It may be a bit like this, but with a 1000-word vocabulary:
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by JackRiddler » Wed Nov 09, 2016 3:12 pm
by Luther Blissett » Thu Nov 10, 2016 1:15 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 1:55 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 2:09 pm
NOT ABOVE THE LAW
75 Lawsuits Against President-Elect Trump
An astounding number of court battles—from Trump University suits to libel cases—will accompany Trump even as he moves into the White House.
Brandy Zadrozny
BRANDY ZADROZNY
11.10.16 12:15 AM ET
President-elect Donald Trump will be spending the days running up to his inauguration in an unprecedented fashion. Along with choosing his cabinet and scheduling the busiest first day in office ever, the reality television star will also be defending himself in several courts of law.
The real-estate developer turned politician is familiar with the courtroom. As reported by USA Today in June, Trump has been a party to some 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years—a uniquely large number of actions framed by detractors as a telling indicator of a life of crooked dealing, and by supporters as simply the cost of running an enormously successful business in America.
Whatever one’s position on the election, it’s clear that Trump’s ongoing court battles—somewhere around 75, according to the USA Today analysis—are the first of their kind for any president, and because even the highest office in the land is not above the law, will accompany Trump as he moves into the White House.
At issue in Trump’s most well-known and problematic legal battles—the subject of three separate lawsuits in fact—is Trump University, the eponymous real-estate seminar program that former students say was nothing more than a scam selling Trump-made promises of financial success that never materialized and stripped the poor, the naive, and the elderly of life’s savings instead.
The federal class action cases were filed in 2010 and 2013, before Trump made good on his decades of teasing a presidential run. They are both being heard in California, by Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was dragged into the campaign over the summer when Trump told an interviewer that the case was stacked against him because Curiel was “a Mexican,” and explained, “we’re building a wall between here and Mexico.” (Judge Curiel was born in Indiana.)
The fraud case filed in 2010, Low v. Trump University, goes to trial in less than three weeks. The second, Cohen v. Trump, alleges Trump’s “school” was really a criminal organization and violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Lawyers are currently fighting over evidence in that case and a trial date hasn’t been set.
The New York fraud case—which was also brought back in 2013 and alleges Trump’s unlicensed university scammed New Yorkers out of a collective $40 million—is still a go, according to Amy Spitalnick of the New York State Attorney General’s Office. A judge decided in March that the case would go to trial, but Trump has appealed the ruling.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman responded at the time in a statement that read in part, “This meritless appeal is yet another example of how Donald Trump will do everything in his power to avoid standing trial for allegedly defrauding hundreds of financially struggling New Yorkers at Trump University… We look forward to holding Donald Trump accountable for this brazen scam when he finally faces trial.”
The next relevant date is Dec. 5, when the people’s opening brief is due.
But allegations of fraud are really just the beginning for President Trump.
Most of the 75 open lawsuits are likely going nowhere. More than a dozen of the 20 ongoing federal cases where Trump is a defendant are actual nonsense, filed against the future president along with co-defendants Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and even Walt Disney, on behalf of seemingly mentally-ill plaintiffs. (Anyone can file a lawsuit.) The complaints in the wildest cases include allegations of kidnapping by the president-elect and his son—members of the supposed Illuminati.
Others may turn out to be much more legitimate. Members of Trump’s golf course in Jupiter, Florida, are currently suing the flaxen-haired businessman for $2.4 million for taking fees and dues while allegedly blocking admission to the actual club. A former employee of the same club brought a lawsuit last month, alleging she was unlawfully fired after reporting sexual harassment by a coworker.
A hearing is scheduled in Chicago on Nov. 29, in another case alleging Trump’s campaign violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending unsolicited text messages urging the plaintiff to “Help Make America Great Again!”
And there’s more. In New York State, two open cases are making their way through the courts. Republican consultant Cheryl Jacobus filed a $4 million libel lawsuit after Trump “destroyed her career,” namely by calling her “a dummy” on Twitter. And a status conference is scheduled for next week in the case of Efrain Galicia, who in 2015 sued the then-candidate when one of Trump’s security guards assaulted him during a protest outside of Trump Tower. (There’s a video of the incident.)
This is not an exhaustive list and there may be other suits winding their way through the legal system in the coming months. But Trump’s camp doesn’t seem alarmed.
