Richard Nixon
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A retired Defense Department worker who was affectionately dubbed the "Yoda" of the Pentagon died Tuesday.
Defense News reported that Andy Marshall, who retired at age 93 after running the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment for more than four decades, passed away at age 97.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and announced Marshall's death during a hearing on Tuesday.
"I can think of fewer people who have had a bigger impact of focusing our defense efforts, our national security, in the right direction than Mr. Marshall," Thornberry said, Defense News reported. "He has been before our committee I don't know how many times over the years. So I wanted to note that passing, but also to honor his memory because he made such a difference."
The Office of Net Assessment looks at the future of the U.S. military compared to other nations. Known as an internal think tank at the Pentagon, the office produces reports on its findings. It was created in 1973 by President Richard Nixon.
Marshall was the first director of the office and served in his role for 42 years before his 2015 retirement. According to a 2015 Foreign Policy profile, Marshall's colleagues nicknamed him "Yoda," a reference to the iconic "Star Wars" character. He was known as one of the top strategic thinkers in the entire government during his lengthy career that spanned eight presidents.
Source: NewsMax America
A retired Defense Department worker who was affectionately dubbed the "Yoda" of the Pentagon died Tuesday.
Defense News reported that Andy Marshall, who retired at age 93 after running the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment for more than four decades, passed away at age 97.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and announced Marshall's death during a hearing on Tuesday.
"I can think of fewer people who have had a bigger impact of focusing our defense efforts, our national security, in the right direction than Mr. Marshall," Thornberry said, Defense News reported. "He has been before our committee I don't know how many times over the years. So I wanted to note that passing, but also to honor his memory because he made such a difference."
The Office of Net Assessment looks at the future of the U.S. military compared to other nations. Known as an internal think tank at the Pentagon, the office produces reports on its findings. It was created in 1973 by President Richard Nixon.
Marshall was the first director of the office and served in his role for 42 years before his 2015 retirement. According to a 2015 Foreign Policy profile, Marshall's colleagues nicknamed him "Yoda," a reference to the iconic "Star Wars" character. He was known as one of the top strategic thinkers in the entire government during his lengthy career that spanned eight presidents.
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO – U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters as the president arrives for a closed Senate Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
March 26, 2019
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top Democrat on tax policy in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday that he is determined to seek President Donald Trump’s tax returns, despite the political victory handed to Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
“I’m committed to this. This is not just about one individual. This is a policy issue. And we think that there’s a test here of the law,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal told reporters. But he declined to say when he could take action to seek Trump’s returns.
Neal is the only House lawmaker authorized by federal law to request U.S. taxpayer records from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. His pending request for Trump’s returns is widely seen as a linchpin for Democratic efforts to investigate the president’s taxes and business dealings for potential conflicts of interest or violations of the Constitution.
Democrats, who have launched a number of probes against Trump since winning last year’s midterm election, suffered a blow over the weekend when the Justice Department announced that Mueller found no evidence that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign took part in Russian election meddling. The finding has enhanced Trump’s political standing.
But Neal said the Mueller report’s findings do not affect his plan to seek Trump’s taxes.
“The most important issue here is that every president since Gerald Ford has submitted their taxes,” Neal said, adding that former President Richard Nixon voluntarily submitted his returns for review by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
With Mueller’s findings weighing on Democratic hopes of establishing political ties to Russia, some expect the focus of House investigations to move to financial issues.
Among those are tax and business dealings that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified about last month.
“This shifts it to the other investigations. Mueller was dealing with a very narrow area. But now we move to a much broader platform and a lot of the things that Cohen talked about in his testimony we now have to take a look at,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings told Reuters.
That could make Trump’s tax returns even more important to Democrats.
Republicans warn that seeking Trump’s tax returns would turn confidential U.S. tax data into a political weapon.
Mnuchin told lawmakers earlier this month that he would follow the law but protect Trump’s privacy rights, if Neal requested the documents.
(Reporting by David Morgan in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Source: OANN
Congressional Democrats are plotting strategy as they await the conclusions of Robert Mueller's now-completed Russia investigation, with senior lawmakers demanding full transparency and preparing for next steps if the results are favorable to President Donald Trump.
