When you're too corrupt even for Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says that the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was the final straw for her in standing by former President Trump, confirming that she was open to using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

DeVos, who writes in a new book about turning in her resignation letter to Trump the day after the Capitol insurrection, blames the former president’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election for blocking her efforts to pass her last piece of school choice agenda legislation through Congress.

  The Hill

Well, at least there's that.

She was the second Trump Cabinet member to step down on Jan. 7, following Education Secretary Elaine Chao.

[...]

DeVos also said that she was shocked when Trump turned against then-Vice President Mike Pence for remaining committed to certifying the election results. She said that she spoke with other Cabinet members about the option of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him, noting that there were “more than a few people” in the White House who considered the move.

But none with the balls to carry it out.

“I spoke with the vice president and just let him know I was there to do whatever he wanted and needed me to do or help with, and he made it very clear that he was not going to go in that direction or that path,” DeVos said, confirming earlier reporting that she resigned after it became clear that invoking the 25th Amendment was not on the table.

Well, no shit, Bets. That could and should have been done way before then.  By January 6, he'd already been elected out of office.

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

JFC

The game is (still) rigged.

Also...

"A top career official in President Joe Biden's Justice Department blocked efforts by Senate investigators to probe the handling of voter fraud complaints in the aftermath of the 2020 election, according to transcripts released Thursday. As Senate Judiciary Committee aides investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election questioned top Trump-era Justice Department officials, a DOJ attorney present for the interviews intervened repeatedly to say such questions were outside the scope of the panel's inquiry.

"The official, DOJ attorney Bradley Weinsheimer - a career official who has worked under attorneys general of both parties - cited guidance he issued in July that paved the way for congressional testimony but limited the topics former DOJ officials were permitted to discuss.

  National Zero

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

Aftermath of an attempted coup - Part 5 /Trump aiders and abetters attempt to extricate themselves from the shit they stirred

It will be interesting to see how Trump attacks Mike Pence in the next couple of weeks.

Yeah, Mike. Too little, too late. You've been abetting Trump's incitement to violence for four years.

An attorney representing President Trump in one of his dozens of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election moved to withdraw from the case on Thursday, telling a federal court that the president used him to "perpetrate a crime."

Philadelphia-based attorney Jerome Marcus asked the court to allow him to withdraw, citing concerns over Pennsylvania's professional conduct standards for lawyers.

[...]

The case Marcus was involved in was one of the earliest election challenges that Trump filed and one of the most short-lived. Submitted just two days after the election, it sought to halt the vote counting in Philadelphia, accusing elections officials of illegally excluding Trump's poll watchers from observing the process. A federal judge denied Trump's motion for an emergency injunction on the same day that the lawsuit was filed.

[...]

Marcus wrote that "the client has used the lawyer's services to perpetrate a crime and the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant and with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement."

  The Hill

What? He just now figured that out? Didn't he read the lawsuits he was filing?

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

UPDATE:

Fuck off back under your rock.  You have been instrumental in keeping Trump afloat by betraying YOUR office.

Yeah, not to mention, if he didn't know, he found out real quick and didn't say anything.

Only six Republican senators ultimately voted to sustain an objection raised by Cruz to Arizona’s electoral slate on Wednesday after 13 Republicans signaled before the polls closed in Georgia Tuesday that they would support such an objection. Only seven GOP senators supported a second objection raised by Hawley to Pennsylvania’s election results.

The drop-off in support was a reflection of Trump’s plummeting political stock after the loss of the Senate majority and his response to the rioting in the Capitol.

Many Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from Trump after he publicly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday and then kept silent after a pro-Trump mobbed swarmed the Capitol and Senate chamber, sending lawmakers to secure rooms while police locked down the campus.

[...]

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who has been a strong Trump ally during his first term, late on Wednesday said [...] “I do think the president bears some responsibility. Certainly, he bears responsibility for his own actions and his own words and today in watching his speech, I have to admit I gasped,” Cramer said.

  The Hill

Apparently Senator Cramer has had his head in the sand for four years.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday that Donald Trump should resign the presidency immediately and that if the Republican Party cannot separate itself from Trump, she isn’t certain she has a future with the party.

  Anchorage Daily News

What was that she said when she voted "no" on impeachment?  Oh yeah, she said she thought he'd learned his lesson.

Fox News contributor and formerWhite House press secretary Ari Fleischer has vowed to no longer “defend” President Trump following Wednesday’s pro-Trump riot that overtook the Capitol.

