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Trump Says He Has the ‘Absolute Right’ to Tell DOJ What to Do – but Claims He Didn’t in Stone Case Despite Angry Tweet

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President Donald Trump says he has the “absolute right” to direct the Dept. of Justice in who and how it prosecutes, but claims that he didn’t, despite his furious tweet overnight attacking the DOJ and calling prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation of Roger Stone a “miscarriage of justice.”

Trump also called the 7 to 9 year recommendation of jail time for Stone, his ally, confidant, and former campaign advisor, an “insult to our country.” Trump often conflates himself and the nation, as if he is the country.

Saying he did not speak to anyone at DOJ Trump then said, “I’d be able to do it if I wanted I have the absolute right to do it.”

Calling the sentencing recommendation “ridiculous” Trump added, “I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous.”

“That was a horrible abberition,” he concluded, apparently meaning “aberration.”

[New Civil Rights Movement]

Media


Trump Deletes Tweet Calling Bloomberg ‘TOTAL RACIST’ Over Very Same Stop & Frisk Policy He Backed in 2016

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President Trump ripped 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg as a “total racist” after audio released Tuesday from a 2015 speech showed the former mayor unapologetically defending his controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy, which targeted young men of color.

“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” the commander-in-chief tweeted early Tuesday along with a link to the audio clip.

Within minutes, the tweet had been taken down.

In leaked audio of Bloomberg’s speech, the Democrat sounded defiant in his acknowledgment of how the policy targeted minority kids in minority neighborhoods, arguing that they were targeted “because that’s where all the crime is.”

“Ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg said.

In late 2016, then-candidate Trump called for a nationwide stop-and-frisk policy during an interview with Fox News, saying the program “worked very well” for New York City.

“I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” the then-GOP nominee told the network.

“You understand, you have to have, in my opinion, I see what’s going on here, I see what’s going on in Chicago, I think stop-and-frisk. In New York City it was so incredible, the way it worked.

“Now, we had a very good mayor, but New York City was incredible, the way that worked, so I think that could be one step you could do,” he added.

Upon entering the Democratic primary contest in November, Bloomberg apologized for his controversial policing policy.

A spokesperson for Bloomberg’s campaign could not immediately be reached by The Post for comment on Trump’s tweet.

DOJ set to lower Stone sentencing recommendation that was criticized by Trump

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The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday is reportedly expected to change its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone a day after telling a federal judge the Trump associate should serve between seven and nine years in prison, guidance that was sharply criticized by President Trump.

Department officials found prosecutors’ initial recommendation “excessive,” according to multiple news outlets, including The Washington Post, Fox News and The Associated Press, citing an anonymous department source.

Reports of the expected change came after Trump denounced the recommended prison term as “horrible and very unfair” in an early Tuesday morning Tweet.  

“The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Trump said, sharing a message from a Daily Caller reporter about Stone’s prison sentence.

Stone, a 67 year-old right-wing provocateur, was convicted in November of seven counts of obstructing and lying to Congress and witness tampering related to his efforts to provide the Trump campaign inside information about WikiLeaks in 2016.

Stone is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 20 by D.C. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee.

Prosecutors recommended in a Monday filing that Stone serve between 87 and 108 months in prison in accordance with federal guidelines.

“Roger Stone obstructed Congress’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, lied under oath, and tampered with a witness,” the DOJ court filing reads. “And when his crimes were revealed by the indictment in this case, he displayed contempt for this Court and the rule of law.”

Department prosecutors wrote that a sentence of up to nine years would “accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law.”

Stone’s attorneys in a Monday night filing asked that the judge impose probation as an alternative to prison.

A Stone lawyer on Tuesday said the legal team had “read with interest” the new reporting on the DOJ’s shifting position.

“Our sentencing memo stated our position on the recommendation made yesterday by the government,” attorney Grant Smith told The Hill. “We look forward to reviewing the government’s supplemental filing.”

The department will reportedly clarify its recommendation on Stone’s sentencing later Tuesday.

[The Hill]

Trump praises China’s execution of drug dealers

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President Donald Trump is campaigning on criminal justice reform efforts that reduce sentences for nonviolent offenders, while suggesting he’d like the American justice system to work more like ones in authoritarian countries where drug dealers are executed after “fair but quick” trials.

