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by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:17 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 23, 2016 12:06 pm
Law Prof: Impeach Trump IMMEDIATELY If He Beats Clinton
ERIC OWENS
Education Editor
4:50 PM 09/21/2016
Trump Reuters/Jim Bourg Trump Reuters/Jim Bourg
A Utah law professor is calling for the prompt impeachment of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the event that Trump wins the 2016 election.
The professor, Christopher Peterson, is the John J. Flynn endowed professor of law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in Salt Lake City.
According to Peterson, enough evidence of Trump’s serious misconduct exists for Congress to impeach Trump without delay.
Trump has previously engaged in fraud and racketeering, Peterson says, and these crimes meet the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” imposed under Article II of the United States Constitution.
The professor lays out his case in a scholarly article entitled “Trump University and Presidential Impeachment.”
The 23-page paper — published on Tuesday — focuses on Trump’s leadership of the now-defunct Trump University. Before going under, the unaccredited, for-profit real estate investment training program charged participants up to $30,000 each in fees.
Peterson describes Trump University as an “unlicensed series of get-rich-quick seminars provided by traveling salesmen.”
Trump is currently fending off civil fraud lawsuits against Trump University by a host of former Trump University students. The lawsuits allege consumers were scammed into spending thousands of dollars on the classes with deceptive promises of wealth. (RELATED: Trump University Students Say They Were Pressured To Give Rave Reviews)
“In the United States, it is illegal for businesses to use false statements to convince consumers to purchase their services,” he adds. “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.”
Peterson notes that fraud and racketeering are federal — and state — felonies, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Congress can impeach a president for crimes committed before a president is sworn in, Peterson also observes, and members of Congress can consider civil case findings when determining the propriety of impeachment.
One of Trump’s tactics in response to the multimillion-dollar lawsuits has been to suggest that a judge in one of the lawsuits is “hostile” toward Trump because the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, is Hispanic and Trump wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.
Curiel was born in East Chicago, Indiana in 1953.
Peterson specializes in consumer finance. From 2012 to 2016, he served as a special adviser for the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has received a Department of Defense commendation for helping to craft legislation protecting military service members from predatory lenders. After graduating law school at the University of Utah, he clerked for Wade Brorby, an appellate judge appointed by Ronald Reagan.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/21/law-p ... z4L5yXkwid
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 23, 2016 2:30 pm
by tapitsbo » Fri Sep 23, 2016 4:30 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 23, 2016 5:11 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 23, 2016 5:52 pm
EBOOT
Silicon Valley Money Floods to Hillary After Facebook Fat Cat Revealed as Secret Trumpkin
The Daily Beast revealed Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey as a Trump “shitposting” sugar daddy. Now the Virtual Reality community is coming out hard for Hillary Clinton.
GIDEON RESNICK
BEN COLLINS
09.23.16 3:50 PM ET
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Oculus Rift developers are donating to Hillary Clinton in direct response to news that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is backing a political action group pushing “shitposts” on behalf of Donald Trump.
Some developers are even pulling support for the Oculus Rift and refusing to continue game development on the platform until Luckey is removed from Facebook, where Luckey’s LinkedIn states he’s worked since he sold Oculus VR to the social media juggernaut for $2 billion in 2014.
A Daily Beast investigation revealed that Luckey, who sold Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, used the pseudonym “NimbleRichMan” to act as the vice president of Nimble America, which is dedicated to making pro-Trump “meme magic.” A spokesperson for the organization said it had raised $11,000 before a Saturday fundraising round on Reddit.
Edward “E” McNeill, who won the 2013 Oculus VR Jam (a contest for early Oculus developers) and created the Oculus Rift launch title Darknet, told The Daily Beast he donated $1,000 to the Clinton campaign directly in response to Luckey’s actions. He then posted a receipt of his donation on Twitter and Reddit.
“I think that Palmer has the right to spend his money as he sees fit. And so do I,” McNeill said. “If he’s going to put his VR money toward supporting Trump, then I’ll put my VR money toward supporting Clinton. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
McNeill said he hopes the donation will spur more developers to take action. “The donation drive was a shot in the dark, and we’ll see if it gains any traction,” he said.
