If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the White House.
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From their performance in court, the only shame is how badly the case is constructed on constitutional grounds. It’s basically an attempt to remove any oversight of the president and their policies, and it has no place in our system.
The thing they don’t seem to comprehend is that the Republicans will not always hold the presidency…the next Democrat can do exactly the same things. And, they investigated the last president, and the potential presidential candidate, at a level far deeper than what is being asked here. Do Republicans really expect to hold power forever, or do they think they can change the rules at their whim? They obviously don’t care about a functioning system anymore, their actions are threatening to destroy the nation just to further their own power…and that’s without considering Trump, he’s just a symptom of the disease.
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If Congress is allowed to investigate President Trump’s finances, then future commanders-in-chief will face “nonstop investigations into the[ir]
personal livesforeign influences, tax evasion, and sources of emoluments”
Fixed that for you, Trump.
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Maybe this won’t become a slippery-slope problem in the future if we don’t elect any more career criminals as president.
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They don’t care a whit about hypocrisy. If they have the power, they just carry right on. They are shameless and impervious to justified criticism.
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I just scanned the brief. Its a pretty solid case for a preliminary injunction, given the unique nature of the subpoenas – especially since they involve not just Trump, but his family down to his grandchildren.
based on precedent (McGrain v Daugherty) Trump will eventually lose. But I’m not so sure that precedent will not be overturned in this case.
McGrain is the case that established that even the thinnest legislative pretext is all that is necessary to justify compelled testimony and document production (and congress only needs to come up with that pretext after an investigation is challenged). This had led to tremendous abuses — and has resulted in claims that Congress has the power to investigate whoever it wants to, whenever it feels like, for any reason whatsoever.
In other words, it s a precedent that has been abused in the past, and is ripe for reconsideration. And given the GOP slant of the Supreme Court, it would be unsurprising if Trump won at least part of this case.
Yes, it has been argued that beginning with non-subpoena requests would serve to impress the courts.
Now Judge Ramos, an Obama appointee and a good jurist, will have to respond to that argument – and all arguments raised by the plaintiffs.
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Can you say Whitewater?
ETA. I see Castor already did.
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It’d Be A Shame If ‘Nonstop Criminal Behavior’ Became ‘New Normal’ for future commanders-in-chief.
TFIFY.
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Yes. Yes they do.
They’re busy packing the courts with corrupt right wing judges. They’re busy suppressing the vote with corrupt Republican legislatures. They’re busy courting foreign oligarchs for money and cyber-criminal influence.
And in the off chance the Dem’s recover the presidency - they rest in the confirmed knowledge that the Dem’s think of themselves as ‘the party of comity and good governance’ - and will ‘reach across the aisle in bipartisanship’ - thereby moving the Overton Window farther to the right.
Yes. They believe this coup will succeed.
And I’m not convinced it won’t.
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BENGHAZI!!!
(commenting system says I need to be more descriptive…crap system…in more ways than one.)
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Umm…see Clinton, Bill and Hillary
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I disagree. The basis of THIS suit isn’t that Congress has no power to investigate the President. Its that Congress is grossly over-reaching its authority with these subpoenas into not just Trump’s pre-presidential personal finances, but that of his entire family as well.
And I happen to think its a really good argument – but for it to succeed, McGrain would have to be overturned (at least in part)
(I would also point out that the letter sent to Nadler claiming that the House can’t investigate the president as such was not a court filing – its merely a political letter.)
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Throw in a bit of markup code like this with the spaces closed: < p >
Won’t print or take up space and you won’t get that dumb message.
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the Committees waited several months into the 116th
Congress before issuing them
and if this filing works …
we’ll consider dragging our feet to appoint anyone to
relevant committees to have worked —
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Yeah, I know.
I put that in the comments on the (futile) off-chance that someone from TPM looks in and maybe, maybe someday corrects the damned bug.
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If Congress is allowed to investigate President Trump’s finances, then future commanders-in-chief will face “nonstop investigations into the[ir] personal lives,” Trump argued in a Wednesday court filing.
Our commanders-in-chief shouldn’t have personal lives. We need to know what could be corrupting them, especially after the extreme corruption displayed by this administration.
I need to hear someone make this argument in the mainstream media. Given the levels of corruption we’re already discovering, our future leaders should have little expectation of privacy, at least when it comes to their personal finances.
Also, it should be pointed out that there wouldn’t need to be investigations if Trump – or future leaders – were as transparent as they were supposed to be.
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“The Committees’ position means that nonstop investigations into the personal lives of Presidents (motivated by the hope of finding politically damaging information) will be the new normal whenever the President is from a different political party than the House or Senate.”
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Rethugs believe they can change the rules at their win because it’s what they do. Just ask the most evil man in D.C., Mitch McConnell.
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I would go so far as to say it’s carefully constructed …
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