If those two things sound hard to square with each other, that’s because they are. But the contrast serves as an especially stark illustration of the incoherency at the core of Trumpism.

Just days after his Super Bowl ad and State of the Union speech highlighted his support for legislation that makes a modest effort to reduce prison sentences at the federal level, Trump on Monday said the best way to further reduce the quantity of fentanyl in the US is to follow China’s lead.

“States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dealers don’t have a drug problem,” Trump said during a White House event with governors. “I don’t know that our country is ready for that, but if you look throughout the world, the countries with a powerful death penalty — death penalty — with a fair but quick trial, they have very little if any drug problem. That includes China.”

(Trump made a number of other eyebrow-raising comments during the event, including saying of the coronavirus that “a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat” and claiming the European Union “was really formed so they could treat us badly.”)

It should be noted that Trump’s claim about China and other authoritarian countries having “very little if any drug problem” is false. Records from the Chinese government indicate that there are more than 2.5 million officially registered drug users in the country, and that the total has increased significantly in recent years. (The real numbers are likely much higher since not all drug users have registered with the state.)

Drugs are prevalent in China in spite of the harsh punishments Trump alluded to. The Guardian reported in late 2017 that China “executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined, although the exact figure is not published and considered a state secret.” And the Chinese government executes people for nonviolent crimes, including, as Trump mentioned, drug dealing — and in some cases carries out executions in public. (Draconian measures taken by President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines have similarly failed to stamp out drug use there.)

But for those who watched Trump’s Super Bowl ad, seeing him laud countries that are remarkably harsh with drug offenders might seem off-key. That’s because the Super Bowl ad highlighted Trump’s June 2018 decision to pardon Alice Marie Johnson, who at the time was serving a life sentence in prison after she was convicted of conspiracy to possess cocaine and attempted possession of cocaine. Fast-forward eight days, and now Trump seems to be suggesting people like Johnson should be executed.

But Monday wasn’t the first time Trump has commended the Chinese government for its tough approach to drugs. Speaking to mayors at the White House late last month, the president sounded the same note:

And they’ve put in very strong penalties, and their penalties are really strong. You want to talk about penalties? Those are strict. (Laughter.) And their court cases go slightly quicker than ours. (Laughter.) Like — like one day. One day. They call them “quick trials.” They go quick. (Laughter.) They go so quick, you don’t know what happened. (Laughter.) Ours take 15 years; theirs takes one day. But he was — he’s been terrific on that. And we’re seeing a tremendous — a tremendous difference in the fentanyl.

Notably, in both instances Trump portrayed the suppression of individual rights and due process that’s part of the Chinese system as if not an improvement over the American system, then at least not significantly worse than what we have here. And Trump has also congratulated the Philippines’ Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem,” even though his violent crackdown has resulted in thousands of deaths.

Even Pompeo’s State Department acknowledges that China’s justice system is nothing to emulate

Beyond the specifics of what Trump thinks about how drug dealers should be dealt with, it’s bizarre to see the president of the United States praise the criminal justice system of a country where a million people are locked away in internment camps.

Trump doesn’t have to take it from me. His own State Department’s website notes that “[t]he Chinese legal system can be opaque and the interpretation and enforcement of local laws arbitrary. The judiciary does not enjoy independence from political influence.”

And with regard to drugs in particular, State notes that “[p]olice regularly conduct unannounced drug tests on people suspected of drug use and have been known to enter a bar or nightclub and subject all patrons to immediate drug testing.”

A politicized judiciary selectively enforcing laws and executing people for nonviolent crimes might sound bad to Americans who are mostly unaccustomed to such things. Trump, however, hasn’t tried to hide his affinity for authoritarian rulers or for the death penalty — not just for drug crimes but for other ones as well.

The jarring thing in this instance, however, is that as part of his efforts to win support from more than 6 percent of black voters in 2020, Trump is simultaneously pushing contradictory notions — that leniency for nonviolent offenders is good, and that nonviolent offenders should in some instances be put to death. In that way Trump’s comments about criminal justice echo a dynamic that has also manifested itself with regard to entitlement programs, which Trump is proposing to cut while at the same time telling people he will never cut them.