Now, other members of the VR community are joining in.
In the aftermath of the story posting, Logan Olson—who developed SoundStage, which allows users to make music in virtual reality—announced that all profits from SoundStage in the ensuing 24 hours would go to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“I want the VR/AR community to be a diverse and inclusive group who welcomes progress, and Trump is the antithesis of those values,” Olson wrote in a direct message on Twitter to The Daily Beast.
Ian Bogost, a video game designer and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote an incisive piece in response to the revelation for The Atlantic, in which he tied Luckey to a series of individuals who sought revenge on the people who essentially excluded them in some capacity.
“America’s long dream of electing a business leader as president (Perot, Romney, Trump, etc.) dovetails so well with Silicon Valley’s belief in entrepreneurial success as the ultimate sign of prowess and competence,” Bogost writes. “It’s more surprising that everyone in the Valley doesn’t support Trump than that [PayPal co-founder Peter] Thiel and Luckey do.”
When reached by email Bogost said that Luckey may have complicated the situation by making his participation somewhat mysterious.
“I certainly think Thiel’s support of Hulk Hogan against Gawker was a kind of precedent… but not entirely similar,” he said, referencing the now-infamous involvement of a billionaire funding a war against a publication he did not like. “An interesting thought experiment: had Luckey just donated $1m (or whatever) to Trump’s campaign directly, wouldn’t the reaction have been totally different? It’s this sense of direct but shrouded cynical cloak-and-dagger work against governance as such that feels new.”
He wasn’t so certain that this would have immediate damaging ramifications for Oculus however.
“A number of smaller game developers have already asserted their intentions to remove Oculus support from their games until Luckey resigns from Oculus VR,” Bogost said. “But this is largely a symbolic act. Oculus has already helped establish the VR marketplace, and besides that, the vast majority of people probably won’t notice.”
As Motherboard reported, a slew of virtual reality game developers have already backed away from Oculus less than a day after the news broke—some even insisting they’ll withdraw support until Luckey is no longer associated with Oculus VR.
“Insomniac Games condemns all forms of hate speech,” the makers of “Ratchet and Clank” and game-developers for Oculus told Motherboard. “While everyone has a right to express his or her political opinion, the behavior and sentiments reported do not reflect the values of our company. We are also confident that this behavior and sentiment does not reflect the values of the many Oculus employees we work with on a daily basis.”
Tomorrow Today Labs, a VR game studio out of Seattle, tweeted: “Hey @oculus, @PalmerLuckey’s actions are unacceptable. NewtonVR will not be supporting the Oculus Touch as long as he is employed there.”
“Palmer Luckey’s behavior is unacceptable,” Adrienne Hunter, co-founder of the Tomorrow Today Labs, said in an email to The Daily Beast. “This is the opposite of promoting inclusion in our industry, and the absolute worst way to lead by example. Oculus SDK support for NewtonVR has been shelved, and any VR tools or games we release in the future will not support Oculus products as long as Palmer Luckey is employed at Facebook/Oculus.”
Scruta Games, a Philadelphia-based company, shared the sentiment in a tweet from their company account
“Until @PalmerLuckey steps down from his position at @oculus, we will be cancelling Oculus support for our games.”
McNeill said he likely won’t boycott the company “based on the politics of its founder.”
“I’ve had a great experience with Oculus over the years—including working with a lot of good people working there—and I like the products that they’ve built,” he said. “I’ll keep working with them. But this sure as hell doesn’t make me feel better about it.”
And despite some Twitter abuse for making his donation public, McNeill is proud he made his Thursday night impulse donation—and did so publicly.
“So far, I’ve gotten a few encouraging responses from other devs, plus someone accusing me of treason and a guy on Twitter telling me to ‘gas myself.’ But not much more than that,’” said McNeill. “I’m happy with my donation, either way.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... mpkin.html
by seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 24, 2016 9:19 am
DONALD TRUMP EITHER LIED TO THE REPUBLICANS OR BROKE THE LAW (EXCLUSIVE)
BY KURT EICHENWALD ON 9/23/16 AT 12:51 PM
Donald Trump committed perjury. Or he looked into the faces of the Republican faithful and knowingly lied. There is no third option.
