The textbook first move of someone with nothing to hide…
The most transparent President, ever, strikes again…
OT: I have just begun to read Caro’s “The Path To Power”, which appears to be very good read.
Already in the introduction, Caro makes it clear, what a pathological liar LBJ was. He had the nickname “Bull” Johnson in college, “Bull” for “Bullshit”.
Congress can only perform oversight on the executive branch if it is trying to gather information for the specific purpose of enacting a piece of legislation.
Nice try, except Article II, Section 2 clearly states “The House of Representatives . . . shall have the sole power of impeachment.” If Congress can “gather information for the specific purpose of enacting a piece of legislation” then it can also gather information for the specific purpose of performing its other Constitutional authorities and duties.
Stall until McConnell can invoke the corollary to his Supreme Court rule - You cannot impeach a president during the last year of his term. The American people have a voice in this momentous decision. The American people may well elect a president who decides to govern the country rather than enrich himself, his enablers and his cronies. This is about a principle, not a person.
Someone’s scared…
To get there, the Judiciary Committee should authorize a preliminary investigation as to whether it would be appropriate for it to recommend instituting impeachment proceedings.
Also, it is usual to at least join the entity issuing the subpoena in an attempt to block it. But here the Trump legal team wants to force the House to move to intervene, adding time in its attempt to run out the clock.
“I’m the most transparent president ever”, Trump said.
Either that or they’re just incompetent. Deutsche Bank has said it intends to continue complying with the subpoena, so now’s not the time to play for delay.
ETA: Also, I think Congress doesn’t have to act to intervene. The party issuing the subpoena is arguably a party necessary to the litigation, making the Complaint fatally flawed if they fail to join Congress. You can’t just avoid serving Congress with process, giving Congress notice and the opportunity to defend its own subpoena by suing the person to whom it was issued. I could be wrong, but I imagine the judge is going to confront them with this right off the bat.
Those lawsuits can go directly to the trash can. No need to even read them before they get thrown out.
Someone with legal experience help me out here, but even IF the reason were purely and only political, Congress would still have a legal right to the execute the subpoena, correct?
IANAL, but I would say yes. My understanding is the “oversight” function of Congress is so broad that you could drive busloads of Benghazis through it.
“to rummage through every aspect of [Trump]’s personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage.”
It’s good to hear just how far-spread he admits his corruption and illegal actions have been… uh, are… uh, will be.
At the top level of government, literally, politics is legality. Trump just wants to appeal to the other co-equal branch of government to stonewall his political/legal opponents.
It’s like …he knows he’s guilty!!!
“The House of Representatives is demanding, among other things, records of every single checking withdrawal, credit-card swipe, or debit-card purchase—no matter how trivial or small—made by each and every member of the Trump family,” the lawsuit reads.4
Of course. That is how you lay the groundwork for a RICO indictment, by providing to the Grand Jury(s) reams of evidence that there is a pervasive, systemic corruption running throughout the entire Trump Organization and Crime Family.
I wonder what Melania’s reward was for holding his hand for this picture.
If I have learned one thing over the last couple years, it is that RICO is pretty weak sauce. The standard that must be met is very high. By the time you can meet that standard you have much more effective tools to use. Ken White (popehat) has explained this very well to us non-lawyers.
Three Billboards should be 4, What are you hiding?
That is because RICO is based on Financial Crimes which are difficult to prove on their own.
Once you move to a RICO indictment, it opens up discovery to a vast array of other tools that are not available in a standard Financial Crimes indictment, and LOWERS the evidence requirements for a conviction.
RICO is not brought against individuals, but against Financial Entities, like the Trump Organization to shake out of them the individuals that will then testify against the top people in the organization in other indictments.
so i’m confused - does this actually stop the transfer of records, or is that up to the banks involved?