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“Donald Trump Was Doing Things That Were Illegal and Unconstitutional”: Massachusetts A.G. Maura Healey on Prosecuting a President
The attorney general fought dozens of cases against the Trump Justice Department. Now she’s looking ahead to a Biden administration, ongoing Trump litigation, and what it will take to heal democracy.
By Emily Jane Fox
December 8, 2020
As a new era dawns in Washington, state attorneys general, who have filed nearly 140 lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s administration over the last four years, are also preparing for what is to come in the next administration. It’s a welcome change for someone like Maura Healey, Massachusetts’s attorney general, who has joined more than 100 of those suits, on everything from Trump’s family-separation policy to census issues to environmental protections. “I don’t think you can overstate how much energy and effort it took to hold the line against the Trump administration that was doing things so entirely unprecedented and in violation of so many norms and the rule of law,” she said in an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this month.
The work, however, is not done, as the country reckons with coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter movement, and issues around free, fair, and trusted elections continue, even after Joe Biden’s decisive win. Healey discussed what lies ahead, what Republicans need to do to help bring our country together, and what she thinks should happen to a post–White House Donald Trump: “I’m going to be limited in what I can say,” she told me, “but it is important that Donald Trump, his enablers, those who acted in concert with him and furthered actions that may have been illegal, criminal or otherwise, are held accountable.”
Maura Healey: I certainly feel much better now that we’ve gotten past the election, but it has been a really difficult and full year when you think about COVID, when you think about the moment of racial reckoning that we’re having in our country, when you think about all the work that led up to protecting a free and secure election.… This is just the reality that we’re in. So many people have endured so much this year and continue to. It’s an incredible time that we’re living in. When you look back on the last four years, I don’t think you can overstate how much energy and effort it took to hold the line against the Trump administration that was doing things so entirely unprecedented and in violation of so many norms and the rule of law.
State attorneys general filed multistate suits against the Trump administration nearly 140 times. That’s compared to the 78 and 76 times the Obama and Bush administrations were sued in eight years. You yourself were involved in dozens of those. Is that right?
More than 100. What a sad commentary that in order to defend the Constitution, to protect the rule of law, we found ourselves taking Donald Trump and his administration to court over 100 times, but it was absolutely necessary. The good news is we won over 80% of those cases…The numbers are staggering, but when you have a president looking to gut health care or roll back environmental protections or reverse years of progress and reproductive freedom, that’s why it’s been really important for us to be active. I’m fortunate that as a state attorney general, I was able to do something.
snip//
What do you think state A.G.s should do when Trump leaves the White House? Should they investigate his finances? Should the Biden Justice Department investigate him?
As a state A.G., I’m going to be limited in what I can say, but it is important that Donald Trump, his enablers, those who acted in concert with him and furthered actions that may have been illegal, criminal or otherwise, are held accountable just as anyone else needs to be held accountable. Much of this will depend on facts and law. Obviously there are investigations underway, and I’m confident that the right offices will do their jobs. I couldn’t care less about Donald Trump. I am very happy to see him go. I think about his incompetence as there are tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases every day. It’s outrageous what he’s done—his callousness, his incompetence, his narcissism, his bullying, how he’s hurt so many people. Either he’s ignorant or callous or both, and I think members of his family are as well. They’re very good at emotionally appealing to people and saying things that resonate. But he only cares about keeping himself in power. I’m about moving forward. It’s not for one government to do alone. It’s not for one party to do alone. It’s going to require collective action. It’s going to require a reset in this country. Everyone has to think about the challenges and think about them as opportunities. It was really affirming to see people stand up, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia making sure that he did his job in the face of pressure.
more...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/massachusetts-ag-maura-healey-on-prosecuting-a-president
Yet another Trump cabinet secretary caught up in scandal
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/yet-another-trump-cabinet-secretary-caught-scandal-n1250699Yet another Trump cabinet secretary caught up in scandal
As Donald Trump's presidency comes to an ignominious end, it's apparently not too late for one more cabinet controversy.
Dec. 10, 2020, 10:08 AM EST
By Steve Benen
As Donald Trump's presidency comes to an ignominious end, it's not too late for one more cabinet controversy. The Washington Post reported late yesterday:
The allegations are, to be sure, important. A congressional staffer alleged that she was groped and propositioned by a man while in the cafe in the main lobby of VA’s flagship medical center. Instead of taking the matter seriously, VA leaders reportedly scrambled to target the accuser.
snip//
But it's the sheer volume of controversies surrounding members of the Republican president's cabinet that continues to amaze.
Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, for example, resigned under a cloud of scandal, as did former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, former HHS Secretary Tom Price, and former VA Secretary David Shulkin.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has faced ethics allegations. So has HUD Secretary Ben Carson. David Bernhardt, a former corporate lobbyist for the oil industry, became the subject of an ethics investigation immediately after becoming the nation's Interior secretary. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is facing so many ethics controversies, it's been difficult to keep up with each of them.
While we're at it, let's also not overlook controversies surrounding Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
As regular readers may recall, Trump declared with pride last year, "There are those that say we have one of the finest cabinets." No one has ever made such an assessment. No one ever should.
Georgetown Law Welcomes Douglas Emhoff to its Faculty
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/georgetown-law-welcomes-douglas-emhoff-to-its-faculty/Georgetown Law Welcomes Douglas Emhoff to its Faculty
December 10, 2020
WASHINGTON – Georgetown Law is pleased to announce that Douglas Emhoff will become a member of the faculty in January.
Emhoff will serve as a Distinguished Visitor from Practice, drawing in part on his deep expertise in media and entertainment matters to teach related coursework, starting with “Entertainment Law Disputes” in the upcoming spring semester. Additionally, Emhoff will serve as a Distinguished Fellow of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy, as part of a new entertainment and media law initiative that will include a speaker series and other projects.
Georgetown Law, the nation’s largest law school, has robust academic and extra-curricular offerings at the crossroads of intellectual property, entertainment, and technology law, and is frequently recognized as a leader in educating future entertainment lawyers.
In his almost 30-year career, Emhoff was known for tackling and resolving the toughest problems and litigating high stakes disputes with an emphasis on media, entertainment, and intellectual property matters.
Georgetown University Law Center is a global leader in legal education based in the heart of the U.S. capital. As the nation’s largest law school, Georgetown Law offers students an unmatched breadth and depth of academic opportunities taught by a world-class faculty of celebrated theorists and leading legal practitioners. Second to none in experiential education, the Law Center’s numerous clinics are deeply woven into the Washington, D.C. landscape. More than 20 centers and institutes forge cutting-edge research and policy resources across fields including health, the environment, human rights, technology, national security, and international economics. Georgetown Law equips students to succeed in a rapidly evolving legal environment and to make a profound difference in the world, guided by the school’s motto, “Law is but the means, justice is the end.”
James Fallows: How Biden Should Investigate Trump
How Biden Should Investigate Trump
The misdeeds and destructive acts are legion. The new president should focus on these three.
Story by James Fallows
January/February 2021 Issue
I. A Crimes Commission?
As he prepares to occupy the White House, President-elect Joe Biden faces a decision rare in American history: what to do about the man who has just left office, whose personal corruption, disdain for the Constitution, and destructive mismanagement of the federal government are without precedent.
Human beings crave reckoning, even the saintliest among us. Institutions based on rules and laws need systems of accountability. People inside and outside politics have argued forcefully that Biden should take, or at least condone, a maximalist approach to exposing and prosecuting the many transgressions by Donald Trump and his circle—that Biden can’t talk about where America is going without clearly addressing where it has been. In 2019, two professors at Princeton, Julian E. Zelizer and Kevin M. Kruse, argued that the most harmful response to Trump’s offenses would be for Democrats and Republicans to agree to look past them, in hopes of avoiding further partisan division. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic congressman from California, has proposed the creation of a Presidential Crimes Commission, made up of independent prosecutors. In the summer of 2020, Sam Berger of the Center for American Progress, an influential think tank with roots in the Clinton administration, released a detailed blueprint for conducting investigations and possibly prosecutions. It laid out the case this way:
Joe Biden, who improbably (or impressively) has lived through exactly one-third of America’s history as a republic, is well aware of this line of argument, and of the risks of papering over the sins of the past. He was in the Senate during the Watergate investigations and, later, when the Church Committee investigated Cold War–era crimes and excesses by the CIA. Modern history is replete with instances of societies that were hampered and distorted by their refusal to face difficult truths.
But how much time can Biden spend looking backwards? Many presidents have taken office with challenges, even crises, immediately at hand. The examples are familiar, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Biden’s challenges as he enters office are larger and appear on more fronts than any other president’s since Abraham Lincoln. He faces a global pandemic that is still getting worse, and an economy that the pandemic has brought to its knees. America’s relations with most of its allies are badly frayed. Conflicts with China are mounting. Many of the federal institutions Biden will supervise have been neglected for decades, and intentionally corrupted and weakened during the past four years. Trust in civic and political institutions has dwindled. For his own ends, the outgoing president has deliberately sought to sabotage the electoral process itself.
more...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/how-biden-should-investigate-trump/617260/
'Dear God, stop the nonsense': Chicago mayor unloads on McConnell over Covid relief
'Dear God, stop the nonsense': Chicago mayor unloads on McConnell over Covid relief
"I don’t know what goes on in that man’s mind," Lori Lightfoot said of the Senate majority leader.
