Category: Unpresidential

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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]

Trump claims Pelosi ripping speech was ‘illegal’

Leave a comment

President Trump claimed Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) committed a crime by ripping up a copy of his speech at the State of the Union on Tuesday evening, a claim that was immediately disputed as false by legal experts. “I thought it was a terrible thing,” Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a speech in North Carolina. “It’s illegal what she did. She broke the law.” Trump asserted that Pelosi was barred from ripping up the speech because it is an official document, later calling it “very illegal.”

Glenn Kirschner, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, disputed Trump’s claim, telling The Hill that a photocopy of a speech is not an official record.

“The federal law prohibiting the destruction of public records or government documents does not apply,” Kirschner said in a text message.

“No prosecutor with half an ounce of common sense would ever charge this case,” said Elie Honig, another legal analyst. “The law isn’t meant to criminalize destruction of copies of ceremonial documents.”

Trump on Friday also described Pelosi’s action as “very disrespectful to the chamber, to the country.”

Pelosi has said she tore up the speech in order to protest the “falsehoods” contained in the president’s State of the Union address and that she felt “very vindicated” by doing so.

The president’s remarks on Friday were his first public reaction to Pelosi’s ripping of his speech at the conclusion of his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

The president told reporters Friday that he didn’t know Pelosi ripped the copy of his speech until members of Congress remarked about it as he left the chamber.

White House aides have repeatedly criticized Pelosi for the move in recent days, though none have suggested her actions were illegal. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Wednesday that she believed Pelosi should be censured.

“I think it shows you how petty and peevish and partisan the Democratic Party has come,” Conway said on Fox News. “And for all the people out there who fancy themselves the armchair psychiatrist trying to analyze certain people, they ought to shift their craft over to Nancy Pelosi.”

Trump has regularly attacked Pelosi over his impeachment by House, but their relationship plummeted to a new low this week following the State of the Union and the president’s acquittal in the impeachment trial by the GOP-controlled Senate.

When Trump entered the House chamber before his remarks, Trump also appeared to snub Pelosi, not taking her hand as she reached out to shake his as is customary at the beginning of the president’s joint address to Congress.

During two separate appearances on Thursday — including one at the National Prayer Breakfast when the House Speaker was sitting just feet away — Trump took a shot at Pelosi for invoking religion during his impeachment.

“Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. And she wanted to impeach a long time ago,” Trump said during remarks from the East Room Thursday afternoon, disputing Pelosi’s claim that she prays for him. “She may pray, but she prays for the opposite. But I doubt she prays at all.”

[The Hill]

Reality

The assertion is rich given Trump’s well-documented penchant for ripping papers into tiny pieces after he’s done reading them. Politico reported in 2018 that White House aides could not convince the President to break his paper-ripping habit, so it became the job of career staffers in the records management office to tape official documents he’s torn into bits back together.

This all came from a tweet from conservative bullshit artist Charlie Kirk.

According to a fact check from the Tampa Bay Times:

The statute in question deals with the “concealment, removal, or mutilation generally” of records and reports. It sets a penalty for anyone who “conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys” any government record “filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States.”

The statute also says that any person with “custody” of a government record cannot “willfully and unlawfully” conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify or destroy it.

“The point of the statute is to prevent people from destroying records in official repositories like the National Archives or in courts,” said Georgetown Law professor Victoria Nourse.

Pelosi is in the clear, experts said, because her copy of Trump’s speech wasn’t a government record.

Media

Trump slams Democrats and Romney at prayer breakfast

Leave a comment

President Donald Trump began his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast by taking veiled shots at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was on the stage with him as he spoke, and Sen. Mitt Romney, the morning after the GOP-controlled Senate acquitted him.Romney, citing his Mormon faith, was the only Republican to vote against his party and join Democrats in voting to convict Trump.Beginning his speech at the bipartisan annual event, Trump criticized “dishonest and corrupt people” who “badly hurt our nation” — an apparent reference to Democrats who pursued his impeachment over what they claimed was an abuse of power in holding up aid in Ukraine.

The President thanked “courageous Republican politicians and leaders (who) had the wisdom, fortitude and strength to do what everyone knows was right.”