[Vox]

Trump singles out Mitt Romney in post-acquittal Twitter-rant

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President Donald Trump isn’t letting up on Sen. Mitt Romney during his post-acquittal victory lap.

Four days after the end of his impeachment trial, the president spent a sunny Sunday in D.C. continuing a weekend tweetstorm against the proceedings and his perceived foes — particularly targeting Romney, the lone Republican who voted to boot him from the White House.

The president retweeted assertions that Romney “stabbed Trump in the back” by joining Democrats in attempts to overturn the 2016 election, and that the Utah senator was connected to unsubstantiated claims that Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was corruptly involved with the Burisma Holdings energy company in Ukraine.

“Mitt Romney is tied to Hunter Biden’s Burisma corruption. This is why he’s bent over backwards for the media with this show ‘guilty’ vote,” read a Trump retweet of the website Big League Politics’ post. “He doesn’t want this story EXPOSED!”

Neither the president nor Big League Politics offered any proof that Romney had been involved with Burisma or Hunter Biden.

The president also fired off his own anti-Romney tweets. “Romney hurt some very good Republican Senators, and he was wrong about the Impeachment Hoax. No clue!” he wrote based off a tweet that Romney’s real damage would be to Senate Republicans in tough reelection races.

He later pulled in Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a red-state Democrat who was considered to be a swing vote on impeachment and whom Trump labeled “weak & pathetic” after Manchin’s vote to convict.

“They are really mad at Senator Joe Munchkin in West Virginia,” the president wrote. “He couldn’t understand the Transcripts. Romney could, but didn’t want to!” This seemed to be a reference to a readout of the July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president that led to the impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s 50-plus tweets and retweets on Sunday included criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for ripping up a copy of his State of the Union speech, and encouragement for Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to find out “who started the Ukraine ‘collusion’ narrative.” The senators have pledged to investigate Hunter Biden’s business activities, even after the impeachment trial’s completion.

Appearing on “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning, Graham directly addressed Trump about the origins of the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election: “If he’s watching the show, here’s what I would tell the president: I’m going to get to the bottom of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] process, because it was an abuse of power at the Department of Justice and the FBI.”

[Politico]

Trump Insists Real Photo Revealing His Fake Tan Is Fake

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Last night, an especially grotesque photo of President Trump began to circulate online. The image, taken by photographer and apparent Trump enthusiast William Moon, showed the sunset-lit president with the wind sweeping his hair back, revealing an especially striking contrast between whatever fake tan or coloration he uses and the ghostly pallor of the skin bordering his hair:

Moon also posted an even more disturbing black-and-white version:

The photo became an instant meme, and so irked Trump that he insisted it was “fake news,” and complained that his opponents would do “anything to demean” him:

Some suspect the images were altered, but Moon posted other photos from the scene, and after comparing his with press-pool shots of the moment, it seems apparent that the wind did indeed expose the fault line in Trump’s orange coloring:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8SEry-pySm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It is of course hilarious that Trump would complain that he is being demeaned on the basis of his appearance. He has spent his entire career as a celebrity put-down artist, sexual harasser, and politician who relentlessly demeans his targets based on their bodies. He is especially cruel to women, having called his former lover Stormy Daniels “Horseface,” mocked Carly Fiorina as ugly (“Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” Mr. Trump said during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”), and belittled such targets as Heidi Cruz, Rosie O’Donnell, and many others.

Trump likewise has mocked Jerry Nadler as fat; sundry opponents, like Marco Rubio, Adam Schiff, and Michael Bloomberg, as short; and had a period of fixating on the allegedly narrow size of Schiff’s neck.

Trump himself places more importance on appearance than any president in history, and perhaps any powerful person who does not work in modeling, television, or film. He staffs his administration in large part based on their appearance. He blocked a second term for Janet Yellen in part because she was too short, initially hesitated to hire John Bolton due to his mustache, and constantly praises the officials surrounding him because they look like they come from “central casting” — the job criteria he most values.

Yet Trump himself is not a central-casting pick for his job. (He was cast for the role of president in Sharknado 3, but he was tabbed to play himself, and tragically turned down the offer at the last minute because he decided to run for real president.) Despite being a tall, white male — the traditional American cultural norm for his position — his appearance is nonetheless anything but “presidential.”

