Heh. Yeah, I should’ve been more clear originally. A few reporters have been squawking that Kelly’s contemporaneous memos are what separate the Kushner security clearance thing out of the vast field of other shady ridiculous nonsense the President has engaged in over the last few years. And the reason for that is that – ugly warts and all – Kelly obviously figured “I’m not taking the fall for this bullshit” and got Trump to give an explicit order to do something that Kelly and the intel community really didn’t want to do.
Doesn’t this also mean that Kelly covered it up? That he lied at least by omission about the whole thing?
EDIT Pic is rendering weirdly so I removed the link.
Captain Big Dick, Toilet Salesman, has left the DoJ.
Wow, that photo scales superbly on a tablet.
As for the news about the DoJ guy, good. Too bad this will still look good on his resume.
Right. So here’s where it gets complicated and speculative-y. :)
It isn’t illegal for the President to just say “Give my shady-ass son-in-law a security clearance.” That’s within his powers. And he probably can even lie about whether he did that or not to the FBI or a DOJ investigator like Mueller. Probably.
But the problem for him comes in if he answered that question as part of other questions leading to a criminal act are concerned. Which may have happened. (Some say, likely to have happened.)
The easiest way to explain that is to use a hypothetical. Let’s say that you’re a team lead at a big company, and you have a keycard that lets you swipe into a building at any time of day or night. Let’s say then, that a crime is committed: Bob is suspected of stealing a few thousand bucks out of petty cash. The cops think he used someone’s keycard to swipe in after hours to steal that money.
Now, if the cops ask you, you can tell them “Yes, I gave my keycard to Bob, because I’m allowed to do that by company rules, and if Bob did anything untoward that’s on him.” What you did may look pretty bad, but you are probably going to be OK from a legal standpoint. But if you say “I have no idea how Bob got in, I certainly didn’t give him my keycard…” and then the cops find out you DID give Bob your keycard…well, now things are a little different, legally.
(if any of that makes sense…)
Sounds like we’re in splitting hairs territory, AKA “hey, it might have been illegal but no big deal, everyone does that kind of stuff, and at least it wasn’t 33 million emails or Benghazi”
To an extent, yeah. But if Jared used his security clearance to do something shady with Yemen or Saudi Arabia, this could be an issue.
Yes, I understand all that quite well. I don’t mean to say that Kelly did something criminal by keeping it secret. What I mean to say is that bravely bold Sir Kelly — adult in the room and constrainer of Trump’s worst impulses — is a fraud. He’s an enabler of Trump.
There are SO many things where if the President does it, it’s not illegal, because it’s an entire branch of government. The President could throw a dart a map and nuke the country that came up – not illegal. It’s infuriating when the Trump defense is, this action is with the legal powers of the office of the President.
Which is why I don’t understand how they could have been upset with anything Obama did as President. Oh, right. Black guy.
Curious and curiouser, wonder if anything will come of it.
Mark Zaid seems to think they are reaching:
That doesn’t seem to be correct.
Dealing with these kinds of cases seems to be one of his primary legal focuses, so I don’t know, but I’d like to hear to Dems refutation of his arguments.
I was listening to comments on this just a bit ago on The 11th Hour. Apparently the White House already has a multi-step plan to push back on all requests coming from Congress. In other words, they KNOW they have something to hide and are holding on to anything.The strategy was suggested that the White House will continue to pair the failure to comply to -requests- with escalating rhetoric of a witch hunt or personal attacks on Trump and his family.
The problem here is that as part of their duties, Congress does have subpoena power.
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Almost certainly true, but it’s my impression that this tug of war has been going on for decades. White Houses routinely push back against the subpoena power of Congress on the grounds that the Executive Branch is co-equal and the subpoenas amount to interference.
Well, tested three times to be exact. One for documents, one for tapes and one for testimony. Truly this is for gathering evidence for crime, not necessarily by the President himself, so I would wager if it went to the Supreme Court they would rule against the White House administration. I think, anyway.