So Robert Mueller has offered in his sentencing statement that Paul Manafort has spent decades committing grievous crimes against the United States.
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| Do I have to do everything myself? |
This must be a call out of our justice system. After all, the IRS went through every one of Manafort's tax returns and never found these obvious tax code violations. The Federal Exchange Commission approved all of his illegal banking transactions. And the FBI twice investigated Paul Manafort for these same issues, and determined both times that no charges were necessary.
Apparently the IRS, FEC, and FBI are a bunch of incompetent boobs to allow for this sort of Al Capone type criminal to remain on the loose for all those years, especially when he was in their radar the whole time. Good thing Mueller is on the case, and this horrible criminal will no longer be able to harm America with his ability to garner questionable loans, his lack of proper reporting, and not bothering to file as a foreign agent.
We can all sleep safer because of Mueller.
34 comments:
Sarcasm aside. This could very well result in a conviction of the ex President as a result of this investigation on tax law violations against the President. Apparently the IRS, FEC, and FBI are a bunch of incompetent boobs to allow for this sort of Al Capone type criminal to remain on the loose for all those years, especially when he was in their radar the whole time.
His tax returns for the previous decades are under investigation.
So roger the parrot is done with the collusion stuff bin favor of financial accusations.
What in ignorant dolt who just says what he's told.
"Collusion"
Roger killed that baby.
He is onto the next shiney bulb.
What in ignorant dolt who just says what he's told.
Funny the pot calling the kettle black as you sit in trumps camp without question....Can you imagine the roar you would make if Obama stole money from the armed forces to buy back guns from criminals with a presidential decree?????/
Can you imagine the roar you would make if Obama stole money from the armed forces to buy back guns from criminals with a presidential decree????
#impeachment
And Trump Mocks the scientific consensus and declares a new committee to deny global warming...When in doubt, just buy an answer with alleged science that agrees what you want them to answer....sad...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-to-select-federal-scientists-to-reassess-government-climate-findings-sources-say/2019/02/24/49cd0a84-37dd-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.5f3ea4e482a1
The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials.
The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The group would not be subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee.
The move would represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.
Happer, who headed an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition before joining the administration in the fall, has challenged the scientific consensus on climate change inside and outside of government.
Public records show the coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has received money from far-right organizations and donors with fossil fuel interests.
In 2017, according to federal tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, the group received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute.
One senior administration official said the president was looking for “a mixture of opinions” and disputed a massive interagency report in November that described intensifying climate change as a threat to the United States.
“The president wants people to be able to decide for themselves,” the aide said.
Several scientists, however, said the federal government’s recent findings on climate change had received intense scrutiny from other researchers in the field before they became public.
Thing is, according to Dennis there are no scientist who question the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
They simply don't exist.
So where are all these scientist coming from.
Can you imagine the roar you would make if Obama stole money from the armed forces to buy back guns from criminals with a presidential decree?
Obama had no authorization to buy back guns.
Trump on the other hand has plenty of authorization to build the border wall.
Bad example, try again.
Obama had no authorization to buy back guns.
Like trump has no authority to steal money from the military to build a wall.....
according to Dennis there are no scientist who question the theory
And where do you see me saying that ? Asshole.....There are a few climatologists that are skeptics, but the CONSENSUS is that GW is real and humans are aiding the increase... Trump already has his first Asshole in Happer.....maybe he can enlist Watts the fraud and Roy Spencer and Judith Curry is another......They are all in the minority and have had their share of stepping on their own positions.....Npne of them have published any peer reviewed paper that shows GW is not happening.....sorry....
What spencer says about C02 which science has proven to be a green house trapping gas....
