Fear and cruelty on the march

 

And...

Jesus Christ.  He just announces the illegal shit he's trying to do.

UPDATE 08:50 pm:

An official with Homeland Security Investigations in Tallahassee took Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old born in Georgia, to a Wendy’s near the jail, where he reunited with his mother after spending more than 24 hours under arrest following a traffic stop in which he was a passenger.

[...]

“I feel fine leaving that place, I felt bad in there. They didn’t give us anything to eat all day yesterday,” he told the Florida Phoenix in Spanish. He added that he had asked the trooper who made the arrest why he was being taken into custody, because he was a U.S. citizen.

His mother, also in Spanish, said the days ahead will be tough for the family and worries that Lopez-Gomez and his sisters will live in fear of deportation despite having been born in the country.

  Florida Phoenix

Instilling fear is the point.

CREW has their work cut out for them

It was January 15, 2021 when CREW released a report called “President Trump’s legacy of corruption, four years and 3,700 conflicts of interest later.” He never divested from his business interests and made uncounted millions from the money foreign and domestic players spent on his clubs, hotels and real estate—at least $5.5 million from China alone, based on a limited and partial House Oversight Committee investigation that Republicans halted when they took control of the chamber in January 2023.

This week, the CREW homepage featured an August 2024 report on “the intensifying threat of Donald Trump’s emoluments.” That’s the term used in the Constitution for corruption and self-enrichment. In other words, we can expect the president-elect to reach new heights of both during his second administration.

[...]

Trump now has social media and crypto holdings that are particularly concerning. Any wealthy person or foreign country who wants to influence or get a favor from Trump could drive up his net worth by buying a ton of stock, or drive it down by threatening to sell. “In terms of the ability to really throw big money around to him or in his direction, the social media and crypto are really sort of unprecedented [...]”

[...]

For the record: CREW won a clearcut victory for accountability in a case that removed and banned from office a New Mexico county commissioner who had participated in the Capitol riot on January 6th. It won many findings of Hatch Act violations, in which White House aides used their taxpayer-funded positions to promote Trump or disparage Democrats, including a recommendation that Kellyanne Conway be fired. And various courts kept its emoluments suit alive throughout Trump’s term.

But [...] the Supreme Court dismissed three emoluments cases, including CREW’s, when Trump left office.

[...]

CREW suggested in an August 7 letter that he fill all federal ethics vacancies—fourteen open slots for inspectors general (the agency watchdogs who investigate waste, fraud, and abuse) and other “vacancies in key ethics roles throughout the government.” Trump will have authority to fire inspectors general and replace them with loyalists, [CREW president Noah] Bookbinder says, “but it’s not super easy to do,” and the president-elect shouldn’t get a pass.

[...]

The wise course, he says, is to wait for Trump to take office: “I’m not positive that yelling and screaming in the next couple of months about the kinds of things that Trump might do will move a lot of people. But if and when stuff [eg. if he uses the presidency to make his social media holdings and his crypto holdings more valuable and line his pockets] starts happening, there will be an audience for that.”

  Bulwark

Please donate to CREW if you can.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They can't win if they don't cheat

Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.

The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections.

[...]

Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

  The Guardian

The fact that these people use email instead of discreet phone calls shows how little they care about getting caught.

The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.

Of course they do.

[T]he emails obtained by Crew show that it was [David] Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections, who has become a leading voice in the push for more power to refuse to certify results.

[...]

Democrats and election experts have cited Georgia court cases dating back to 1899 dictating certification as a “ministerial”, not discretionary, duty of county election officials. At a Monday gathering of state-level election officials from several swing states, Gabe Sterling, a deputy to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, warned county election officials that they could be taken to court for refusing to certify results in November.

Like they care.

The communications also show members of the group coordinating on messaging regarding their false claims of widespread voter fraud.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

CREW amicus

A watchdog group is asking the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to remove Judge Aileen Cannon from overseeing former President Trump’s classified documents case.

