And the WINNER/LOSER of the "blatantly corrupt" list is ... the DiC! ~ ~ Sooz

White House picks Trump’s struggling Florida business for G7 gathering
10/17/19 02:15 PM
By Steve Benen

In late August, Donald Trump made an announcement that seemed brazen, even by his standards: the president liked the idea of having the next G7 summit at one of his own businesses. Specifically, Trump talked up the possibility of hosting the event at his Doral, Florida, golf resort, not far from Miami International Airport.

As the Washington Post reported at the time, “If Trump does choose Doral, he would be directing six world leaders, hundreds of hangers-on and massive amounts of money to a resort he owns personally – and which, according to his company’s representatives, has been ‘severely underperforming.’”

Take a wild guess what happened next.


Just so we’re all clear, world leaders who wish to participate in the G7 gathering will now have no choice but to spend considerable funds at the American president’s own struggling business. It’s a recipe for an Emoluments Clause nightmare.

This is, of course, the same American president who claims to be deeply concerned about “corruption,” even as his own White House awards a lucrative contract to one of his failing enterprises.

Indeed, the resort has been in “sharp decline” for a while: “At Doral, which Trump has listed in federal disclosures as his biggest moneymaker hotel, room rates, banquets, golf and overall revenue were all down since 2015. In two years, the resort’s net operating income – a key figure, representing the amount left over after expenses are paid – had fallen by 69 percent.”

The venue has especially struggled in the summer months, when it’s “usually empty.”

The G7 summit will be held in June 2020, which means Trump’s business will suddenly have a lot of customers, right when they’re needed most.

Did I mention Doral’s “lengthy history of health-code violations”? Because that’s probably relevant, too.

I’m sure the president’s Republican allies will once again shrug their shoulders. They’ll say the conflicts of interest don’t matter. They’ll say it doesn’t matter if Trump uses his office to help the business he still owns and profits from. They’ll say the foreign money flowing into the president’s private-sector enterprise only looks unconstitutional. They’ll say it’s only a coincidence that the White House is doing a lucrative favor for Trump’s struggling business.

I’m less sure why they think anyone would find their arguments persuasive.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/white-house-picks-trumps-struggling-florida-business-g7-gathering

It just keeps on keeping on ~ I never before thought I'd ever celebrate "stupidity", but I'm guessing Mulvaney just committed "career suicide by stupidity" all by himself ~ ~ Sooz

An avalanche of confessions: Trump’s chief of staff just admitted a stunning amount of wrongdoing on live TV
Published on October 17, 2019
By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney adopted a new approach to President Donald Trump’s war on impeachment in a Thursday press briefing: admitting a gigantic amount of wrongdoing in one sitting and daring Republicans to care.

The avalanche of confessions began in the White House briefing room, where Mulvaney revealed that the United States will host the upcoming G7 summit of world leaders at Trump National Doral in Miami, the president’s own Florida resort.

This is a grotesquely corrupt move, and the White House knows it. Even if, as Mulvaney claimed, the Doral was the best possible location for the G7 in the country — a ridiculous assertion — it would still be incumbent on the administration to choose another location to avoid the appearance of corruption and the reality of a conflict of interest. Mulvaney claimed that, all things considered, Trump decided he would “take the hit” of accusations of corruption. But it’s not just Trump who “takes the hit,” it’s the entire federal government, and the United States itself, that gets stained with corruption, and that’s a condemnable choice to make.

Mulvaney even admitted: “There’s plenty of other good places in this country to hold a large event. There’s no question.” And yet, they still chose absolutely the most corrupt place to do it.

The chief of staff also revealed that it was Trump himself who suggested the Doral as a possible location, exacerbating the wrongdoing. If some neutral process had selected the location as a possible site for the meeting, it still should have been rejected for obvious reasons, but at least the choice would have been more defensible. But no — Mulvaney made clear that Trump’s dual role as both a private businessman and president was the reason Doral was considered at all in the first place.

Asked if it was important for the United States to send a message about “self-dealing” to other countries, Mulvaney simply said “no.” So on top of the corruption of the U.S. government, Mulvaney sent the explicit message to countries around the world that they shouldn’t worry about self-dealing.

All that, of course, was galling enough on its own. But it also completely undermines Trump’s defense in the Ukraine scandal, in which the president has claimed that he only asked the foreign country to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, because he cares about fighting “corruption.” That claim was laughable from the start, but now Mulvaney is telling the press that the White House literally doesn’t care about self-dealing. So his admission confirms Trump lied.

The Doral announcement could and should constitute a justification for impeachment all on its own. But not only did Mulvaney divulge all that in the press conference, he also made a decisive case against Trump in the Ukraine scandal.

