Friday, February 10, 2017

Last Call For The Fraudster In Chief

Trump at this point will do anything to take the focus off his collapsing regime, now accusing NH Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of voter fraud in her win over Republican Kelly Ayotte in a meeting with senators on Capitol Hill.

President Donald Trump can’t stop—won’t stop—talking about the election.

On Thursday, during a meeting with 10 senators that was billed as a listening session about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, the president went off on a familiar tangent, suggesting again that he was a victim of widespread voter fraud despite the fact that he won the presidential election.

As soon as the door closed and the reporters allowed to observe for a few minutes had been ushered out, Trump began to talk about the election, participants said, triggered by the presence of former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who lost her reelection bid in November and is now working for Trump as a Capitol Hill liaison, or “Sherpa,” on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch.

The president claimed that he and Ayotte both would have been victorious in the Granite State if not for the “thousands” people who were “brought in on buses” from neighboring Massachusetts to “illegally” vote in New Hampshire.

According to one participant who described the meeting, “an uncomfortable silence” momentarily overtook the room.

Hillary Clinton narrowly won New Hampshire’s four electoral votes over Trump by nearly 3,000 votes. Ayotte’s margin of defeat was even slimmer: 743 votes.

Once again, Trump is accusing Democrats of perpetrating voter fraud with no evidence whatsoever.  The larger danger is that his indicates the Trump regime clearly plans to either introduce draconian national restrictions on voting, to use the Justice Department as a weapon against Democratic voters, or more likely, both.

As I've been saying, I expect millions to be disenfranchised under the Trump regime, if not tens of millions, in an effort to set up as many Republicans in state legislatures as possible in 2018 and 2020, and gerrymandering Democrats out of existence.

When a fascist keeps repeating an outright lie, it's something he intends to act on as if it were true.

Anti-Immigration Nation

So, I don't want to hear any more about Obama being the "Deporter-in-Chief" while Trump's ICE agents are already getting started on huge raids.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained scores of immigrants across the Los Angeles area in a massive deportation operation on Thursday, following President Donald Trump’s harsh executive order stepping up the crackdown of immigrants with criminal offenses living in the country illegally.

Advocates and lawyers said that ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents detained 134 immigrants at their workplaces and homes in a series of raids. They said that some people were picked up as “collateral arrest” after they opened their doors to agents who were not there to specifically arrest them. ICE agents allegedly requested to see identification from everyone and took in family members who were undocumented.

The immigration sweeps are believed to have taken place across Southern California in Santa Paula, Oxnard, Van Nuys, San Bernardino, and Downey.

As of Thursday night, the ICE agency denied that it had detained 100 immigrants, the original figure given by lawyers who said that the number comes from a list of immigrants apprehended at the ICE office in Los Angeles.

“Our operations are targeted and lead driven, prioritizing individuals who pose a risk to our communities,” ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice wrote in an email to ThinkProgress. She said officers conduct “routine” enforcement actions to arrest “known street gang members, child sex offenders, and deportable foreign nationals with significant drug trafficking convictions.”

Kice added that the agency prioritizes cases based on factors such as the person’s criminal and immigration history, “as well as the viability of the leads we have on the individual’s possible whereabouts.”

But advocates disagree. They say that this particular raid was not “routine” and that the immigrants detained did not pose a risk to their communities.

Routine immigration operations typically detain three to five people — but a sweep across seven counties to round up people appears to be a direct consequence of Trump’s recent executive order that gives broad power for agents to detain immigrants, advocates said.

Expect bigger raids, more often, and with the targets especially being undocumented parents of US citizens.  It's about fear now, fear and the threat that families will be destroyed.  Eventually these are going to get ugly, and the head-cracking will begin in earnest on these "collateral arrests".

Then the informing begins, and Trump divides us yet again.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Trump regime's massive Russian problem refuses to go away anytime soon, as it looks very much like Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn was making promises to Moscow well before the regime assumed power three weeks ago.

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

The officials said that Mr. Flynn had never made explicit promises of sanctions relief, but that he had appeared to leave the impression it would be possible.

Mr. Flynn could not immediately be reached for comment about the converations, details of which were first reported by The Washington Post. Despite Mr. Flynn’s earlier denials, his spokesman told the Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

Remember that Christmas phone call Flynn had with Russian ambassador Kislyak?  That was a very pointed leak to the press last month that heavily implied that Flynn was cutting a deal, but the Trumpies walked away from it relatively unscathed.  This leak tells us what Flynn said, and it's a doozy.

During the Christmas week conversation, he urged Mr. Kislyak to keep the Russian government from retaliating over the coming sanctions — it was an open secret in Washington that they were in the works — by telling him that whatever the Obama administration did could be undone, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified material.

And it gets worse, because now that means that the Trump regime was lying when they said they didn't know anything about Flynn's conversation.

Days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Vice President-elect Mike Pence also denied that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. He said he had personally spoken to Mr. Flynn, who assured him that the conversation was an informal chat that began with Mr. Flynn extending Christmas wishes.

They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Mr. Pence said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

Except we now know he did discuss just that.

Some officials regarded the conversation as a potential violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the American government, according to one current and one former American official familiar with the case.

Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

The call is the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s advisers have come under scrutiny from American counterintelligence officials. The F.B.I. is also investigating Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

The Trump regime lies because they know they can get away with it.  So far they have, and completely.  Will anyone care enough to call this what it is?

Flynn's a traitor, period.  And our government is owned by the Russians. I would expect that Flynn will be let go for the crime of lying to Pence, not for being an obvious traitor.  And that's only if the heat starts coming on Pence, which at this point is anyone's guess.

Odds are good that again, since Trump's base won't care, Trump won't care.  We'll see.

StupidiNews!