What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Grey Fox]

Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star could tell you that out of those 991 tweets, 750 were lies.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/20/donald-trump-support-base-hillary-clinton-hatred-pennsylvania

Long one but thought the above is a good read (as much as I've read ) regarding level of delusion among Trump voters and degree to which not-Clinton is more important than country/world.

[Grey Fox]

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/07/20/donald-trump-said-397-false-things-in-six-months-heres-what-weve-learned.html

[Malthus]

One takeaway from the NYT interview: The Donald is no fan of Baltimore. 

That the first good thing I've heard about the place. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Interesting he gave the interview to The Fake News (tm) New York Times.  For all his bluster, he still craves the legitimacy and reputation of the Gray Lady.

Then again, the razor-sharp journalism of the NYT:

There may be method to the apparent madness.  Going after Trump like a prosecutor makes him defensive.  Schmoozing him with small talk gets him to blab and the more he blabs the more he hangs himself.

[Syt]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/mueller-is-said-to-expand-probe-to-trump-business-transactions?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year's election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump's businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe.

The president told the New York Times on Wednesday that any digging into matters beyond Russia would be out of bounds. Trump's businesses have involved Russians for years, making the boundaries fuzzy so Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to be taking a wide-angle approach to his two-month-old probe.

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump's involvement in a controversial SoHo development with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump's sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

Agents are also interested in dealings with the Bank of Cyprus, where Wilbur Ross served as vice chairman before he became commerce secretary, as well as the efforts of Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law and White House aide, to secure financing for some of his family's real estate properties. The information was provided by someone familiar with the developing inquiry but not authorized to speak publicly.

The roots of Mueller's follow-the-money investigation lie in a wide-ranging money laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.

FBI agents had already been gathering information about Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to two people with knowledge of that probe. Prosecutors hadn't yet begun presenting evidence to a grand jury. Trump fired Bharara in March.

The Bharara probe was consolidated into Mueller's inquiry, showing that the special counsel is taking an overarching approach to his mandated investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Altogether, the various financial examinations constitute one thread of Mueller's inquiry, which encompasses computer hacking and the dissemination of stolen campaign and voter information as well as the actions of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Joshua Stueve, Mueller's spokesman, declined to comment, as did Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner and a Manafort spokesman.

Spokesmen for the White House, Trump Organization and Ross didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mueller's team is looking at the Trump SoHo hotel condominium development, which was a licensing deal with Bayrock Capital LLC. In 2010, the former finance director of Bayrock filed a lawsuit claiming the firm structured transactions in fraudulent ways to evade taxes. Bayrock was a key source of capital for Trump development projects, including Trump SoHo.

The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there. About a third of that sum went to Trump in the form of a licensing fee, according to Forbes magazine. At the event, Trump met Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC. Agalarov's son Emin helped broker a meeting last year between Trump's son and a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida estate that Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.

As part of their investigation, Mueller's team has issued subpoenas to banks and filed requests for bank records to foreign lenders under mutual legal assistance treaties, according to two of the people familiar with the matter.

[crazy canuck]

Interesting he gave the interview to The Fake News (tm) New York Times.  For all his bluster, he still craves the legitimacy and reputation of the Gray Lady.

Then again, the razor-sharp journalism of the NYT:

There may be method to the apparent madness.  Going after Trump like a prosecutor makes him defensive.  Schmoozing him with small talk gets him to blab and the more he blabs the more he hangs himself.

Yep, the best strategy is just to keep him talking.

[Jacob]

Yeah it appears that the combination of Trump's desire for approval and his lack of self-awareness and discipline causes him to blab out whatever enters his head when faced with seemingly friendly people.

[jimmy olsen]

Deutsche Bank giving documents to investigators. Even if Trump manages to get rid of Mueller, the State of New York is going to nail his kids and associates to the wall.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/donald-trump-deutsche-bank-russia

[jimmy olsen]

Six months in and we're already at the "Can I just pardon myself and everyone I work with" stage?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lawyers-seek-to-undercut-muellers-russia-investigation/2017/07/20/232ebf2c-6d71-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.2e8532dc0ff7

Some of President Trump's lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president's authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump's lawyers have been discussing the president's pardoning powers among themselves.

Trump's legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller's investigation.

"This is not in the context of, 'I can't wait to pardon myself,' " a close adviser said.

...

[jimmy olsen]

Holy Hell, what a pack of cowards. Give your fucking names.

Good on Collins for speaking on the record.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/20/politics/gop-senators-donald-trump-doj/index.html

Washington (CNN)A group of Republican senators criticized President Donald Trump on Thursday, a day after the President rebuked top law enforcement officials in an interview with The New York Times.

"The attorney general is America's top law enforcement official," one GOP senator said. "It's unclear if he understands that, and that's pretty disturbing."

The senator was referring to Trump's comment in the Times' interview that he would not have hired Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Sessions would go on to recuse himself from investigations related to the 2016 campaign. The senator said Trump seemed to be thinking of the law enforcement heads as his personal employees.

"One gets the impression that the President doesn't understand or he willfully disregards the fact that the attorney general and law enforcement in general -- they are not his personal lawyers to defend and protect him," one GOP senator told CNN. "He has (his) own personal lawyers, and of course, the White House has the White House counsel's office."
Trump's blast of Sessions has 'chilling' effect inside West Wing

That Republican senator and two others spoke on background with CNN to avoid prompting a fight with the President. Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins was the only one of the four to speak on the record in response to Trump's comments about Sessions, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and former FBI Director James Comey as well as his venting about the special counsel investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.

