Posted on 04/08/2018 5:38:22 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends)
Saturdays have always been busy Twitter days for President Trump, and yesterday was no exception. In addition to tweets defending embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and announcing that the suspicious fire that devastated an apartment in Trump Tower had been put out, Mr. Trump issued two tweets on Saturday morning related to the ongoing refusal by the FBI and Justice Department to comply with congressional demands for un-redacted documents pertinent to the FISA abuse scandal.
Here are those two tweets:
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Lawmakers of the House Judiciary Committee are angrily accusing the Department of Justice of missing the Thursday Deadline for turning over UNREDACTED Documents relating to FISA abuse, FBI, Comey, Lynch, McCabe, Clinton Emails and much more. Slow walking - what is going on? BAD!
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump What does the Department of Justice and FBI have to hide? Why aren’t they giving the strongly requested documents (unredacted) to the HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE? Stalling, but for what reason? Not looking good!
The President’s characterization of the failure of DOJ and FBI officials to produce the requested documents as “slow walking” is a vast understatement. The reality here is that the requests for most of these documents have been outstanding since at least last August, some even longer than that. And it’s not just the House Judiciary Committee that is being stonewalled, it’s also the House Intelligence Committee, Chaired by California Republican Devin Nunes.
Nunes became so frustrated with the situation in mid-March that he set an April 11 deadline for the production of the documents in question, promising to pursue all remedies available to him if the stonewalling continued. On Friday, after having produced an updated, but still redacted version of some of the documents in question, the Justice Department offered to allow members of the House Intelligence Committee to “view” these un-classified documents in a “secure room” normally used to provide viewing of documents that are highly classified.
Separately, after having missed a Thursday deadline for complying with a subpoena issued by House Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte, the DOJ said it would “supplement” what it has already produced this coming week.
Obviously, neither response is in any way acceptable, and the time has come for congress quit fooling around with the bad actors at DOJ and the FBI, and keep Rep. Nunes’s promise to use “every tool at its disposal” to force proper compliance. Nunes and Goodlatte, both good men, have unfortunately spent the last 8 months whining about the lack of cooperation and making threats, but have always backed off when the bad actors missed whatever latest deadline had been set for compliance. Nunes was on Fox & Friends again Sunday morning, complaining about DOJ/FBI’s latest dodge, but not saying exactly what he’s planning to do to combat it.
Here’s a suggestion: Refuse the offer by the bad actors to “view” these documents. That is a completely unacceptable offer, and if it is accepted, it will just show Nunes and congress to once again be a toothless tiger. The same advice applies to Goodlatte: your deadline has been missed, and it’s time for further, real action. You issued a lawful subpoena that has been ignored by a bunch of scofflaws – do something real about that reality.
And guess what? Both men now have been provided cover for taking real enforcement action by the President of the United States. Whether they realize it or not, that is most likely why President Trump issued those specific tweets on that particular subject early on a Saturday morning.
Don’t be fooled otherwise: There are a number of things congress has the power to do here, including levying heavy fines on the bad actors, or even having them tossed in jail. Those are just two of five real options – with real examples of precedence – laid out by Mark Tapscott in a piece at Lifezette in a really good piece published on Saturday.
The other two people who just got some presidential cover on Saturday are FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who are now free to take some or all of the bad actors who have been conducting the document production stonewall. If they’re too squeamish to take the media heat for such firings themselves, they can always point to the President’s and congress’s frustrations as the justification for finally, at long last taking some action to break up the logjam at their agencies.
The President doesn’t just tweet this stuff for no reason. We should expect some serious action to end the stonewalling of these various congressional committees in the coming days.
Just another day in the FBI is an outlaw agency America.
That is all.
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Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.
I think that refusal to submit to a congressional subpoena when ordered to do so by the President constitutes a firing offense.
For the love of God, who the hell runs this country? If the freakin’ president wants to have the documents released then just give the order. If refused, arrest the SOBs and put them in jail. Being president is hard. THIS isn’t.
Congress controls the purse to the DOJ. Instead of appropriating funds to the Department, real congressional leadership would offer to allow them to view the money in a secure room, but not actually have until such time as the documents are produced.
Misleading title.
When the Congress played the impeach RR, they got immediate action to their request. Keep playing that card!!!!
IF he does not do this, he is aiding and abetting the stonewalling and foot dragging allowing the statute of limitations to kick in and allowing these criminals to walk free. This is what the intentions are here and it is working
Evidence that exposes unlawful activities, the existence of a subversive political cabal, and their refusal to be held accountable. This is totally unacceptible in a democracy.
These are rogue agencies that do not want to answer to the elected representatives of the American people.
These agencies are clearly stalling and stonewalling, hoping that they can ride out the storm until a new, more friendly administration arrives and will allow them to go right back to business as usual. That's how the DC bureaucracies work. The Swamp resists all efforts to drain it.
I am convinced that Sessions has been a Deep State plant from day one.
Sessions is not Sleepy. He is actively doing just what he was put in place to do.
Being president is hard. THIS isn’t.
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Being president means doing difficult things, not just talking about them. Trump needs to show the Swamp who is in charge.
Tweeting is good, but its no substitute for action.
I think that refusal to submit to a congressional subpoena when ordered to do so by the President constitutes a firing offense.
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The people who voted for Trump would agree. We expected, and want to see, accountability restored in our government.
Without accountability, we have no democracy or a government that serves the will of the people.
Maybe Sundance should clue the president in before Trump screws up Sessions’and Rosenweasel’s 3D, rope a dope, super secret plan. I’m so sick of Sessions providing cover, the president complaining and the Sessions shills spinning.