Alan Garten told USA Today, “We’ll treat all cases the same way if he’s elected or not—and the results shouldn’t be different in the eyes of the law.”
Though presidential immunity may keep Trump safe from civil liability for any shady schools he starts from the White House or any libelous tweets he sends from Obama’s seized @potus account, litigation involving pre-presidential conduct can proceed as it would had Trump lost the election.
“The lawsuits don’t stop because someone happens to be president of the United States,” said Michael Gerhardt, a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
The decision that will keep the wheels of justice moving for dozens of plaintiffs suing Trump, ironically came from the Supreme Court’s 9-to-0 ruling in 1997 which allowed Paula Jones’s lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by Bill Clinton to move forward.
Though Trump could be deposed or have to testify in the cases against him, the time away from the Oval Office wouldn’t likely be too taxing as Trump depends heavily on his team of attorneys. What’s more dangerous, Gerhardt said, is the risk of discovery—that testimony or evidence gathered in the litigation of a case could be embarrassing to a sitting president, or worse, “could warrant an impeachment.”
An impeachment in a Republican-dominated House of Representatives is extremely unlikely, but two lawyers have already dangled the threat of discovery in front of the soon-to-be president. Famed feminist attorney Gloria Allred and her daughter, civil-rights lawyer Lisa Bloom, told Trump to back off his threats to sue the handful of women who came forward during the campaign to accuse the Republican candidate of harassment or sexual assault, including forced kissing and groping.
In a statement, Bloom said, “In that lawsuit I would take the deposition of Trump and all of his enablers, and subpoena his business and personal records as well as any recordings that may exist in which he brags about sexual assault, such as the Access Hollywood recording and potentially, the Apprentice raw footage.”
The possible humiliation and danger of discovery aside, Gerhardt said a defamation suit against the women or any others by whom the famously litigious Trump might feel aggrieved, would be ill-advised.
“[Trump] would have to deal with the law as it is, not as he would like it to be, Gerhardt said. “Truth is a defense,” that could potentially lead to an impeachment, and damages would be hard to prove.
“Given the fact that the man was just elected president, it might be hard to quantify his harm.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... trump.html
by Morty » Thu Nov 10, 2016 3:21 pm
Trump’s Revolution
Now beware the counter-revolution
by Justin Raimondo, November 09, 2016
Donald Trump has done the unthinkable – unthinkable, that is, to the sneering elites: the “journalists” who have been spending their days snarking at Trump on Twitter, the DC mandarins who disdained him from the beginning, and the foreign policy “experts” who gasped in horror as he challenged the basic premises of the post-World War II international order. And he did it by overcoming a host of the most powerful enemies one could conjure: The Republican Establishment, the Democratic party machine, the Money Power, and a media united in their hatred of him.
That this is a revolution is a bit of an understatement: revolutions are usually national in scope. This is an earthquake that will shake the whole world.
The United States is a global empire, and from the Korean peninsula to the Baltic states, our protectorates are quavering in panic that the system they’ve depended on for over half a century is about to come down. During the election, America’s client states all but formally endorsed Hillary Clinton, and expressed their unmitigated horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. After all, the GOP candidate pledged to make our allies start paying their own way, a possibility that naturally fills them with dread. And Trump committed the biggest heresy of all by not only openly questioning the continued existence of NATO, but also by asking “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?”
The Clinton campaign’s response was to do what no presidential candidate has done since the earliest days of the Republic: they accused Trump of being a Russian “puppet.” Former CIA director Mike Morrell, in endorsing Clinton, wrote that Trump is “an unconscious agent” of the Kremlin. In the hothouse atmosphere of Washington, D.C., this was not only acceptable: it was the conventional wisdom. Indeed, it no doubt still is. However, out in the real world, it fell flat: no normal American believed that for a minute. Endless articles appeared in the media, linking Trump to the Kremlin: a major piece of “evidence” for the “puppet” theory is that the Trump people pushed to keep a plank calling for arming Ukraine out of the Republican party platform. What the new McCarthyites didn’t understand, however, is that nobody cares about Ukraine, as polls consistently show.
The political class is reeling: how could this have happened?
We’ll doubtless be subjected to endless essays on the subject of who or what is to “blame” for Trump: FBI Director James Comey? The “alt right”? WikiLeaks? Putin?