He has to avoid wind, or guard against it by wearing a hat, lest it turn his combover into comic, flapping yellow wings:

As for his orange color, Trump is clearly aware that it creates a strange look, but he oddly blames it on newfangled light bulbs, and seems to believe that rolling back bulb efficiency standards will make his skin look normal again.

Trump’s superficiality is the main problem. That a president would bully others based on their appearance, and select his aides on their looks, is one of his many utterly disqualifying character traits. But as bad as it may be that the president does this, what tips it from the infuriating to the absurd is the fact that the body-shamer-in-chief is also quite possibly the most ridiculous-looking president in American history.

[The New Yorker]

Trump assails Rep. Dingell, citing her late husband, amid wave of attacks on Dems

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President Donald Trump on Saturday launched a vitriolic attack on his perceived enemies, including the widow of a prominent Democratic congressman, days after he was acquitted in his impeachment trial.

Trump took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to heap scorn on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), the widow of the late Rep. John Dingell, among others.

“@RepDebDingell, who called me, tears flowing, to thank me for rolling out the maximum ‘Red Carpet’ for the funeral of her husband, then voted against me on the partisan Impeachmen Hoax, said ‘everybody (Dems) wants to get out of town. This has been, in my whole career, one of… …the worst weeks ever.’ She could have had a much better week if Crazy Nancy, who is the most overrated person in politics (going to lose the House a second time), didn’t bring the phony & corrupt Impeachment Hoax,” Trump tweeted.

The tweets came at the end of a week that saw Trump acquitted Wednesday, a rambling post-impeachment White House address Thursday that mocked Democratic lawmakers and opponents, and the ousting of two impeachment witnesses Friday.

Trump has attacked Dingell before over her role in the impeachment inquiry, saying to supporters at a Michigan rally in December that her late husband, the longest-ever serving congressman when he died in February 2019, was “looking up” from hell.

Those comments drew condemnation from lawmakers, including from Republicans like Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) who called on Trump to apologize.

The president on Saturday continued lacing into Pelosi, who told Democrats she felt “liberated” after ripping up a paper copy of Trump’s Tuesday State of the Union speech on national television, which became one of the most talked about moments of the event.

“Crazy Nancy Pelosi’s Impeachment Hoax has lifted Republican Congressional Polls (she lost the House once before!), and my Polls, WAY UP, which was expected,” he tweeted, without citing examples.

He also attacked Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the NSC official who testified about the president’s actions on Ukraine, drawing a furious response from Vindman’s lawyers, who called Trump’s attacks a “campaign of intimidation.”

Later Saturday, Trump also assailed Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) for their votes to convict him, in an echo of attacks he’d leveled against the senators on Friday.

Manchin responded in kind, tweeting: “I’ve read the transcripts thoroughly & listened to the witnesses under oath. Where I come from a person accused defends themselves with witnesses and evidence.”

Trump’s tweeting — totaling more than 40 tweets or retweets sent Saturday — didn’t end there.

The president also retweeted a photograph of himself that showed a darkened layer of makeup on his face as he walked across the White House lawn, which had gone viral online. While the original photograph was in color, Trump tweeted a black and white version of it.

“More Fake News. This was photoshopped, obviously, but the wind was strong and the hair looks good?” Trump said. “Anything to demean!”

[Politico]

Trump justifies firing Alexander Vindman for being “insubordinate”

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President Trump tweeted on Saturday morning to explain why he fired national security official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who had testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the president’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “improper.”

“I don’t know [Vindman], never spoke to him or met him (I don’t believe!) but, he was very insubordinate, reported contents of my ‘perfect’ calls incorrectly…….and was given a horrendous report by his superior, the man he reported to, who publicly stated that Vindman had problems with judgement, adhering to the chain of command and leaking information. In other words, ‘OUT.'”

Context: Vindman was fired on Friday just before U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was dismissed. The firings took place two days after Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

  • Trump “expressed deep anger … over the attempt to remove him from office because of his actions toward Ukraine,” the Washington Post writes.