House Democrats planned meetings by phone on Saturday to share what they know about the probe and to discuss how to move forward. It was unclear how soon they will have more information from Attorney General William Barr, who received the report from Mueller on Friday and has notified Congress that he intends to share its "principal conclusions" soon.
The Justice Department told lawmakers that Barr's summary was not expected Saturday but could still come over the weekend, according to multiple people familiar with the notification. The people requested anonymity to discuss the private message from the Justice Department.
The conclusion of Mueller's probe comes as House Democrats have launched several of their own into Trump and his personal and political dealings. And no matter what Mueller concludes, they say there is much more investigating to do.
"It's the end of the beginning but it's not the beginning of the end," said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, echoing his party's strategy moving forward.
In a Saturday conference call, Coons also issued a warning for his fellow Democrats, many of whom have pinned astronomical political hopes on Mueller's findings: "Once we get the principal conclusions of the report, I think it's entirely possible that that will be a good day for the president and his core supporters."
As they waited for more information, House Democrats planned conference calls. In a letter to colleagues Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there would be an "emergency caucus conference call" in the afternoon in which committee chairmen would update all Democratic House members on "where we go from here." Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were expected to convene on a smaller call beforehand.
Without the results of the report, the Democrats were expected to discuss the few details that are currently known and also their own plans to call for more transparency. Pelosi said in the letter that Barr's offer to provide Congress with a summary of conclusions was "insufficient."
Democrats have said they have to see the full report from Mueller, including underlying evidence, before they can assess it. Those demands for information are setting up a potential tug of war between Congress and the Trump administration that federal judges might eventually have to referee.
Six Democratic committee chairmen wrote in a letter to Barr on Friday that if Mueller has any reason to believe that Trump "has engaged in criminal or other serious misconduct," then the Justice Department should not conceal it.
"The president is not above the law and the need for public faith in our democratic institutions and the rule of law must be the priority," the chairmen wrote.
It's unclear what Mueller has found related to the president, or if any of it would be damning. In his investigation of whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the 2016 election, Mueller has already brought charges against 34 people, including six aides and advisers to the president, and three companies.
Lawmakers say they need that underlying evidence — including interviews, documents and material turned over to the grand jury — because the Justice Department has maintained that a president cannot be indicted and also that derogatory information cannot be released about people who have not been charged. So if the investigation did find evidence incriminating Trump, they may not be able to release it, under their own guidelines.
The Democrats say it could be tantamount to a cover-up if the department did not let Congress and the public know what they found.
Barr testified at his confirmation hearings that he wants to release as much information as he can about the inquiry. But the department's regulations require only that the attorney general report to Congress that the investigation has concluded and describe or explain any times when he or Rosenstein decided an action Mueller proposed "was so inappropriate or unwarranted" that it should not be pursued. Barr said Friday there were no such instances where Mueller was thwarted.
But anything less than the full report won't be enough for Democrats.
"If the AG plays any games, we will subpoena the report, ask Mr. Mueller to testify, and take it all to court if necessary," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y. "The people deserve to know."
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN on Friday that he's willing to subpoena Mueller and Barr, if needed, to push for disclosure.
Though Trump himself has said the report should be made public, it's not clear whether the administration would fight subpoenas for testimony or block the transmission of grand jury material.
If the administration decides to fight, lawmakers could ask federal courts to step in and enforce a subpoena. A court fight could, in theory, reach the Supreme Court. But few tussles between Congress and the White House get that far. They often are resolved through negotiation.
In both the Clinton and Obama administrations, even when talks failed and courts got involved in assessing claims of executive privilege, the White House decided not to take the fight to the high court and complied with lower court rulings against it.
The Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, could also formally ask Mueller to send his committee evidence that could be used in possible impeachment proceedings against Trump, as suggested by Benjamin Wittes, a senior Brookings Institution fellow and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog.
That's the course one of Nadler's predecessors followed during Watergate, although an impeachment inquiry against President Richard Nixon had already started by that point. Grand jury material from special counsel Leon Jaworski, provided through the federal judge who presided over the Watergate trials, became the road map that the House committee used to vote for articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned before the full House acted on his impeachment.