Their problem is that these people live in a bubble: the conservative writer Mollie Hemingway tweeted the night of the election that “ I was at a small DC dinner several weeks ago where several people said they knew not a single Trump supporter. I was like, ‘I know 100s.’” This evokes the famous Pauline Kael quote, who is reputed to have responded to Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide victory by saying: “I don’t know how Nixon won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.” Actually, the acerbic film critic didn’t say that, exactly. What she really said was far more telling:
“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
This puts it succinctly: the inhabitants of the “special world” of the political class — self-satisfied pundits, self-serving politicians, avaricious hedge fund managers, arrogant academics, less-than-thoughtful thinktankers, politically correct scolds, neoconservative warmongers – couldn’t imagine a world in which Donald Trump could win the White House. They laughed at him when he announced, they sneered at him even as he was winning the primaries, and they unleashed more venom than an army of rattlesnakes when he won the Republican nomination, even as they claimed he was headed for a Goldwater-like defeat. The American ruling class lives in a world entirely separate from that of their subjects: even as the peasants with pitchforks gathered in the shadow of the castle, they never saw the Trumpian revolution coming.
In short, they have no idea why he won because they live on a different planet than the rest of us. And yet the reason for his victory is very simple, and it’s no secret. He stated it clearly and succinctly in a remarkable television ad in the final days of the campaign.
Trump understands that, as I put it in my last column, “The main issue in the world today is globalism versus national sovereignty, and it is playing out in the politics of countries on every continent.” A transnational ruling elite, the types who flock to Davos every year, has arisen that believes it has the right to manipulate the peoples of the world like pawns on a chessboard. These lords of creation engage in “regime change” when a government they don’t like challenges their imperial prerogatives: they move entire populations around as if they were human dust – they manipulate currencies, “manage” the world economy — and woe to those who challenge their rule!
And the epicenter of this global ruling elite is located in Washington, D.C., with the White House as the inner sanctum of the whole rotten system. And now that Fortress of Power has been breached. Thus, the panic of the elites.
Trump rode into office promising that “we’ll get along with everybody” who wants peace with the United States, as he said in his victory speech. He campaigned on a platform of “America First” that his enemies derided as “isolationist” and which was, in reality, simply the foreign policy of the Founders of this country. While his stance on immigration provoked a lot of hostility, I would argue that the real reason for the sheer hatred directed at him by both parties is his foreign policy views – especially his radical condemnation of the Iraq war, in which he not only rightly denounced it as a disaster but also said that we were lied into that war. And he sent a message to the neoconservative authors of that war in his April foreign policy speech sponsored by The National Interest magazine. In outlining a new foreign policy vision for this country, he said:
“I will also look for talented experts with new approaches, and practical ideas, rather than surrounding myself with those who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war.’”
As I put it in my column on the subject: “Here he is openly telling the neocons, who have inveigled themselves into every administration since the days of Ronald Reagan, that they will be kicked to the curb if and when he takes the White House.”
Which brings me to an important point: we must hold Trump’s feet to the fire on this pledge. This is the task of those anti-interventionists who supported him – and there are many – as well as those who stood aside. Let our battle cry be heard: no more neocons!
Trump has said that NATO is “obsolete” – and let’s hold him to that evaluation, and its clear implications. The Soviet Union has been dead since 1989. It’s time to put NATO in mothballs.
Trump has said Japan and Korea must start providing for their own defense: let’s hold him to that one, too. It’s high time to pull US troops out of South Korea, where they are sitting ducks, and out of Japan as well. The Korean war is over: so is World War II. These countries are wealthy, as Trump has repeatedly pointed out: let them defend themselves.
The Saudis depend on us for their defense: we send them weapons, we train their troops, while they fund terrorism and run one of the nastiest regimes on earth. They’re filthy rich, as Trump has remarked many times: it’s time to cut them loose, too.
In short, it’s time to pressure the new President to keep his promises. Because you can be sure, as the sun rises in the West, that the War Party will try to co-opt the new administration, and do everything in their power to make sure that they retain their hegemony over US foreign policy.
We can’t let that happen.
