Ethics Office has ‘essentially’ reported Trump to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution
MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber reports that the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) sent a letter to the Department of Justice on President Donald Trump’s hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
NEW: Ethics office sending letter to Rod Rosenstein stating that Michael Cohen's payment on behalf of Trump was a debt and may be relevant to "any inquiry" Rosenstein may be pursuing. pic.twitter.com/e22Jfuozic
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) May 16, 2018
Former Department of Justice spokesperson Matt Miller described the letter as “essentially a criminal referral to DOJ for Trump making a false statement in a previous financial disclosure.”
“Fascinated by OGE’s decision to make this referral public,” he continued. “Leaves DOJ no choice but to open at least a preliminary investigation into Trump for false statements (if he wasn’t already a subject in the Cohen inquiry, which he might be).”
Walter Shaub, the former Director of the Office of Government Ethics, went even further than Miller.
“This is tantamount to a criminal referral,” Shaub suggested. “OGE has effectively reported the president to DOJ for potentially committing a crime.”
2020 Election
William Barr made it clear this week that he’d sign off on a sham investigation into the Dems’ 2020 nominee
Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.
A perfect storm propelled New York's sleaziest real estate developer to an Electoral College victory in 2016 despite winning three million fewer votes than his opponent, but Nate Silver made a compelling argument that the letter James Comey sent to Congress just 11 days before Election Day announcing that the FBI was re-opening its probe into Hillary Clinton's emails was decisive.
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Bill Barr is serving notice to DOJ officials that he’ll ruin them if they investigate Trump: MSNBC host
An MSNBC discussion about Bill Barr running interference within the Justice Department for Donald Trump ended with "AM Joy" host Joy Reid suggesting that the attorney general's very public "media blitz" over the so-called "Horowitz Report" is a warning shot to anyone in the DOJ who thinks about investigating the president.
As Reid explained it, "He did a whole TV blitz to basically say that his own agency, the FBI, was spying on the Trump campaign, something that the inspector general said did not happen."
Reid took that to its logical conclusion.
"Now he’s saying, ‘Well, I’ve got a different report that’s going to find the motivations’ that he’s basically saying are bad motivations by people in the FBI. And if you’re that FBI agent and then you hear that Donald Trump may be again looking for foreign help and maybe again getting help from Russia or forcing help from Ukraine, what do you do?" she asked. "Would you then not be concerned that, should you go ahead and investigate foreign interference in our election, that William Barr may come after you?"
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Stefanik voters turning on GOP lawmaker after she threw away her credibility to defend Trump
Over the course of the impeachment hearings, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has gone from a relative backbencher who sells herself as a moderate to voters in Upstate New York, to a theatrical partisan grandstanding for President Donald Trump and a top target of ire from Democrats.
But according to Politico, at least some of her voters appear turned off by her new stance.
"While Stefanik once able to strike a delicate balance between her Republican identity and her positions on issues like climate change, some think those earlier convictions are gone, like Phillip Paige, a former Stefanik backer and a member of SUNY Potsdam’s College Republicans," wrote Politico's Anna Gronewald. "A native of the 21st district’s Madrid, New York, Paige said he started to lose faith in Stefanik when she began supporting Trump as the party’s nominee in 2016. Paige supported John Kasich’s candidacy in that election. 'A lot of her boots-on-the-ground young Republican crowd has really become quite disillusioned,' he said. 'We saw her as what we thought the future of the Republican Party was and that really has been disproven. Unless, maybe the future of the Republican party is Donald Trump.'"
Bill Barr finally revealed the real reason he’s such an aggressive Trump defender
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Barney Frank unveils the slogan Democratic candidates can use to win the Senate in 2020
William Barr made it clear this week that he’d sign off on a sham investigation into the Dems’ 2020 nominee
Bill Barr is serving notice to DOJ officials that he’ll ruin them if they investigate Trump: MSNBC host
Stefanik voters turning on GOP lawmaker after she threw away her credibility to defend Trump
DOJ employees urged to revolt against Bill Barr for throwing IG report ‘in the trash’ to defend Trump
GOP ridiculed for hyping Ohio anti-impeachment protest — and only a handful of Trump supporters showed
Bill Barr is serving notice to DOJ officials that he’ll ruin them if they investigate Trump: MSNBC host
DOJ employees urged to revolt against Bill Barr for throwing IG report ‘in the trash’ to defend Trump
GOP lawmaker scrambles for excuses after being cornered with McConnell’s promise to rig Trump impeachment
Jared Kushner’s ties to Saudis could be fair game if Trump keeps going after Hunter Biden: Dem lawmaker