Pelosi said recently that she's not for impeaching Trump, at least for now.
Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: Special Counsel Robert Mueller (R) departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
March 19, 2019
By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Special Counsel Robert Mueller, examining potential conspiracy between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, is leading the latest in a series of U.S. investigations conducted by prosecutors outside usual Justice Department channels in recent decades.
The release of the findings by previous investigators analogous to Mueller has been handled differently over the years, sometimes with voluminous reports and other times with no reports or with key elements kept under wraps for months and even years.
Mueller is preparing to submit a report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on his findings, including Russia’s role in the election and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction. Russia has denied election interference.
Barr already is coming under pressure from lawmakers to make the entire document public quickly, though he has wide latitude in what to release.
Here is an explanation of some past high-profile U.S. investigations and how their findings were made public.
WATERGATE SCANDAL
The Justice Department named a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal that eventually forced Republican Richard Nixon in 1974 to become the only U.S. president to resign from office. At the time, no specific regulations or laws governed special prosecutors.
Attorney General Elliot Richardson, as a condition of his Senate confirmation, appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor to examine the 1972 break-in by Republican operatives at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.
Cox found himself at odds with Nixon over subpoenas to obtain taped White House conversations. Nixon ultimately ordered the firing of Cox, and several top Justice Department officials resigned in protest including Richardson, in an event dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre.
Leon Jaworski, subsequently named as the new Watergate special prosecutor, prepared a report with his findings, known as the “road map,” to assist Congress with possible impeachment proceedings to remove Nixon from office.
The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee used it as a basis for hearings and passed articles of impeachment, though Nixon quit before the full House could act. The “road map” remained under seal by a federal court for 55 years until it was released by federal archivists in 2018.
IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR
The job of independent counsel, with broader powers, was created by Congress after the Watergate scandal. In 1986, Lawrence Walsh was named as independent counsel to investigate the Iran-Contra affair involving illegal arms sales to Iran under Republican President Ronald Reagan, with the proceeds diverted to fund rebels in Nicaragua called Contras.
The probe lasted nearly seven years and led to criminal charges against 14 people. The convictions of some prominent officials – Oliver North and John Poindexter – were overturned on appeal. In 1992, Republican President George H.W. Bush pardoned others.
Walsh submitted his final report to a federal court in 1993, which had the power to release it publicly but was not required to do so. Its release was delayed after people named in the report sued to keep it suppressed. A federal appeals court ruled in 1994 that it should be released in the public interest. Walsh then unveiled it at a news conference.
WHITEWATER AND LEWINSKY SCANDALS
Attorney General Janet Reno in 1994 appointed Robert Fiske as a independent counsel to investigate allegations of impropriety by Democratic President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton regarding real estate investments in the Whitewater Development Corporation. Fiske’s probe was expanded to include reviewing the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, which police had ruled a suicide.
Fiske, who was not subject to the independent counsel law because it had temporarily lapsed, publicly released a 200-page interim report in 1994 clearing White House officials of wrongdoing in the Whitewater affair and confirming that Foster’s death was a suicide unrelated to Whitewater.
On that same day, Clinton signed a law reauthorizing the independent counsel statute, which paved the way for a federal court to replace Fiske as independent counsel with Kenneth Starr. Starr turned in a report on Foster’s death to federal courts in 1997, also finding no foul play. It remained under seal for three months before being released.
Starr’s probe expanded into other areas, including a sexual affair between Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky and alleged improprieties in the White House travel office. His expansive 445-page report, containing explicit details on Clinton’s sexual affair, was sent to Congress in 1998. Two days later, lawmakers voted to release it publicly. Its findings triggered an unsuccessful Republican effort to remove Clinton from office through the impeachment process.
Congress let the independent counsel law expire, with some lawmakers believing Starr went too far. The Justice Department in 1999 wrote regulations creating the new job of special counsel, with more limited powers.
FEDERAL RAID AT WACO
Reno in 1999 appointed John Danforth as special counsel to investigate the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas. The FBI used tear gas and a fire broke out, killing more than 70 people including cult leader David Koresh.