Trump is sincere, but he’s only one man – yes, he’s the President, but even the chief executive of the United States runs up against limitations; I’m talking about not only political limitations but also the power of the “deep State” – the permanent national security bureaucracy that guards it power and agenda jealously. President Trump cannot stand alone against these powerful forces: he needs a mass movement to stand behind him and, if necessary, push him in the right direction.
This is a great victory for our cause, and I can’t help but feel elated. Yet our job won’t get any easier: indeed, in many ways it will get harder. We are up against an enemy that will fight tooth and nail to retain its dominance, and who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. We must be as determined to stop them as they are to resist the revolutionary wave that is lapping at their feet.
Yes, the revolution has arrived. But this is no time for complacency. Quite the contrary: we must be prepared for the counter-revolutionary reaction that is already setting in. We must ready ourselves to fight – and win.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 3:52 pm
Russian Government: Actually, We Were in Contact With the Trump Campaign
By Joshua Keating
451364068-russian-deputy-foreign-minister-sergei-ryabkov-arrives
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov arrives for a press conference on June 28, 2014, in Damascus, Syria.
Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news service Thursday that “there were contacts” between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s campaign staff during the election. He didn’t elaborate on the extent or nature of these contacts, but this still seems like a direct contradiction of statements by both Trump and the Kremlin, denying any contact during the campaign.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for instance, said in August that "President Putin has never had any contact with Trump, never spoken to him, including by telephone. The same goes for all of his staff—we don’t have any dealings with them."
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks is sticking with that line, telling the Washington Post on Thursday, “The campaign had no contact with Russian officials.”
Putin himself recently said that the notion that the Kremlin was trying to influence the election on Trump’s behalf was a falsehood perpetuated by the Clinton campaign and the pro-Democratic U.S. media. But not even his supporters seem to be buying that. Speaking to the Guardian on Wednesday, the well-connected pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov said that while Russia hadn’t influenced the outcome of the election, “maybe we helped a bit with WikiLeaks.”
We’ve seen this movie before. Putin flat out denied that there had been a planned operation by his government to use special forces to annex Crimea in early 2014, then by the next year was bragging about it. Whatever Russia’s exact role in this campaign was, the forthcoming Trump administration would probably prefer to keep it under wraps. Putin and his staff, however, may not be so reticent.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... paign.html
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 4:44 pm
Scared About Trump Wielding FBI And NSA Cyber Power? You Should Be
Thomas Fox-Brewster , FORBES STAFF
I cover crime, privacy and security in digital and physical forms.
NAPLES, FL – OCTOBER 23: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Collier County Fairgrounds on October 23, 2016 in Naples, Florida. Early voting in Florida in the presidential election begins October 24. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Americans are understandably anxious about the idea of Donald Trump wantonly wielding “The Cyber” to quiet his enemies, following his election to president today. The fear is manifesting and metastasizing fast on social media…
But whatever the future for non-white citizens, women, the climate and the free press in Trump’s America, the surveillance state of the U.S. will not immediately expand as a result of his ascent to power, at least from the perspective of the most powerful of the 17 intelligence agencies. That’s according to former National Security Agency staffers, including former deputy director Chris Inglis, who told FORBES prior to the election the NSA wouldn’t cave to excessive demands of any president: it’s first duty, he said, was to uphold the Constitution, not obey crazy demands. “Given an unlawful order… it must say ‘no.’”
Dave Aitel, a former NSA computer scientist, said it was unlikely the NSA would see any change in the near future. “There’s no reason to panic yet… It’s much less a concern with the NSA than the Department of Justice,” he said, pointing to Trump’s vocal support on the feds’ attempts to force tech companies like Apple into breaking their own security measures to get data on suspects.
FBI – a friend of Trump’s
Indeed, Trump’s relationship with the FBI will be of particular concern given James Comey’s much-criticized move to re-ignite the Clinton email scandal a week before the election, subsequently dropping any threat of another investigation two days ahead of the vote. The FBI will, it seems, be happy with a president who is so keen to shine a light on the “going dark” issue and encryption. Hillary Clinton’s plan, Aitel noted, was to do nothing.
Susan Hennessey, former counsel for the NSA, told FORBES she also believed a more immediate concern was how Trump might use the DoJ. The NSA, claimed Hennessey, had more safeguards in place than the FBI when it came to spying on individuals.