It has become an accepted reality of this presidential campaign that Trump spins a near-endless series of falsehoods. For months, the media has struggled with this unprecedented situation—a candidate who, unlike other politicians who stretch the truth, simply creates his own reality. Trumps regularly peddles “facts” that aren’t true, describes events that never happened or denies engaging in actions that everyone saw him do. He utters his falsehoods so fast that before reporters have the chance to correct one, he has tossed out five or six more.
This time, it is different. Trump can’t skip past his perfidy here. There are two records—one, a previously undisclosed deposition of the Republican nominee testifying under oath, and the second a transcript/video of a Republican presidential debate. In them, Trump tells contradictory versions of the same story with the clashing accounts tailored to provide what he wanted people to believe when he was speaking.
This fib matters far more than whether Trump was honest about why he abandoned his birther movement or the corollary fib that Hillary Clinton started the racist story that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In the lie we are examining here, Trump either committed a felony or proved himself willing to deceive his followers whenever it suits him.
Trump told the public version of this story last year, during the second Republican presidential debate.
Trump had been boasting for weeks at his rallies that he knew the political system better than anyone, because he had essentially bought off politicians for decades by giving them campaign contributions when he wanted something. He also proclaimed that only he—as an outsider who had participated in such corruption of American democracy at a high level—could clean it up. During the September 2015 debate, one of Trump’s rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, verified Trump’s claim, saying the billionaire had tried to buy him off with favors and contributions when he was Florida’s governor.
"The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something—that was generous and gave me money—was Donald Trump,” Bush said. “He wanted casino gambling in Florida."
Trump interrupted Bush:
Trump: I didn’t—
Bush: Yes, you did.
Trump: Totally false.
Bush: You wanted it, and you didn’t get it, because I was opposed to—
Trump: I would have gotten it.
Bush: Casino gambling before—
Trump: I promise, I would have gotten it.
Bush: During and after. I’m not going to be bought by anybody.
Trump: I promise, if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.
Bush: No way. Believe me.
Trump: I know my people.
Bush: Not even possible.
Trump: I know my people.
If Trump was telling the truth that night, so be it. But if he was lying, what was his purpose? His “If I wanted it, I would have gotten it,” line may be a hint. Contrary to his many vague stories on the campaign trail about being a cash-doling political puppet master, this story has a name, a specific goal and ends in failure. If Bush was telling the truth, then Trump would have had to admit he lost a round and, as he assured the audience, that would not have happened. When he wants something, he gets it.
But that wasn’t the point he needed to make in 2007. The deposition was part of a lawsuit he’d filed against Richard Fields, whom Trump had hired to manage the expansion of his casino business into Florida. In the suit, Trump claimed that Fields had quit and taken all of the information he obtained while working for Trump to another company. Under oath, Trump said he did want to get into casino gambling in Florida but didn’t because he had been cheated by Fields.
A lawyer asked Trump, “Did you yourself do anything to obtain any of the details with respect to the Florida gaming environment, what approvals were needed and so forth?”
Trump: A little bit.
Lawyer: What did you do?
Trump: I actually spoke with Governor-elect Bush; I had a big fundraiser for Governor-elect Bush…and I think it was his most successful fundraiser, the most successful that he had had up until that point, that was in Trump Tower in New York on Fifth Avenue.
Lawyer: When was that?
Trump: Sometime prior to his election.
Lawyer: You knew that Governor Bush, Jeb Bush at that time, was opposed to expansion of gaming in Florida, didn't you?
Trump: I thought that he could be convinced otherwise.
Lawyer: But you didn't change his mind about his anti-gaming stance, did you?
Trump: Well, I never really had that much of an opportunity because Fields resigned, telling me you could never get what we wanted done, only to do it for another company.
One of these stories is a lie—a detailed, self-serving fabrication. But unlike the mountain of other lies he has told, this time the character trait that leads to Trump’s mendacity is on full display: He makes things up when he doesn’t want to admit he lost.
