Another OMG Day
D. S. Mitchell
Calamity Politics is the place for relevant, topical and engaging coverage of the U.S. political scene. Please join me today as I examine the good, the bad, the planned and the unplanned of today’s headline political conversation.
The news media has been churning out so much sludge since Monday that I have decided to just touch on each topic briefly.
Headline: Sally Talks. Sally Yates former acting Attorney General of the United States appeared in a high profile televised congressional hearing on May 8, 2017. She shared the witness table with former Director of National Intelligence now retired, James Clapper. The subcommittee has been designated to investigate the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.
Lt. General Michael Flynn is a central figure in the aforementioned investigation. Sally Yates came to Capital Hill to testify as to when the Justice Department warned the Trump White House of Flynn’s possible illegal contacts with the Russian government.
Ms. Yates, was fired by President Trump. Trump claimed that Yates was fired because she refused to defend Trump’s first travel ban. However, that may not be the real motive for the firing. When you look at the timeline of the events President Trump’s claims become questionable.
Yates said that on 1/26/2017 she had a meeting with White House Counsel Don McGahn for the purpose of alerting the White House that the sitting NSA could be a danger to the country. The DOJ led by Yates, believed Flynn, was “compromised with respect to the Russians.”
Remember, this action came in the first week of the new administration. Yates told the panel that she warned McGahn that General Flynn’s “underlying behavior (outside the stated lying to Vice President Mike Pence) toward Russia that was problematic.”
Yates and other DOJ officials felt Flynn “could be essentially blackmailed by the Russians.”
Wow, this means that Mike Flynn was sitting in on sensitive intelligence briefings daily, while he was on the payroll of the Turks and the Russians, in effect an unregistered “agent of a foreign power.”
According to Ms Yates she was fired before Michael Flynn, so she has no first hand knowledge of what the White House did with her submitted concerns. What we do know is that Flynn, despite his known Russian connections, was kept on by the Trump White House until the Washington Post newspaper broke an expose on the Flynn topic. It was only after the clamor of the media outrage, that Flynn was forced out, eighteen days after Yates told the Trump Administration of her concerns.
Incredible. Would Flynn still be in the West Wing if the Post had not broken that story? I have a feeling, I’m not sure why, but I think, he would be.
The question is, what was Trump’s motive for firing Ms. Yates? Was the cause of her dismissal really the travel ban that she believed to be unlawful and refused to defend, or was it that she was sniffing around Mike Flynn and the Russian connection to the 2016 election and Trump felt things were getting too hot for his comfort?
Headline: America for sale?
Nicole Meyer is the sister of Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner, for those who may have forgotten, is not only a senior advisor to President Trump, but his son-in-law.
Nicole Meyer was in China “courting individual investors with the much criticized Federal visa program” that provides a path to obtain a U.S. green card, which President Trump had just renewed within the last two weeks.
Meyer was promoting “One Journal Square” a Kushner Company development in New Jersey to a crowd of Chinese investors at the Four Seasons Hotel in Shanghai. Kushner’s sister was using the U.S. government EB-5 visa program, which grants permanent U.S. residency to foreign individuals that finance U.S. projects that create a specific number of jobs to American citizens, to tantalize investors who might want to relocate to the United States.
The event was organized by QWOS a Beijing based immigration services company along with the Kushner Company. According to publicity surrounding the event, Meyer was seeking 150 million dollars from Chinese investors to move forward with their N.J. project.
The Shaghai event was advertised as public, however when a group of reporters tried to enter the event they were denied admission. Attendees reported that during the presentation Nicole Meyer specifically mentioned both Jared Kushner and President Trump. There were reportedly pictures of both men shown during the presentation. To strengthen the sales pitch, Meyer indicated that Jared Kushner was “a shareholder” in the project.
Before his appointment to his current White House position Jared Kushner stepped down as chief operating officer of the family real estate business, the Kushner Company. Kushner reportedly had divested himself of his assets by placing those assets in a blind trust, managed by Nicole Meyer’s husband, or Jared Kushner’s brother-in-law. Hmmm, sounds like a questionable arrangement to begin with. How could this possibly look any worse?
