DC Superior Court, who oversaw a case that was sanctioned by the Chief Judge for failing to provide adequate discovery to defendants in those cases (covered extensively by Unicorn Riot). Under a Whitaker DOJ, will prosecutors be held accountable in their DOJ career advancement for misconduct in trials and probes of left-leaning defendants and targets?
https://unicornriot.ninja/2018/cointelp ... ry-probes/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Sessions "Resigns" Whitaker & A Constitutional Crisis

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 16, 2018 6:54 pm

Lawyers ask #SCOTUS to resolve the dispute over whether Matthew Whitaker can be the acting AG. READ the filing:
Image


Lawyers Challenge Matthew Whitaker's Appointment As Acting Attorney General At The Supreme Court

"Because Whitaker’s appointment does not satisfy the Appointments Clause, it is unlawful, and he cannot serve as Acting Attorney General," the lawyers wrote.

Chris Geidner
Posted on November 16, 2018, at 5:28 p.m. ET

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker


Lawyers on Friday brought a challenge to the validity of President Donald Trump's appointment of Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to the Supreme Court in a pending case.

"Because Whitaker’s appointment does not satisfy the Appointments Clause, it is unlawful, and he cannot serve as Acting Attorney General," the lawyers wrote.

The filing comes in Barry Michaels' pending petition for certiorari in a case challenging the federal law barring possession of a gun by a felon.

In addition to Michael Zapin, Michaels' lawyer on previous filings, Tom Goldstein and his colleagues at Goldstein Russell joined Friday's filing challenging Whitaker's appointment.

Goldstein and the firm joined the Maryland attorney general in challenging Whitaker's appointment in a different case before a trial judge earlier this week.

In Friday's filing at the Supreme Court, the lawyers filed a similar request, asking the court to declare that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and not Whitaker, should be substituted as the respondent in the case because, they argue, Whitaker's appointment violates both federal law setting the order of succession at the Justice Department and the Constitution's Appointments Clause.


The lawyers also ask the court to take up the case without waiting for lower courts to rule, as it ordinarily would, because the issue is "a pure question of law" and could arise in "thousands" of cases.

"If this Court declines to resolve this question immediately and instead determines several months in the future that Mr. Whitaker’s appointment was always invalid, then 'unwinding' all of those personal orders would be a fraught and disruptive exercise that could embroil the federal courts in innumerable collateral disputes," the lawyers write in asking the Supreme Court to take up the issue immediately.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ch ... -challenge
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They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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