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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Remember Rod Rosenstein's "The Department of Justice will not be extorted", "I will not violate my oath" comments?
Well, the NYT, reported that he and other high up officials in the Justice Department believe that they want this information so they can give it to the president's legal team.
I feel like this is important, but I wonder what the implications of this will be. Congress trying to use it's oversight power to Obstruct an ongoing investigation. This is new.
edited 7th May '18 2:59:23 PM by megaeliz
So in semi-fluff news, John McCain has officially requested that Trump not attend his funeral in preference for Pence, and Orrin Hatch called such a request "ridiculous", saying that "He's the President of the United States. He's a very good man. But it's up to John. I think John should have his wishes fulfilled with regard to who attends his funeral."
And he would, if given the opportunity, try to convince McCain otherwise.
This part in particular is so fucking blind to Trump that I'm now convinced that Hatch is such a Professional Butt-Kisser that his head is lodged firmly up Trump's rear - "He would be a very interesting speaker and would do a good job for John," Hatch said before noting that he hopes McCain recovers from his brain cancer and returns to work.
Gee, I can't fucking imagine why McCain might not want to invite the person who continually ridiculed him - both for getting captured as a soldier (while the mocker got multiple deferments from the same war) and for not toeing the party line - to his funeral
edited 7th May '18 5:11:16 PM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"![]()
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Does anyone have any ideas for how this will go down?
It looks like Rosenstein and the DOJ's offensive on this is that they believe that Nunes and his buddies are trying to use their oversight authority to extort the Justice Department and obstruct an ongoing investigation, as supported by the NY Times reporting, but as far as I know, their is no precedent for how to respond to that.
edited 7th May '18 5:23:03 PM by megaeliz
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Eh. If Mc Cain had ever, you know, did anything about Russian interference or fighting extremism in the senate instead of just talking, I'd care more. Trump can dance on his grave for all I care.
edited 7th May '18 5:21:48 PM by JBC31187
So this is basically a public confession of obstructing.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.Trump seems to have realized that if Blankenship wins the nomination in West Virginia, the GOP will blow any chance of unseating Manchin.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/07/politics/donald-trump-don-blankenship-west-virginia/index.html
Torn here. While Blankenship is even worse than Moore (his actions led to the death of almost 30 people), the Dems need every seat they can get...but if he gets the nomination you run the risk of that scum getting in the Senate (even though the GOP might refuse to seat him as a Republican. Oh who are we kidding, they'll seat him....).
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Because they're all grotesques straight out of Arkham Asylum.
I live like 30 miles away from West Virginia's largest river port and everyone is trying to figure out how they got stuck with these guys.
At this point, the drug lords in the region would be better candidates.
edited 7th May '18 6:32:14 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
So basically a Roy Moore Situation?
IN other news, the Office of the Special Counsel rejected Trump's teams request to answer their questions in writing
edited 7th May '18 6:37:17 PM by megaeliz
As bad as Blakenship is, I love that he hates Mitch Mc Connell.
I mean it's still Jabba the Hutt complete with a Rancor that eats coal miners but Mitch is a vile human being. Trump's version of Tarkin.
It's just weird because Mitch is a Kentuckian and Blankenship is West Virginian. I mean...remember your districts.
edited 7th May '18 6:38:52 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Don Blankenship Is a West Virginia Senate Candidate. He Lives in Nevada.
Mr. Blankenship, a Republican loyalist of President Trump, is running an America First-style campaign and calls himself an “American competitionist,” but he admires China’s state-controlled economy and has expressed interest in gaining Chinese citizenship.
The former coal mining executive is widely known for spending a year in prison for his role in a mining explosion that claimed 29 lives. Yet ahead of the May 8 primary election, he is running as a champion of miners and has bought TV ads that challenge settled facts about his role in the disaster.
And even as Mr. Blankenship seeks to join the Republican majority in Washington, a “super PAC” linked to the party establishment is attacking him as a “convicted criminal” and a hypocrite.
No Republican candidate in the 2018 midterms embodies so many contradictions as pointedly as Mr. Blankenship, who was found guilty of conspiracy to violate mine safety standards in federal court and yet has plenty of supporters in coal country.
He is one of three leading Republican contenders heading into the primary, even though he is lugging around enough political baggage to disqualify a candidate most anywhere else.
That Mr. Blankenship retains a political hope is a consequence of West Virginia’s sharp shift to the right, driven by seething hostility to the Obama presidency, both its social changes and its perceived “war” on coal. The emergence of a former coal boss with a criminal record as a potential Senate nominee seems partly an expression of many West Virginia voters’ desire to poke a thumb in the eye of the Washington establishment, Republicans very much included.
Mr. Blankenship offers no apology for his many contradictions and personal and business decisions, some of them previously undisclosed. Though he lives a baronial lifestyle thanks to a fortune built on coal scratched from West Virginia’s mountains, he says the size and origins of his wealth are no one’s business. He is the only candidate in either party in the Senate race who has not disclosed his personal finances as required by law to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics. There isn’t “much of a penalty” for flouting the law, he explained in an interview, justifying his refusal.
“I don’t personally think anybody should have to disclose private information,” he said while awaiting the start of a “meet the candidates” event last week in Cabin Creek, W.Va.
National Republican leaders are alarmed that Mr. Blankenship could emerge as the winner of the primary, which they fear would cost them a winnable seat in November against Senator Joe Manchin, a vulnerable Democrat.
In a highly unusual move, a super PAC linked to Mitch Mc Connell, the Kentucky senator and Republican leader, began saturating the West Virginia airwaves last week with an ad attacking Mr. Blankenship for poisoning local drinking water from his former coal mines. The nearly $745,000 campaign of TV and digital ads is meant to boost the chances of two conventional Republicans in the race, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Representative Evan Jenkins. A Fox News poll conducted last week found a fluid race, with Mr. Blankenship trailing his rivals but about one in four voters undecided.
