Meanwhile, off in his own little corner of the apocalypse, Jeff Sessions is refusing to release portions of his SF86 form detailing his contacts with the Russians.
The wrinkle is that he was ordered to release it by a court. And the deadline expired yesterday.
But hey, how can he possibly be expected to keep up with this whole following-the-laws thing?
JD
3964
Wonder if they’ll put this one into Trump’s golf clubs… :v
Teiman
3965
Nobody will remember him.
So just now the DOJ is “complying” with the court order to release his SF86 form:
… Which is just a little odd - if you’re going to release only one piece of information from the form, you’d think you’d go with something that wasn’t blatently false:
From back in March - Sessions did not disclose meetings with Russian ambassador
Thanks for that link, @HumanTon
If this, “Russia thing,” is all a witch hunt, perhaps someone on the Trump team could explain why there are SO MANY members of that team with ties to Russia, why they all seem to have lied on security clearance forms (about dealings with Russia,) why they have been shown in lies about meetings with Russian contacts, and why they continue to meet with and share information with Russian political members?
This is the biggest case of, “where there is smoke, there is fire,” I have personally ever watched unfold in front of me. And to be honest, I don’t think we’ve even begun to see everyone involved. I fully expect there to be some Senators and Congressmen involved before this is through.
“Sometimes we dance naked in the light of the full moon and give benedictions to Satan. We may also periodically curse livestock and our rivals, blaspheme against Christ, and commit lewd acts with base animals while vandalizing Scripture. Once, maybe twice, we’ve sacrificed a baby. But this investigation is a witch hunt!”
Or maybe “Where there’s smoke, there’s a burning witch”
Clay
3970
The Russians are clever. It’s possible that they were approaching people in separate silos and telling them to keep it quiet. The implication would be that the GOP itself, not to mention the Trump team, wasn’t aware of the broad nature of the contacts. As for the Trump team, my guess there is that they’re so used to doing shady business deals that they just proceeded to do shady deals when it came to the election, completely oblivious to the fact that they might be breaking the law. In business, they’ve always been above the law, so I guess they thought what they were doing was fine. This would also help explain why they’re having so much trouble putting together a coherent defense. Their team, including their business-oriented lawyers, are simply unaware of the Federal laws that they’re breaking.
It’s completely pathetic. I sincerely hope the American public can learn from this and not elect unqualified snake-oil salesmen again. I’m afraid it will keep happening as long as their propaganda team (aka FOX News) remains in business.
I suspect this is the truth of the matter; the Russians were aware of how weak the infrastructure and experience was for the Trump Collective and took advantage of that.
I don’t believe that anyone in Trump’s inner circle committed anything approaching treason. However, from an admittedly biased layperson’s perspective, I’m pretty sure they broke plenty of other laws.
CraigM
3972
Listening to All Things Considered last night and they had a Yale Law professor explain the legal intricacies, and reasonings, behind this. It is as well put as I’ve seen, and largely seems legally accurate.
http://www.npr.org/2017/07/12/536729440/could-donald-trump-jr-be-charged-with-treason-short-answer-no
So while they may seem treasonous, and they really are, from the legal perspective and definition this is almost impossible to get him on. And that is a deliberate feature of the constitution.
But he can get nailed for a bunch of other things.
That’s a good segment, and the professor’s statements fit in with what I’ve read elsewhere: the bar for “treason” is very high and requires a level of malicious intent this doesn’t approach.
As of right now, they’re also getting away with it in government and politics.
The wheels of justice grind slowly, but are extraordinarily difficult to stop.
Let’s not forget passing the buck and never taking responsibility for their actions and lies.
“Hillary was worse” will still be the go-to argument if Trump sets up camps to imprison lower-income citizens and harvest their organs for the wealthy.
the buck stops with the Clintons.
Timex
3980
The buck stops with literally anyone besides Trump.