Danforth was the first person appointed under the 1999 regulations, the rules that now apply to Mueller. Under those rules, a special counsel must submit a confidential report to the attorney general, who then has discretion to publicly release some or all of it. The attorney general must weigh the public interest. But he also must consider thorny issues such as secrecy of grand jury testimony, protecting classified information, communications with the White House possibly subject to the principle of executive privilege shielding certain information from disclosure, and safeguarding confidential reasons for why some individuals were not charged.
Reno specifically instructed Danforth to prepare two versions of his report, a confidential one and another for public release. Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, gave no such instruction to Mueller when he appointed him in May 2017.
In 2000, Danforth held a news conference to publicly release his report, exonerating federal agents and Justice Department officials of any wrongdoing.
OUTING OF CIA AGENT PLAME
In 2003, James Comey, then the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special counsel to investigate how CIA operative Valerie Plame’s cover was blown through media leaks. Fitzgerald was not appointed under the 1999 regulations and was not bound by them.
Fitzgerald held a 2005 news conference to announce that a grand jury had returned a five-count indictment against Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements. Fitzgerald never published a final report on his findings.
A jury convicted Libby. Republican President George H.W. Bush commuted his sentence in 2007. Trump gave Libby a full pardon in 2018.
(This story has been refiled to insert dropped word in lead paragraph.)
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at Huntington Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia, U.S., November 2, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
March 12, 2019
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A momentous question hanging over Washington is whether investigations into President Donald Trump will prompt the U.S. Congress to try to remove him from office through the impeachment process set out in the U.S. Constitution.
The answer could be significantly influenced by the clock.
With the 2020 presidential and congressional election campaigns already gearing up, the political calendar could dictate whether initiating the time-consuming impeachment process is even plausible, Democratic and Republican lawmakers said.
An emerging sentiment among some lawmakers is that by the time a president is nearing or in the last year of a four-year term, voters in the next election, not Congress, should determine whether he stays or goes, even amid allegations of wrongdoing.
The House of Representatives, which would initiate any impeachment bid against the Republican Trump, is controlled by Democrats. Republicans control the Senate, which would conduct a trial and then vote on whether to remove Trump if the House impeaches him for any “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as the Constitution specifies. [nL1N20H1WX]
A Republican-led House voted to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1998, midway through his second term in office, and the Senate voted not to remove him in 1999. Under the Constitution, presidents are barred from seeking a third term.
Asked whether Congress should begin impeachment actions against Trump if it means doing so late this year or into 2020, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, told Reuters, “Well, the (presidential) race is next year, so I would think it would not make sense perhaps to do it in an election year.”
“But the year before, I think is fair game,” added Feinstein, who like all Senate Democrats at the time voted to acquit Clinton of the perjury and obstruction of justice counts approved by the House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump is unfit to be president but she is “not for impeachment.”
“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” Pelosi said in a Washington Post interview published on Monday. “And he’s just not worth it.”
Representative Steve Chabot, one of 13 House Republicans who prosecuted Clinton’s impeachment charges before the Senate, said in an interview, “The closer one gets to an election, I think the bar goes up as to what one considers to be impeachable.”
As an election nears, “I think there is an inherent consideration that perhaps the voters should decide this,” added Chabot, a House Judiciary Committee member.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr a report on his investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Several congressional committees have launched their own investigations.
Trump has denied obstruction of justice and collusion with Moscow.
PRESIDENTIAL RACE TAKES SHAPE
The Clinton impeachment process ran five months from the release of the independent counsel report that prompted the House to act until his Senate acquittal.
Even though the Nov. 3, 2020, election is roughly 20 months away, numerous Democrats have kicked off campaigns to win the right to challenge Trump, who is seeking re-election. The state-by-state contests to decide the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees begin Feb. 3, with the Iowa caucuses.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee during Clinton’s impeachment process, said of the current Congress: “They’ve basically got a sweet spot of a year” to impeach and hold a Senate trial, if lawmakers deem those actions necessary.