“At this point, I won’t defend him anymore,” Fleischer, who served in the George W. Bush administration and who voted for Trump in 2020, told The Associated Press.

“I won’t defend him for stirring the pot that incited the mob,” the GOP strategist added. “He’s on his own.”

[...]

Fleischer had previously vocalized support for Trump, writing in an October opinion piece for The Hill that he planned to cast his vote for the sitting president in the 2020 election, viewing the choice between Trump and Biden as “between a personally offensive outsider who signs good policies and a professionally offensive politician who will turn bad ideas into law.”

“Say what you will about Trump violating norms, he has never tried to redo the balance of power by irregular means,” Fleischer wrote at the time.

  The Hill

And where the Hell does Kellyanne Conway get off?  She's been one of Trump's biggest enablers.

He can't be allowed a second term

The list of planned replacements is much longer, but these are Trump's priorities, starting with Wray.

Wray and Haspel are despised and distrusted almost universally in Trump's inner circle. He would have fired both already, one official said, if not for the political headaches of acting before Nov. 3.

  Axios

What has Haspel done to displease him?

"The view of Haspel in the West Wing is that she still sees her job as manipulating people and outcomes, the way she must have when she was working assets in the field," one source with direct knowledge of the internal conversations told Axios. "It's bred a lot of suspicion of her motives."

Trump is also increasingly frustrated with Haspel for opposing the declassification of documents that would help the Justice Department's Durham report.

"The view of Haspel in the West Wing." So, Ivanka and Jared don't like her.

Trump soured on Esper over the summer when the Defense secretary rebuffed the idea of sending active-duty military into the streets to deal with racial justice protests and distanced himself from the clearing of Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John's church.

Trump indicated to Axios then that he "really wasn't focused on" firing Esper. One senior official cautioned that others who want the Pentagon job could be driving speculation to undercut Esper.

[...]

Trump last week signed an executive order that set off alarm bells as a means to politicize the civil service. An administration official said the order "is a really big deal" that would make it easier for presidents to get rid of career government officials.

There could be shake-ups across other departments. The president has never been impressed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for example. But that doesn't carry the urgency of replacing Wray or Haspel.

Unhappy with Betsy DeVos???

While Trump has also privately vented about Attorney General Bill Barr, he hasn't made any formal plans to replace him, an official said.

I doubt if he could find anyone more subservient. Unless he plans to put all his family members in office. I saw recently that Tiffany Trump got her law degree.

Chris Liddell, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy coordination, is heading the White House’s transition effort, including vetting potential new Cabinet officials, two White House officials told Axios.

He's working closely with White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Johnny McEntee, who runs the Office of Presidential Personnel and has been conducting "loyalty tests" to weed out "Never Trumpers" from the administration.

DeVos blocked

Education groups, teachers unions, civil rights organizations and some GOP education officials have expressed concerns about the administration’s approach to distributing the pandemic assistance.

[...]

At issue in the cases is how school districts must share their coronavirus relief funding with private schools to provide “equitable services” such as technology, tutoring or transportation for those students.

[...]

[A new] court ruling blocks [Secretary of Education Betsy] DeVos from implementing or enforcing her rule in at least eight states and some of the nation’s largest public school districts. The secretary's policy requires public school districts to send a greater share of their CARES Act, H.R. 748 (116), pandemic assistance funding to private school students than is typically required under federal law.

[...]

Public school officials argue the emergency funding should be shared with private schools under the typical federal formula, which is based on the number of low-income students at private schools. But DeVos’ [policy] says school districts must set aside money for private school students, based on total enrollment, irrespective of income.

[...]

The Trump administration argues that it has the authority to create policy dictating public distribution of the funding to private school students because the CARES Act is ambiguous on that point. But [...] two judges disagree.

[...]

U.S. District Judge James Donato’s order prevents DeVos from carrying out her policy in a large swath of the country: Michigan, California, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia as well as for public school districts in New York City, Chicago, Cleveland and San Francisco.

Last week a federal judge in Washington state similarly blocked DeVos’ rule, but there has been a dispute about whether that order applies nationwide. DeVos separately on Wednesday evening sought clarification from that judge about the order.

[...]

Donato ruled that DeVos’ policy is likely to be struck down because she lacks the legal authority to impose her own conditions on coronavirus relief funding for K-12 schools. He wrote in the 15-page decision that “allowing the Department to rewrite the statutory formula for sharing education funds is manifestly not in the public interest.”

[...]