“The DoJ can investigate pretty much anyone they want to,” she told me, pointing to the threat of vindictive prosecutions and unjustified searches of people’s property. “I think… tremendous damage could be done with the DoJ.
“There’s a more immediate possibility for abuse at the DoJ and the FBI than at the NSA… We should not kid ourselves about the power and trust we vest in our president.”
Fear and hope over The Cyber
But, said Aitel, some of the executive orders designed to rein in the NSA in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks could be scrapped come January 1. That’s something that has concerned Jay Healey, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs specializing in cyber conflict. Healey said whilst there are checks and balances, in two years, it’d be easy for Trump to start changing laws to bend the NSA to his will. “With a friendly Congress, after two years, the laws could easily be changed to give much more scope,” he said. Trump could, for instance, rescind some of the restrictions put on the Patriot Act or limitations on the NSA’s bulk telephone surveillance.
Hennessey said that if Trump were to start rolling back Obama’s changes, the easiest target would be the executive order Presidential Policy Directive 28, which sought to offer more protection for foreign citizens from the NSA’s mass surveillance. “Because it is newer, it is easier to undo.” The Obama regime was last month accused by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on failing to deliver on PPD-28 anyway.
Whatever is coming, the intelligence agency could well be tested by the Trump regime, she presaged. “The NSA has some tremendously strong institutional protection, more importantly it is staffed by law abiding, honourable people. Those institutions and those people may be about to be tested in ways that they have never been tested before,” said Hennessey, who now works at the Brookings Institution. “While I hope and I pray they will pass that test, I don’t think anybody knows what is going to happen.”
Aitel had a more positive outlook than most, noting it was a good time to make decisions in cybersecurity that Obama’s regime has failed to deliver. Trump could come good on his promise to invigorate the U.S. Cyber Command, better known as CyberCom, an offensive cyber department currently located within the NSA. Trump could spur on CyberCom’s separation from the NSA and its march towards full capability, which has been criticized for its sluggishness, Aitel suggested.
He added: “We have an opportunity to make major steps. A lot of people are afraid of what those steps could be. Both candidates ran policy-free campaigns and it’s time for governance to happen.”
It will likely take a major disaster for Trump to start flexing what he calls “The Cyber,” said security expert Robert Graham. “NSA will be fine — until there’s something like another 9/11. Trump’s populism will then have little restraint to reshape it into a massively police state,” Graham told me.
Snowden himself has chimed in with a similar argument, posting a video from the year he leaked the NSA files. In it, he warned about a “turnkey tyranny,” where a new leader could “flip a switch” to allow itself huge surveillance power. The populace, he added, would be helpless to stop it.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:13 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:31 pm
Trump won, now protect yourself from the surveillance state
Donald Trump won the presidency. Now, among so much else, the United States and the world will have to contend with a vast, largely unaccountable system of surveillance which will be at his control.
The growth of that system isn’t confined to any ideology. It’s grown vastly under the Obama administration, and likely would’ve continued to grow under Hillary Clinton, and the American deep state is existentially invested in its maintenance and growth.
Under Trump this system will be at the hands of someone who has a history of eavesdropping on his guests at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, is reportedly tracking his “enemies” and has expressed plans to punish them. On the campaign trail he said he would “bomb the shit” out of ISIS in Middle Eastern countries (and then take their oil), and late last year he told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he’d be inclined to support the NSA’s vast metadata collection despite the fact he neither uses computers nor understands digital technology.
Trump also enters office in a country where surveillance, including digital surveillance, disproportionately affects minorities (part of a long, shameful history) and where speech, especially political speech, is increasingly surveilled. Trump’s administration will probably embolden a largely unaccountable FBI, NSA, and local authorities who target black people, muslims, latinx immigrants, and other marginalized groups.
As Conor Friedersdorf wrote in The Atlantic three years ago, a tyrant has all the infrastructure he needs. Trump has won and we’re now faced with the question of what he will do with that infrastructure.
On a policy level, there may be little you can now do, post-election day, but on a personal level, there are some ways you can protect yourself from easy surveillance.
First off, improve your passwords. Use a password vault app like 1password or LastPass so that you can easily generate a unique, gibberish password for every digital account that you don’t have to commit to memory.
