Trump's Constant Is Represented By The Poop Emote

Donald Trump continues to be awful in every possible way given any possible opportunity to be repugnant, like some sort of amoral version of Planck's constant or Avagadro's number.

While meeting with President Donald Trump, the parents of a British teenager who was killed in a traffic collision with the wife of a U.S. diplomat were offered money from the Treasury by the president, which they refused, according to The Guardian.

Harry Dunn, 19, was riding his motorcycle near the Royal Air Force base in Northamptonshire, England when he was involved in an accident with Anne Sacoolas. Dunn died of his injuries in the hospital while Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and left the United Kingdom. Trump invited Dunn's parents, Tim Dunn and Charlotte Charles, to the White House to discuss the case.

Toward the end of the meeting, Trump intimated that he had Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin "standing by ready to write a check."

"It was almost as if he let it slip out," said family spokesman Radd Seiger. "When he said, 'We've got the driver here', he basically meant we're all going to have a big hug and a kiss and I'll get my Treasury guy to write a check. That's how it was. On the day it just didn't register with me, but the more I think about those words, the more shocking it is."

The asshole thinks the Treasury Secretary is his money guy, and that he can just write a check and make things go away, like he's Logan Roy from HBO's Succession.

Oh wait, that's what he actually did with Stormy Daniels.

Why is this man not in prison?

The Reach To Impeach,.Con't

House Republicans are trying to disrupt next week's public impeachment hearings by spending the entire time demanding the whistleblower and Hunter Biden testify instead.  Luckily, it doesn't really matter what they want.

Republicans and the president have complained that the Democrats’ inquiry is unfairly partisan. When the Democrats deny the witnesses they’ve requested, the Republicans will then present that as evidence of a one-sided process.

Witnesses who testified out of public view have corroborated the crux of the case against Trump — that he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals — so the Democrats see no need for the whistleblower, who heard the story secondhand, to testify. Three career State Department officials are returning next week for the public hearings.

Republicans want to publicly question witnesses who would divert the conversation away from questions about Trump’s behavior to allegations only tangentially related to the case, such as unfounded claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and that the Bidens acted nefariously in their dealings with Ukraine.

In the request that the anonymous whistleblower be asked to testify publicly, Nunes argued that Trump “should be afforded an opportunity to confront his accusers.” He also asked that all individuals who provided information to the whistleblower be compelled to appear.

Democrats have pushed back on Republicans’ desire to expose the identity of the whistleblower, citing protections afforded to federal employees who anonymously disclose information about government wrongdoing.

In addition to Hunter Biden, the Republicans said they also want to hear from Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, who served with Biden on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Nunes writes that both Biden and Archer’s time with Burisma “can assist the American public in understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption, information that bears directly on President Trump’s long-standing and deeply-held skepticism of the country.”

So why would I care about what Devin Nunes wants, when Devin Nunes literally gets no say in the process?

Because it makes me laugh.  Adam Schiff isn't going to do a damn thing.

In denying the GOP witness list, Schiff will point to parameters he laid out earlier this week limiting the scope of the public hearings to Trump’s actions related to Ukraine.

The narrow guidelines set forth by Schiff center on three fundamental questions:

●Did Trump request a foreign government conduct investigations that would benefit the president’s personal political interests?

●Did Trump, or his aides, use the power of the presidency to apply pressure on Ukraine? 

●Did the Trump administration attempt to obstruct justice by concealing evidence of the president’s actions related to Ukraine?

Keep those three questions in mind as we head into next week.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

The White House is going all the way to the Supreme Court to keep Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance from seeing Donald Trump's tax returns and it could be a major, precedent-setting case involving Presidential power...if the high court takes it up, which is no guarantee.

President Trump's lawyers intend to petition the U.S. Supreme Court by Nov. 14 to review a lower court ruling requiring the president to turn over eight years of his tax returns to a state grand jury, according to a letter written Friday.

Why it matters: This case would mark the first time the Supreme Court makes a decision on Trump's legal argument — that he is immune from criminal investigation while in office — and could "produce a major statement on the limits of presidential power," the New York Times reports.

Details: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which said on Monday that Trump must turn over his tax returns, dodged Trump's legal arguments that he is exempt from criminal investigations while in the White House. Instead, the court stated the president’s accounting firm is being subpoenaed for the documents — rather than Trump himself. 

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance subpoenaed Trump's tax returns as part of an investigation into hush-money payments allegedly made to Stormy Daniels by by the Trump Organization during the 2016 election.

Background: Trump has filed at least three lawsuits to block the release of his tax returns. The president, his family and his company also filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank to block the bank from complying with congressional subpoenas for their business records.

My guess is the court won't touch the case and the narrow scope of the Second Circuit ruling -- that Vance is entitled to the tax returns because Trump's accountants aren't immune to the subpoena -- will stand.  But of course, the returns will be leaked, and we'll find out that Trump has been fast, loose, and comically ugly with his numbers.

It'll be a massive embarrassment to loser Trump, and he will lash out.

On the other hand, we could finally get that republic-ending Supreme Court precedent that the Chief Executive and the entire branch are utterly immune to state legal proceedings.

At this point, who knows?