The judge also said the coronavirus relief law “unambiguously” instructs the funding to be distributed to private school students in the typical manner under federal law, based on the number of low-income students.

  Politico

DeVos is part of the administration that's above the law.  She didn't think it applied to her.

Your joke for the day

It should have been the other way around.

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

Flashback

Still works.

Here's a major reason to vote for Biden

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

When the Trump admin fails, it all fails

Betsy DeVos is keeping up her end of the failure.

The Education Department says just $6 million of $6.28 billion in emergency aid for college students has reached campuses so far, and officials are trading accusations with college leaders over the slow pace of a rollout that's left students waiting for help.

[...]

Under the stimulus law, colleges are supposed to receive billions in federal funding, based on the number of students on their campus, to distribute to students in emergency cash grants. The money is aimed at helping students cover expenses stemming from the coronavirus, such as food, housing, health care and child care costs, technology and course materials.

[...]

The Education Department is placing blame on colleges, accusing college leaders of “dragging their feet” in submitting applications for money allocated in the bill. Only 27 percent of the more than 5,000 colleges eligible for the program had submitted the paperwork needed to access the funding by Friday, according to the department.

But the department has yet to fully distribute millions of dollars even to those colleges that have applied for the assistance. And higher education groups say the program has been beset by bureaucratic hiccups, confusion over the rules and a lack of guidance from the government.

Department officials are working on a policy that explains in more detail how the higher education stimulus money can be used, but it hasn’t been released publicly yet. Colleges, which apply for the aid on behalf of their students, are reluctant to dole out the money before they know the full rules that will govern the program.

[...]

Colleges are concerned that they could be penalized in the future for running afoul of guidelines that they haven’t yet seen.

  Politico

Well, no shit.

And what are they doing with the $6 billion or so they haven't sent out?  Who's getting the interest on that money?

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

THERE SHOULD BE NO FUCKING BIBLE TEACHER IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CABINET!

Impeach them all.

In other Trump admin failure news...

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

Lucky Betsy

This is why people in Washington support the would-be despot.  Or, if not support, keep quiet.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sure, Betsy, we understand

Christ, these people.

AS PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP was getting ready to go to Grand Rapids, Mich., on Thursday, he told reporters that his administration was abandoning its plans to shave nearly $18 million from the Special Olympics. This came after EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DEVOS and Trump’s campaign defended the decision even though Congress was ready to completely ignore it. This was a completely avoidable episode.

  Politico

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

UPDATE:

Federal judge takes on Dept of Education's Betsy DeVos

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos illegally delayed an Obama-era rule that would force states to rectify racial inequities in special education programs.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said DeVos’s delay was “arbitrary and capricious.” Her ruling invalidates DeVos’s decision and will allow the rule to immediately go into effect over agency leaders’ expressed concerns over “racial quotas.”

The provision, which was passed under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) near the end of the Obama administration, required states to identify school districts with “significant disproportionality” in the number of students of color put in special education programs or restraining classroom settings or were disciplined.

  The Hill

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

Petition to replace Betsy DeVos with LeBron James

Shoes are not dropping, they're raining down

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is digging deeper into Trump ally and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.

Prince, America’s most famous private military contractor, acknowledged last week that he “cooperated” with Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after falling under scrutiny amid questions about an alleged effort to establish a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, something Prince has vehemently denied.

  ABC

"Cooperated." Read into it what you will.

ABC News has since learned that Mueller is also reviewing Prince’s communications, a sign that Mueller could try to squeeze Prince, as he has others, probing potential inconsistencies in his sworn testimony in an attempt to pressure him to turn into a witness against other targets of the investigation.

I can imagine that for Michael Cohen, an eventual flip on Trump will be a difficult choice, but for Erik Prince? He doesn't even possess the minimal ethics of loyalty.

“As Mr. Prince told the Daily Beast he has spoken voluntarily with Congress and also cooperated completely with the Special Counsel’s investigation, including by providing them total access to his phones and computer,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Prince has a lot of opinions about the various investigations, but there is no question that they are important and serious, and so Mr. Prince will keep his opinions to himself for now and to let the investigators do their work."

Good choice. He can spout all he wants behind bars or from an undisclosed location after he's turned state's witness. Prince lied to Congress. And even though that, in itself, is a federal crime, he probably felt comfortable that the Republicans wouldn't pursue the matter.  He may have thought better of it when facing the Special Prosecutor's team.

Two of Prince’s former business associates, both of whom asked to remain anonymous, told ABC News they have been contacted by investigators probing a pair of proposed business deals between the Hong Kong-based security firm Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is the founder and chairman, and Russian nationals.

