The Donald Trump Score Card

Watchdog: 13 Trump officials violated Hatch Act during 2020 campaign

excerpt:

"More than a dozen top Trump administration officials violated the terms of the Hatch Act in the run-up to the 2020 elections, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel said in a report released Tuesday.

The list includes several cabinet officials and top White House aides, including Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, chief of staff Mark Meadows and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

The report depicts an administration that felt little obligation to the terms of the 1939 law, stating that some officials “intentionally ignored the law’s requirements and tacitly or expressly approved of senior administration officials violating the law.”

OSC wrote that this disregard, which stemmed from the former president down, laid the groundwork for "what appeared to be a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus within the upper echelons of the executive branch."":

 

Article from October 2020.


Trump relying on government officials in final campaign stretch - CNNPolitics

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"That is partly because Trump himself does not regularly distinguish between political and official events, using the same politically motivated speech in both settings and attacking his rival during nearly every public appearance. His decision to host the final night of the Republican National Convention on the White House South Lawn seemed both to encapsulate his disregard for separating the two and to permit more rampant politicking by his team.

Trump himself is not bound by the Hatch Act. But the example he sets has clearly been adopted by other members of his administration, whose salaries are funded by taxpayers but who have nonetheless engaged in explicitly political activity over the past weeks. Trump has joked in the past that those found in violation of the Hatch Act won't face consequences, according to people who have heard the conversations."

 

US Capitol riot: These veterans swore to defend the Constitution. Now they're facing jail time. - CNNPolitics

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"More than 70 current and former members of the US military, who all swore an oath to defend the Constitution, are now facing criminal charges and special attention from prosecutors for attacking their own democracy by storming the US Capitol on January 6.

For these defendants, many with decorated combat records and multiple overseas deployments, their military service has become a double-edged sword in their legal cases. The Justice Department has argued that rioters' veteran status is an aggravating factor, and some judges have held veterans to a higher standard while considering whether to send them to jail, either as punishment for their crimes or while their cases play out."

 

Reuters unmasks Trump supporters terrifying U.S. election officials

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"In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die.

“This might be a good time to put a f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pistol in your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f‑‑‑‑‑‑ numbered.”

The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the 2020 election. They are regular consumers of far-right websites that embrace Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods. And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats.

They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Seven made threats explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the U.S. federal standard for criminal prosecution, according to four legal experts who reviewed their messages at Reuters’ request."

 

Flynn is the grand poobah of all of them.


Charles Flynn: Army now acknowledges Michael Flynn's brother was a part of Army response to Capitol riot - CNNPolitics

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"There is no indication that Charles Flynn agrees with his brother, who was a vocal adherent of disputing President Joe Biden's victory on behalf of the former president.

Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by Trump, had suggested in an Oval Office meeting that the President should invoke martial law as part of the effort to overturn the election, though others in the room pushed back on the idea, CNN previously reported. At a rally the day before the riot, Michael Flynn urged the crowd to dispute the election results.

"Those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow, we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie," he said."

 

Jan. 6 committee issues 10 more subpoenas targeting Trump administration officials

excerpt:

"The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued 10 subpoenas on Tuesday to former members of the Trump administration -- including West Wing aides and senior officials who were in or around the Oval Office and former President Donald Trump when the riot unfolded on Capitol Hill.

They include senior adviser Stephen Miller, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, personnel director John McEntee, deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell, and Keith Kellogg, who served as former Vice President Mike Pence's national security adviser and was with Trump watching coverage of the riot on television, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book "Peril."

With this latest tranche, the committee has now issued at least 35 subpoenas as part of its investigation."

 

I’m sick of hearing him get away with shit

 

By that reasoning, President Eisenhower was an extreme communist. During his administration, about a trillion in today's dollars was spent on the U.S. highway system.

