Morning Joe
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Rep. Max Rose said Thursday he decided to tell a group of Jewish people in his district in Staten Island that he's sorry for the words of fellow Rep Ilhan Omar because he believes in changing American politics.
"Everybody is blaming each other," the New York Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "She caused pain in the Jewish community. She apologized, but we are working as hard as we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Muslims also are feeling an incredible amount of pain, said Rose, noting that Staten Island and Brooklyn have one of the largest Muslim communities in the country.
However, he said he does not believe Omar to be anti-Semitic, but he thought her tweets were, and he apologized "because they came out of Congress. This shouldn't be news that someone did this. This should be run of the mill stuff."
He also noted that on the same day or the day before Omar made her comments about Jews and the government on Twitter, there was a "very, very public threat made against her life."
"There is an incredible rise of Islamophobia in this country," said Rose, while commenting on an anti-hate resolution that was passed after Omar's tweets. Initially, the resolution was going to be against anti-Semitic statements but was widened to encompass other religions and walks of life.
"What I saw was a resolution that pronounced objection and opposition to acts of hate, as they rise across the county, particularly anti-Semitism and Islamophobia," said Rose.
Source: NewsMax Politics
President Donald Trump had not been elected, it is "dangerously close" he would have been indicted in the Southern District of New York on campaign finance violations in connection with a guilty plea from his ex-attorney Michael Cohen, Preet Bharara, the district's former U.S. attorney, said Tuesday.
"The particular legal peril for him is what has been spelled out in a plea allocution, the statement given by Michael Cohen in federal court," Bharara told MSNBC's "Morning Joe," noting Cohen had said he committed the crime of campaign finance violation was done at the "direction of Individual 1, everyone's favorite pet name for the president of the United States."
As the Southern District accepted Cohen's statement, "that says to me, given that I know the folks who did all this, actually I hired them and they're all great, honorable, hard-working people, that they believe Donald Trump was involved in that crime," Bharara said.
He said the policy is "very clear" about not indicting a sitting president, but he does believe special counsel Robert Mueller will feel "bound" by that practice and policy and he would have felt that way if he was still the U.S. Attorney.
"But once you're not president, then anything can happen," Bharara said.
He added critics should not pin all their hopes on Mueller's report, but he does think the president's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., might in legal jeopardy.
"We're all in jeopardy because if something would befall Donald Trump Jr., I don't know what his father is capable of," Bharara said.
Source: NewsMax America
Democratic lawmakers are rewriting a law to ensure President Donald Trump won't escape "criminal liability" if he is re-elected and time runs out to indict him, Rep. Eric Swalwell said Tuesday.
"I don't think any person should be above the law," the California Democrat, who is mulling a run at the presidency, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "What concerns me right now is the president may escape criminal liability because he could win reelection and the statute of limitations could run out."
The current policy rules out indicting a sitting president, Swalwell added, so "we should rewrite the law. The statute of limitations can continue to run, so once you're out of office, you can be indicted."
And the law, he added is "in the works because there are "indictments waiting for this president."
Swalwell said he also has every confidence lawmakers will see special counsel Robert Mueller's report, as Congress just voted unanimously to see it and Trump is "outnumbered."
The lawmaker also said Tuesday he believes Trump colluded with Russia, and he thinks there is circumstantial evidence.
"The president knew the Russians were seeking to help him," said Swalwell. "So he went out as a candidate, invited them to hack more, did not tell his family not to take any of these meetings. He was told by Roger Stone that Wikileaks was also going to be putting out materials damaging to his opponent and he went on the stage and said I love Wikileaks. This is circumstantial evidence which in a court of law can be treated as the same as direct evidence. Yes, he's colluded."
Source: NewsMax Politics
Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said Monday that Muslims in her hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, the location of the largest mosque in the United States, are afraid after the massacre of worshippers in New Zealand last week.
"This community has been targeted for a long time," Rep. Dingell told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I think it's time to stand up. I think some of the younger people are tired of feeling targeted."
Dingell pointed out a similar mass shooting occurred in the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue last October.
"The rabbis were with us Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday and people want to stand up to this hate," Dingell said. "They want people to know who they are. They want to be able to go to a mosque or temple or Catholic church and not be afraid."
She also called for all members of the federal government to take a stand against such "hatefulness" and complained that social media has "become a tool of absolutely vitriolic rhetoric."
Meanwhile, Dingell said she is concerned people have lost their ability to communicate under President Donald Trump.
