Steve Bannon to be investigated

Eric

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Trump drained the swamp and immediately filled it with rats. I fear that congress is really inept when it comes to anyone in the Trump administration, it will be interesting to see it if they want to continue to pursue them after the election if Dems take over.
 

Alli

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Trump drained the swamp and immediately filled it with rats. I fear that congress is really inept when it comes to anyone in the Trump administration, it will be interesting to see it if they want to continue to pursue them after the election if Dems take over.

I’d really like to see them continue. There are a number who deserve punishment.

As far as him filling the swamp with rats, I beg to differ. Rats are quite intelligent. He filled it with cockroaches.
 

Eric

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Technically speaking, Trump will no longer have the protection of the presidency and they charge and lock him up but I think the optics of it might look like a vendetta, I would be surprised if the Dems went down that path but the DA's office sure could.
 

Alli

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Technically speaking, Trump will no longer have the protection of the presidency and they charge and lock him up but I think the optics of it might look like a vendetta, I would be surprised if the Dems went down that path but the DA's office sure could.

I’m counting on NY to deal with him. But there are so many others that have such questionable behavior. Notably one Devin Nunes.
 

Eric

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I’m counting on NY to deal with him. But there are so many others that have such questionable behavior. Notably one Devin Nunes.
Nunes represents in a county right near me, I had to drive through it to go to LA a while back and he was on a bunch of billboards out there. CA is a liberal state but the rural counties are full of right wing nutjobs.
 

Thomas Veil

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I’m counting on NY to deal with him.
Yes, my understanding is that if he pardons himself on his way out the door (and if it will legally even hold up in court), that pardon only covers federal crimes. States can still bring charges.
 

Eric

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Yes, my understanding is that if he pardons himself on his way out the door (and if it will legally even hold up in court), that pardon only covers federal crimes. States can still bring charges.
So he can pardon himself for crimes he hasn't been charged with yet as he exits?
 

Thomas Veil

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He can absolve himself (or try to) of any actions he committed as President. Future actions don't count.

And even a self-pardon is legally problematical. The Atlantic has a pretty good article explaining it.
...scholars’ views don’t mean much. The current constitutional rule is Donald Trump can do anything he can get away with. The president operates by hotel-burglar logic: If people don’t want to be robbed, they ought to lock their doors; if the Founders didn’t want Trump to do something, it’s their own fault for not writing “the president can’t do this.”

If you read on in that article, you'll see that a successor could attempt to charge him with federal crimes, and Trump could fight it, and the case would almost certainly go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Talk about setting a major precedent!

But to get back to Steve Bannon...I'm with Alli. I never saw that one coming.
 

lizkat

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I'm still back at incredulity over most of what has transpired since Trump dropped his hat into the ring in the summer of 2015. It's my age, I suppose, and the fact that "reality TV" was never my cup of tea, so most of what Trump has been doing all this time just strikes me as grossly incompetent, vastly malfeasant and corrosively corrupt. Maybe that's how real reality TV works. I mean how does that crap get on the air anyway.

As for Bannon, he's worse than Trump in a way because he has seemed overall and personally far less dysfunctional (so far) than Trump, despite some apparent character flaws including an ego that takes him over cliffs now and then. His foray into highest levels of American politics has been just one of his adventures and I'd say he's still a fairly dangerous guy with nationalist, populist influences abroad. While he was at Breitbart and in the White House I thought of him as a nasty kingmaker. Now he's back to being a nasty barnburner.

I hadn't thought Congress would [still?] be investigating Bannon though. Heh, maybe trying to figure out if they can burn his US passport. I mean it's not clear he's really that much a fan of the US Constitution.
 

Yoused

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So he can pardon himself for crimes he hasn't been charged with yet as he exits?
Ford did it for Nixon (I am old enough to remember), so one can imagine that he could resign on January 2nd and receive a pardon from Bootlicker on the 3rd (as the new Congress is convening).

The biggest problem is this: if the pardon is blanket, that leaves open the possibility that absolutely any action he undertook as president could be viewed as illegal and thus easily reversed (perhaps even judicial appointments), because accepting a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt. Which means that he would forfeit all fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination, since he had plead guilty by taking the pardon, and thus could be forced to testify on any matter (guaranteed charge of perjury right there).

Also, such a pardon would only cover him, which leaves all his minions who have not been pardoned exposed to prosecution for carrying out illegal orders. I should make a lot of people sweat.
 

Alli

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I hadn't thought Congress would [still?] be investigating Bannon though. Heh, maybe trying to figure out if they can burn his US passport. I mean it's not clear he's really that much a fan of the US Constitution.

He was only ever interested in burning the country down.

The biggest problem is this: if the pardon is blanket, that leaves open the possibility that absolutely any action he undertook as president could be viewed as illegal and thus easily reversed (perhaps even judicial appointments), because accepting a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt. Which means that he would forfeit all fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination, since he had plead guilty by taking the pardon, and thus could be forced to testify on any matter (guaranteed charge of perjury right there).

That is the most positive outlook I’ve heard in quite some time. Thank you.
 

Edd

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Round 2:

From the article:
“The Soros-backed DA has now decided to pursue phoney charges against me 60 days before the midterm election because WarRoom is the major source of the Maga grassroots movement,” Bannon said, referring to his far-right conservative show War Room.
😆 Invoking Soros never gets old with the base, I guess.
 

Edd

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The Soros-backed short order cook burnt my toast this morning. 😝

It becomes slightly less funny when you realize they are using Soros as a substitute word for Jew.
This summer in NH, there was a political struggle over a small but popular ski area that’s a county-owned business. The story gets complex fast but, at one point, an asshole state representative (who’s a Free Stater), made a public statement criticizing the forces against him, including our mainstream Republican governor. He referred to Soros funding opposition against him, as if Soros is involved with NH county politics and our small slice of the ski industry on any level.

He lost that political fight, and fingers are crossed that he’s ousted in November. It could be that bringing up Soros alerted the voters that he’s a fucking wing nut (like all Free Staters).
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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This summer in NH, there was a political struggle over a small but popular ski area that’s a county-owned business. The story gets complex fast but, at one point, an asshole state representative (who’s a Free Stater), made a public statement criticizing the forces against him, including our mainstream Republican governor. He referred to Soros funding opposition against him, as if Soros is involved with NH county politics and our small slice of the ski industry on any level.

He lost that political fight, and fingers are crossed that he’s ousted in November. It could be that bringing up Soros alerted the voters that he’s a fucking wing nut (like all Free Staters).

It needs to be widely known that whenever the far right uses Soros they mean Jews. They shouldn't be let off the hook with this technicality.

Of course the irony is that some Jewish groups have issues with Soros but the far right doesn't give a shit about that. The name works to shield their true beliefs.
 
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