Assume the story he told at the debate is the lie. Even though Bush’s story reinforced what Trump was saying at rallies—he had played the “cash for outcomes” political game for years—he could not admit he had tried to do the same in Florida because he could not bring himself to say that he had lost. Instead, he looked America in the eye and lied. And then he felt compelled to stack on another boast: His people are so wonderful that they would have gotten casino gambling in Florida, regardless of Bush’s opposition—if Trump had wanted it.
Now consider the other option, that Trump committed perjury in the 2007 testimony. There, he admitted pushing for casino gambling in Florida, but said he would have gotten what he wanted if he hadn’t been tricked by Fields. The rationale for the perjurious testimony is simple—Trump wants money from a man who stopped working for him and, once again, the story lets him deny he is anything less than perfect.
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No question, these two stories must be investigated if there is ever a President Trump. In their impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about an extramarital affair, Republicans established the standard that failing to tell the truth while testifying—even in the most understandable of circumstances—rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Surely, perjury for pecuniary purposes or to inflate one’s self-image cannot be ignored.
Finally, the lie here matters because it shows how shameless Trump is and how reckless. He told this lie even though he knew he was standing next to a credible witness—Bush—who could contradict him, and he gambled that no one would discover his sworn testimony.
Trump’s penchant for this type of baldfaced lying could undermine American foreign policy—when he meets with a foreign official, will he try to deceive the world about what happened? That question already came into play in early September when Trump flew to Mexico to talk with that country’s president in a bizarre publicity stunt. He came out of the meeting and declared the two had never discussed his signature issue—that he would compel the Mexican government to pay for a wall along America’s southern border. Before an hour passed, a Mexican official declared that Trump’s statement was false, and that President Enrique Peña Nieto had told the Republican nominee that his country would never pony up the cash for the wall. Either Trump lied or Peña Nieto did. The government of Mexico—one of America’s most important trading partners and allies—knows whether a President Trump will be trustworthy or will lie out of convenience, on matters large or small. Shouldn’t the American public know the same before it votes in November?
Trump must be called upon to answer the troubling questions raised by the episode regarding Bush and gambling in Florida: Is the Republican nominee a perjurer or just a liar? If he refuses to answer—just as he has refused to address almost every other question about his character and background—Trump supporters must carefully consider whether they want to vote for a man who at best has treated them like fools over the past year and at worst committed a crime
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-je ... ing-502144
by seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 24, 2016 9:59 am
What every New Yorker knows about Donald Trump
By Garrison Keillor September 21
I know, it seems outrageous,
But it’s getting a lot of attention
On some very respectable Web pages —
Which mainstream media won’t mention:
Donald Trump was not born in Queens,
He was born in the Philippines,
In a hotel in downtown Manila.
Where his hair turned bright vanilla
Due to vitamin deficiencies.
His mom and dad were Celanese
And left him with Franciscan nuns
At the age of 14 months.
Adopted on the third of June
By a real estate tycoon
Who took the little boy away
To a mansion in the USA
Bestowing on him great largesse
And naturalized him more or less.
The record of his nativity
Is kept under lock and key
With his tax returns, the MRIs
Showing what’s behind his eyes
Including, according to rumor,
A diverticulated tumor.
I hope it isn’t true, although
It comes from folks who ought to know.
A week ago, a panhandler in Times Square sat holding a sign reading, “Give me a dollar or I’ll vote for Trump,” and people laughed and reached into their pockets. His bucket overflowed. He stuffed the bills into his jacket, and other panhandlers looked at him with admiration. The man could’ve sold franchises and retired to Palm Beach.
The panhandler knows what every New Yorker knows, which is that the biggest con job since the Trojan horse is taking place in our midst. Millions of Americans are planning to cast their votes for a man who has lived his life contrary to all of their most cherished values. They are respectful, honest, generous, loyal, modest, church-going people with no Mafia connections and good credit records who try not to spout off about things they know nothing about.
His followers out on the prairie were brought up to be wary of slick-talking New Yorkers but here they are, falling right into line behind the biggest braggart ever to hit the sawdust trail. It’s going to be an education for them, watching him cut taxes while expanding the military and building a wall and deporting 11 million people. In America, you can’t send gendarmes through the streets to round up people in trucks and load them on boxcars and ship them away. There is a judicial process. Lawyers are involved. People have certain rights.