[...]

The CREW brief asks for the documents case to be reassigned to another jurist in South Florida. Smith did not make that request, but the 11th Circuit could independently determine the rare move is warranted.

“Even before she dismissed this case on novel and insupportable grounds that ignored both statutory authority and Supreme Court precedent, Judge Cannon’s other extraordinary rulings and sluggish administration of the case had provoked well-founded concerns that she might be biased against the Government’s case and unable to manage that case impartially,” CREW wrote in its motion to file a friend-of-the-court brief filed late Tuesday.

[...]

“If the Court reverses Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling in this matter, it will be the third time in under three years that it has had to do so in a seemingly straightforward case about a former president’s unauthorized possession of government documents,” CREW wrote.

“But citing the mere number and frequency of reversals does not fully capture the problem; for some of Judge Cannon’s rulings have been so unprecedented that affirming them would, in this Court’s words, ‘violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.’”

  The Hill

The brief

14th Amendment lawsuits

The DC-based group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), is representing six Colorado voters – who are either Republican or unaffiliated with a political party – seeking to remove Trump from their state’s ballot in next year’s general election.

[...]

According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday, the former president violated section 3 of the 14th amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause, with his involvement in the January 6 US Capitol attack. The section bars any federal or state official that has “previously taken an oath” from holding office after they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”.

Two prominent conservative legal scholars recently authored a lengthy law review article arguing that Trump is disqualified from holding office under the 14th amendment.

[...]

In addition to Colorado, other states are bracing for similar lawsuits challenging Trump’s eligibility including Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire.

  Guardian

Good luck.

UPDATE 09/09/2023:

An entire administration of grifters

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Support CREW

They do a lot of important work.  Like this:

Trump conflict tracker

Here

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Violation of emoluments clauses should also be included in the Trump articles of impeachment

Thank heaven for CREW and the ACLU.

Trump leaned heavily on a claim that after an exhaustive search, members of the government preferred Doral, saying “When my people came back…They went to places all over the country. And they came back and they said, ‘This [Doral] is where we would like to be.’ Now we had military people doing it. We had Secret Service people doing it.”

[...]

On August 27 and 28, CREW requested records about that claim from the city of Doral, the Secret Service, and the State Department on the prospect of hosting the G-7 at Doral. After receiving nothing from State, or the Secret Service, CREW sued for those records on October 18.

[...]

CREW received records from the United States Secret Service that, along with emails from Doral city officials, undermine President Trump’s dubious claim that members of the Secret Service wanted the 2020 G-7 Summit to be hosted at Trump’s Doral resort in Miami. The reality appears to be quite different, with the Secret Service instead expressing reluctance, saying “the property does present[] some challenges,” followed by a redaction that implies security concerns. The records also seem to show that Doral was added for consideration at the last minute, saying “[b]y departure, they had already cut two (California and North Carolina) and added Miami on the back end.” Taken together, the records that CREW obtained call into question nearly every aspect of Trump’s justification of his choice.

[...]

The email that was ultimately provided suggests a disjointed process, where Doral was added on as an afterthought. Signed by a member of Dignitary Protective Division’s Special Events team, the email suggests the Secret Service wasn’t able to make it down to Doral until a month after the original itinerary concluded. “Yesterday was the first time we put eyes on this property,” the email, dated July 12, says, apparently referring to Doral.

[...]

In order to learn what vetting process took place between the federal and local levels, CREW also requested records from the Doral police department and mayor’s office.

CREW’s search of thousands of responsive emails from Doral government officials for the terms “Secret Service,” “dhs.gov,” and other relevant terms, returned no results. While at this time, we can’t confirm that there was zero communication between the city of Doral and the Secret Service, it certainly calls into question the President’s claim of the extensive vetting of his club before he chose it to host the G-7.

  CREW

If you can, please donate to CREW:

They do important work.

