Tag Washington Post

The lipstick on a pig

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The artificial intelligence that is squatting, uninvited, in my Google search engine is trying to reassure me.  There are people  involved in this equation, it says, and “absolute proof that leaves no room for denial does not exist in human  discourse” because people may deny an obvious conclusion if it hurts their feelings.  Or if, as we’ve seen, it casts the Mayor of MAGAtown in a less than a blindingly positive glow.  My conclusion is you’ve got to keep piling up the facts and remain confident they will lead, eventually, to the scales falling from the eyes of enough people to make a difference.  As may be happening now, both in the Senate’s consideration of the nominee for attorney general and in a federal judge’s finding that a Donald Trump lawsuit against the IRS “was manufactured simply to justify its settlement”.

In May we discussed the very clearly corrupt intentions of the lawsuit filed by private citizen Trump (and his elder sons and their businesses) against the Internal Revenue Service of the government run by President Trump, seeking $10 billion to punish the IRS for laxity in letting TFG’s personal income taxes be stolen and later published (by the New York Times) against his wishes during his first term.  He swore in the court filing that letting the public see his tax returns “caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”  But just as Judge Kathleen Williams began to question the legitimacy of Trump suing his own government – with Trump controlling the lawyers on both sides of a case in which there seemed to be no real conflict – Trump withdrew the suit (hoping to take away the judge’s control of the proceedings) and then his Justice Department announced a stunning settlement.

  • The creation of a tax-funded $1.8 billion fund to pay damages to persons who claim to have been victimized by the government under Democratic presidents, apparently to include those convicted (and later pardoned, by TFG) of offenses related to the treasonous assault on the Capitol on January 6; the fund was to be controlled by Trump-appointed trustees with no oversight permitted from Congress or the courts; and
  • The IRS would be barred, in perpetuity, from auditing any of the past tax returns of Trump or his elder sons or or any of their businesses, which I had characterized as “An after-the-fact non-disclosure agreement, shielding any evidence of any prior tax evasion” from use in court or from disclosure to the public.

It took less than two weeks for the prospect of a “slush fund” of tax money being used to pay off the rioters who attacked police officers on January 6 to rouse some GOP members of Congress who had conveniently forgotten the concept of “checks and balances” among the branches of government, while always remembering the political power TFG holds over MAGA America.  Acting attorney general Todd Blanche told a House subcommittee that plans for that fund were dead.  Deceased.  Irretrievably unrevivable.  And you could take his word for it, although he refused to put this new part of the agreement in writing.  But the part of the agreement preventing the IRS from auditing the Trumps?  Oh, that would stay in effect.

Meanwhile, Judge Williams had re-opened the case to investigate whether the court had been deceived through the misconduct of lawyers.  She was prompted to that action by a letter from three dozen former federal judges who argued “that Mr. Trump’s settlement agreement raised serious questions about his ‘candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system.’”

Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit — chief among them, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official in the department.

In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her…”

Did she ever.  In mid-July,

A federal judge held [July 13] that President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS was manufactured simply to justify its settlement, including a multibillion-dollar “anti-weaponization” fund for political allies and a shield from IRS scrutiny.

“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process,” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote in a blistering 56-page ruling. “This was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”

The fact that the federal government did not ever counter arguments that the arrangement was unconstitutional —and that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche unilaterally canceled plans for the Anti-Weaponization Fund — were glaring signals that the lawsuit was not genuine, Williams said.

And furthermore,

Though the administration has argued that Trump had filed the lawsuit — a demand for a $10 billion payout for the leak of his tax returns — in his personal capacity, Williams said that explanation was untenable.

“The court declines to adopt or accept the credulous exercise of divorcing President Trump’s current job title from an understanding of what happened here,” she wrote. “The Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.”

Williams added that Trump could have brought the lawsuit while he was a private citizen but appears to have waited until he was reelected president and appointed his former lawyer to help lead the DOJ.

Trump is appealing that ruling, which is a “full-throated repudiation of Trump and his administration” that came just as Blanche’s nomination as attorney general was going before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Where, as luck would have it, sit two Republicans who object to provisions of the Trump/IRS lawsuit settlement AND who are ending their terms this year and so are beyond the reach of Trump’s political threats.  By earlier this week,

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) had insisted that the Trump administration limit — in writing — central provisions of a controversial deal struck this spring between the Justice Department and the president to resolve a lawsuit he filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. DOJ was not able to provide the senators sufficient assurances to win their agreement to support Blanche.