"There are people who are scared and worried about their jobs," Dingell said. "You have union workers who don't think that anybody cares about them, and they still think he cares about them . . . I think there's almost schizophrenia.
"People just want somebody to care about them. They want to have a safe and secure job that pays them enough to live in a decent neighborhood. That's what I'm hearing."
Source: NewsMax America
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Wednesday that while he does "wholly concur" with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's opinion that impeaching President Donald Trump would create divisions in the party, the Department of Justice still must release the results of special counsel Robert Mueller's extensive investigation to Congress.
"We are certainly considering whatever is necessary to make sure this is not buried," Rep. Schiff told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "The public gets to see this report. More than that, we have access in Congress to the supporting evidence. We can bring Mueller in to testify and we take it to court if necessary."
Further, he said, if the DOJ takes the position that a sitting president cannot be indicted, while not sharing information about Mueller's investigation with Congress so that it can determine if impeachment is warranted, "that amounts to immunity for the president," Schiff said.
Schiff said he believes there is both "direct and circumstantial evidence" of collusion between the President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, and "whether that evidence amounts to beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal conspiracy, we have to wait for Bob Mueller on that."
Schiff also commented on complaints former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had several areas of inconsistency with his testimony, particularly on the issue of whether he had sought a pardon from Trump.
"We questioned him about the dangling of pardons and communication with the president or people on his team," said Schiff, whose committee heard Cohen's testimony behind closed doors. "We'll be releasing his transcript at the appropriate point. We may have to interview other witnesses before we do so."
Source: NewsMax America
Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., says requests for President Donald Trump's tax returns are coming soon.
"Within some days or weeks that request will be made," Rep. Kildee told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"We don't expect that they will respond affirmatively, but the public has an interest in knowing what the president's financial interests really are."
Trump has fought release of his returns since he announced his presidency, citing an ongoing audit. He is not required by law to release them, though previous candidates for president and vice president have voluntarily disclosed their returns.
Democrats made it a point to go after Trump's returns after they won control of the House of Representatives but have dragged their feet so far.
"We are going through the process," said Kildee, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
"We had a hearing to establish clearly our legal authority to acquire these returns, which dates back to a law that followed the teapot dome schedule and we're laying a factual basis to make it clear that there's a public interest in having access to these returns."
Source: NewsMax Politics
Most of the drugs entering the United States are coming through the ports of entry, not across the border, and President Donald Trump has his "feet stuck in the cement of fantasy" with his insistence a border wall will keep drugs out, border expert Don Winslow said Tuesday.
"He knows the facts," Winslow, whose new book "The Border: The Novel" is out today, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"He knows the facts," Winslow said. "The DEA has told us this. If you read the last five years of their report, it says it. The cartels have told us this lately in the (Joaquin "El Chapo") Guzman trial. Major traffickers on the stand said it comes through these open gates, so President Trump knows this."
However, his refusal to acknowledge the problem means he's showing "willful ignorance," said Winslow.
"I think he's just stuck his feet into his campaign promises and he's sticking it out," he added. "I guarantee you, this wall will do nothing to stop the flow of drugs. In fact, it will help the flow of drugs. It's going to drive more migrants into the hands of cartels, who are getting into the human smuggling business."
Winslow said that 90 percent of the illicit drugs that come in are arriving through ports of entry, while a wall will force the mules bringing drugs through the hills to be transported by the cartels through the ports of entry.
"They'll pay a tax to the cartels of something like 5-7 percent of the value of the product of that heroin, that cocaine, that methamphetamine, and that will feed the cartel's profits," said Winslow.
Source: NewsMax America
Sen. Dick Durbin said Wednesday he's read over the "Green New Deal" several times, and he doesn't know yet if he'll vote for it.
"At this point, I can't tell you," the Illinois Democrat and Senate Minority Whip told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I have read it and I have reread it and I asked, 'What the heck is this?'"
The controversial 14-page proposal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., earlier this month, includes goals to follow for the country to reach an economy that has a net-zero carbon emission footprint.
"It's an aspiration," said Durbin. "It's a resolution. We're going to ask the Republican leader what's your position on global warming while we're at it. Should he come out on the record and say if human activity is having an impact on the environment? Get it on the record on both sides."
Durbin said he does "certainly agree," though, with the "premise that global warming is a threat to the planet and we're not doing enough."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already has promised to bring the Green New Deal to a vote and House Republicans are calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring it the floor not to avert climate change, but because of hopes to take back Congress seats by casting Democrats as being extreme over the proposal.
Source: NewsMax Politics
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