If you haven’t yet, turn on 2-factor authentication for your email, for all social media, for everything. Two-factor means that beyond a password you need a second code sent to a device like your phone to log into an account. It’s system that has problems —determined hackers can get around it— and it’s not enough on its own, but it’s another layer of security.
If you have a website, switch to HTTPS, which is more secure than HTTP. If you visit websites, use extensions like HTTPS Everywhere, which will encrypt your browser’s communications with websites further.
Speaking of browsers and encryptions, download the Tor browser, which helps protect your web traffic by routing it through relays around the world. You should also get and learn how to use the Tails operating system, which you can run off of a USB stick or SD card, and which also uses the Tor network to circumvent potential surveillance.
Encrypt all your communications, too: Use encrypted messaging apps like Signal. It’s easy and will encrypt your messages and phone calls to other Signal users so that only you two are privy to the conversation. Facebook Messenger and iMessage can be encrypted, but use Signal, seriously. Facebook, Apple, and other corporations are much more beholden to the interests of the national security complex, and are ultimately companies that need to make a profit. Signal is open source and developed by volunteers. Also, be cognizant of your phone in general, since it knows where you are all the time. It’s less easy, but consider encrypting your email using PGP.
These steps matter not just for you, but for anyone you’re in contact with, so talk to your friends, family and colleagues. Security is a two-way street.
These are small steps, and ones it’d be prudent to follow under any circumstances. It may seem like a lot, but these are easy things to learn, and once put in place will, by default, help protect you not just from hackers but from a security state run amok.
Update: I should add (at least) one additional item. Cover the camera on your computer.
http://fusion.net/story/368351/trump-se ... dium=email
by Wombaticus Rex » Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:43 pm
by dada » Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:57 pm
Wombaticus Rex » Thu Nov 10, 2016 4:43 pm wrote:Gotta flatly disagree on that one.
1) You can't protect yourself from the surveillance state. You can complicate your daily routine, sign up for new/different honeypots, and even, bless your heart, spend money for premium services that will sell you out as surely as Eric Schmidt already did.
2) You've already been full spectrum captured by the surveillance state for years now. That's all searchable now.
3) Removing your content from that feed will render you more visible by your sudden absence.
4) Every one of us has already said enough to get arrested for any seditious thoughtcrime either football team would want to persecute us for in the decades to come.
Learning OpSec is good, very good. Won't save anyone from the Giuliani Raids, though.
Also, TOR is a military-owned proprietary software testing environment for distributed development. It's not "The Dark Web," it's the Quantico basement and nothing is invisible there to anyone but you, the end user.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 8:01 pm
U RESEARCHER: TRUMP UNIVERSITY LAWSUITS PRESENT POTENTIAL IMPEACHMENT CASE
NEW ANALYSIS UNVEILED TODAY BY UNIVERSITY OF UTAH S.J. QUINNEY COLLEGE OF LAW PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER L. PETERSON OUTLINES WHY THERE IS A LEGALLY SUFFICIENT CASE TO IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION ON CHARGES RELATED TO FRAUD AND RACKETEERING FOR PRIOR CONDUCT IF HE IS ELECTED PRESIDENT.
Sep 20, 2016
As the presidential race continues to heat up, a new legal analysis released today by University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law professor Christopher L. Peterson outlines why there is a legally sufficient case to impeach Republican nominee Donald Trump under the U.S. Constitution on charges related to fraud and racketeering for prior conduct if he is elected in November.
In an analysis titled “Trump University and Presidential Impeachment,” Peterson explores Trump’s actions as the leader of Trump University, a for-profit business founded in 2005 where students spent upwards of $30,000 to learn real estate development skills. Trump University advertised curriculum and instructors chosen by Trump, promising students a high-caliber and selective experience. In fact, according to Peterson, Trump University was an unaccredited and unlicensed series of get-rich-quick seminars provided by traveling salesmen. The school closed in 2010 and lawsuits—including one filed by the state of New York alleging Trump tricked students out of $40 million—are ongoing. (Two class action cases in California are also pending). Peterson asserts that Trump’s pending consumer protection lawsuits for fraud and racketeering will cast a shadow over his presidency if Trump wins the election and possibly be legally permissible grounds for impeachment should he be elected to the White House.