His boast after the Manhattan pressure-cooker bombing Saturday night was revelatory. “I called it!” he cried on Fox News, as he had after the Orlando nightclub shooting. It would’ve been classier for him to have congratulated New York’s Finest but instead he took it as a personal coup.
What the bombing showed was the courage and smarts of the NYPD, arriving on the scene in time to defuse a second bomb, identify a suspect and track him down Monday morning. “We’ve got to be very, very tough,” cried the candidate out in Colorado, but back in New York, the work was being done by people who know how to do it.
Ah, chutzpah! There was once a mayor of New York who overruled the NYPD and the Secret Service and put the city’s Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of the World Trade Center, and whose emergency plan for the towers led to massive confusion and miscommunication, with some desperate people directed to climb up and others told to stay put, as the mayor stood in the streets below and urged residents to be calm, and thereby became a national hero and started his own security consulting company. This is like the captain of the Titanic, had he survived, writing a book called “The Art of Navigation.” The mayor is now a close Trump adviser.
Trump is a man whom few Republicans would care to invite into their homes. So what’s going on here? An epidemic of hippocampus poisoning from bad enzymes in cheap beers? The man is a fraud, a compulsive liar and a clueless playboy whose presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. If you would make us the laughingstock of the world just to irk your liberal sister-in-law, you are someone who should not be allowed to come within 500 yards of an elementary school.
The success of Trump would show our children the exact value of education, which is: not that much. It would mean that fact-based journalism had very little bearing in America and a Manila-born Celanese child could aspire to the highest office in the land. So here’s a dollar in the beggar’s bucket. Good luck to democracy. Hang in there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 57f2cc4151
by seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 24, 2016 10:48 am
Tim Wise on the Chauncey DeVega Show 8/19/16 – Trump, White Resentment, Electoral Politics and Crime (Among Other Things)
Posted on September 18, 2016
My appearance on the Chauncey DeVega Show, from August 19 — forgot to post earlier. Here we discuss the bright line connections between the David Duke campaigns of the early 90s and the Donald Trump campaign of 2016: what’s similar, what’s different, and what are the dangers ahead…Also we discuss broader issues of white racial resentment, the politics of race and crime, movement building and the unfortunate inadequacy of pure logic and facts when it comes to political organizing…among other things…
http://www.timwise.org/2016/09/tim-wise ... er-things/
Viral Video Explains How Elites Have Used Racism to Divide and Conquer… in 3 MinutesZach Cartwright | March 15, 2016
Anti-racist commentator Tim Wise perfectly explains how Trump is so successful in just three minutes. According to Wise, Trump’s meteoric ascension to the top of the polls is just the latest in a centuries-long trend.
“When we look around and we see today, in our politics, a rich white man telling working-class white people that their problem is brown people,” Tim Wise begins, “we need to understand the historical pedigree of that.”
Wise explained that whiteness, a concept born in the 17th century, is a power structure that relies on dividing and conquering people of European descent. In the early days of the colonies, black slaves and indentured servants shared solidarity with white slaves and indentured servants, as both were property of elite landowners. Through this kinship, black and white slaves and indentured servants took part in various armed uprisings.
But those landowners soon realized that their grip on power could be solidified by giving white-skinned indentured servants power over black slaves by creating a race-based hierarchy.
“They created this mentality that said, ‘You’re now a member of the white race, you’re on our team. You’re wearing our uniform. Now, you’re at the end of the bench, you may not get in the game, but you’re on our team,'” Wise explained.
After creating the concept of whiteness, wealthy landowners deputized poor whites to go on slave patrols to police black slaves to quell any inkling of rebellion.
“They didn’t really give them any land or any real power, except the power to control people of color, which is why folks of color say — and they are right in saying — that modern policing traces to the system of slave patrols in slavery,” Wise said.
“Even though you might not have much, at least you’re not black. At least you’re not indigenous. At least you’re not Mexican. At least you’re not Chinese, working on the railroads to build the transcontinental economy,” Wise said around the two-minute mark of the video. “You may not have much, but you at least have, as W.E.B. DuBois said, the ‘psychological wage of whiteness.'”
