posted 04-11-2018 01:12 PM                  

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

April 10, 2018

Why don’t we take a step back and contemplate what Americans, and the world, are witnessing?

Early Monday morning, F.B.I. agents raided the New York office, home and hotel room of the personal lawyer for the president of the United States. They seized evidence of possible federal crimes — including bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations related to payoffs made to women, including a porn actress, who say they had affairs with the president before he took office and were paid off and intimidated into silence.

That evening the president surrounded himself with the top American military officials and launched unbidden into a tirade against the top American law enforcement officials — officials of his own government — accusing them of “an attack on our country.”

Oh, also: The Times reported Monday evening that investigators were examining a $150,000 donation to the president’s personal foundation from a Ukrainian steel magnate, given during the American presidential campaign in exchange for a 20-minute video appearance.

Meanwhile, the president’s former campaign chairman is under indictment, and his former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. His son-in-law and other associates are also under investigation.
This is your president, ladies and gentlemen. This is how Donald Trump does business, and these are the kinds of people he surrounds himself with.

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.

On Monday, when he appeared with his national security team, Mr. Trump, whose motto could be, “The buck stops anywhere but here,” angrily blamed everyone he could think of for the “unfairness” of an investigation that has already consumed the first year of his presidency, yet is only now starting to heat up. He said Attorney General Jeff Sessions made “a very terrible mistake” by recusing himself from overseeing the investigation — the implication being that a more loyal attorney general would have obstructed justice and blocked the investigation. He complained about the “horrible things” that Hillary Clinton did “and all of the crimes that were committed.” He called the A-team of investigators from the office of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, “the most biased group of people.” As for Mr. Mueller himself, “we’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’”

In fact, the raids on the premises used by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, were conducted by the public corruption unit of the federal attorney’s office in Manhattan, and at the request not of the special counsel’s team, but under a search warrant that investigators in New York obtained following a referral by Mr. Mueller, who first consulted with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. To sum up, a Republican-appointed former F.B.I. director consulted with a Republican-appointed deputy attorney general, who then authorized a referral to an F.B.I. field office not known for its anti-Trump bias. Deep state, indeed.

Mr. Trump also railed against the authorities who, he said, “broke into” Mr. Cohen’s office. “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” the president tweeted early Tuesday morning, during what was presumably his executive time. He was wrong. The privilege is one of the most sacrosanct in the American legal system, but it does not protect communications in furtherance of a crime. Anyway, one might ask, if this is all a big witch hunt and Mr. Trump has nothing illegal or untoward to hide, why does he care about the privilege in the first place?

The answer, of course, is that he has a lot to hide.

This wasn’t even the first early-morning raid of a close Trump associate. That distinction goes to Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and Russian oligarch-whisperer, who now faces a slate of federal charges long enough to land him in prison for the rest of his life. And what of Mr. Cohen? He’s already been cut loose by his law firm, and when the charges start rolling in, he’ll likely get the same treatment from Mr. Trump.

Among the grotesqueries that faded into the background of Mr. Trump’s carnival of misgovernment during the past 24 hours was that Monday’s meeting was ostensibly called to discuss a matter of global significance: a reported chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. Mr. Trump instead made it about him, with his narcissistic and self-pitying claim that the investigation represented an attack on the country “in a true sense.”

posted 04-11-2018 01:43 PM                  

Nunes threatens to 'impeach' Wray and Rosenstein

By Max Greenwood - 04/11/18 10:34 AM EDT

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes

(R-Calif.) said Tuesday that he will seek to "impeach" FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

if they decline to hand over the document used to launch the FBI's probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

"I can tell you that we're not going to just hold in contempt, we will have a plan to hold in contempt and impeach," Nunes said on Fox News's "The Ingraham Angle."

Asked host Laura Ingraham if he was serious about impeaching Wray, Nunes replied: "Absolutely."

ADVERTISEMENT

Nunes appeared exasperated on Tuesday with the FBI's refusal to turn over to the intelligence committee an unredacted version of the two-page document used to justify the law enforcement investigation into the Trump campaign's contacts with Moscow.

The New York Times reported in December that the investigation was launched after U.S. officials received a tip that George Papadopoulos

, a former Trump campaign adviser, had been told that Moscow had damaging information on 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton

.

That report contradicted claims by several Republican lawmakers that the FBI probe was based on a controversial opposition research dossier authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.

Steele's work was commissioned by the private research firm Fusion GPS, which was paid for in part by the Clinton campaign.

Nunes vowed on Tuesday to get the document from the FBI and set a Wednesday night deadline for it to be handed over.

"We are going to get the document. We are going to get the two pages," he said. "So they can either cough them up now, or it will get really complicated starting tomorrow night, and we'll have to take all the steps necessary in order to get the document."

posted 04-11-2018 01:58 PM                  

Alan Dershowitz: Why the FBI raid on Trump's lawyer hurts all of us

Alan DershowitzOPINION By Alan Dershowitz | Fox News

Excerpt as it wouldn't let me post the entire text.

Someday soon, government is going to have to justify its decision to conduct this raid. I challenge any reader who is not concerned about the raid to honestly answer the following question: If the raid had been conducted on Hillary Clinton’s lawyer’s office and home, would you be as unconcerned? The truth now!

Tomcal, please answer Alan's question.

posted 04-11-2018 02:17 PM                  

Tomcal's a crock so don't expect anything but left wing fecal matter from him...

Liberalism is a mental disorder...

posted 04-11-2018 06:27 PM                  

So, job growth in many sectors is up, black and hispanic unemployment is down, war on illegal drugs has begun which will help clean up our streets and our kids, war on illegals who are gang bangers, criminals and likewise harmful to our streets and kids has begun - and yes, the stock market is doing well which benefits EVERYONE with an investment, 401k or company profit sharing ....

So I ask you ... WHY do you want to see America fail? Because under Obama and the heir apparent hilLIARy Clinton Cash Cartel was doing just that - turing America from the Republic for which our flag stands, One Nation Udner God into what you now see in Germany, England and France ...

posted 04-11-2018 08:46 PM                  

A little food for thought,,,,,,

Why in God's name would a successful man AKA Trump want to give up a lifestyle most dream of???? For a dollar don't forget.

Possibly he knew what was going on in the deep state and wanted to bring the house of cards down!!!!

The biggest challenge anyone could ever imagine,,, if Trump ends up concoring the challenge,,, what a thing to say you did as historians look back at this time in history.

posted 04-13-2018 04:51 PM                  

Michael Cohen under criminal investigation for personal business dealings as part of grand jury probe

By Brooke Singman | Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/polit ics/2018/04/13/michael-cohen-under-criminal-investigation-for-personal-business-dealings-as-part-grand-jury-probe.html

excerpts

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen is under criminal investigation for his conduct in his personal business dealings as part an “ongoing grand jury investigation” being conducted by the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in the Southern District of New York and the FBI--independent of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, court documents obtained by Fox News state

This week critics of Mueller have claimed that the special counsel’s referral of an investigation into Cohen was an overreach of his original jurisdiction. But the order filed on Friday states the investigation is focused solely on Cohen’s personal conduct in his business dealings, and “independent” of Mueller’s investigation.

“Cohen is not a criminal defense attorney, has no cases with the USAO-SDNY, and is being investigated for criminal conduct that largely centers on his personal business dealings,” the order reads.