The lawsuits begin

https://www.aclu.org/donate-aclu


Also, CREW has filed suit.

The Trump administration is keeping CREW busy

They've filed lawsuits and complaints against:

1) DHS for violating federal record-keeping laws in the caging and detention of immigrant children and families;
2) Trump Foundation for violating tax-exempt status and campaign finance laws;
3) Kellyanne Conway for Hatch Act violation;
4) CIA and NSA for failure to disclose records relating to Trump's meeting with Russian officials where he leaked highly classified information.

They've also filed a FOIA request for documents from the legal defense fund for Trump aides involved in the Russia probe.

And they're watching:
1) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for possible criminal conflict-of-interest law;
2) Ryan Zinke for ethics violations;
3) All of Trump's bullshit;
and...
4) Jared.

Donate to CREW if you can.

Thank goodness for CREW (and the ACLU)

A U.S. District Court on Friday rejected election regulations that allowed even very large donors to politically active nonprofit groups to remain anonymous. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group which brought the suit, described the ruling as “a major game changer” in an era when political spending by non-campaign groups has become not only unchecked, but increasingly opaque.

[...]

CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement that the ruling will allow the public to “know a whole lot more about who is giving money for the purpose of influencing an election”.

The ruling stems from a suit CREW brought against the FEC in connection to spending by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which did not disclose the donors behind $6 million spent campaigning against Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in 2012.

The decision is subject to appeal, either by the FEC or by Crossroads GPS.

  Fortune

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But is it unconstitutional?

[T]he president is seen as a walking, talking constitutional violation. And absent any corrective action by a complacent, complicit Congress, the only way to rein him in is to take him to court.

  NY Magazine

Which makes it a great perk that he gets to nominate judges - or "stack the bench" as they say.

[The foreign emoluments clause [...] decrees that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust … shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The Supreme Court has never interpreted what any of that means, let alone declared a sitting president in violation of it. But on Wednesday, a federal judge in Trump’s own backyard, Manhattan, began to crack the code, hearing arguments from CREW and the Department of Justice on the meaning of the clause.

[...]

Brett Shumate, the government lawyer dispatched to defend Trump’s business interests and get CREW’s lawsuit dismissed (read that sentence over one more time) insisted that [...] without an explicit quid pro quo from Trump, [nothing would] qualify as an emolument and thus would be perfectly kosher.

[...]

U.S. District Judge George Daniels didn’t seem too impressed. To him, emolument seemed to mean any “compensation” received by a federal official on account of a benevolent foreign entity. “Why isn’t that the most direct and accurate definition of its use?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem to be a complicated concept.” Daniels didn’t quite tip his hand either way, but he suggested that he sees the foreign emoluments clause (not to be confused with the domestic emoluments clause, which CREW also thinks Trump is flouting) as an “anti-bribery” and “anti-corruption” provision meant to keep government honest and free of foreign influence.

[...]

That may sound like good news to CREW, but the nonprofit has an uphill battle of its own. For one, the group may not even have standing to sue in the first place — as a government watchdog, they serve the public and are not competitors of Trump properties. And no matter what resources they spend or how many times they send former Obama “ethics czar” Norm Eisen to appear on MSNBC, that may not be enough to claim that CREW has been harmed by Trump’s emoluments.

So why can't they file the suit on behalf of their "clients" - the public?

Since filing the lawsuit in January, CREW has brought on other plaintiffs to strengthen their case, among them a restaurant association, a D.C. event booker for major hotel chains, and Eric Goode, a hotelier in New York City. Deepak Gupta, one of the superlawyers representing CREW, told Daniels that all of these plaintiffs, which are competitors in the hospitality sector, have been unfairly disadvantaged by Trump’s wooing of international patrons at his properties.

Even if the courts find in plaintiff's favor, there remains the question of a remedy. And that seems to be something that would have to go to Congress (remember "without the consent of congress" clause?). And, guess what? Yeah, you guessed it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.