Is Increasing CO2 Even Capable of Causing Warming? There are some very intelligent people out there who claim that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere can’t cause warming anyway. They claim things like, “the atmospheric CO2 absorption bands are already saturated”, or something else very technical. [And for those more technically-minded persons, yes, I agree that the effective radiating temperature of the Earth in the infrared is determined by how much sunlight is absorbed by the Earth. But that doesn’t mean the lower atmosphere cannot warm from adding more greenhouse gases, because at the same time they also cool the upper atmosphere]. While it is true that most of the CO2-caused warming in the atmosphere was there before humans ever started burning coal and driving SUVs, this is all taken into account by computerized climate models that predict global warming. Adding more “should” cause warming, with the magnitude of that warming being the real question. But I’m still open to the possibility that a major error has been made on this fundamental point. Stranger things have happened in science before.
I didn't use the word collusion
Scott has either tried to be sarcastic or that the Manafort independent has changed his mind about the investigation.
Manafort managed to evade taxes using good lawyers and the presumption of innocence until convicted.
Like trump has no authority to steal money from the military to build a wall.....
As a matter of fact he does. Your beef is with Congress. They gave the president the authorization.
Perhaps you're correct in some way but he is trying to take money away from the armed forces, that were appropriated by the house of Representatives.
The power of the President doesn't extend to pay for his campaign promises.
Bad example, try again.
Menstra he is trying to take money away from the armed forces, that were appropriated by the house of Representatives.
The power of the President doesn't extend to pay for his campaign promises.
Bad example, try again.
Manafort managed to evade taxes using good lawyers
If he used good lawyers to evade taxes doesn't that mean by definition what he did was legal?
If these lawyers advise him to evade taxes illegally then at the very least they are not very good lawyers and at worse they would be co-conspirators.
Logic 101.
Perhaps you're correct in some way but he is trying to take money away from the armed forces, that were appropriated by the house of Representatives
Which he can do under his emergency declaration.
And hears the hard lesson for you. An emergency is whatever the president says is an emergency the Congress gave him full planetary powers in this matter.
The national review disagrees with your naive statement, cramps....
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/no-trump-cant-build-a-wall-through-military-eminent-domain/
His emergency powers aren’t broad enough to bypass Congress.
Let me begin by stating my policy preference up front. I strongly believe that our nation should bolster its border security, including by building a more effective and longer border wall. A better border barrier would represent a far more humane way of deterring desperate individuals and families from making the extraordinarily dangerous trek to the United States, would properly channel asylum seekers to ports of entry, and would ease the need for border detention facilities.
If you believe a nation can and should control who enters its borders, then border barriers are one part of a solution to the problem of illegal entry. But the wall is a symbol now. Democrats will not consent to constructing the founding promise of Trumpism, and Trump (for now, at least) won’t abandon his signature proposal.
So he’s floating the possibility of declaring a state of emergency, using a “military version” of eminent domain to seize private land along the border, and building the wall without congressional consent. This would be a serious mistake — a lawless abuse of power that would almost certainly be blocked by the courts (including by Trump-appointed judges). In the remote chance it passed legal review, his declaration would have malignant effects on the American constitutional structure. He would enable future presidents to wield vast powers at a whim, shaking the president loose from his constitutional bonds once and for all.
The legal analysis here is relatively simple. The president does not have the constitutional or statutory authority to unilaterally declare an emergency under these facts, seize private land, and spend money to build a wall. The constitutional question was settled during the Korean War. At the height of the conflict — when the United States was locked in a grueling land conflict with hundreds of thousands of Chinese and North Korean troops — President Truman attempted to “take possession of and operate most of the nation’s steel mills” to avoid a strike by the United Steelworkers of America.
The necessity of steel to modern military operations is too obvious to require explanation, but the Supreme Court still blocked the president’s takeover. Justice Black, writing for the majority, declared that the president’s authority to act must derive from an “act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.” Since there was no specific enabling statute, Truman attempted to rely on inherent executive powers and his authority as commander-in-chief. The Court rejected his arguments:
The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces . . . Even though “theater of war” be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation’s lawmakers, not for its military authorities.
Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute.
With the president’s authority constitutionally constrained in a time of actual war, President Trump won’t have greater power when the “foe” isn’t the Chinese Army but instead a caravan of poor, unarmed Hondurans.