The senators have said their votes for Blanche’s nomination hinge on their requested changes to the deal. A “no” vote from either one of them would be enough to sink Blanche’s nomination at the committee stage, given the expectation that all Judiciary Committee Democrats will oppose Blanche’s confirmation.

(snip)

Tillis, who opted not to seek reelection this year and has shown an increasing willingness to tangle with Trump, has expressed concern that the payout fund could end up rewarding defendants who attacked police during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Cornyn, who lost his reelection bid in May after Trump endorsed his primary opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, shared Tillis’s worries on the fund and has said he wants the administration to clarify, in writing, that the tax protections afforded by the deal do not apply to the Trump family’s future actions.

This resistance led to a rescheduling of the committee vote to next week.  Cornyn and Tillis had continued discussions with Blanche and reported some progress…until Blanche’s former law client couldn’t resist the urge to show everyone who is boss.

President Donald Trump threatened on Saturday to revive his controversial plan for federal payouts to people he says were “badly treated” by the Obama and Biden administrations, telling senators that he would “push hard” for legislation to fund the payments if they did not confirm his nominee for attorney general.

“It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account, vowing to pass an “Anti-Weaponization Bill” should his nomination of Todd Blanche for attorney general fail in the Senate.

Trump added that he would keep Blanche as acting attorney general and blasted two GOP senators — John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) — who have blocked the nomination from advancing over concerns about the fund.

It was not immediately clear what legislation the president was referencing, and the White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s post.

So, what do we have here:

  1. A man who ceaselessly brags about his business acumen (even though he is a man who ran casinos  into bankruptcy), but who swears in court that public disclosure of his tax returns causes him public embarrassment and tarnishes his business reputation.
  2. A man who, at any time in the years when he was not president of the United States, could have sued the IRS over its contractor’s theft of his tax returns that got leaked to the New York Times, but who didn’t do so until he was president again and thus controlled the governmental department that runs the IRS as well as the department that files lawsuits on behalf of the government.
  3. A man who claimed he really really deserved $10 billion dollars in compensation for real damages done to him, but who dropped the suit without argument when the judge began to question the suit’s legitimacy.
  4. A man who claimed not to know anything about the settlement of that lawsuit (sorta like he claimed not to know anything about Project 2025), but who was all on board with paying almost $2 billion dollars to people he had already pardoned for their crimes in attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6.  And still is, even after a federal judge found that the suit was just the lipstick put on the pig of an effort to legitimize a multi-billion dollar payoff to Trump supporters while shielding his possible past tax evasion from government scrutiny.
  5. A man who wants his former personal criminal defense lawyer to run the Department of Justice (so he can punish his political enemies), but who thinks nothing of bastardizing the legal procedure for putting him in that office in order to get his way after officials in another branch of government have the temerity to do their job instead of rubberstamping his edicts.

When a man’s actions tell you who he really is…it’s time to believe him.  Not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, you know; just piling up some facts over here, boss…

A sliver of dawn, a sleight of hand

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Just two weeks ago the president who never stops impressing us with his corruptive instincts and self-serving interpretations of law and custom raised the bar like nobody’s ever seen before.  He went to court as a private citizen suing his own government for $10 billion in damages, then withdrew the suit in favor of the establishment of a multi-billion dollar fund he could control from the shadows that could make payments with taxpayer dollars (your taxes and mine) to anyone who claimed to have “victimized” by the Biden Justice Department, including the people convicted of crimes for storming the Capitol on January 6.  Turns out those “billion-dollar slush fund” headlines were too much, even for the cowed and subservient Republicans in Congress who had never before seen any Trump proposal they couldn’t love.  But so far, they still providing cover for another part of the “settlement” that’s just as corrupt and self-serving for you know who.

In the good news section, we have yesterday’s declaration by the acting attorney general “withdrawing a proposal to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to be victims of unfair prosecution, amid a revolt among Republicans who saw it as an ethical and political disaster.”  Even at that, though, the acting AG (and Trump’s former criminal lawyer) wouldn’t go as far as some members wanted.

Democrats repeatedly requested that Mr. [Todd] Blanche commit to rescind, in writing, his order creating the payout fund.

“You started it, you established it in writing, so it just makes sense to rescind it in writing,” said Representative Grace Meng, Democrat of New York.

“I’m not committing to put anything in writing,” he said, adding that he would abide by his word and would take the request under advisement.

So, won’t sign, but you can trust him?  Right.  Some Republicans senators trust him so much that today they’re considering writing a ban on the fund into law! [6/5 Editor’s note: they tried, but they did not succeed. Later today Justice Department filings in two courts stated the fund is not going forward; I’m still not convinced.]