By SHIA KAPOS
12/09/2020 07:06 PM EST
CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday for pushing a stimulus proposal that would largely leave cities and states empty-handed, and urged her party to dig in.
Lightfoot regularly attacks McConnell and other Republicans unwilling to consider financial aid for local governments who have seen their revenues nosedive since the spring as social distancing policies shuttered businesses and curbed tourism. But the recent rollercoaster in negotiations on Capitol Hill have fueled her frustration.
While there is some bipartisan agreement on writing a new round of stimulus checks, McConnell has pressed negotiators to drop two of the biggest sticking points in the talks: Democrats' desire for state aid and Republican hopes for liability protections for employers potentially facing Covid-related lawsuits.
more...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/09/chicago-lori-lightfoot-mitch-mcconnell-coronavirus-relief-444003
Accused hate groups receive pandemic aid
Accused hate groups receive pandemic aid
14 groups identified as hate groups benefited from the PPP program.
Dec. 9, 2020, 10:45 AM EST
By April Glaser and Olivia Solon
Fourteen organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League have received funding from the Paycheck Protection Program totaling $4.3 million, according to data released last week by the Small Business Administration, revealing who benefited from the pandemic federal relief funds.
Those organizations include the New Century Foundation, known for publishing the white supremacist website and now-discontinued magazine American Renaissance. That group is run by prominent white supremacist Jared Taylor, who for decades has argued that immigration policy should aim to “keep the country white.” The New Century Foundation received $51,600 in relief funds.
The analysis by NBC News, one of 11 newsrooms that sued for the release of data, was based on hate groups designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League, that received PPP money and primarily focus on advocating against immigrants and opposing the advancement of homosexual and transgender rights. NBC News crosschecked the PPP data against 73 different designated hate groups whose work and advocacy focuses on attacking, maligning and delegitimizing entire classes of people based on their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or if they have a disability.
The same list of hate groups was used in an assessment earlier this year for research conducted by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism think tank, and the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit research group, that analyzed how hate groups fundraise and collect payments online, which was exclusively reported by NBC News. All the groups assessed were also active as of 2020 and are actively promoting hateful ideologies, whether through literature, online content or grassroots organizing. In total, the 14 accused hate groups that received relief funds analyzed by NBC News were awarded a total of $4.3 million in PPP loans. Overall more than 5.2 million PPP loans worth more than $525 billion were approved, according to the SBA.
The groups that received funds also include American Family Association, a group that opposes what its leaders describe as the "homosexual agenda." It received $1,390,800 in PPP funds. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, known as FAIR, an anti-immigration group founded by leaders that hold ties to white supremacists, also was awarded $683,680 from the relief program.
Among the anti-LGBT groups that received relief funds is Church Militant, an organization that runs a media operation that advocates for so-calledgay conversion therapies and links homosexuality to pedophilia, reaching large followings across Facebook, YouTube and on its own website. The group received a $301,100 PPP loan, according to SBA data.
more...
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/accused-hate-groups-receive-pandemic-aid-n1250474
Eric Boehlert: Why is Washington Post still running puff pieces about Trump White House?
Why is Washington Post still running puff pieces about Trump White House?
Access journalism
Eric Boehlert
After losing an election by seven million votes, Trump's still waging a ghoulish war on election integrity. He's also reportedly preparing to preemptively pardon dozens of aides as he continues to run the White House as a criminal enterprise. There's not a guardrail in sight that Trump hasn't torn down.
Inexplicably, the Washington Post at this late date is still running puff pieces on key West Wing players on their way out the door. The normalizing never stops. For the Post to be doing it just weeks before Trump leaves office represents an egregious lapse in newsroom judgment — one likely driven by access journalism.
Chained to the narrative that Republicans are savvy and that Trump surrounds himself with superstars, the press showers attention and praise on people who not only fail at their jobs, but actively shred public trust for a living.
snip//
It was no coincidence that after years of Trump's deliberate and dehumanizing rhetoric about how journalists represent "enemies of the people," members of the media were assaulted at an unprecedented rate while covering nationwide protests over racial inequality this year.
Yet the Beltway press is still toasting members of Trump's media team, the ones who have helped him carry out his "fake news" war on the Fourth Estate. The disconnect is jarring.