He then obliquely referenced Romney and Pelosi.”I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that’s not so. So many people have been hurt and we can’t let that go on,” Trump said.”We have allies, we have enemies, sometimes the allies are enemies but we just don’t know it. But we’re changing all that,” Trump later remarked.Pelosi has previously said she prays for the President daily and Romney brought up his faith in a speech announcing his vote on impeachment. Later Thursday after the breakfast, Pelosi called Trump’s remark about faith as justification for doing something wrong “completely inappropriate” and “particularly without class.””This morning the President said when people use faith as an excuse to do … bad things … was just so completely inappropriate, especially at a prayer breakfast,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.”I don’t know what the President understands about prayer or people who do pray, but we do pray for the United States of America,” she said. “I pray hard for him because he’s so off the track of the Constitution, our values, our country.””He really needs our prayers, so he can say whatever he wants … but I do pray for him and I do so sincerely and without anguish,” Pelosi added.Trump walked into the annual, bipartisan breakfast and immediately picked up the newspaper laid on his place setting, a hard copy of USA Today, with the headline “ACQUITTED.” He displayed the headline to the room and to the cameras, to laughter from the audience.Pelosi, at the news conference, said that the President’s talking points were outside of religiously oriented issues was also inappropriate at the breakfast.”To go into the stock market and raising up (the newspaper) and mischaracterizing other peoples’ motivation, he’s talking about things he knows little about — faith and prayer,” she said.The President’s arrival at the breakfast was soon followed by a prayer to the breakfast group by Pelosi. Pelosi prayed for the poor and the persecuted around the world. The House speaker did not bring up politics or impeachment.”Let us pray that the names of the persecuted always live on our lips and their courage carried through our actions. And let us pray that we honor the spark and divinity in them and in all people including ourselves and that we treat everyone with dignity and respect,” Pelosi said.Prefacing Trump’s speech, Dr. Arthur Brooks, discussed the “crisis of contempt and polarization that’s tearing our societies apart.”He called for those at the breakfast to do what was preached in the Bible: “Love your enemies.”Brooks spoke at length about how politicians from differing parties need to treat each other with love.”Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you,” Trump told the audience after approaching the dais. “I don’t know if Arthur is going to like what I’m going to have to say.”

[CNN]

Pompeo says denying credentials to NPR sends “perfect message about press freedoms”

Leave a comment

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the State Department’s decision to deny NPR press credentials for his trip to Europe following his confrontation with reporter Mary Louise Kelly, stating in an interview in Kazakhstan Sunday that it sends “a perfect message about press freedoms” to the world.

The backdrop: In an NPR interview in January, Kelly pressed Pompeo about his reluctance to defend former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch after she was the victim of a smear campaign. After the interview ended, Kelly says Pompeo took her into his private living room and berated her, asking if she could even find Ukraine on a map.

  • After Kelly went public about the episode, Pompeo released a statement accusing her of lying to him, claiming the interview was “another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this Administration.”
  • The State Department later denied an NPR reporter press credentials to cover his trip to Europe.

https://twitter.com/RFERL/status/1224028787190484993

What he’s saying: During an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Pompeo denied that he had a confrontational interview with Kelly and said the State Department only grants press credentials when it believes reporters are “telling the truth and being honest,” according to a transcript.

  • “I always bring a big press contingent, but we ask for certain sets of behaviors, and that’s simply telling the truth and being honest. And when they’ll do that, they get to participate, and if they don’t, it’s just not appropriate — frankly, it’s not fair to the rest of the journalists who are participating alongside them,” Pompeo said.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[Axios]

As others stand at attention for anthem, Trump fidgets, points, pretends to conduct the band

Leave a comment

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said all Americans should “stand proudly” during the national anthem, and publicly chastises those who don’t as disrespectful of the troops and the flag.

But during the national anthem at his own Super Bowl watch party Sunday night, a brief video posted to Instagram shows Trump greeting guests, adjusting his chair, and straightening his suit jacket as other attendees — including first lady Melania Trump and their teenage son — stand with their hands over their hearts. As “The Star Spangled Banner” crescendoes, Trump raises both of his hands in the air, and twirls them around as if conducting the music.

The video was included in an Instagram story by a real estate agent for a Russian-American firm who frequents Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties and events.

Trump entered his party at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach as Demi Lovato was introduced to sing the national anthem at Hard Rock Stadium, videos of the moment show. It’s unclear from the video of Trump “conducting” whether the anthem you hear is Lovato, projected on screens around the room, or if a live performer is singing at the club.

(The video appears flipped, or mirrored, likely because it is an Instagram video recorded with a phone’s selfie camera. That is why Melania Trump appears to have her left hand across her chest and there is a backward numeral 4 in the video. The Herald chose to retain the original orientation as it was posted on the social media site.)

The White House declined to provide an on-the-record response to requests for comment. The Trump Organization did not immediately respond. Copies of the video were sent along with the Herald’s inquiries.

For years, Trump has publicly attacked NFL players who chose to kneel in protest during the anthem.

The protest movement was started by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in August 2016 when he refused to stand during the pregame ritual. He described his choice as a protest against racism and police brutality. Within months, other players joined Kaepernick, taking a knee and bowing their heads during the anthem.

Kaepernick is no longer in the league and claims he was blackballed for his actions.

Trump and many others called the protests disrespectful to the flag and to the troops. In 2018, the NFL announced it would begin to fine players on the field for not standing during the anthem, but would allow them to stay in the locker room if they preferred.

Megan Rapinoe, co-captain of the U.S. Women’s World Cup team, refused to participate in the anthem during the 2019 World Cup, provoking Trump’s ire. At Sunday’s Super Bowl in Miami Gardens, Beyonce and Jay-Z stayed seated during the anthem, drawing rebukes from many, especially conservative pundits.

“Maybe they should try another country that allows them a little more freedom & success?” Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren wrote on Twitter.

The Super Bowl watch party at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, just miles from Mar-a-Lago, is a tradition that predates the Trump presidency. It has taken on a new price tag in recent years due to the need for presidential security and travel budgets. Taxpayers will shell out $3.4 million for Trump’s visit to Palm Beach this past weekend, according to an analysis by the HuffPost.