Turley told an American Bar Association conference in New Orleans, “No one is going to tolerate an impeachment months before an election, when the president is on the campaign trail.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, whose panel would be instrumental in drafting any articles of impeachment, has said he believes Trump has committed obstruction of justice, but that it is too soon to decide on impeachment. “We do not now have the evidence all sorted out,” Nadler told ABC’s “This Week” program on March 3.
“Before you impeach somebody, you have to persuade the American public that it ought to happen,” Nadler added.
Only two presidents, Clinton and Andrew Johnson, have been impeached by the House. Neither was removed. In the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, Johnson was impeached in 1868 after firing his secretary of war, only to be acquitted by the Senate.
President Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal in 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment but before the full House had a chance to vote.
Regardless of whether impeachment is pursued, Democrats and even some fellow Republicans noted the importance of congressional oversight of Trump.
Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a Judiciary Committee member, said in an interview that the “oversight function is the critical thing right now.”
Raskin added, “Timing is obviously going to be a subsidiary factor along with the character of the offenses that have been discovered.” Timing, Raskin said, “becomes more of a factor” in impeachment as elections near.
Chabot offered some advice to his fellow Judiciary Committee members: “Move forward with great caution.”
Chabot said if there is evidence that Trump “colluded with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to steal an election – if that really happened – then he ought to be impeached, as far as I’m concerned.” Chabot quickly added that he doubts there will be such evidence.
Democratic Representative Joe Courtney said in an interview impeachment “would probably be a very hard thing for the average American to swallow if we’ve got an election” looming with Trump on the ballot.
“Having said that,” Courtney added, “there are certain circumstances, which I don’t think we’re in right now – sometimes you just have to do what you have to do if the country’s at great risk.”
(Reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld in New Orleans; Editing by Will Dunham)
Source: OANN
Former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen departs after testifying behind closed doors before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
February 27, 2019
By Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former “fixer” and longtime lawyer, will try to turn the tables on his former boss in congressional testimony on Wednesday that promises to be a media spectacle with potentially high stakes for the Trump presidency.
Cohen, who served as Trump’s lawyer for a decade, will attempt to portray him as racist and a business cheat while providing evidence of criminal misconduct by Trump after he took office in January 2017, a person familiar with his testimony said.
Cohen also plans to offer “granular detail” about Trump allegedly directing hush-money payments to women in violation of campaign finance law, the person said. Cohen pleaded guilty to his role in arranging the payments, and prosecutors in New York said in a December court filing they believed the president ordered the payments to protect his campaign.
Trump has repeatedly denied ordering the payments.
Cohen, 52, who testified behind closed doors to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and has another non-public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, said he would use Wednesday’s hearing to make the case to the public why it should believe him rather than Trump.
The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is scheduled to start just as Trump wraps up a dinner with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, and TV networks may show both simultaneously on a split screen.
The White House again questioned Cohen’s credibility on Tuesday, with presidential spokeswoman Sarah Sanders calling him “a convicted liar.”
It is not clear whether the hearing will significantly alter the public’s perception of Trump’s business practices or put him in greater legal peril.
“It will be a spectacle. No question about that,” said Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor. “But after the midday TV drama is over, we’ll see if there is anything that amounts to something from a legal perspective.”
While Cohen is expected to talk on Wednesday about Trump’s interest in a proposed skyscraper project in Moscow long after he secured the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, the bulk of his testimony will be about allegations of wrongdoing by Trump as a businessman and the hush payments, the source said.
According to a staff memo seen by Reuters, Democratic lawmakers will ask Cohen about evidence they believe shows Trump’s lawyers misled ethics officials about how Cohen was reimbursed for $130,000 paid to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film star who said she had sex with Trump in 2006.
CREDIBILITY AT ISSUE
The Republicans on the oversight panel, including ranking member Jim Jordan, are likely to question Cohen’s credibility, given his guilty plea for lying to Congress and other crimes.
Republican U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, another staunch Trump ally, who is not on the oversight committee, sparked controversy with a tweet on Tuesday suggesting there was compromising information about Cohen’s private life.
“I guess tomorrow we will find out if there is anyone who Michael Cohen hasn’t lied to,” Gaetz said on the House floor amid criticism that his tweet amounted to witness intimidation.
