Special Counsel Investigation of Chumph Brings Serious Legal Heat

Meuller isn’t playing around. The level of prosecutorial heat being brought to this investigation would melt most evil-doers on the spot.

As further evidence that there is some “there there” in the investigation of the Chumph’s treason, mob activities, and obstruction of justice – Mueller has recruited a murderer’s row of some of the top prosecutorial legal talent in America.Those guys quite simply – wouldn’t be there unless there was ample evidence of the “dirty”. Too bad Kamala Harris is a Senator I’d  love to see she and Preet” Bharara on the same team on this.

No wonder the Chumph can’t get a top law firm to sign on to defend him…Not only does he stiff lawyers (and everyone else) on paying them for their work…The opposition this time is real, and the Chumph can’t escape because he has more money than the poor guy.

The Man Investigating Donald Trump’s Russia Connections Is Assembling a Murderer’s Row of Prosecutors

They include men and women responsible for bringing down Nixon, Enron, and the mafia.

As Donald Trump and company continue their audacious plan to humiliate each and every American with their constant incompetence, one man is pushing to find the truth about the president and his cronies’ connections to Russia and their clumsy, foolish, shockingly transparent attempts to cover up any wrongdoing. That man is Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department to lead the investigation, and a new story from Politico paints an interesting portrait of the team Mueller is assembling. In fact, I’m pretty sure, if I were Donald Trump, that this news of this team would make me very, very nervous.

He already has picked three former colleagues from his last job as a partner at the Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr law firm: Aaron Zebley, who also was Mueller’s FBI chief of staff; Jeannie Rhee, a former DOJ attorney; and Quarles, who got his start in Washington some four decades ago as an assistant Watergate prosecutor.

But Mueller’s biggest hire to date was [Andrew] Weissmann, who is taking a leave from his current post leading the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section. The two men have a long history together at the FBI, where Weissmann served as both the bureau’s general counsel from 2011 to 2013 and as Mueller’s special counsel in 2005.

Weissmann’s prosecution record includes overseeing the investigations into more than 30 people while running the Enron Task Force, including CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. And while working in the U.S. attorney’s office in the eastern district of New York, he tried more than 25 cases involving members of the Genovese, Colombo and Gambino crime families.

Imagine being a president and a corrupt businessman who potentially is at the head of an immense conspiracy. Your life is full of paranoia. You don’t know whom to trust. The people around you are constantly trying to manipulate you. You’re out of your depth in most meetings. The media won’t stop talking about the scandal you’re at the center of, but you hope against hope that you’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll just go away.

And then you find out the guys who are investigating you are people who have literally brought down presidents and corrupt businessmen. That’s the situation our president finds himself in now. And if we’ve learned anything from the past two years of Donald Trump’s political career, it’s that there’s nothing this guy handles worse than pressure. I have no doubt that we’re only days away from a Twitter rant about how these guys are losers who should be deported for being FAKE NEWS or something equally stupid.

 

 

Obama and the Courts – Judicial Nominees

President Obama has nominated a much more diverse set of judges to the Federal Courts than any of his predecessors. Of course, that has resulted in Republicans fillebustering a higher percentage of his nominees and preventing the confirmation of qualified nominees. Obama has had fewer nominees confirmed than any recent President.

Percentage of Nominees Confirmed By President Since Carter

Now, Bush stacked the court with 322 far right wing sycophants, reactionary ideologues, and extremist right wing appointments, resulting in a Federal Judicial System and Supreme Court more hostile to minorities and Civil Rights than at any time since Dred Scott. Indeed, the financial association between Bush Supreme Court appointments and right wing financiers such as the Koch brothers have led many to believe the Supreme Court of the United States has been corrupted, by corrupt right wing judges. Of course an Obama Administration too cowardly to prosecute Dick Cheney’s war profiteers and torturers, isn’t likely to take on the job of prosecuting a corrupt Supreme Court judge – even if he is caught red-handed taking a $500,000 bribe through his wife.

Undeniably, the fact that President Obama has nominated more women and minorities is also difficult for Republicans to swallow, with the confirmation of minorities taking nearly twice as long as their white, male counterparts.

I think Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is fully justified in exercising “the Nuclear Option”, and should do so ASAP.

Obama increases number of female, minority judges

President Barack Obama is moving at a historic pace to try to diversify the nation’s federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn’t selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships.

More than 70 percent of Obama’s confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were “non-traditional,” or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent), according to Sheldon Goldman, author of the authoritative book “Picking Federal Judges.”

“It is an absolutely remarkable diversity achievement,” said Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who is only counting judges once, even if they fit more than one category.

The White House recently has been touting its efforts to diversify the federal bench during Obama’s tenure, now approaching three years in office.

The president won Senate confirmation of the first Latina to the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And with the confirmation of Justice Elena Kagan, he increased the number of women on the high court to three for the first time. The Obama administration also nominated and won confirmation of the first openly gay man to a federal judgeship: former Clinton administration official J. Paul Oetken, to an opening in New York City.

“All of us can be proud of President Obama for taking this critical step to break down another barrier and increase diversity in the federal judiciary,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said upon Oetken’s confirmation.

 

Republican Obstructionalism – Shelby Stops The Senate

This is a massive abuse of power and position by Alabama Senator Shelby. If the chickensquat Democrats don’t censure him for this, or use the “nuclear” option –  they are fools.

Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, CongressDaily (sub. req.) reports. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

“While holds are frequent,” CongressDaily‘s Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report, “Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.”

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to “all executive nominations on the Senate calendar.”

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama’s nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. CongressDaily laid out the programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

– A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From the report: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.”

– An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson earlier in the day, the magazine reports.

Back in Alabama, the Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid’s account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson “did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator’s action or his reason for doing so.”

A San Diego State University professor and “Congressional expert” told the paper “he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold” in recent history.