Last year’s party stirred controversy when Trump inadvertently posed for a selfie with a woman who turned out to be Li “Cindy” Yang, founder of the massage parlor where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft allegedly paid for sex.

[Miami Herald]

Media

Trump immediately refuted the Republican idea he was chastened by impeachment

Leave a comment

Minutes after the Senate vote to acquit him on Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump posted a tweet undercutting the belief a number of Republican senators expressed in recent days that getting impeached might prompt him to tone it down a little.

Trump posted a video with an edited animation of a Time magazine cover teasing that he, or at the very least someone with the same last name, will be running for president in 2020, 2024, 2028, and beyond. It ends with Trump standing being an election placard reading, “TRUMP 4EVA.”

Trump regularly jokes about serving more than two terms in office. Coming from someone who’s supposedly the leader of the free world, Trump’s quips along these lines are never in good taste. But alluding to them in the immediate aftermath of a trial in which a bipartisan group of senators voted for his removal from office is especially brazen.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign’s official Twitter account posted a tweet making a mockery of the entire impeachment proceedings.

None of this is surprising at this stage of the Trump presidency. But it does reveal the absurdity of the talking points used by Republican Sens. Susan Collins (ME), Lamar Alexander (TN), and Rob Portman(OH), each of whom indicated in recent days they believe Trump learned a lesson from getting impeached and will behave better going forward.

That talking point was self-evidently absurd for anyone operating with a basic understanding of the timeline that culminated in Trump’s impeachment. The call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump implicitly linked the release of military aid to Ukraine helping with investigations into his political foes took place on July 25 — just one day after special counsel Robert Mueller wound down his investigation of the president by testifying to Congress and saying Trump could be indicted after his term for obstructing justice because of his interference with the Russia investigation.

So instead of responding to the end of the Russia investigation by cooling his jets, Trump was on the phone with the Ukrainian president the very next day trying to solicit political favors — the very same conduct that fueled suspicions about his Russia dealings in the first place. With Republican senators now having voted to let him off the hook for that conduct, there’s no reason to think he won’t try and do it again.

Trump is who he is. Republican senators who justified impeaching him partly because they thought he’d be chastened by the experience were either fooling themselves or the American people. Trump’s initial response to being impeached made that perfectly clear.

[Vox]

Trump: Susan Collins is wrong — I did not learn a ‘lesson’ from impeachment

Leave a comment

After Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) announced she would be voting to acquit President Donald Trump of the articles of impeachment for a scheme in Ukraine that she admitted was wrong, one rationale she offered, in conversation with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell, was that the president had learned “a pretty big lesson” and would be “much more cautious” from now on, having faced such a thorough investigation of his conduct.

But one person who seemingly disagrees with this is the president himself. When asked about Collins’ remark by reporters at a pre-State of the Union event, Trump insisted he had not learned any such thing and reiterated that his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect.”

[Raw Story]

White House excludes CNN from annual pre-SOTU lunch with news anchors

Leave a comment

President Donald Trump’s targeting of CNN is moving to yet another arena: The annual presidential lunch with television network anchors.CNN anchors are being excluded from Tuesday’s lunch, three sources said on Monday night.Trump, like presidents before him, typically invites anchors from all the major networks to dine with him at the White House in advance of his State of the Union address. The lunch conversation is considered off the record, but it gives the anchors a sense of the president’s state of mind before they anchor SOTU coverage. “Despite Trump’s persistent attacks on the news media, he’s kept up such traditions,” Politico pointed out last year.CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer attended last year’s lunch. Blitzer has been attending these lunches longer than almost any other anchor — 20 years in a row.

Journalists from other networks are still planning on attending Tuesday’s session, according to sources at those networks.This is the first time in recent memory that a president has singled out one network and opted to not invite any anchors from there.White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.The president has directed his ire at CNN dozens of times over the past three years. He has declined all of CNN’s requests to sit down with him for an interview and has denigrated both the network as a whole and some of its individual journalists. His administration also suspended chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass until a federal court ruled in CNN’s favor.

[CNN]

‘Where’s the Whistleblower?’ Trump launches new attacks on impeachment as trial nears conclusion

Leave a comment

President Donald Trump attacked the impeachment process as closing statements began in his Senate trial.

The president apparently watched the start of closing statements by House managers, who argued that evidence showed Trump should be impeached, and complained the constitutional process was unfair.

“I hope Republicans & the American people realize that the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax is exacty that, a Hoax,” Trump tweeted. “Read the Transcripts, listen to what the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said (‘No Pressure’). Nothing will ever satisfy the Do Nothing, Radical Left Dems!”

Trump then renewed his call to produce the whistleblower whose complaint launched the impeachment inquiry.

“Where’s the Whistleblower? Where’s the second Whistleblower? Where’s the Informer?” Trump tweeted. “Why did Corrupt politician Schiff MAKE UP my conversation with the Ukrainian President??? Why didn’t the House do its job? And sooo much more!”

[Raw Story]

1 … 22 23 24 25 26 … 340