I don’t understand why President trump just doesn’t have his Security Detail drive him over to the Justice Dept. and FBI and walk in to those establishments and demand on TV in front of the Press, the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney general and FBI Director that they comply IMMEDIATELY (24-48 Hrs.) with the Congressional Subpoenas without Redactions. If they fail to comply, he should start firing them for violating his orders. Sounds simple. So, why doesn’t he do it?
What action do you want?
I want the corrupt to be jailed. But ordering the release of documents won’t do that. If President Trump says release these (identifiable) documents, they will be. But then what? Congress cannot put people in jail.
The people who need the documents are in the DOJ — Horowitz and the Utah prosecutor. They probably have them. Bill Priestrap should have good access and seems to be cooperating. If a DOJ prosecutor won’t prosecute one of its own, we are screwed.
Congress won’t confirm an AG who will appoint a second special counsel who is a mirror image of Mueller. That is, Congress won’t approve someone like Joe Digenova or won’t approves someone who will come in and appoint someone like Joe Digenova as a second special counsel.
So, for the moment, we’re left with the IG and the Utah prosecutor.
The reality and the truth are that, what we are seeing with the DOJ and FBI (and other federal agencies), is the same thing that happened with the education system and the press. Those agencies had been taken over, and loaded with the far-left sympathizers, and I’m pretty sure that, if surveys were conducted about the “selection process” for hiring people at the DOJ and FBI and other agencies, that we’d discover the “liberalization” by democrats.
Democrats have virtual control of the school systems, k-12 and colleges/universities. Democrats have control of most of the media.
There is no doubt in my mind that the FBI and DOJ hired people with liberal mindsets, to insure that the democratic party agenda was served, rather than those agencies serving the people. So, what we’re seeing is the slow-walking of the requests by congress to release the FISA documents, because, what WILL be discovered is the virtual takeover of the government via the biased hiring process. The DOJ and FBI have been turned into the American KGB, which served the communist party in the USSR. Now we have the equivalent in the DOJ and FBI. Those agencies had become the property of the democratic party.
Obama and his cabinet promised “fundamental transformation” of the country, and to get that done, they needed to have complete control of every aspect of government. Education: done. Press: done. Federal agencies: almost there.
So, can anybody still be wondering why it was a huge shock to democrats that they lost to Trump, when they had expected that their entire machinery was set up to insure victory?
The FBI and DOJ had been taken over, and the agents/workers within those departments FEAR being found out, and thus, the slow-walking and refusal to cooperate with congress and the president. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and Comey and McCabe, are just a tiny indication of how completely corrupt those agencies and others had become.
It’s a coup d’etat, while the country was sleeping.
So, for the moment, we’re left with the IG and the Utah prosecutor.
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I appreciate your points and your reply. Its a difficult situation, to be sure.
However, we elected Trump to deal with difficult situations. And he knew that draining the Swamp was going to be tough. (But I don’t think he foresaw the resistance and lack of support he would get from his own party.)
At this point, I am not concerned about prosecution. I agree with you that a lot of people should be jailed, but let’s be real, that rarely if ever happens to the elite denizens of the DC Swamp. So the best we can do is to reveal the truth about this treason to the American people and that requires the release of unredacted information from FBI/DOJ. Our political system was undermined by conspiratorial elements of the Obama administration. They simply must be exposed for their treachery.
I have great reservations about Horowitz and the Utah “prosecutor”. Do you have any personal experience with IG’s? (I mean this as a genuine question, not being critical.) In my experience the IG’s are pretty good at reporting on low level mismanagement, malfeasance, waste and fraud but they are are very reluctant to criticize the hierarchy of the agency THEY WORK FOR. IG’s don’t want to inflict lasting damage the own agency for what should be obvious reasons. Not saying Horowitz won’t come up with anything significant, but his findings will be “restrained”. I can guanantee you that.
Also, recall that both Horowitz and the “prosecutor” are Democrats appointed by Obama. I doubt they will bite the hand that fed them, nor will they want to incur the personal and professional wrath of their friends and colleagues by uncovering a Democrat cabal that was engaged in extremely unlawful and traitorous activities.
We both want accountability. I am just a bit more skeptical than you are about how to go about getting it.
I think we would also both agree that Sessions is a disaster and should be replaced ASAP. Trump may have to move someone into the job who is has alredy been approved by the senate. Eventually I would love to see Digenova or Pam Bondi in the AG position.
Managing is tough business. Decisions always seem to generate resistance and resentment. But they have to be made and a good captain keeps his ship on course.
There is always the option of a Recess appointment which is only temporary, but may have a long enough term to kick butt and take names.
As the useless congress is frequently on recess there are lot’s of opportunities for an appointment. :)
Replacing Sessions would be a game changer IMO. Trump will never clean up DC until he gets a real AG in place. We need a fearless AG who will will clear out the muck and slime. Its a critical positions and a terrible shame that Sessions betrayed him.
When could that happen?
Congress is on Recess every time there is a Holiday and often when there is no Holiday. Usually they take a week off and often longer. Labor Day is Tuesday, May 1st. I suspect they will be in Recess all that week. During that period, Trump can make Recess appointments that don’t require Senate Confirmation. Those appointments have a limited term. John Bolton served as UN Ambassador under a recess appointment for a year under the Bush Administration. If Trump chose to fire Sessions, Rosenstein or anybody else before that Recess, he could then fill the vacancies as Recess Appointments without Congressional Approval. During their time in those positions, they could swing big axes.
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