Perhaps you're correct in some way
You mean Trump is correct according to the legislation that covers Presidential executive orders on emergency actions. In other words, he is legally correct (and will likely ultimately prevail in the USSC).
Eighteen times in the past, our President have declared national emergencies and shifted funding around to accommodate spending for the emergency. And no Roger, none of those declarations would sound any more like real emergencies that this emergency.
The only difference is that in the first 18 cases this happened, the President wasn't Donald Trump.
Blogger Unknown said...
The national review disagrees with your naive statement, cramps
His emergency powers aren’t broad enough to bypass Congress
He's not bypassing Congress that is the fundamental flaw in the premise that makes the entire argument irrelevent.
?none of those declarations would sound any more like real emergencies that this emergency. ?
This is not an emergency. None of the other emergency declarations were to fulfill a campaign promise.
Scott, https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/no-trump-cant-build-a-wall-through-military-eminent-domain/
His emergency powers aren’t broad enough to bypass Congress.
This is not an emergency. None of the other emergency declarations were to fulfill a campaign promise.
Congress has the power of the purse. His emergency declarations were designed to satisfy Sean Hannity etc.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/no-trump-cant-build-a-wall-through-military-eminent-domain/
His emergency powers aren’t broad enough to bypass Congress.
Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute.
With the president’s authority constitutionally constrained in a time of actual war, President Trump won’t have greater power when the “foe” isn’t the Chinese Army but instead a caravan of poor, unarmed Hondurans.
As a non lawyer I think that if it goes to the Supreme Court, because the a caravan of poor, unarmed Hondurans, is not a threat to security of the United States, the Roberts Court is not going to sustain his declaration.
Blogger Roger Amick said...
As a non lawyer I think that if it goes to the Supreme Court, because the a caravan of poor, unarmed Hondurans, is not a threat to security of the United States, the Roberts Court is not going to sustain his declaration.
and here you've provided yet another classic textbook example as to why i consider your political and legal judgements to be worthless.
the roberts court, or any court for that matter, is not supposed to take into consideration a poor honduran, or a chambermaid from an acapulco resort.
the only thing they're supposed to consider is whether or not the president's actions are constitutional.
period.
and this is exactly why thoughtful legal professionals such as jon turley fully expect trump to prevail on this particular issue.
david french is a never trumper, and was being drafted by bill kristol to run for president at the 11th hour.
good job latching on to the worst possible example of a legal opinion national review could've produced on the topic.
This is not an emergency.
it is if the president says it is.
None of the other emergency declarations were to fulfill a campaign promise.
completely meaningless on its face, genius. this is how i can tell you're grasping at straws in an attempt to make your very weak and shitty point.
he could've said it came to him in a vision while he was scratching his balls in the shower at 3 AM. it's genesis is not relevant.
what's relevant is the constitutionality of his action.
Congress has the power of the purse. His emergency declarations were designed to satisfy Sean Hannity etc.
several legal experts who have chimed in on this topic have made the same basic observation. had congress not ceded it's authority to the executive little by little over the past 75 years, this would not be an issue. the power of the purse remains with congress. the power to declare an emergency was granted BY CONGRESS in 1976.
and sean hannity? he has nothing to do with this.
oh, and btw alky -
you still owe me this:
He has been trying to circumvent the system from day one, in a strict violation of the Constitution of the United States of America.
more psychological projection from you today. you're on a roll, alky.
name one instance of trump doing as you claim.
one, single, demostrable, unconstitutional instance.
meanwhile, if i was so inclined, i could bury this blog in unconstitutional behavior from "captain pen and phone," listing chapter and verse of what he did, when he did it, why he thought it was a good idea, and especially exactly why it violated our constitution and rule of law. i could cite the dozen or so times 0linsky was bitchslapped 9-0 by the USSC, and i could even include some anecdotes from congressional democrats APPLAUDING skeets' unconstitutional behavior and their willingness to cede even MORE power to the executive. the geniuses from the CBC were particularly vocal in this regard.
so c'mon alky. put up or shut up. give us one legitimate example of trump " trying to circumvent the system from day one, in a strict violation of the Constitution of the United States of America."
we'll wait.
