All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[Alan B]

That boat must be the biggest evah! It's enormous.

[Sean Hayden]

[Joe]

I think he's in a huff after being suspended...

He was suspended? I missed that.

[Tero]

By stepping down, Robert Mueller forces Congress to finally stand up to Donald Trump

With respect to the president’s obstruction of justice, Mueller viewed his job as assembling the facts and placing them in context, but it was always going to be up to Congress, not his office, to determine what to do with his findings.

USA today

[Joe]

The points he made about obstruction are in the report. I remember when I read that part, because when I got to the 4th point, I stopped and went back and reread all 4 points again and started laughing.

In effect, Mueller declared Trump "not innocent."

[Seabass]

[Seabass]

The GOP is totally not racist. And if they are, it doesn't matter because everyone is racist, so who cares?

Architect of GOP Gerrymandering Was Behind Trump’s Census Citizenship Question
The GOP’s longtime redistricting expert said the question would be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... -question/

The Trump administration’s controversial effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census was drawn up by the Republican Party’s gerrymandering mastermind, who wrote that it “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.” This bombshell news, revealed in newly released legal documents, suggests that the Trump administration added the question not to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, as it claimed, but to benefit Republicans politically when it came to drawing new political districts.

A case challenging the citizenship question is currently before the Supreme Court, and the new evidence significantly undercuts the Trump administration’s position in the case.

Tom Hofeller, who passed away last year, was the longtime redistricting expert for the Republican National Committee. He helped Republicans draw heavily gerrymandered maps in nearly every key swing state after the 2010 election. In some of those places, like North Carolina, the new lines were struck down for discriminating against African Americans.

In 2015, Hofeller was hired by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, to study the impact of drawing state legislative districts based on citizenship rather than total population, which has been the standard for decades. Hofeller’s analysis of Texas state legislative districts found that drawing districts based on citizenship—a move he conceded would be a “radical departure from the federal ‘one person, one vote’ rule presently used in the United States”—would reduce representation for Hispanics, who tended to vote Democratic, and increase representation for white Republicans. But Hofeller said that a question about citizenship would need to be added to the census, which forms the basis for redistricting, for states like Texas to pursue this new strategy.

Hofeller then urged President Donald Trump’s transition team to add the question about citizenship to the 2020 census. He urged the team to claim that a citizenship question was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, even though Hofeller had already concluded that it would harm the racial minority groups that the act was designed to protect. That argument was then used by the Justice Department in a December 2017 letter requesting that the Commerce Department, which oversees the census, include a citizenship question.

Hofeller’s documents were discovered on hard drives found by his estranged daughter and introduced into evidence in a separate trial challenging gerrymandered North Carolina state legislative districts drawn by Hofeller. On Thursday, lawyers challenging the citizenship question cited them in federal court. They suggest that members of Trump’s team may not have been fully forthcoming in their testimony under oath. Neither Trump transition team member Mark Neuman nor John Gore, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights who wrote the Justice Department letter, mentioned Hofeller’s involvement in the letter when they were deposed under oath as part of a lawsuit by New York and 17 other states challenging the citizenship question.

continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... -question/

[Tero]

Sir Bone Spurs, about 60% of us registered voters are never trumpers.

[Tero]

[Animavore]

[Tero]

More:
Concerns about Russian meddling

In a tweet, Trump said "Russia has disappeared" from the public debate because the Mueller investigation did not establish a conspiracy of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.

Facts First: The topic of Russian interference is still at the forefront of national politics.

Mueller zeroed in on Russian meddling during his public comments, solemnly saying, "I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments, that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every American."

Top US intelligence officials have warned about Russia's continued efforts to undermine American politics. Democratic presidential candidates are bringing it up on the campaign trail, and lawmakers are asking about it at Congressional hearings with administration officials.

Trump's handpicked chiefs to lead the US intelligence community have continued to raise the alarm about persistent Russian meddling. And many of the Democratic candidates for president, including frontrunner Joe Biden, feature their positions on how to counter Russia on their websites.

Mueller's findings on obstruction

In a tweet, Trump said, "Mueller didn't find Obstruction either."

Facts First: This is patently false. Mueller did uncover substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump and the report detailed how Trump's actions crossed the legal threshold on several key episodes. But Mueller said he was prohibited from recommending criminal charges and struggled with "difficult issues" of investigating a sitting President. Instead, he alluded to Congress' role in holding a president accountable.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/30/poli ... index.html

[Seabass]

Former Republican Federal Prosecutors Speak Out Against President Trump's Obstruction of Justice

[Joe]

I figure there's one thing Trump knows for sure about the Mueller report. It's footnote 4, on page 1 of Volume II.

OLC Op. at 255 ("Recognizing an immunity from prosecution for a sitting President would not preclude such prosecution once the President's term is over or he is otherwise removed from office by resignation or impeachment").

The statute of limitations for federal obstruction of justice is five years. I bet he really, really wants to be reelected.

[Tero]

[Tero]

"And an acquitted Trump will be an immunized Trump. Is it vexing to hear Trump’s team misrepresent Robert Mueller’s report as an “exoneration”? Imagine what they will say and do if they defeat impeachment on a party-line Senate vote. It was all fake news, a plot by the Deep State. As false and wrong as those claims will be, how will Democrats sustain the momentum to hold Trump to account after a trial and acquittal? Won’t they then have to submit to the jeers of Trump henchpersons: This issue was litigated, and it’s time to move on?

Impeachment now threatens to turn the 2020 election into a referendum on the Democrats’ methods in Congress, not Trump’s wrongdoing in the presidency, in the campaign, and in private life.

Trump accountability is not an all-or-nothing choice. It’s not now or never. The House can investigate every Trump misdeed, exposing to the light of day everything from allegations of money laundering and bank fraud to the abuse of undocumented-immigrant laborers at Trump-owned properties. It can investigate the Trump-Russia file, not as a case of criminal conspiracy, but as a national-security threat. It can fight the battle for proper Trump financial disclosure in the courts—and summon the national-security professionals who were overruled by Trump when they denied Jared Kushner a security clearance to testify before committees."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... et/590578/