And just because Blanche “promised” this bad idea would be canned does not, I think, mean we should trust that it will.  The Trumpists usually come up with a backup plan to get whatever crazy thing they want; they are not the kind to throw up their hands and whisper “oops, my bad.”

Still, on its face at this point, I finally see a glimmer of a sign that Trump can be stopped: by the citizens who react so viscerally to such a poorly-camouflaged grift, who then empower the paper tiger members of Congress to for once do their —-ing jobs and stand athwart a runaway Executive and shout “Stop!”  The only people who seem unhappy about this development are those January 6 offenders-turned-pardonees who thought they’d stumbled onto a way to monetize their treason.

Another good news part is that the federal judge who originally felt she had no choice but to let this plan go ahead has had a change of heart.  After three dozen former federal judges argued “that Mr. Trump’s settlement agreement raised serious questions about his ‘candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system,’” Judge Kathleen Williams re-opened the case to investigate allegations that the court was deceived through the misconduct of lawyers.  All of whom, you’ll recall – both sides – are Trump’s lawyers.  Words like “collusion” and “fraud upon the court” are being summoned.

Before she closed the case, Judge Williams, an Obama appointee, had in fact questioned whether the lawsuit presented an actual conflict that she could adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was on both sides of the suit, bringing claims against a federal agency that he controlled. When she closed it, she noted there was no “settlement of record,” but shortly after, the Justice Department released its agreement foreclosing the action.

In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit — chief among them, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official in the department.

In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud.”

She also wanted Mr. Trump’s lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”

(snip)

In their filing…the former judges claimed that Mr. Trump had improperly used his suit against the I.R.S. as a way to obtain “unlawful private benefits” for himself and his family, and to create a fund that would dole out taxpayer money “without constitutional or congressional authority.”

They also argued that the president had tried to shield the deal from judicial oversight by rushing a settlement and “short-circuiting” Judge Williams’s ability to examine its terms.

Now, it wouldn’t be much of a good news/bad news set up if I didn’t have at least one bad news item to point out.  And it comes from right in the middle of the good news about the Trump Administration’s “aw shucks” reversal of the plan for a $1.8 billion fund to pay “victims” of political harassment by the Justice Department.  The Biden Justice Department only, of course.

But Mr. Blanche said he would leave in place [emphasis added] an order he signed last month that would, in effect, block the I.R.S. from investigating Mr. Trump, his family and his businesses for existing tax violations.

“Nothing has changed with that,” said Mr. Blanche, who added that the tax order would not shield Mr. Trump and his associates from future investigations.

Sleight of hand is a wonderful thing when used by magicians as entertainment, but it’s not so damn entertaining when our government distracts us with shouts of “nothing up my sleeve” while end-running Congress to legalize whatever tax evasion TFG might have committed in the past…you know, back in the time he gloated that not paying federal taxes “makes me smart.”

Trump and Republicans have offered zero clarity about the future of the other part of his slush-fund scheme: the grant of immunity from IRS scrutiny for Trump, his businesses, and his family members. Incredibly, this would “forever” bar IRS audits of past tax claims by the Trump clan or the Trump Organization. Democrats can try to make Republicans vote on that  towering act of corruption, which might prove politically even worse.

(snip)

Democrats tell me they’re moving to force votes in Congress that would effectively nullify the IRS immunity piece, as well. That provision is potentially an incredibly lucrative giveaway for Trump: It could benefit him to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. So one approach would be for Democrats to use “reconciliation”—the process that Republicans are using to pass the ICE funding, which enables Senate passage by simple majority—to push amendments that would nix Trump’s IRS immunity scam.

“We will do whatever we can to force a vote during the budget reconciliation process on this monarchical outrage and further plunder of the people,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, emails me. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that Democrats are set to push an amendment that will “revoke” Trump’s and his family’s “free rein to commit tax fraud.”

Here a complication arises. Now that Trump seems to have put his slush fund on hold, Senate Republicans may drop any effort to nix it via legislation from the reconciliation process entirely. If so, that could procedurally preclude Democrats from offering any amendments involving the IRS settlement—including one nixing Trump’s IRS immunity scam.

(snip)

Now imagine if the public broadly understood that Trump has ordered his Justice Department to reach a deal exempting himself—and his businesses and family members—from a good deal of IRS examination. This could personally and directly benefit Trump by saving him enormous sums of money while quite consciously placing him and his cronies above laws that the rest of us must live under.