How Cohen handles the Republican assault could determine whether he is perceived as credible and if his congressional testimony ends up having a similar impact to that of John Dean, who helped bring down President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.
Advocates for Cohen have likened his decision to come clean to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, to that of Dean.
But Dean himself said the significance of Cohen’s testimony would depend on what he had to say. He noted that Cohen did not fully cooperate with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, which is the reason he is due to start a three-year prison sentence in May despite pleading guilty to financial crimes.
Dean, former White House counsel to Nixon, told Reuters that he expected the Republicans to hammer at why he did not cooperate fully with Manhattan prosecutors.
“It could be historic,” Dean, now a frequent commentator on TV, said of Cohen’s testimony. “But if he just gets beat up by the Republicans, it won’t be.”
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Washington; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Peter Cooney)
Source: OANN
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Critics call President Donald Trump a diplomatic wrecking ball, while his supporters admiringly watch him take on foreign policy challenges that previous presidents chose to ignore or left to diplomatic “experts.”
Who’s right? This week, the rubber meets the road. Trump’s highly personal approach to negotiating with foreign powers — while ignoring Congress — is being put to the test by North Korea and China. Whether presidents should go it alone on foreign policy has been controversial since the founding of the nation. Even the Constitution’s framers fought over the question.
Midweek, Trump met one-on-one in Hanoi, Vietnam, with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator he used to taunt as “Little Rocket Man.” Previous U.S. presidents stood by while North Korea developed nuclear weapons and brandished them. This president, acting as his own chief arms negotiator, is taking on the problem. This will be Trump’s second summit with Kim, following their June meeting at which the dictator promised to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
So far, that’s just an empty promise. Though, admittedly, North Korea has stopped nuclear testing and lighting up the sky with missiles. Trump concedes that “much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one.” Is Trump relying only on personal charm? Hardly. American economic sanctions are pushing North Korea into ever more desperate food shortages, and Trump has threatened to meet any North Korean aggression with “fire and fury.” So, why not try diplomacy first, the president suggests.
Unlike previous presidents, Trump is also confronting China’s unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft head on. He slapped a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and threatened to hike the tariff to 25 percent on March 1 absent a deal.
While hitting hard with tariffs, Trump also praises China’s chief negotiator Liu He as “one of the most respected men in all of China, and frankly, one of the most respected men anywhere in the world.” At the United Nations last fall, he called President Xi Jinping “my friend” even while saying the trade imbalance with China “is just not acceptable.”
Career diplomats for years got nowhere with China. Trump’s iron-fisted, velvet-tongued diplomacy seems to be working better. Trump would call it “the art of the deal.” On Sunday, he tweeted that he’ll delay hiking the tariffs because of the progress made so far in trade talks, and he invited Xi to meet with him personally at Mar-a-Lago in early March to finalize a deal. “I think President Xi and I will work out the final points.”
Meanwhile, Congress is on shaky ground trying to rein in Trump’s “l’etat c’est moi” diplomacy. Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., introduced a bill to block Trump from withdrawing troops from South Korea, as part of any deal. Sorry. Deciding where to deploy troops is what the commander in chief does, not Congress. Check out Article II of the Constitution.
Congress also wants to limit Trump’s power over tariffs. At least there, lawmakers have an argument. Article I gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations.” Congress has frequently ceded that power to the president. Now it’s having second thoughts.
The tug between Congress and the president over who controls foreign policy has been going on since the nation’s founding. When President George Washington declared neutrality in the war between France and its European neighbors in 1793, two of the Constitution’s framers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, disagreed over whether Washington had that power. Madison insisted the power belonged to Congress, while Hamilton argued the decision was the president’s.
Trump is by no means the first president to seize control of diplomacy in a personal way. In 1972, President Richard Nixon shocked the establishment with a surprise visit to Communist China, a dramatic first step toward opening diplomatic relations between the rival powers.
And who can forget President Ronald Reagan’s personal dealings with Mikhail Gorbachev, which contributed to ending the Cold War?
Face it, Trump’s personal diplomacy is controversial because he’s controversial. But look beyond his swagger and judge the results.