For the first time, Mulvaney admitted that part of the reason that that congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine was held up by the White House was because Trump wanted the country to investigate the 2016 U.S. election. When it was pointed out that this was a “quid pro quo,” Mulvaney responded: “We do that all the time.”

He added: “Get over it.”

But this admission reveals multiple layers of wrongdoing. First of all, it proves Trump lied on many occasions when he has denied that there was any quid pro quo with Ukraine. In fact, he explicitly denied that the holding up of the aid was tied to the investigation to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in early September. Many Republicans have used this denial as a key defense of the president. Now it is has crumbled.

Mulvaney tried to deny that the military aid was used as a quid pro quo with regard to an investigation of Joe Biden and his son’s ties to the Ukrainian oil company Burisma. But this denial is not credible. The aid was held on July 18, and a week later, on July 25, Trump tied the request of an investigation of 2016 and an investigation of the Bidens together while asking for a “favor” from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This ask of a favor came in direct response to Zelensky bringing up the United States’ military support for Ukraine. Even if Trump and the White House had made it clear that the military aid wasn’t tied to the request for an investigation of Biden — which there’s no evidence they ever did — it would have been reasonable for Zelensky to assume the two were connected.

But even if, contrary to the facts, the military aid were withheld only to prompt a Ukrainian investigation into 2016, and having nothing to do with the Bidens, this would still be wildly inappropriate. As one reporter noted during the press conference, Trump will essentially be running against the Democratic National Committee in 2020 no matter what; asking that its conduct be reviewed by a foreign government, using the power of the Oval Office and illegitimately delayed congressional funds, is a grotesque abuse of power and election interference.

The Justice Department is reviewing the events of the 2016 campaign, as it has a right to do. But it has its own processes for communicating with foreign governments about such investigations. There’s no need for the president to get involved — and certainly no need to involve his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as he did.

Presidents, indeed, are supposed to remain walled off from specific investigations to preserve the rule of law and to — once again — avoid even the appearance of corrupting political influence or conflicts of interest. This is true as a general matter, but it’s even more emphatically the case for a review of the events of the 2016 election, in which Trump himself is deeply invested and in which he has a strong personal interest in the outcome.

This is, in short, a slam dunk case for impeachment. All the wrongdoing is there, and most of it from the mouth of Trump’s own chief of staff.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/an-avalanche-of-confessions-trumps-chief-of-staff-just-admitted-a-stunning-amount-of-wrongdoing-on-live-tv/

It's like they aren't even trying to hide the fact they are breaking our laws.

Mulvaney is trying to back pedal saying the press misinterpreted him - what a joke! We are asked to deny our eyes and ears and pretend he did not say what he did. When I say ''we" I mean people who still have all their gray cells in working in order - not his supporters who will swallow his absurdity whole. The WH came out after his statement and the reaction to it - to reiterate there was no quid pro quo - what a fiasco trump and his administration are.

You guys just don't get it! They don't care! Nor do his multitudes of devotees care! Nor does the Republican Party care! He literally can do anything he wants, no matter how corrupt, no matter how vile and it will just increase their adoration of him. Hopefully next November there will be enough Americans, in the right places, to shut him down but don't count on it. Don't forget the Republicans have been gerrymandering districts and repressing voting rights for many years now. They've pretty much got it set up to the point where voting in the U.S. is just a joke. You can all run out and cast your ballot but the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Welcome to 1990 Iraq West.

From my Facebook feed ~ the DiC and his enablers will embrace anything that brings in cash! ~ ~ Sooz

To quote another politician from elsewhere:

This too shall pass!

Seems he's changed his mind ....

Trump drops plan to host G-7 at Doral
By ZEKE MILLER and JILL COLVIN



Responding to stinging criticism, President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly reversed his plan to hold the next Group of Seven world leaders’ meeting at his Doral, Florida, golf resort next year.

Trump announced a rare backtrack Saturday night after facing accusations that he was using the presidency to enrich himself by hosting the international summit at a private resort owned by his family.

“Based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020,” Trump tweeted. He said his administration “will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately.”

The striking reversal raises further doubts about the position of the president’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who held a press conference Thursday announcing the choice of Doral for the summit. He insisted his staff had concluded it was “far and away the best physical facility.” Mulvaney said the White House reached that determination after visiting 10 sites across the country.

In the same press conference, Mulvaney acknowledged a quid pro quo was at work when Trump held up U.S. aid to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine’s investigation of Democrats and the 2016 elections. Mulvaney later claimed his comments had been misconstrued, but not before drawing the ire of the president and frustration from other senior aides.