One former business associate, who has worked with Prince since the 1990s, recounted a recent conversation with FBI agents from Mueller's office.

"Are you aware of any falsehoods in the testimony that Erik Prince gave to the House Intelligence Committee?" the associate said agents asked him.

The associate said he told the agents about Prince's previously undisclosed [in an effort to secure a possibly illegal private security contract with Azerbaijan].

Having images of orange in his future.

The internal investigation, first reported by The Intercept earlier this year, was turned over to U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, multiple sources said. The findings prompted two senior company officials to resign in protest over Prince’s activities, the sources said.

  ABC News

Having images of orange in their futures.

“Frontier Services Group was trying to build a relationship with [state-owned Russian energy firm] Rostec to be the logistics guys,” the associate said, “and Rostec met with Erik.”

Work began, the associate said, but the deal fell through when the United States imposed sanctions on the Kremlin-run firm in 2014 because of Russian military operations in Ukraine, and the firm was never paid by the Russians.

In response to questions from ABC News, a spokesperson for Prince said that neither deal came to fruition.

"Any discussions between FSG and those individuals predated the existence of the Trump campaign, and never resulted in any business being done,” the spokesperson said.

Which is why they needed to get Trump elected president.

Prince was reported to be talking privately with Trump and Oliver North about creating a private intelligence service for Trump to circumvent US intel agencies. From the report, it appears the genesis of this plan was formed at least as early as spring of 2016. Eric Prince seems to be standing right in the heart of the Russian conspiracy/collusion scandal. Perhaps how he got his sister Betsy DeVos her job.

Closing in, Yer Lardship.

Special Prosecutor Mueller smells feces.

Unbelievable

What a surprise

Besty DeVos is another Trump jackal. Who could have foreseen?

A company that once had financial ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was one of two firms selected Thursday by the Education Department to help the agency collect overdue student loans. The deal could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The decision to award contracts to Windham Professionals and Performant Financial Corp. — a company DeVos invested in before becoming secretary — arrives a month after a federal judge ordered the department to complete its selection of a loan collector to put an end to a messy court battle. Windham and Performant beat out nearly 40 other bidders for contracts valued at up to $400 million, but their win may be short-lived if the losing companies fight the decision.

  WaPo

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

House of Crooks

Heather Rinkus, the guest reception manager at Trump's "Winter White House," is working with the president's advance and logistics team, while Trump's exclusive club, Mar-a-Lago, closes for the summer. She has an official White House email and government-issued phone, two sources familiar with Rinkus’s trip told BuzzFeed News.


[...]

[Rinkus, who has no prior government experience,] is married to a twice-convicted felon, Ari Rinkus.

[...]

Ari Rinkus, who is still on probation for pleading guilty to wire fraud as part of a Ponzi scheme, has told a foreign company, Securablinds, he can use Heather's access to the president to secure government and Trump Organization contracts.

[...]

Rinkus pleaded guilty in 2006 to conducting a criminal enterprise — specifically, the “illegal possession and resale of stolen motor vehicles,” in Michigan, and in 2011, he again pleaded guilty in federal court to felony wire fraud for a Ponzi scheme. He was released from prison in 2014.

[...]

Rinkus presented himself to [UK-based Securablinds company] executives as "well-connected with the Trump family," claiming he could get a contract for the company to put its blinds in Trump Tower. "He told us he discussed it with Eric Trump,” he said, referring to one of Trump's sons.

[...]

"Someone who has access to the Trump family would have been quite effective to us,” [Securablinds CEO Gavin] Richardson said, adding he terminated his involvement with Rinkus after reading BuzzFeed News’ story about his background.

[...]

Heather Rinkus started working for Mar-a-Lago in 2015. She had previously worked for the Amway Hotel Corporation, which is owned by the family of Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, as a front desk supervisor and later as a nanny.

[...]

Her dual role is the latest example of how closely intertwined the president's inner circle is between his business and government, despite Trump's claims of a firewall.

It also raises questions of whether other Trump Organization employees are quietly employed by the White House, as the administration struggles to staff up amid a chaotic few weeks. Trump, who likes to be surrounded by aides who are loyal to him, has already brought in senior adviser Hope Hicks, his longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller, and his social media director Dan Scavino from the Trump Organization.
  Buzzfeed

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

Of Course They Did

The Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos on Tuesday as education secretary, approving the embattled nominee only with the help of a historic tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence.

  NYT

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