 

Kellyanne Conway dismisses Hatch Act violation: 'Let me know when the jail sentence starts'
By Brett Samuels
05/29/19 10:08 AM EDT

Kellyanne Conway dismisses Hatch Act violation: 'Let me know when the jail sentence starts'

excerpt:

Conway tore into the former vice president and senator over his vote on the 1994 crime bill, his role in overseeing the 1991 Anita Hill hearing and his record on immigration as she fielded questions from reporters outside the White House. But she insisted she was not commenting on the 2020 election and that she has a right to size up the record of her boss's potential opponent.

"I’m going to talk about people’s records because I have the right to," Conway said.

"I’m not concerned about Joe Biden," she added. "I’m concerned about the failures of the last administration to deal with the issues of the day, including North Korea."

When reporters noted the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) found she violated the Hatch Act with two interviews she gave in late 2017, Conway was dismissive.

"Blah, blah, blah," she said as one reporter recounted the OSC's findings.

"If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work," Conway said.

"Let me know when the jail sentence starts," she added.

 

Judge denies Trump's overnight request to stop Archives from turning over his records, still needs to rule on main case - CNNPolitics

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"Former President Donald Trump's latest procedural attempt to keep secret documents from his presidency about the January 6 insurrection quickly failed overnight.

Trump late on Monday night had asked Judge Tanya Chutkan of the DC District Court to block the records from being handed over to the House Select Committee investigating January 6 while he continues to fight in court.

A federal judge ruled that she won't let the ex-President get ahead of her forthcoming decision on whether he can block the National Archives from turning over records to the US House on Friday.

His request and the judge's response amount to an odd blip in a historic case about the power of a former president.

Effectively, Trump's request for an emergency injunction was an attempt to get ahead of Chutkan's ruling in the coming days. The judge is expected to decide soon on whether the National Archives should turn the tranche of Trump documents over to the House committee, possibly ahead of Friday -- the deadline for the Archives to hand the documents over.

In denying Trump's request, Chutkan called Trump's Monday filing "premature" and said she plans to rule "expeditiously" on his case."

 

She's the one that never lies, right?

 

GOP candidate claims Michael Flynn hoped to blackmail U.S. officials into pro-Trump "audits"
Pennsylvania Senate candidate Everett Stern made the bombshell accusation in a press conference Saturday
By Brett Bachman
Published October 31, 2021 3:09PM (EDT)

GOP candidate claims Michael Flynn hoped to blackmail U.S. officials into pro-Trump "audits"

excerpt:

"Stern claims that at least two people representing a Flynn-linked group called "Patriot Caucus" approached him earlier this year after a public speech, offering to hire his firm to gather "dirt" on officials and recruit others to assist in the plot. One of the men allegedly told Stern that they had retained the services of active intelligence officials "both domestic and foreign."

"They wanted to gather intelligence on senators, judges, congressmen, state reps, to move them towards the audit," Stern said. "The word 'move' was emphasized tremendously. It was clear to me what they wanted was not traditional opposition research — what they wanted was to extort and to literally move people towards the audit with dirt.""

 

Article about McEntee.

The January 6 committee recently subpoenaed McEntee, Trump's White House personnel director who had influence over hiring and firing people..


The Man Who Made January 6 Possible

 

Trump unloads on 13 Republicans who backed infrastructure bill

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"Several of the other Republicans released similar statements, including Bacon, who said the bill will make the nation "stronger."

"Most of the hard infrastructure bill is paid for by unspent COVID money that was already appropriated by Congress. This bill makes our nation stronger and more competitive for years to come," Bacon said in a statement. "Make no mistake. This is not the Bernie Sanders’ Socialist Budget Busting Bill, which would’ve cost American taxpayers their hard-earned money. When that bill does come to the floor for a vote, I will be a hard ‘NO.’"

Several House Republicans have sided with Trump and expressed outrage toward the 13 Republicans, and sources confirmed to Fox News Digital that GOP leadership is concerned that disgruntled GOP lawmakers will attempt to strip committee assignments from the lawmakers who supported the bill."

 

McEntee was literally thrown out of the White House by Secret Service in 2018.

Trump brought him back as a director in charge of hiring and firing White House officials.