[Axios]

Reality

If any other person in America retaliated against witnesses like Donald Trump is doing, they would be in jail. But today we have a monarch.

Trump Is Purging People Who Testified Against Him During the Impeachment Hearing

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Two prominent witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump were recalled from their positions on Friday evening in what appeared to be a retaliatory purge after the president’s acquittal this week.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council aide, was removed from his post at the White House this afternoon—along with his twin brother, Yevgeny Vindman, a lieutenant colonel in the Army. Just a couple hours later, Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, said he had been told he would be recalled.

Vindman’s attorney, David Pressman, said that Vindman and his brother, who is a lawyer for the NSC, were escorted out of the White House after they received the news on Friday. Vindman had already said that he planned to leave his post months ahead of schedule. The two will now be reassigned to positions at the Pentagon.

During the House impeachment inquiry, Vindman had emphasized that he was apolitical and motivated by nothing but loyalty to public service when he testified against Trump. In that testimony, he said that Trump’s July 25 phone call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens was “inappropriate” because of “significant national security implications.”

In a statement Friday night, Sondland said that he “was advised today that the President intends to recall me effective immediately as United States Ambassador to the European Union.” During his appearance in the impeachment inquiry, Sondland said explicitly that there had been a “quid pro quo” in Trump’s discussions with Zelensky. Sondland, unlike Vindman, was a Trump appointee with a background in business, rather than government. He was put in his position after donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

Pressman, the lawyer for Vindman, said in a statement that there was no doubt about the White House’s motive. “There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over,” he said. “LTC Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth.”

He added that because of Vindman’s commitment to telling the truth, “the most powerful man in the world” had “decided to exact revenge.”

Earlier Friday, Trump was asked what his press secretary meant when she said the president’s opponents should be “held accountable.” Trump responded, “Well, you’ll see.” When asked if he would have Vindman removed, Trump indicated that his actions were driven by spite. “Well, I’m not happy with him,” he told reporters. “You think I’m supposed to be happy with him?” The previous day, Trump had mentioned Vindman and Vindman’s twin brother in a speech boasting about his acquittal in the impeachment trial.

Democrats spoke out against the president upon hearing the news on Friday.

After news of Sondland’s firing, the president’s son appeared to confirm the critics’ interpretation of Trump’s actions. “Allow me a moment to thank—and this may be a bit of a surprise—Adam Schiff,” he tweeted. “Were it not for his crack investigation skills, @realDonaldTrump might have had a tougher time unearthing who all needed to be fired. Thanks, Adam!”

[Slate]

Trump hotels charge Secret Service up to $650 per night while protecting him

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Secret Service personnel traveling with President Trump to his private luxury properties in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J., pay rates as high at $650 per night for lodging, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The Post investigation tallied the amount of taxpayer dollars spent in Trump’s properties and found that the Secret Service spent $159,000 at Trump’s D.C. hotel in his first year alone. In the president’s out-of-state properties, the Trump company is recorded as charging as much as $17,000 per month for rent.

The newspaper noted that after a thorough search of rentals in the area for comparable homes, the average cost for rent was $3,400. 

Trump previously told The Hill in 2015 that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” but currently he often visits his properties in Florida and New Jersey, Secret Service in tow. 

In an October interview with Yahoo News, Eric Trump, the executive vice president of The Trump Organization, answered questions about the president’s decision to host the 2020 Group of Seven summit at the president’s golf club, Trump National Doral Miami in Florida.

“If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free,” Trump said. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.”

Those numbers don’t match the Post’s findings. Trump told the Post that the company is legally required to charge a fee, though they were unable to find what law he was citing.

The Post’s report comes just hours before an appeals court ruled that Democrats cannot sue President Trump over emoluments claims.

More than 200 House and Senate Democrats alleged that the president’s holdings and refusal to put his business assets into a blind trust violates the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign countries. 

The lawmakers’ lawsuit claimed that foreign diplomats’ patronage to Trump hotels is exactly the kind of entanglement that the framers of the Constitution hoped to avoid. 

Separately, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have requested details on Trump’s travel costs as part of negotiations over legislation regulating the Secret Service. However, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has told the committee that he opposes releasing that information until December, after the general election.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[The Hill]

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