That’s another level of self-dealing entirely. And Trump is flaunting it with great relish. OK, then: Democrats should do everything they possibly can to ensure that vulnerable Republican incumbents own every last little bit of it.

We all know – or certainly should know by now – that the only person Trump cares about is himself.  If he could finagle a couple billion dollars to buy the continuing fawning adoration of his supporters, that’s fine; but the one part of this whole agreement he won’t give up willingly is the order to protect himself from the IRS.

You damn right nobody’s ever seen anything like this before

Pat Ryan 3 Comments

Do I have this straight: the president as a private citizen sued a department of his own government for billions of dollars, then dropped the suit as the Justice Department announced a fund that gives (essentially) him control of $1.8 billion to disburse at his whim, with no oversight, and the government agreed never to audit any of his prior income tax returns?  That doesn’t seem right…how did we get here?

As a candidate for president, who later was convicted of multiple dozens of felonies, he was asked to release his income tax returns as is customary in these elections, but said he was being audited and would release them once the audit(s) were complete.  (There is no law that prohibits the release of returns that are under audit, although some lawyers would urge their client not to while the matter is ongoing; the public release of tax returns is a nod to openness and to prove that the candidate will have no secret conflict of interest once in office.)

But then this candidate never did release his tax returns, and never gave any further reason why he chose not to do so.  (Some returns were released later by a House committee, though.)

The candidate (and we all know who I’m talking about) won the 2016 election, and later some of his federal tax returns were published after an investigation by the New York Times.  Those returns show the man who claims enormous wealth twice paid only $750 in federal income tax.  This same man had proudly boasted during the campaign that not paying taxes was an indication of his intelligence, rather than his greed or his unwillingness to pay his fair share of the operation of our nation’s government.

After the twice-impeached former president won re-election in 2024, which itself forced the termination of several other criminal cases against him due to a custom not to prosecute sitting presidents, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit – yes, TEN BILLION DOLLARS – against the Internal Revenue Service – yes, an arm of the same Executive Branch that he himself was now (again) the leader of – to recover for the alleged damages done to him by the Service’s alleged laxity in allowing his tax returns to have been published against his wishes.  That’s right: the president admits – he swears in the suit– that letting the public see his tax returns “caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”  Curious claim for such an outstanding and successful businessman, right, but there it is.

As the judge assigned to this case started to ask questions that indicated the suit may not have smooth sailing – that, for example, there didn’t seem to be any real conflict here if the president is suing his own government and he controls the lawyers on both sides – the president announced he has withdrawn the lawsuit.  As is his right.

But THEN, the president’s Justice Department – which has in this second TFG Administration brought shame upon itself and the nation for openly seeking revenge (under the cloak of “justice”) against the boss’ political enemies and those of the boss’ supporters – announced the creation of a giant (insert your own descriptive adjective here) fund controlled by the president’s supplicants that can be distributed by them/him, with no oversight from Congress or the courts, to those who claim damages from being victimized by a previous government of another party which had attempted (ineptly and too slowly, it turned out) to investigate allegations of lawbreaking by TFG himself.  And by his minions.

Mr. Trump’s decision to drop his suit against the I.R.S. appeared to be intended to strip Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who had been overseeing the I.R.S. case in the Southern District of Florida, of her appointed role in approving a formal settlement agreement. By dismissing the case in its entirety, Mr. Trump was able to reach an agreement with his own appointees [emphasis added] without risking the rebuke of an impartial and independent arbiter. Judge Williams, tacitly acknowledging her hands were tied, accepted the president’s dismissal of the suit and formally closed the case by the end of the day.

(snip)

Money for the fund will come from a special, unlimited account available to the Justice Department for settling lawsuits. That pool of money gives the department the authority to make monetary settlements without needing approval from Congress. A group of five people, selected by Mr. [acting attorney general Todd] Blanche, will oversee the operations of the fund, though Mr. Trump can fire its members at will. It will stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before Mr. Trump leaves office.

Creation of the fund, which could be used to compensate Trump supporters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is sure to please a president who has demanded not only retribution but recompense. But it could create major political problems for congressional Republicans already dealing with the political ballast of his unpopularity — and who will now be forced to say if they support or oppose allocating taxpayer cash to his allies at a time when many Americans are struggling economically.

AND, the agreement attempts to protect itself by claiming up front that no arm of Congress or the courts, or anyone else on this planet or any other, in perpetuity, has any legal right to try to do anything at all about it.  (We’ll see about that: two police officers who were in the Capitol on January 6 have already filed suit to block creation of the fund.  I bet there will be others.)