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Bernie Sanders was just the mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1985, but this did not stop him from formulating his own foreign policy.
A video from that era is circulating among some Reaganites showing Bernie Sanders extolling the virtues of Fidel Castro, expressing empathy for the communists running Nicaragua, and castigating Ronald Reagan for all manner of things.
In the tape, Bernie also praised the radical Catholic priest, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a high official in the communist government of Nicaragua and — hold your breath — winner of the Lenin Peace Prize.
Pope John Paul II, an ardent anti-communist, admonished Brockmann for his choice of politics. But Bernie called Brockmann a, “gentle, loving man.”
At least Bernie was somewhat ahead of his time; now all liberals embrace collectivism, rebuke Ronald Reagan, and run up the hammer and sickle while striking the Stars and Stripes.
Fidel Castro once closed down local hot dog stands in the name of state socialism. The pin up girl for American socialism, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wondered just the other day why Americans needed to have more than one hamburger a day. As if that was any of her business. Can you imagine the hue and cry if someone asked her how many designer eyeglasses she owned? Why, that’s nobody’s business!
In 1985, Bernie said: “If President Reagan thinks that any time a government comes along, which in its wisdom, rightly or wrongly, is doing the best for its people, he has the right to overthrow that government, you're going to be at war not only with all of Latin America, but with the entire Third World.”
Of course, Mayor Sanders got this wrong as almost all of Latin America embraced the Monroe Doctrine and rejected Soviet advances. He said Reagan “disliked these people” but Reagan disliked oligarchical collectivism, not individuals.
Reagan once quipped that Harvard was not the answer to juvenile delinquency. Neither apparently is the state of Vermont, who keeps sending this wretch back to Congress although maybe that’s the only way to get rid of him.
Bernie has never been alone in hating America and loving the collectivists of Moscow. Alger Hiss, infamous aide to FDR and Harry Truman, was a covert Soviet agent. When a young Richard Nixon exposed Hiss cold and sent him to jail for perjury as an enemy of the American people, the left hated Nixon.
The left also rallied to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who stole the secrets to the Hydrogen Bomb and gave them to the Russians for money. They risked the lives of millions of Americans for 30 pieces of silver. Most Americans thought the electric chair was too good for these traitors.
Jane Fonda’s fondness for the North Vietnamese communists and loathing for America manifested itself in her touring the Hanoi Hilton prison during the Vietnam War, where an American POW slipped a note to her, but rather than giving the note to the American military, she instead gave it to his captors. They gave him extra rations of beatings for this infraction. The hottest place in hell has valet parking waiting for Jane Fonda.
In the 1980s, there was no shortage of Democrats willing to conspire with the thuggish Ortegas in Managua to defeat Ronald Reagan and his support for the freedom fighters, the Nicaraguan Contras. No less than Rep. Jim Wright, D-Texas, second in command of the U.S. House, was a willing lackey to the communists in Nicaragua. Bernie at the time called the communist Daniel Ortega an “impressive man.”
Of course, a recitation of traitorous liberals would be incomplete without citing the disgusting behavior of Ted Kennedy who made open appeals to the Kremlin to help them defeat Reagan for reelection in 1984.
Flash forward. Bernie just got a huge book advance with no plans to share it with the poor. Bernie is like other café socialists. They want you to share your wealth; they just don’t want to share theirs.
I, for one, am glad to see this dyspeptic old man running again for president. What greater recruiting tool do American conservatives have than Bernie? Really, his only constituencies are the charlatans at the Washington Post, liberal newsreaders on cable, the radical chic of Vermont, the Upper Side of Manhattan and the deep thinkers of Beverly Hills; these are the limousine liberals who love socialism in practice, just as long as they don’t have to soil their hands or empty their pockets.
Reagan versus Sanders? Give me a break. There is no choice. It’s like trading Babe Ruth for Bob Uecker. Not in the same league, man.
Besides, Reagan was fun, Reagan was an intellectual, Reagan was a winner, in everything he did and he believed that Americans could and should be winners too. And he won for America too, grinding the Soviets into the ground. Reagan believed in the privacy and dignity and freedom of the individual. Sanders and his ilk oppose all these things.