Trump had been the first administration official to publicly float the selection of his property to host the summit when in August he mentioned it was on the short-list and praised its facilities and proximity to Miami’s international airport. His comments, more than a month before the official announcement, drew instant criticism from good governance groups and Democrats, who said it raised concerns that Trump was using the White House to boost his personal finances

The vociferous criticism did not die down, even as Trump insisted he would host the summit at cost, though he refused to disclose financial details. The annual heads-of-state gathering would at minimum have provided good-will value to his property.

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Trump’s reversal Saturday “is a bow to reality, but does not change how astonishing it was that a president ever thought this was appropriate, or that it was something he could get away with.”

An hour before Trump’s announcement, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden condemned the selection of Doral for the summit. “Hosting the G7 at Trump’s hotel? A president should never be able to use the office for personal gain,” the former vice president said.

On Thursday, Mulvaney had discounted Camp David, the government-owned presidential retreat, as the site for the summit, claiming, “I understand the folks who participated in it hated it and thought it was a miserable place to have the G-7.” He added that it was too small and remote for the international summit.

Mulvaney said then that unspecified sites in Hawaii and Utah had also been on the short list. It was unclear if they were still under consideration.

https://apnews.com/d3a7b2d762c9472c8eee ... KEipfivPxI

Even his belated "explanation" is a LIE! ~ ~ Sooz

Abandoning summit scheme, Trump presents himself as a victim
10/21/19 08:00 AM—Updated 10/21/19 08:59 AM
By Steve Benen

Four days ago, the White House announced that one of Donald Trump’s struggling business would host next year’s G7 summit, creating a legal and political mess. The Constitution prevents U.S. officials from receiving foreign payments, but under this scheme, world leaders who wished to participate in a key international gathering would have no choice but to spend foreign funds at the American president’s golf club in Doral, Florida.

Two days later, Trump announced via Twitter that he’d abandoned the plan.


There are, not surprisingly, all kinds of problems with the presidential message. Note, for example, that by Trump’s version of events, he was personally involved in the alleged corruption. He also used a series of first-person pronouns that suggested the president sees little difference between himself and his private-sector enterprise.

I was also entertained by the all-caps reference to Miami International Airport, as if MIA deserves to be seen as a flagship facility synonymous with greatness.

But let’s not brush past the underlying point of the presidential tweets: Trump continues to see himself as a victim. The public is apparently supposed to believe the Republican simply wanted to do “something very good” for the United States by using his venue – the tweets were practically another ad for his struggling business – and it all would’ve worked out fine were it not for those rascally Democrats, journalists, legal experts, and authorities on governmental ethics.

It’s a pitiful posture, made worse by the fact that it isn’t even true.

As the Washington Post reported, it was the White House’s allies who convinced Team Trump to move in a different direction.


The New York Times had a similar report, noting that Trump was not prepared for “the reaction of fellow Republicans who said his choice of the club, the Trump National Doral, had crossed a line, and they couldn’t defend it.”

Of course, more than a few of the president’s allies towed the party line and defended Trump’s plan after Thursday’s announcement. It created a familiar dynamic for the GOP: Republicans went out on a limb to defend the indefensible, and when the pressure intensified, the president cut his losses – and in the process, cut off the limb on which his supporters were suddenly stuck.

Let this be a lesson for the White House’s allies about the dangers of supporting Trump’s schemes.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/abandoning-summit-scheme-trump-presents-himself-victim

hey, he said thank you!

The ONLY thing the DiC is EVER "straight-up" about is corruption ~ ~ Sooz

Trump is straight-up bribing GOP senators to back him against impeachment: report
Published on October 31, 2019 / By Tom Boggioni

According to a report from Politico, President Donald Trump is attempting to regain the full support of GOP lawmakers facing tough re-election prospects in 2020 by showering them with cash in the hopes of keeping them on his side with an impeachment vote likely.

As the House prepares to take a historic vote on Thursday authorizing the impeachment inquiry to go forward, the White House is actively engaging in fundraising with a plan to distribute money raised to GOP senators who are wavering on the support for the embattled president.

Politico reports, “Trump is tapping his vast fundraising network for a handful of loyal senators facing tough reelection bids in 2020. Each of them has signed onto a Republican-backed resolution condemning the inquiry as ‘unprecedented and undemocratic.'”

In an email to supporters headlined “WITCH HUNT,” the report states, “on Wednesday, the Trump reelection campaign sent a fundraising appeal to its massive email list urging donors to provide a contribution that would be divided between the president and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. Each of the senators are supporting the anti-impeachment resolution despite being endangered in 2020.”

Noticeably missing for the list of senators is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Politico reporting, “The new online fundraising drive bypassed Collins, an occasional Trump critic who called on the president to retract his tweet comparing the impeachment investigation to a ‘lynching.’ Collins also said Trump made a ‘big mistake’ in asking China to investigate the Biden family.”

As for the other, along with Arizona Sen. Martha McSally (R), they are facing tough re-election campaigns and losses could mean control of the Senate could change hands.