On Monday, responding to the attack ads, Mr. Blankenship brought up Mr. Mc Connell’s marriage to Elaine Chao, the secretary of transportation, and questioned whether the majority leader faced a conflict of interest in foreign relations. Ms. Chao’s father is “a wealthy Chinaperson,” Mr. Blankenship said, speaking on a West Virginia radio show, adding, “And there’s a lot of connections to some of the brass, if you will, in China.”
“I read in books that people think he’s soft on China,” he said of Mr. Mc Connell.
China, as it happens, is a topic of personal interest to Mr. Blankenship. His fiancée, Farrah Meiling Hobbs, was born there. The two met on a flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas about eight years ago, Mr. Blankenship said. According to the website of an international trading company Ms. Hobbs founded, she is “a former Chinese professional basketball player and part-time model” who moved to the United States in 1996.
In 2016 Ms. Hobbs and Mr. Blankenship paid $2.4 million in cash to buy the palatial home near Las Vegas that Mr. Blankenship claims in court papers
is his principal residence. It is a six-bedroom, eight-bath Spanish-style mansion with marble floors and a dolphin sculpture beside the pool, according to an online real estate site. (He also owns a residence in West Virginia.)
It was purchased just before Mr. Blankenship began a one-year prison sentence following his conviction on a misdemeanor count related to the 2010 explosion at Upper Big Branch mine, the deadliest mine accident in the United States in 40 years.
Though Mr. Blankenship stepped down that year as chief executive of the Massey Energy Company, he exited with his sumptuous earnings intact. Massey paid him $17.8 million in his last year. He gained an additional $86.2 million when the company was later sold, by one estimate.
Part of Mr. Blankenship’s assets are now paying for some $2 million of TV and digital ads — far more than his rivals — that seek to muddy the picture of his 2015 conviction by painting him as a victim of a politically driven “Obama judge” and “Obama prosecutors.”
Family members of the 29 Upper Big Branch victims said it was crushing to watch those ads, in which Mr. Blankenship portrays himself as a champion of safety and refuses responsibility for the loss of life.
“I want Mr. Blankenship to say he’s sorry, I want him to feel contrition, I want him to feel compassion,” said Dr. Judy Jones Petersen, whose brother Dean Jones died in the explosion. “People have to understand that Mr. Blankenship is a bad man. Your character doesn’t change.”
In his campaign, Mr. Blankenship positions himself as a West Virginia populist, an “American competitionist” who stands for unfettered capitalism. The heart of the government’s case against him at trial was that he rapaciously sought profit while ignoring mine safety.
Yet he identifies the new frontier of uninhibited capitalism as China. In a telephone conversation he recorded in 2009, introduced at his trial, Mr. Blankenship said he might move to Asia where governments enforce fewer regulations.
“I’m actually considering moving to China or somewhere and being more like George Washington if I can get citizenship,” he said. “I can probably get citizenship in India. I’d rather be in China.”
In the interview, he repeated this sentiment and freely discussed his financial history in China, though he said foreign citizenship was no longer a priority for him — perhaps dual citizenship would be useful, he mused.
He expressed admiration for how Beijing exercises central control over its economy.
“Americans confuse the words communism and dictatorship,” he said. “The Chinese are running a dictatorial capitalism and it’s very effective. That’s the way corporations are run. Corporations are not a democracy.”
Before his foreign travel was restricted after his arrest in 2014, Mr. Blankenship was a frequent enough visitor to China that he opened a bank account there. “When I go over there I don’t have to carry a lot of money with me,” he said in the interview. “If you go over there and you spend some time, you can easily spend a good bit of money.”
Ms. Hobbs and Mr. Blankenship formed a business together in 2012, Generator World, to import home generators made in China. According to records from Panjiva, which tracks global trade, a shipment of 386 items was sent from Fuzhou, China, the next year to Ms. Hobbs’s company, Amerasia International.
“They arrived and we did sell them, but we didn’t grow the business or continue it,” Mr. Blankenship said. “I wasn’t in a position to do that.” It was a dry reference to his trial, sentence and one-year parole, which will end the day after the May 8 primary.
Mueller rejects Trump request to answer questions in writing
The president's legal team has previously signaled that this would be their preferred format for a possible interview as it helps protect Mr. Trump from the possibility of lying or misleading investigators, which is a criminal offense.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now on President Trump's legal team, told CBS News correspondent Paula Reid Monday afternoon that special counsel Robert Mueller's office has rejected proposals to allow Mr. Trump to answer questions from investigators in writing.
The president's legal team has previously signaled that this would be their preferred format for a possible interview as it helps protect Mr. Trump from the possibility of lying or misleading investigators, which is a criminal offense.
Giuliani told CBS News that it will take up to three weeks for him to get fully up to speed on the facts of the investigation and be prepared to engage in formal negotiations with the special counsel about the terms of a possible interview with Mr. Trump.
Giuliani told Reid that he and the president's legal team continue to be in communication with the special counsel, but that he wants to have a better sense of the facts before engaging in formal negotiations about a possible interview.
If they can come to an agreement on the terms of an interview, Giuliani says he would like to wait until after the North Korea summit to prepare Mr. Trump. He believes that it would take several days to prepare the president for this kind of interview and he would not want to take him away from preparing for talks with North Korea.
If negotiations are not successful and Mr. Trump is subpoenaed, he will fight it, Giuliani said. The case would likely end up at the Supreme Court.
Giuliani is not suggesting that Mr. Trump would ignore a subpoena, but rather that they will use it as another opportunity to negotiate an interview on their terms. If that does not work, they will challenge it in court.