Roger...
There is a certain reality that you do not seem to grasp.
The Court has no jurisdiction to second guess the President or Congress, unless executive actions or laws are unconstitutional. This is the whole argument about whether or not Judges should be "legislating from the bench".
We, have, at this point in time five conservative Justices who do not want to "legislate from the bench". In many ways, Robert's decision on Obamacare (to make the fine a tax) was a means to get around the Court having to overturn a legislative decision.
While many on the right felt he was wrong, and that forcing Americans to buy something or face a penalty was unconstitutional, Roberts found a way to not have his court overturn the legislation.
The whole travel ban situation was about four Justices who didn't like the call Trump made, and five Justices who followed the law and said it was his call (not the court's call) to make.
So there is no inherent Judicial oversight here. They cannot overturn an emergency declaration because they don't believe it's an emergency. The law (that they are sworn to follows) give the sole discretion to the President to make that decision and provides Congress with the only oversight (with the means to write legislation to put an end to it).
So while there may be some District Court Judge that will overstep their authority (as most liberal District Court Judges like to do - because after all they were given godlike authority) and possibly even an appeals court that might agree (although even that is questionable)... I don't think Roberts would go out of his way to have his court LEGISLATE something over the President's EO.
The precedent that says Presidents have sole discretion has over 50 examples. The precedent that says Presidents can move money has 18 examples.
You do understand this, right?
There are not different legal rules because Trump is President. He gets to have the same powers Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc... had.
Roger, Does the power of the President change depending upon who the President IS?
If this gets to the Supreme Court, to declare that his actions are unconstitutional, they will not be legislating from the bench. His declaration is not legislation.
This isn't just, in my opinion, because Trump is the President. We have been giving the executive branch more power for decades. One example is the last time the Congress declared war, was on 1941.
If the next President is a Democrat who decides that global climate change is a national emergency and moves money from military spending to control emissions from fossil fuels. And toward solar power plants to produce electricity for electric vehicles, would you be saying the same things about executive power?
Claiming that the only reason to oppose this, is because it's Trump, is a dodge.
"because Trump is President." You were opposed to everything by Barack Obama.
Roger
Okay I will play along.
- Explain how the law regarding emergency declarations works?
- Explain how the law is worded as to who gets to determine what is an emergency?
- Explain how this one is different from the previous 50 or so?
- Explain how this one is different from the 18 others that required the movement of funds?
Scott
Okay I will play along.
- Explain how the law regarding emergency declarations works?
- Explain how the law is worded as to who gets to determine what is an emergency?
- Explain how this one is different from the previous 50 or so?
- Explain how this one is different from the 18 others that required the movement of funds?
Duck and cover up for Trump!
If this gets to the Supreme Court, to declare that his actions are unconstitutional, they will not be legislating from the bench.
they certainly will. the judges have one question to address - are trump's actions constitutional in accordance with the emergency act of 1976.
full stop.
it IS NOT to decide the validity of the "emergency."
His declaration is not legislation.
well duh. the act is not designed to, nor does it address or even remotely consider that a president's actions with regard to the act be classified as legislation. while technically correct, that's one of the dumber fucking points you've ever made. otherwise known as a non sequitur.
If the next President is a Democrat who decides that global climate change is a national emergency and moves money from military spending to control emissions from fossil fuels. And toward solar power plants to produce electricity for electric vehicles, would you be saying the same things about executive power?
yup. now, it stands to reason that a decision to do that would be the mount everest of fucking stupidity, but a democrat would make that call, no problem. and he, she, or it would be acting within their powers as president. as fucking fucktarded as that declaration would be, we would be bound by it, in all it's fucktarded glory.
jj sefton over at the AoS in describing the oscar elite from last night nailed you perfectly, alky:
Blinkered, philistine, pig-ignorance wrapped up in blind rage that borders on, and occasionally crosses over, the line into psychosis.
heh.
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