“The president is looking to buck up senators coming under mounting pressure on impeachment. Gardner, who is widely seen as the most jeopardized Republican incumbent up for reelection, faced criticism earlier this month after he dodged questions about Trump’s conduct. Ernst was confronted at a town hall over her support for the president,” Politico reports. “This week, a liberal group began a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign pushing both Republican senators to support impeachment.”

Mike Reed, a Republican National Committee spokesman, Wednesday beg for cash brought in “six figures,” adding, “Our supporters stand totally behind President Trump and are eager to support down-ballot candidates who do the same.”

The report notes that the door is open for the president’s campaign to add more senators to future campaign contribution emails depending on who appears to be wavering and to keep his Senate firewall in place.

You can read more here.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/trump-is-straight-up-bribing-gop-senators-to-back-him-against-impeachment-report/

A very important perspective that, for me, cements my own thought that ALL Rs today are 100% craven [at a minimum] ~ ~ emphasis/bolding below is mine ~ Sooz

Trump tries bribing the jury … and no Republican seems bothered by it
Written by Terry H. Schwadron / DC Report November 5, 2019

As the House moved closer last week to impeaching Donald Trump, the almost more disturbing note was that Trump is working to buy Senate support with campaign cash.

According to Politico, Trump is tapping his vast fund-raising network for a handful of loyal senators facing tough re-election bids in 2020.

Each of them has signed onto a Republican-backed resolution condemning the inquiry as “unprecedented and undemocratic.”

“Conspicuously absent from the group is Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a politically vulnerable Republican who has refused to support the resolution and avoided taking a stance on impeachment.

With his new push, Trump is exerting leverage over a group he badly needs in his corner with an impeachment trial likely coming soon to the Senate—but that also needs him,” said Politico.

In any world I understand, paying cash to would-be jurors in a pending trial would be called jury tampering and is against the law.

Nothing Trump Does Is Unlawful

But in the Senate Republican bubble where almost nothing that this president does is considered unlawful, we probably will have to put these actions to the ever-growing list of things-that-should-be-Trump-impeachment counts.

This week, as a partisan divided House was preparing to vote to move the impeachment proceedings to its public hearings phase, the Trump re-election campaign sent a fundraising appeal to its massive email list urging donors to provide a contribution that would be divided among the president and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.

Each of the senators is supporting the anti-impeachment resolution despite being endangered in 2020.

“If we don’t post strong fundraising numbers,” the message warned, “we won’t be able to defend the President from this baseless Impeachment WITCH HUNT.”

Of course, the opposite need not be stated.

Take a stand against Trump and stand by for a political fusillade from Trump loyalists and the campaign itself.

Politics, not Law

All of this underscores that the impeachment efforts are being seen first, continuing and at last as a partisan political battle, not a question of whether the president’s actions in seeking to pressure Ukraine’s leader into seeking dirt on Democrat Joe Biden in return for lethal military aid, as had already been voted by Congress.

If you consider this a set of political skirmishes rather than a Constitutional question, every supporting action on either side could be seen as an expression of politics, not law or American values.

That is why Republican supporters of the president in Congress have resorted to attacks on process without trying to defend the substance of the issues at hand, and why Trump feels totally within his rights to seek campaign influence over his Republican tribe in public debasement, twisting arms or, seemingly, trying to bribe individuals.

In the end, of course, any impeachment trial would require that 20 Republicans join in a finding of guilt with the full cadre of Democrats in the Senate.

The political chances of that happening are slim to none, even as the legal case, the moral case, the abuse case against Trump is building.

We continue to hear from the nonpartisan military, security and intelligence figures within the White House – including military officers on the damning July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian leader – that dispute Trump’s account of the call.

Moreover, the continuing testimony, which is about to spill into open, televised sessions, shows that the White House campaign to dispatch attorney Rudy Giuliani outside the bounds of diplomatic protocols, outside Congressional review, shows the effort was far more than a single phone call.

Attacking the Probe

It was a months-long effort to turn diplomacy to the personal, partisan advantage of Trump.
The Republican defenses for Trump have attacked the investigation by Democrats as procedurally too secret, “a Soviet-style” inquisition, as said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House minority whip.

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said only that even if true, the president’s behavior does not merit impeachment, indeed asserting that nothing bad or unusual has happened at all.

If Republicans don’t want to accept that basic violation as impeachment-worthy, it is difficult to imagine what exactly does qualify—unless it was a Democratic president in office, of course.

If Trump had a strong case here, why in the world would he need to offer cash to persuade senators even in his own party to stand with him? If Trump is interfering with his eventual jurors, why should that not prove an impeachment count on its own?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-tries-bribing-the-jury-and-no-republican-seems-bothered-by-it/