Wise further contextualized Trump’s popularity by alluding to how white landowners convinced poor whites in the South to fight for the cause of slavery in the Civil War, even though those people would have jobs if slavery ceased to exist.
“Why would you do that? Why would I go fight for your property? Well because you told me that if I don’t, these slaves are gonna take my job! No, fool, they got your job, that’s the point!” Wise said. “If you gotta charge a dollar a day, and you can make them work for free because you own ’em, guess who got the gig, Jack? Not you!”
Wise further illustrated how racism undermined the class struggle in the early days of the industrial revolution, when white union bosses discouraged black membership, even though it would have strengthened their bargaining position.
“When you go out on strike, they can’t replace your happy ass with the brown folk that you didn’t want next to you in the first place. Because when they do replace you with them, then you will blame them, and not the elites,” Wise said.
“You see how this works? It’s a trick. It has worked for hundreds of years and it is working on some folk right now, and it is our job to resist that with every fiber of our being,” he concludes.
This is not the first time a Trump has come along, and it probably won’t be the last. Thankfully, Tim Wise and so many other activists are there to peel the mask back on this hateful rhetoric.
http://usuncut.com/politics/tim-wise-donald-trump/
by seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 24, 2016 11:32 am
Trump foreign policy advisor reportedly being probed for ties to Russia
Christine Wang | @christiiineeee
17 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
Carter Page, an adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the graduation ceremony for the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia, Friday, July 8, 2016. Page is a former investment banker who previously worked in Russia.
Pavel Golovkin | AP
Carter Page, an adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the graduation ceremony for the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia, Friday, July 8, 2016. Page is a former investment banker who previously worked in Russia.
One of Donald Trump's foreign policy advisors is being probed by U.S. intelligence officials to determine whether he has had private discussions with senior Russian officials, Yahoo News reported, citing sources.
In particular, members of the intelligence community are concerned that Carter Page has spoken with the Kremlin about the possibility of lifting economic sanctions on Russia, sources told Yahoo.
Page and Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The report comes amid growing concerns that Moscow may be trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. On Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff of California issued a joint statement expressing their concern about Russian hacking and called on President Vladimir Putin "to immediately order a halt to this activity."
"Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election," Feinstein and Schiff said. "At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election—we can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians."
Feinstein is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Schiff is a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/23/trump-fo ... ussia.html
Feds investigating Trump advisor’s meeting with Russian officials seeking to influence U.S. election
Harry Reid wrote the FBI, demanding action.
Carter Page, an adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the graduation ceremony for the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia, Friday, July 8, 2016. Page is a former investment banker who previously worked in Russia. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PAVEL GOLOVKIN
U.S. law enforcement is looking into Donald Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page’s meetings with high-ranking Russian officials this summer, Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff reports.
Page, who Trump said was one of his five foreign policy advisors last March, is suspected of communicating with “senior Russian officials” about “the possible lifting of economic sanctions” if Trump becomes president, Yahoo reports, citing “multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue.”
One of the officials Page allegedly met with, Igor Diveykin, is “believed by U.S. officials to have responsibility for intelligence collected by Russian agencies about the U.S. election.” Russia is widely believed to be behind high-profile computer hacks that appear timed to influence the presidential election.
ThinkProgress obtained a letter from Sen. Harry Reid to the FBI, dated August 27, demanding an investigation into Page’s contacts with the Russians. Reid’s letter refers to Page as a “Trump advisor” with “investments in Russian energy conglomerate Gazprom.”
Page worked in Russia for Merrill Lynch for three years starting in 2004. Sergey Aleksashenko, who became head of the bank’s Moscow operation in 2006, told Reuters last month that he viewed Trump’s selection of Page as “a strange choice.”
Page traveled to Russia this summer and gave a speech criticizing U.S. foreign policy. From Yahoo:
Page showed up again in Moscow in early July, just two weeks before the Republican National Convention formally nominated Trump for president, and once again criticized U.S. policy. Speaking at a commencement address for the New Economic School, an institution funded in part by major Russian oligarchs close to Putin, Page asserted that “Washington and other West capitals” had impeded progress in Russia “through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.”