AND MORE THAN THAT, this agreement also bars the IRS from auditing TFG’s previous tax returns, or those of his sons, or their companies.  For ever.  (A get out of jail free card?  An after-the-fact non-disclosure agreement, shielding any evidence of any prior tax evasion?)

Is that about it?  What should we think about all this?

“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal watchdog group that has been critical of the administration.

But others disagree, including some of the nearly 1600 people indicted for their role in the January 6 attack who have already been pardoned or had their convictions dismissed.  By TFG.  They could be getting a payout from the government they attacked.

Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.

“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.”

From the “most corrupt ever” reactions, to the folks annoyed by the nuisance of filling out the application, a more pertinent question (or impertinent, if you are TFG) would be, is this legal?  The answer is, I think: we will see.

The whole enterprise was a jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system, raising what legal experts said were profound questions about presidential power. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, they said, Mr. Trump will have managed simultaneously to thwart Congress’s power of the purse and the ability of the courts to police the separation of powers.

(snip)

Professor [Samuel] Bagenstos, who served as the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget and of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration, wrote in January about the danger posed by the Judgment Fund.

“An administration that wished to spend money on projects or beneficiaries not authorized by Congress,” he wrote, “could simply encourage its desired recipient to bring a lawsuit against the United States and then settle that lawsuit (no matter how frivolous) by making a payment from the Judgment Fund.”

While Congress has ceded power to the executive branch, it could also reclaim it. Indeed, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Tuesday that he expected lawmakers to scrutinize how the president’s lawsuit had been ended.

(snip)

A Justice Department news release on Monday said that the “plaintiffs” — that is, Mr. Trump and his family — “will receive a formal apology but no monetary payment or damages of any kind,” a provision the White House used to defend the fund. Still, the opportunity to help direct payments approaching $2 billion to allies has value.

So does the elimination of the threat of an audit. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump could face a tax liability of more than $100 million.

The deal was open to question for other reasons.

The I.R.S. had plenty of defenses to Mr. Trump’s suit. For instance, it might well have been barred by the statute of limitations.

Nor was it clear that the agency was liable for the acts of Charles Littlejohn, a former I.R.S. contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking Mr. Trump’s tax information and whose actions Mr. Trump had cited as a reason he had been wronged by the government.

The sum Mr. Trump sought was also roughly equal to the agency’s annual budget.

And the suit was palpably collusive, ordinarily a reason for a judge to toss a case.

Tuesday’s addendum to the settlement, the codicil purporting to immunize Mr. Trump and his family, raised its own legal questions.

(snip)

Even under the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision conferring broad immunity on Mr. Trump for his official acts, purely private conduct, as the filing of a tax return would seem to be, is fair game for prosecution after a president becomes a private citizen. It is not clear whether the addendum could block a future administration from pursuing such a claim.

How a bad thing can lead to your being grateful

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

Over the past month there have been enough examples of my state’s leaders behaving disgracefully to make me think I could write a nice satire about how I am thankful we have leaders who are willing to protect us from things we didn’t know we needed protection from.  You know, things like, Muslims in America exercising their First Amendment rights to the freedom of religion, or Texas state employees using personal social media accounts to promote a non-MAGA political rally, or university professors who are serious about exposing students to ideas their parents may not agree with, or actually anything done by anyone intent on telling truths that don’t align with the preferences of how those in power prefer their “truths” nowadays.  But before I could get there I found something that I really am grateful for: the first serious signs of a potential loosening of TFG’s grip on the Republican Party.

During the 2016 primary campaigns there were plenty of Republicans willing to be quoted disagreeing with the outrageous things Donald Trump had to say, right up until he won the nomination.  After that, as is usual, members of the party supported the party’s candidate.  But as time went on we saw an eerie, almost mystical transformation that left virtually every Republican unable to speak any criticism at all: they learned that (1) Trump was so thin-skinned that he could stand no disagreement of any kind at all on any issue, no matter how petty, (2) he had demonstrated how he would gleefully make good on his threat to support a challenger to any critic when he or she ran for re-election, and (3) MAGA nation was eager to do whatever TFG asked.  Republican senators and members of Congress – never shy and retiring types, always eager to defend their institutional prerogatives as well as their high and mighty personages – forgot how to disagree, however politely, with the Chief Executive.  They might as well have stopped meeting at all.  For a period recently, they pretty much did stop meeting.