A second senator vouched for Sessions' integrity and backed Sessions' recusal decision, and a third senator said, "If you're Jeff Sessions, it's gotta be tough to come to work the next day."

Sessions said Thursday that he would stay on the job despite the President's public criticism.

Trump's anger with Sessions in the Times' interview appeared to stem in part from his belief that Sessions' recusal had led to Sessions' deputy, Rod Rosenstein, appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller to lead a special counsel investigation into any alleged collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia. In the interview, Trump claimed it would be a "violation" for Mueller to look into his family's finances as part of the investigation into his associates' potential contacts with Russians and left open the possibility of trying to fire Mueller.

The third Republican said he was stunned by Trump's remark on Mueller, although he said "at this point" perhaps it shouldn't surprise him.

"This one seemed to go a little further," the senator said. "Any thought of firing the special counsel is chilling. It's chilling. That's all you can say."

The senator said Trump removing Mueller would cause Congress to put in place its own special investigation "somehow."
Collins said the ramifications for Trump firing Mueller would be huge.

"It would be catastrophic if the President were to fire the special counsel," Collins said.

The first two Republican senators said that, like Trump, they were concerned about the special counsel, but still criticized Trump's comments about potentially drawing a line for Mueller's investigation.

"That's just making the bad situation he's in worse," the first senator said.

The second said, "You've got a special counsel. Let the individual do his work. Don't comment. Don't interfere."

[11B4V]

  Trump's a wanker. News at 11.

[jimmy olsen]

Oh really now, that's interesting.

http://www.newsweek.com/congress-investigate-missing-trump-white-house-security-clearance-data-639632

Congress to Investigate Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner Missing Security Clearance Data

By Graham Lanktree   On 7/20/17 at 11:06 AM

The congressional oversight body that holds U.S. employees accountable and exposes government fraud and abuse voted unanimously Wednesday to investigate why senior Trump administration officials have been granted security clearances.

Senior advisers to the president Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions were all given security clearances after "omitting significant information about foreign contacts from their applications," said a  statement from Illinois House Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi.

The House Oversight Committee vote passed an amendment tabled by Krishnamoorthi to  a bill on the backlog of security clearance investigations. Now, Trump White House security vetting procedures are coming under the microscope.

Mr. Kushner and other senior administration officials repeatedly failed to disclose their foreign contacts, including those with hostile powers," said Krishnamoorthi. "It is essential that we determine whether this failure puts them or our nation at risk."

The  Oversight Committee requires the director of the National Background Investigations Bureau to report back within 90 days on how senior Trump administration officials are applying for and getting their security clearances.

Kushner has come under criticism from  security experts in the past two weeks after it was revealed that he left more than 100 names off his list of foreign contacts—including the names of Russians whom he met with in Trump Tower last June after he was told they represented a Kremlin plot to help presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election.

Kushner has been operating on an "interim" security clearance as he seeks top-secret clearance to work alongside his father-in-law. The president has given him the responsibility of brokering peace between Israel and Palestine and restructuring the federal government, among other tasks. So he needs the clearance to carry out his job.

To get full clearance, Kushner's legal team has been going back in recent months and filling in the blanks of seven years of his contacts with foreign government officials.

Kushner submitted incomplete forms earlier this year. Also left off those documents were contacts with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak last December and another the same month with Sergey Gorkov, the president of the state-run Russian bank VEB.

Trump administration contacts with Russian government officials and representatives are under scrutiny after America's intelligence agencies found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the intention of helping Trump win. The Trump campaign is being investigated for whether it helped the Kremlin's efforts.

"It's a question about the potential for blackmail, which is one of the biggest things security clearance investigators are looking for," Jacob Parakilas, a U.S. national security researcher at the international affairs think tank Chatham House, told  Newsweek last week. If the meetings remained secret they could potentially be used as leverage.

On Wednesday, 22 Democrat members of Congress  petitioned the FBI to review whether Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump—the eldest daughter of the president—completed the form with details about Kushner's contacts with foreign officials and representatives, as well as her own.

The security clearance form, known as an SF-86, asks applicants to list whether "you or any member of your immediate family in the past seven years had any contact with a foreign government, its establishment (such as embassy, consulate, agency, military service, intelligence or security service, etc.) or its representatives, whether inside or outside the U.S."

It is illegal to leave information off it, and government officials can face up to five years of jail time for withholding contacts on the form.

In  May, it was found Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn't disclose his contacts with Russia's Kislyak during the 2016 election on his clearance form. Sessions said he was told by an FBI employee that he didn't need to list dozens of meetings he had with foreign ambassadors when he was a senator.

The Department of Justice  released redacted copies of Sessions' security clearance form last week that show he checked "no" in a box when asked if he had contact with foreign governments in the past seven years.

Trump's fired national security adviser Michael Flynn—who survived on the job for less than a month—kept his security clearance even after the White House was warned by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates in January that he was  vulnerable to blackmail.

In March,  Flynn registered as a foreign agent for receiving $530,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the authoritarian Turkish government during the later months of the American election. As national security adviser, he held access to America's most closely guarded secrets.

"Access to our nation's secrets should demand the highest levels of scrutiny and the strictest adherence to security procedure," Krishnamoorthi said of the new review "to protect against compromise by hostile foreign powers."

[Eddie Teach]

I find it interesting how quickly the media has started describing Russia as "hostile".

[CountDeMoney]

I find it interesting how quickly the media has started describing Russia as "hostile".

What term would you use?