Page isn’t the only Trump advisor whose connections to Russia have come under scrutiny. Last December, retied Gen. Michael Flynn, a prominent Trump military advisor, traveled to Russia and gave a speech during a tenth anniversary celebration for Russian state-owned media company RT. He’s refused to answer questions about who paid him for the appearance.
In March, Trump hired veteran Republican political operative Paul Manafort to lead his delegate-recruitment efforts. Manafort quickly rose to become Trump’s campaign manager, but left that position last month amid reports Ukrainian authorities were investigating him for allegedly receiving $12.7 million in illegal payments from Ukraine’s former pro-Russia ruling party.
During a news conference a month before Manafort stepped down, Trump brazenly encouraged Russian hackers to obtain emails deleted from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Those comments came in the wake of a massive hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails that sparked controversy about how the party treated Bernie Sanders days ahead of the Democratic National Convention. State election databases have also reportedly been hacked.
On Thursday, the top Democrats on the intelligence committee pinned those hacks on Russian intelligence. A joint statement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Adam Schiff said, “Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election.”
“At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election — we can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians,” the statement continues, going on to say “that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such actions could come only from very senior levels of the Russian government.”
Trump, for his part, downplayed reports that Russia might be trying to meddle in American politics during an interview that aired earlier this month on the Russia-run RT network.
Trump has praised Putin, calling the man presiding over a country where opposition leaders have been killed under mysterious circumstances “highly respected within his own country and beyond.” During a presidential forum broadcast on NBC earlier this month, Trump said that if Putin “says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him” and commended Putin’s high approval ratings in Russia — a country known for stifling dissident journalists.
Around the same time as the forum, Trump surrogates, including campaign vice presidential nominee Mike Pence and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, defended Trump’s praise of Putin during TV interviews. Both echoed Trump’s statement that Putin is a stronger leader than President Obama.
In the Yahoo report, Trump spokesman Jason Miller says Page “has no role” in Trump’s campaign, adding, “we are not aware of any of his activities, past or present.” But Miller couldn’t explain why Trump would’ve cited him as an advisor in the past. And as recently as last month, Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks described Carter as an “informal foreign advisor.”
The full text of Reid’s letter is below:
https://thinkprogress.org/feds-investig ... .ka7vjlqir
by JackRiddler » Sat Sep 24, 2016 10:09 pm
by Nordic » Sun Sep 25, 2016 12:46 am
JackRiddler » Sat Sep 24, 2016 9:09 pm wrote:Impeach Trump? Immediately? No.
The last thing reasonable people should want is Trump winning, I suppose I have to agree. But the second-to-last would surely be seeing such an outcome morph into President Pence by February. If Trump wins, it's a fight, and quite possibly the good guys win. I'd prefer a late impeachment, lest we get the setup for a Pence reelection. But as I've made clear: I'd Rather Fight Her! (Which sentiment shouldn't be confused with my voting for anyone other than Jill Stein.)
by 8bitagent » Sun Sep 25, 2016 2:02 am
by 8bitagent » Sun Sep 25, 2016 2:07 am
Gennifer Flowers Accepts Trump’s Invitation to Attend Debate
by seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 25, 2016 8:00 am
POLITICS
Donald Trump’s Properties Were Sued At Least Eight Times For Disabilities Violations
Trump dragged some cases out for years.
09/23/2016 11:41 am ET
9.4k
Ben Walsh
Business Reporter, The Huffington Post
FRANK FRANKLIN II/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City on May 31, 2016. In 2004, a disabled Purple Heart veteran sued the property, alleging it lacked proper handicapped-accessible emergency exits, guest rooms and restrooms.
At least eight times over the last 19 years, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s properties have been subject to lawsuits for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, court records show. Additionally, a federal inspection found ADA violations at one of his properties.
Only once did Trump come close to winning, in a suit that was dismissed at the request of both sides. Five of the cases were settled, while two ended in consent decrees requiring building modifications and one met its end in a Trump property bankruptcy.