"If you get this flattering of a story after orchestrating a four-year assault against journalists, Biden team has zero incentive to be more respectful to reporters," tweeted Democratic strategist Eric Schultz.
The Post has also been busy toasting Ivanka Trump. The paper assumes she's built up a powerful political constituency while running corrupt errands for her father:
The Post piece relied mostly on anonymous sources to describe Ivanka as "impressive," "glamorous," "a perfect bridge to conservative women," and a "“a creative visionary” who has “handled herself wonderfully."
more...
https://pressrun.media/p/why-is-the-washington-post-still-e9a
What fresh hell is this?
Matt Schlapp, appointed to any kind of position? And what's the point?
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/529377-trump-taps-conway-chao-to-government-posts-in-waning-days-of
Trump taps Conway, Chao to government posts in waning days of administration
By Tal Axelrod - 12/08/20 09:32 PM EST
President Trump on Tuesday tapped former aide Kellyanne Conway and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to government jobs in the final days of his administration.
The White House said in a press release that Conway will be appointed to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Chao, who is also married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will be a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Lynn Friess, the spouse of major Republican donor Foster Friess, will also be a member of the board of trustees at the Kennedy Center, and Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is being appointed to the Library of Congress trust fund board.
The appointments were announced in a press release that included 26 appointments to government postings at places such as the National Cancer Advisory Board and Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board, among others.
The Tuesday announcement marked the second time in as many weeks that the White House announced government jobs for allies. The White House also released a number of other appointments last week that included the appointment of Pamella DeVos, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s sister-in-law, to the Kennedy Center board of trustees.
Conway is the most prominent figure on either list. She was Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and later served as a counselor to the president from the start of Trump’s administration until her August resignation.
Over 1500 Attorneys Call For Sanction Of Trump Legal Team
12/08/20 3:00pm
Read time: 6 minutes
29 comments
Over 1500 Attorneys Call For Sanction Of Trump Legal Team
"Giuliani and certain Trump campaign lawyers have either been lying to the public or believe frivolous and unfounded claims, calling into question their fitness to practice law." —Cheryl Niro, LDAD
By Common Dreams
As President Donald Trump continues what critics have called a "narcissistic crusade" contesting his loss of the November election with lies and baseless lawsuits about election fraud and security, by Monday more than 1,500 attorneys across the country had signed on to a call for bar associations to condemn and investigate his campaign's lawyers.
Although even some Trump allies like U.S. Attorney General William Barr have admitted there is no evidence of mass voter fraud that led to President-elect Joe Biden's victory last month, the president's attorneys have continued to pursue suits that "have become so transparently filed in bad faith that state and local officials are beginning to call for judges to sanction Trump campaign and Republican lawyers," as Vox noted Saturday.
Those calls are coupled with the Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) open letter, which has now been signed by hundreds of attorneys—among them, former American Bar Association (ABA) and state bar presidents, retired federal judges and state Supreme Court justices, and former leaders of lawyer disciplinary bodies.
more...
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/12/over-1500-attorneys-call-sanction-trump
The Rude Pundit: We Cannot Overlook All the Ways That Trump and His Idiot Hordes Attack Democracy
The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
12/08/2020
We Cannot Overlook All the Ways That Trump and His Idiot Hordes Attack Democracy
They never should have gotten away with "Lock her up."
One of the things we are learning is that the media and officials shouldn't have been coddling soon-to-be shitcanned President Donald Trump and his idiot hordes and allowing them to indulge in their fits and fantasies over the 2020 election outcome. "Just let him throw this tantrum," supposedly smart Republicans told us. "He'll get tired and go to Mar-a-Lago and go to sleep." It really was the "lie back and it'll be over quickly" of political messages. Except no one who gives that kind of fucked up advice ever considers that you gotta live with that shit for the rest of your life.
Time and time again, Trump and his maniac voters were allowed to get away with more and more egregious behavior. Anyone who could have done anything just let him go on with his Hitler rallies where he named his enemies (anyone who doesn't agree with him absolutely and completely) and called for them to be investigated, arrested, and/or imprisoned. When the first chants of "Lock her up" were directed at Hillary Clinton, someone who has never been charged with a crime despite years of sexist and vengeance-motivated investigations, that shit should have been shut down. Venues should have canceled the rallies. Republican Party leaders should have booted Trump out of the debates. Instead, while, yes, some in the media expressed outrage, it was mostly just smirked at and glossed over, like it's all in fun, in jest, and not any kind of serious threat. The GOP was greedy, seeing a cash cow in Trump, someone who will get the rubes all hetted up and ready to click on that donate button.
more...
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2020/12/we-cannot-overlook-all-ways-that-trump.html
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