Peterson explains that under the U.S. Constitution, presidents can be impeached for bribery, treason or other high crimes and misdemeanors. He argues that fraud and racketeering—both of which are alleged as civil claims against Trump in the pending lawsuits—may qualify as impeachable high crimes or misdemeanors under the U.S. Constitution.
“In the United States, it is illegal for businesses to use false statements to convince consumers to purchase their services,” explains Peterson. “The evidence indicates that Trump University used a systemic pattern of fraudulent representations to trick thousands of families into investing in a program that can be argued was a sham.”
“Fraud and racketeering are serious crimes that legally rise to the level of impeachable acts,” Peterson adds.
Among points raised in Peterson’s analysis:
Fraud and racketeering are serious crimes. Both fraud and racketeering are considered felonies under state and federal law. First-degree fraud is punishable by up to four years in prison in Trump’s home state of New York. Racketeering is punishable by up to 20 years in prison under federal law.
Civil cases can legally inform Congress on whether impeachment is justified. The U.S. Constitution has never required criminal conviction prior to impeachment proceedings.
Impeachment for pre-incumbency conduct is legally permissible under the U.S. Constitution. Nothing in the Constitution’s text requires impeachable conduct to have occurred while the president is in office. The framers rejected alternative formulations of impeachable offenses that included limitations to incumbent activity.
Peterson’s analysis is among the first from a legal scholar offering an objective and professional analysis of these issues. Unlike other political issues currently subject to debate, the legal claims of fraud and racketeering in the Trump University cases have survived early judicial scrutiny and are likely to proceed to trial. Peterson’s research focuses on the Trump University cases—and not on the background of other presidential candidates—because the legal issues facing Trump align with his academic expertise.
A recognized authority on consumer protection cases, Peterson has frequently testified in Congressional hearings and has presented his research to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve Board of Governors and at the White House in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Peterson’s books include the Thompson/West casebook Consumer Law: Cases and Materials and Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market which won the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers’ outstanding book of the year prize. He is a consumer fellow of the American Bar Association’s Consumer Financial Services Committee. He is a recipient of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators’ Consumer Advocate of the Year award and the Department of Defense’s Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence—both bestowed in recognition of his role in promoting an Act of Congress and subsequently implementing regulations that protect military service members from predatory lending practices.
Peterson is currently the John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law where he teaches contracts, commercial law and consumer protection courses. From 2012 to 2016, he served as a special advisor in the Office of the Director at the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in the Office of Legal Policy for Personnel and Readiness in the United States Department of Defense and as Senior Counsel for Enforcement Policy and Strategy in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Enforcement.
He is available for media interviews about his latest research on Trump. Peterson’s research is available here.
http://unews.utah.edu/university-of-uta ... ald-trump/
Trump University and Presidential Impeachment
Christopher Lewis Peterson
University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law
September 20, 2016
Abstract:
In the final weeks of the 2016 Presidential campaign Donald J. Trump faces three lawsuits accusing him of fraud and racketeering. These ongoing cases focus on a series of wealth seminars called “Trump University” which collected over $40 million from consumers seeking to learn Trump’s real estate investing strategies. Although these consumer protection cases are civil proceedings, the underlying legal elements in several counts that plaintiffs seek to prove run parallel to the legal elements of serious crimes under both state and federal law. This essay provides a legal analysis of whether Trump’s alleged behavior would, if proven, rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the presidential impeachment clause of the United States Constitution. This essay begins with a summary of the evidence assembled in the three pending Trump University civil lawsuits. Next, it describes the legal claims involved in each matter. Then, this essay summarizes the applicable law of presidential impeachment under the United States Constitution and analyzes whether Trump’s actions in connection with Trump University are impeachable offenses. Finally, I offer concluding thoughts, considering in particular the policy implications of a major presidential campaign with simultaneously pending legal complaints of fraud and racketeering.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=2841306.
Published on
Thursday, November 10, 2016
byCommon Dreams
President-Elect Trump Heads to Office with 'Litigation Cloud Over His Head'
'Certainly no presidential candidate in modern times has potentially come to the office of president with such a litigation cloud hanging over his head'
byDeirdre Fulton, staff writer
Donald Trump's legal team is trying to exclude any statements made by or about their client during the presidential campaign from a trial over now-defunct Trump University. (Photo: Daniel Huizinga/flickr/cc)
President-elect Donald Trump is facing not only a divided electorate but also multiple legal battles, one of which heads to court just two days after his upset victory over Hillary Clinton.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel holds a pre-trial hearing in a class-action lawsuit over the now-defunct Trump University. The trial, at which Trump could testify, is set to begin November 28.