Baby-faced assassin: the 29-year old at the heart of Trump's 'deep state' purge

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"The gist of Trump’s project, critics say, is to hone the federal government to the one purpose he believes it ought to serve: helping him. It is also a process supercharged by Trump’s acquittal at the end of his impeachment trial.

“The failure to remove the president on impeachment, and the Senate’s malleability and acquiescence to the president’s whims, clearly have emboldened him and inclined him to remove any hint of dissent, clearly in the White House and more widely in the executive branch,” said Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former National Security Council official under Barack Obama.

The outflow of civil servants has coincided with an inflow of trusted former Trump deputies, some of whom had previously left the White House in the turbulence of Trump’s first three years.

McEntee was forced out in 2018 by the chief of staff, John Kelly, over a problem with McEntee’s security clearances reportedly relating to online gambling. Now McEntee is back and Kelly is long gone."

 

Out with the rational people and in with diehard Trump loyalists.

The composition of a second term of Trump is expected to be even more extreme.

 

That includes people who returned to Trump in an unofficial position, such as Bannon and Flynn.

Trump's insurrection at the Capitol has Bannon's fingerprints on it.


Steve Bannon's second act: He's back, and he wants to bring down the curtain on democracy

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"Bannon has also made repeated use of the technique known as stochastic terrorism to encourage right-wing violence, while disclaiming personal responsibility. As HuffPost reports, he recently told his listeners of his "War Room" podcast: "We need to get ready now. We control the country. We've got to start acting like it. And one way we're going to act like it, we're not going to have 4,000 [shock troops] ready to go, we're going to have 20,000 ready to go."

Bannon has said these "shock troops" would be used to destroy the federal government from within in a second Trump administration, as a way of tearing down what he calls "the administrative state," an anti-government euphemism that also includes multiracial democracy.

Political scientists, historians and others have shown that such rhetoric is used by Republicans and their allies (and by too many "moderate" or corporate-sponsored Democrats) to justify attacks on the very idea of government itself, in large part because they perceive it as serving the interests of Black and brown people and others deemed to be "undeserving."

Bannon's use of violent language about "shock troops" — in a military context, this means heavily armed, fast-moving elite soldiers used to break through enemy defenses — is not necessarily hyperbole or metaphor. Rather, it should be seen as part of a larger embrace of political violence and other terrorism by the Republican fascist movement.

Bannon has reportedly described himself as a "Leninist," and makes no apologies for his belief that the existing social and political order must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt according to his reactionary, revanchist, neofascist and racist authoritarian vision.

Bannon has said that in a second Trump term he wants to see Trump's "enemies," such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray, decapitated, with their heads mounted on stakes. Again, it's a mistake to consider this a joke. Business Insider reports:"

 

Trump is endorsing the rogue Idaho Lt. Governor McGeachin to oust Governor Brad Little.

McGeachin has been issuing rogue executive orders while Little is out of state on trips. Little has had to rescind the orders upon his return to Idaho.


Trump endorses rival against Idaho Gov. Brad Little

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"Former President Donald Trump endorsed Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s bid to primary Gov. Brad Little, as the former president looks to further remake the Republican Party in his image.

Trump’s Tuesday evening endorsement of McGeachin does not mention or even allude to Little, who first won the office in 2018. Instead, Trump praises her as “a true supporter of MAGA since the very beginning” who has his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to be the next governor of the state.

McGeachin and Little have been locked in a bizarre power struggle, as she challenges him. On several occasions when Little has left the state, McGeachin has used her authority as acting governor to issue executive orders often in relation to various pandemic-related mandates, which she has tried to ban. Little has then rescinded those orders."

 

All these people who are against improving the infrastructure should not use the internet, not drive on highways, and don't cross bridges.

 

Trump cannot shield White House records from Jan. 6 committee, judge rules

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"A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Jan. 6 investigators from accessing White House records related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, determining that he has no authority to overrule President Joe Biden’s decision to waive executive privilege and release the materials to Congress.

“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her ruling Tuesday."