When a disabled Purple Heart veteran filed a lawsuit in 2004 alleging that the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York lacked proper handicapped-accessible emergency exits, guest rooms and restrooms, Trump dragged the case out for three years. He tried to get the lawsuit dismissed and counter-sued his own architects to try and shift liability to them, but a judge dismissed that attempt. Trump eventually settled and agreed to make changes to the hotel.
“What was so striking and frankly appalling was the way he tried to fight [the violations],” said Helena Berger, the president and CEO of the nonprofit American Association of People with Disabilities. “That, I think, is really telling.”
What was so striking and frankly appalling was the way he tried to fight [the violations].
Helena Berger, American Association of People with Disabilities.
Still, after Trump mocked a New York Times reporter with arthrogryposis last November, the reality TV star defended himself by pointing out how much money he’d spent on accessibility in his hotels. “I spend millions a year, or millions of dollars on ramps,” he said in July, “and get rid of the stairs and different kinds of elevators all over and I’m gonna mock? I would never do that.”
Spending that money is a legal requirement: The Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990, requires that buildings and spaces used by the public meet specific disability access standards.
“It is the policy at all of our properties to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Christine Da Silva, a Trump Hotels spokeswoman, told The Huffington Post. “This handful of cases, many of which are over ten years old, are not representative of our organization’s strong record of ADA compliance.”
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Still, the cases do show that Trump has, at times, been less than enthusiastic about spending money to bring his buildings into compliance with federal law.
For example, in 2001, two wheelchair users alleged that the wheelchair lift at Trump International was kept locked, and the employee who eventually unlocked it couldn’t operate it. In court records, one of the plaintiffs, Robert Levine, said the experience made him feel like a “second class citizen.” The other plaintiff, Frieda Zames, said it was like being a “grade school child asking permission to go to the restroom.”
As in the 2004 lawsuit, after a judge denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case, Trump counter-sued his architect to try to shift liability. Trump “amicably settled” the 2001 case in 2009, when both he and the plaintiffs agreed to dismiss the complaint.
Emily Munson, a disability rights lawyer, told HuffPost that she understands the building owner’s perspective in ADA cases. The requirements are exhaustive and violations can be very technical, compared to more substantive problems, Munson said. “On the other hand,” she added, “businesses have had over a quarter century to come into compliance with the ADA.”
Trump, she said, “clearly sees people with disabilities as sick or in need of charity and pity, rather than people with rights who deserve to be out and about and accessing the community.”
Trump “clearly sees people with disabilities as sick or in need of charity and pity, rather than people with rights who deserve to be out and about and accessing the community.”
Disability rights lawyer Emily Munson
Trump’s Atlantic City Plaza Hotel has also come under fire for its basic and serious deficiencies in accessibility. In a 1997 suit, James Conlon, who is paraplegic, said that even though he stayed in a designated handicapped-accessible room at the hotel, the toilets and showers were unusable for someone in a wheelchair, and the public restrooms were so inaccessible that he had to ask strangers to help him use them.
Trump settled the case a year later, agreeing to pay Conlon’s legal fees and renovate the hotels rooms and public restrooms to comply with federal law. But a year after that, Conlon told the judge in the case that the renovations Trump had agreed to hadn’t been done.
Two additional complaints were brought against the Plaza Hotel in 2007 and 2008. The plaintiffs in the former agreed to dismiss the case, and the latter case was terminated by Trump’s company’s 2009 bankruptcy.
Conlon also brought a case in 2003 alleging that the bus between New York and the Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino wasn’t accessible and that wheelchair access could only be provided with one week’s notice. Trump tried counter-suing the bus provider, but eventually settled Conlon’s case.
Another Trump hotel in Atlantic City, the Trump Taj Mahal, settled with the Department of Justice in 2011 after an inspection by the U.S. Attorney’s Office showed numerous violations, including not posting signs on some disabled parking spots.
But the cases aren’t limited to Trump’s tri-state area properties. In 2011, a guest at the Trump International Miami ― which the reality star doesn’t own but licenses his name to ― alleged that his designated accessible room had accessibility problems. The case was confidentially settled.
And in response to a lawsuit in 2014, the Trump National Doral Miami golf course said making its pool accessible to disabled users would be “impose an undue burden.” Trump and the plaintiff agreed to enter into a consent decree four months after the suit was filed.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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