The 2010 lawsuit, which Reuters notes is one of three over the business venture, "was filed on behalf of students who say they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate investing 'secrets' from his 'hand-picked' instructors. Trump owned 92 percent of Trump University and had control over all major decisions, the students' court papers say."
Trump University "playbooks," unsealed in June, exposed how employees were instructed to "[prey] upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money," as one former sales manager put it.
Indiana-born Curiel, who is presiding over two of the three cases, was this summer the target of racist vitriol from Trump, who said the judge should recuse himself based on his "Mexican heritage"—which Trump said presented a conflict of interest due to the candidate's own repeated vows to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
The Associated Press reported of Thursday's hearing:
Among the flurry of requests from both sides is a highly unusual petition by Trump's legal team to exclude any statements made by or about their client during the presidential campaign.
The request would apply to Trump's tweets, a video of him making sexually predatory comments about women, his tax history, revelations about his private charitable foundation, and public criticisms about Curiel.
Reuters adds:
In addition, the celebrity-businessman's lawyers want to exclude evidence of instructors involved in bankruptcy proceedings, and the Better Business Bureau's ratings of Trump University, along with complaints it received.
Trump's lawyers argue the information is irrelevant to the jury and prejudicial to the case. Lawyers for the students disagree. In court papers, they claim that statements by the former Republican nominee would help jurors as they weigh Trump's credibility and whether he and his venture were deceptive.
Surviving the Trump Era
Meanwhile, other cases are pending. Vanity Fair reported:
The Trump University case isn't the only legal battle facing Trump as he prepares to take over the White House. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who filed another suit against Trump University in 2013, is currently investigating the hometown billionaire's namesake charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, for alleged "self-dealing" and other violations of the tax code governing nonprofit organizations. Last month, the attorney general's office ordered the Trump Foundation to cease fund-raising after finding the charity in violation of New York law. And Schneiderman's office isn't backing down now in the wake of Trump's victory, either. "The Trump University litigation continues to move through the appellate process," spokesperson Amy Spitalnick, told Politico in a statement Wednesday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also looking into one of Trump's closest aides, Paul Manafort, and his business ties to Russia. (Both Manafort and the Trump campaign have strenuously denied any wrongdoing.) According to a public letter from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the bureau has been withholding "explosive information" linking Trump and his top advisers to the Russian government.
And the Daily Beast adds to the tally:
Members of Trump's golf course in Jupiter, Florida, are currently suing the flaxen-haired businessman for $2.4 million for taking fees and dues while allegedly blocking admission to the actual club. A former employee of the same club brought a lawsuit last month, alleging she was unlawfully fired after reporting sexual harassment by a coworker.
"This is an extremely unusual situation," Stephen Kaufman, who specializes in political and election law, told Bloomberg. "Certainly no presidential candidate in modern times has potentially come to the office of president with such a litigation cloud hanging over his head."
While sitting presidents are shielded from litigation over acts made in an official capacity, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that presidents can still be sued for events that happened before they took office or are unrelated to their presidential duties.
"Taking the office would not protect Mr. Trump from lawsuits that have been filed against him already or lawsuits that could be filed against him for civil matters that arose before he became President," Kaufman said, before acknowledging that "there would be a mountain of logistical issues in trying to pursue" such claims.
Still, should the Trump University case not turn in the president-elect's favor—and as the San Diego Union-Tribune points out, jury composition will be an important factor—the implications could be serious.
As University of Utah law professor Christopher L. Peterson argued in a recent analysis (pdf): "In the United States, it is illegal for businesses to use false statements to convince consumers to purchase their services. The evidence indicates that Trump University used a systemic pattern of fraudulent representations to trick thousands of families into investing in a program that can be argued was a sham."
And, Peterson continued: "Fraud and racketeering are serious crimes that legally rise to the level of impeachable acts."http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/10/president-elect-trump-heads-office-litigation-cloud-over-his-head
by 8bitagent » Fri Nov 11, 2016 4:49 am
by tapitsbo » Fri Nov 11, 2016 5:34 am
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