I wonder is anybody going to investigate Jared and Ivanka?
Several recent events have underlined that “questionable arrangement” and the appearance of conflict of interest has dogged nearly everyone in the first family, including President Trump, Melania, daughter Ivanka and husband Jared.
Ivanka’s company recently received several trademark approvals from the Chinese. Were those approvals based on the fact that her father was now the President of the U.S.? My guess is, yes.
After the 2016 election it was announced that Ambang Insurance Group (a Chinese company) was making purchase overtures to the Kushner Company to buy a building in Manhattan. Those negotiations subsequently faltered and Ambang did not buy the offered property. Maybe because the property was over priced by a $100,000,000?
Furthermore, Ivanka was recently granted at least three trademarks for her products in China. Again, I believe that Ivanka received those trademarks because Daddy is in the White House.
Headline: Comey Firing Debacle
The abrupt firing of James Comey, FBI Director, by Donald Trump has created a perception problem for the administration. The timing is shocking and suspect. Despite the reasons that Trump identified for the firing, others, including this writer, believe that when Comey came to the DOJ and asked for more money to expand the investigation of the 2016 election panic set in at the White House.
Details are coming out hourly. I will be adding much more to this story as the next several days provide more information. Calamity is going to reprint a statement by Ezra Levin, Executive Director of the Indivisible Project on the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey.
“Regardless of your party, regardless of who you voted for in November, and regardless of what you think of James Comey, his dismissal undermines basic democratic principles. At best, it shows poor judgement at worst, it could be an obstruction of justice and an abuse of power.
The biggest problem is what will happen now, Trump will appoint one of his cronies to lead the FBI and the investigation. And we all know what that means-the investigation will be a sham.
This underscores why we need an independent law enforcement investigation. We need to get to the truth of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, and what involvement Trump or his associates had in Russia’s interference.
The Senate now needs to step up and refuse to confirm any of Trump’s Justice Department of Judicial nominees until an independent law enforcement investigator is appointed. The onus is on three Senate Republicans, who must put country over party and join Senate Democrats in holding these nominees.
We cannot trust Congress or a Trump FBI to conduct an impartial probe. We must have a truly independent investigation of Trump, with full powers to bring charges if warranted. Our democracy demands nothing less.”
Russia has managed to wreck havoc on our 2016 election and has potentially placed a rogue president in the White House. I am enraged that the Republicans have not stepped up and demanded an independent investigator be appointed. Where is the love of country, bravery and patriotism, or is that just campaign rhetoric? John McCain? Lindsey Graham? Mitch McConnell? The country is watching.
Trump has fired an acting Attorney General of the United States (Yates), he has fired a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of N.Y.(Preet Bahara) and Director of the FBI (James Comey). What do these people have in common? Each of these individuals was digging up dirt on Trump and the Russians and he perceived them as dangerous.
Late breaking news indicates that Comey before his dismissal, had ordered subpoenas on numerous associates related to the Trump campaign. Flynn received one, tonight.
Also, the Treasury Dept has verified that numerous documents related to Trump’s business dealings in Russia have been requested. All good news to those of us who believe that Donald Trump will become the most disgraced president in United States history, if this investigation gets legs and the committees in the Congress do their jobs.
If I was in Washington, D.C. and had worked for Trump at any time, I would be looking for cover as soon as possible. I’m sure a lot of lawyers are getting late night phone calls at this very moment.
The last thing I have to say is that Trump had two Russian visitors at the White House today. Is that a fucking slap in the face of the American people? Since when does the Foreign Minister get an Oval Office sit down with the President of the United States? Two Russians in one day.
Man, this guy knows how to really look guilty, but that’s okay with me. I’m hoping that the smell of blood in the water, meaning the guilty coverup behavior, will wake up the Republican congress and they will go after this scoundrel that has hijacked our government with the assistance of a adversarial foreign power.
What the fuck? Russian press allowed for photo op in the Oval Office while U.S. press not allowed. OMG, I wonder how many surveillance devices were planted?
Join the Resistance
Dar