When the president began issuing executive orders to take actions that have always been the right and/or responsibility of Congress, the Republicans who control both the House and Senate never raised a public peep about it.  When his administration took it upon itself to begin unprovoked attacks on private boats in international waters – destroying the ships and killing the crewmembers – while claiming the boats and their crews were hauling illegal drugs and therefore constituted an attack on the safety of the United States but never sharing with the world any evidence to prove the claim, there was one constant in the response from GOP members: the sound of crickets.  Until this weekend.

Last Friday the Washington Post reported (free link) on the questionable orders that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave to the Navy SEALs executing the first of these attacks.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The important thing to be emphasized here, beyond the claim that Whiskey Pete ordered the killing of “combatants” who might have been considered “non-combatants” after their boat was blown out from under them and were clinging to wreckage to keep from drowning, is that the talk of investigating potential “war crimes” is coming from Democrats AND Republicans!

The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.

“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.

“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.

(snip)

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

That was followed Saturday with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and the ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”

“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.

This does not mean that ALL Republicans are challenging the White House, but today some of them are willing to say the quiet part out loud: that lawmakers have the responsibility to check this out for themselves…it might be that the president’s puppet, the demonstrably unsuitable nominee to lead the nation’s military that the Senate obediently approved even if holding their collective noses, might have given orders that violate the Geneva Convention.  And, they are saying, we won’t ignore this.

For that, I am grateful.

Just a few helpful suggestions

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The lack of enthusiastic support – or any support at all, really – for the current American president found within and among this blog’s posts might lead one to believe I am a withered, cranky, “no fun” sort with all the redeeming social characteristics of a cadaver.  The poster coot for the “get off my lawn” model of Americans.  But it’s not true: I’m actually quite friendly and eager to help out anyone any time I can.  For example, while watching TV “news” stories about recent actions being taken by the Administration, it dawned on me that perhaps no one bothered to clearly explain to TFG just what it is that a president of the United States is supposed to do and, more importantly, what such a president is not supposed to do.  I’d like to help!

For example, presidents don’t seek to “punish” other sovereign countries (especially ones that are our friends and biggest trading partners) because the leader of some political subdivision of that country (like a provincial premier or a state governor) runs a television ad critical of the American president’s economic policy.  Whether the ad was truthful or not.  An autocrat would do something like that.

Presidents don’t – unilaterally, without warning, and without prior consultation with allies – launch unprovoked, lethal military strikes against private vessels in international waters without presenting to the world the incontrovertible evidence of that vessel and its crew’s threat to American interests.  A lawless tyrant would do that.

Presidents don’t presume to dictate to the leaders of other sovereign nations how to wage war or how to end war.  Only a…well, only a would-be dictator would try that.

Presidents don’t believe they have leeway to significantly alter, or destroy, historic artifacts in order to erect gaudy monuments to their almighty selves (even when they say the costs will be paid by private donations; a scheme ripe for corruption) without even a show of a cursory consultation with appropriate government officials.  That sounds like something a megalomaniac would do.

Presidents don’t tell transparently false stories about the conditions in their country as an excuse to send their nation’s armies into their own cities against their own citizens to put down peaceful protests and intimidate political opponents.  Totalitarians do stuff like that.

Presidents don’t misuse the routine processes of self-governance to re-set the conditions of an upcoming election they fear they will lose.  Cowardly losers try to rewrite the rules of the game.

Presidents may indeed be the driving force behind the construction of patriotic symbols recognizing the greatness of their country, but they don’t reflexively presume to name those edifices after themselves or fire public officials who have the authority to alter what could easily be interpreted as self-aggrandizing plans.  But, boy oh boy, narcissists sure do.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the Commission on Fine Arts is terminated, effective immediately,” reads an email reviewed by The Post that was sent to one of the commissioners by a staffer in the White House presidential personnel office.

(And if you want to fire people who work for you, a president has the guts to do the dirty work themselves.  Especially if they are a president who invaded the public consciousness in a brainless television offering in which their very very macho catchphrase was “you’re fired.”)

When the do-nothing (without TFG’s approval) Congress lets appropriations authority lapse and forces the government to shut down, presidents don’t use that as an excuse to take “unprecedented, and even illegal, steps during the shutdown to inflict unnecessary damage to public services and investments, the federal workers who deliver them, and the public who depends on them.”  But a con man would…and they would really hate it when the courts step in to stop them.

See, it was easy to be friendly and offer good-natured, non-accusatory assistance.  I feel good!  If any similar instances of possible misunderstanding turn up in the future, I’ll be happy to try to help out.  It’s what I do.