And that’s the real choice facing Americans. Who is going to take money out of your wallet and who is going to put money into your wallet? Who believes the American people are beholden to the state, and who believes the state is beholden of the American people?
For all his faults, Donald Trump’s conservative philosophy holds that freedom is for the autonomous. Bernie Sanders and his philosophy of socialism is for people to always be subjects of the state.
American conservatism is and always has been the intellectual philosophy. American liberalism is the anti-intellectual “irritable mental gesture.”
As the great conservative writer and philosopher Russell Kirk said, “From the moment I began to think, and the time I began to reason, I have always been a conservative.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during campaign rally at Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S., August 2, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
February 26, 2019
By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Constitution explains how a president can be removed from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors” by Congress using the impeachment process. But the Constitution is silent on whether a president can face criminal prosecution in court, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not directly addressed the question.
The question looms large with Special Counsel Robert Mueller preparing a report on his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, whether President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe.
The U.S. Justice Department has a decades-old policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, indicating that criminal charges against Trump would be unlikely, according to legal experts.
Here is an explanation of the rationale behind the Justice Department policy and whether it applies to Mueller.
WHAT IS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT POLICY?
In 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal engulfing President Richard Nixon, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel adopted in an internal memo the position that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Nixon resigned in 1974, with the House of Representatives moving toward impeaching him.
“The spectacle of an indicted president still trying to serve as Chief Executive boggles the imagination,” the memo stated.
The department reaffirmed the policy in a 2000 memo, saying court decisions in the intervening years had not changed its conclusion that a sitting president is “constitutionally immune” from indictment and criminal prosecution. It concluded that criminal charges against a president would “violate the constitutional separation of powers” delineating the authority of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government.
“The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions,” the memo stated.
The 1973 and 2000 memos are binding on Justice Department employees, including Mueller, according to many legal experts. Mueller was appointed in May 2017 by the department’s No. 2 official Rod Rosenstein.
But some lawyers have argued that the nation’s founders could have included a provision in the Constitution shielding the president from prosecution, but did not do so, suggesting an indictment would be permissible. According to this view, immunity for the president violates the fundamental principle that nobody is above the law.
Nixon himself in 1977 offered an opposite view when he told interviewer David Frost, “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”
COULD MUELLER INDICT TRUMP DESPITE THE EXISTING POLICY?
Possibly. The Justice Department regulations governing Mueller’s appointment allow him to deviate from department policy in “extraordinary circumstances” with the approval of the U.S. attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official. Trump appointee William Barr currently holds that post.
Some legal experts have suggested Mueller could invoke this exception if he has uncovered serious wrongdoing and lacked confidence in the ability of the divided Congress to hold Trump accountable. Some lawyers also have said Mueller is not bound by the 1973 and 2000 memos because he is not a typical employee of the department.
Ken Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton in the 1990s in the somewhat different role of independent counsel, in 1998 conducted his own analysis of the question of whether a sitting president can be indicted, indicating he did not consider the 1973 Justice Department memo binding on him.
Starr did not indict Clinton in his investigation involving the president’s relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, but lawyers in his office concluded he had the authority to do so, according to a once-secret internal memo made public by the New York Times in 2017.
After the independent counsel statute under which Starr was named expired in 1999, the Justice Department devised procedures governing the appointment of special counsels to handle certain investigations. Mueller was named after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been overseeing the agency’s Russia probe.
COULD TRUMP BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE AND THEN PROSECUTED?
Yes. There is no debate over whether a former president can be indicted for conduct that occurred while in office. In fact, President Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after his resignation, was mindful of this when he granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed.”
The statute of limitations – restricting the time within which legal proceedings such as a prosecution may be brought – may work to Trump’s benefit if he is re-elected in 2020 and serves a full two four-year terms as president until January 2025.
Many federal crimes have a five-year statute of limitations, meaning prosecutors have five years from the date the conduct at issue occurred to bring an indictment. That means criminal charges against a re-elected Trump could be time-barred.
Some lawyers have said that, as a matter of fairness, the normal rules on timeliness of charges should not apply to the president. The issue potentially could be resolved in the courts.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)
Source: OANN
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