359

 

So Trump’s is corrupting entire agencies of the government even the GSA. Indeed, recently we saw how he’s corrupted the Secret Service:

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1052554791954644993

It seems that Trump has turned the Secret Service into his own Gestapo service. Here the SS wasn’t acting like it serves the American people but rather like Jared Kushner’s personal bodyguard. Meanwhile, Trump’s weekly visits to Mar-a-Lago, etc have run up huge bills for the SS. 

Then there are recent stories of how low morale is at Jeff Sessions’ DOJ. Part of this is because of the way Sessions has politicized the entire agency. It’s ironic that Trump has gone after Sessions so brutally, as no one has pursued his authoritarian and xenophobic agenda with more gusto than the unreconstructed segregationist from Alabama. Part of it is Trump’s attacks on Sessions and his attempts to micromanage the agency.

The story of how Trump changed the plans on building a new FBI headquarters is very revealing on a few levels. First of all, he’s corrupted the GSA as Congressman Quigley had directly asked Administrator Emily Murphy  about wether she’d spoke to Trump about this decision and she flatly lied about it. 

“House Democrats are asking the Trump administration for more information about the decision to keep the FBI headquarters across the street from Trump International Hotel downtown, which they criticized as $500 million more expensive than moving to the Washington suburbs.”

So keeping it here costs us $500 million dollars but the good news is it protects Trump’s hotel from competition which is what really matters. He doesn’t serve us at our pleasure but the reverse-or so both the GSA and the Secret Service now apparently believe.

“The General Services Administration, the agency that oversees federal buildings, and the FBI provided plans to the Senate in February to keep headquarters at 935 Pennsylvania Ave. and construct a new building there, rather than move to the suburbs as had been long planned.

“But Democrats have criticized Trump for meeting with GSA Administrator Emily Murphy on Jan. 24, while the decision was being made about the valuable property across the street from his namesake hotel.”

“House Democrats asked Thursday in a 10-page letter to Murphy for a timeline of all discussions between the White House, GSA and the FBI about the headquarters.”

“As a direct result of President Trump’s clear conflict of interest on this matter, we are now requesting information and documents to determine whether the president is making decisions about the FBI headquarters based on what is best for the country or what is best for his own bottom line,” the lawmakers said in the letter. “We have heard no legitimate justification for this decision.”

The letter was from five top Democrats on key committees that oversee federal buildings: Elijah Cummings of Maryland from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Peter DeFazio of Oregon from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Gerald Connolly of Virginia from the oversight subcommittee on government operations; Mike Quigley of Illinois from the appropriations subcommittee on general government; and Dina Titus of Nevada from the transportation subcommittee on public buildings.”

GSA officials said the agency settled on the Pennsylvania Avenue location with the FBI and the agency stuck with its $3.328 billion cost estimate from February for that location.

“As previously testified by GSA and the FBI, the leadership team at the FBI made the decision to keep its headquarters at the current Pennsylvania Avenue location,” spokeswoman Pam Dixon said. “GSA stands by its testimony and the cost analysis proposed in the joint revised plan submitted to Congress in February.”

Ok but they refused to reveal what Trump said at the meetings.

“GSA officials have refused to disclose what Trump said at the meetings, on advice of White House counsel, and could only disclose who attended, based on White House instructions not to disclose information about confidential meetings between the president and his senior advisors.”

Ok the White House counsel-ie, Don McGahn, who limited the scope of the Kavanaugh investigation-told them not to let us know what Trump said. The WH counsel doesn’t serve Trump either-it’s the WH’s counsel, not Trump’s personal lawyer. But McGahn doesn’t see it that way.  I’m tired of all these ‘confidential meetings’ for the fake ‘President.’ While I tend to doubt Rod Rosenstein ever said it, as dishonest and compromised as so-called ‘President Trump’ is I think everyone who speaks to him should wear a wire.

FN: In retrospect Rosenstein probably did say it-Andy McCabe also remembers him saying it-though it’s clear that this was something a lot of folks in the Russia House were saying at the time.

End of FN.

Ok, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work-I get it. Though don’t tell me he was duly elected-that’s exactly what remains the point of contention. Ideally, you don’t want staff recording him-the oversight should come from Congress. But as we know that’s not happening as Devin Nunes, Lindsay Graham, and friends see their job as protecting ‘President Trump.’

“The president took an interest in the project because of his background in real estate development, White House officials have said. Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, said Trump is always interested in construction because he knows the field from real-estate development, and found GSA “very impressive” and “knowledgeable.”

Rather he took an interest because of his pecuniary interest in real estate development.

In any case, the claims of Administrator Murphy, spokeswoman Pam Dixon, and friends are false. In other words they have lied to the public to protect  the faux ‘President.’

Ms. Murphy made her claims under oath to Congress and so she’s committed perjury-to protect who she sees as her boss. But 

But their emails! Newly public emails show exactly what simple logic would suggest-of course he was involved.

“President Donald Trump was more instrumental than previously known in scrapping plans to move the FBI headquarters out of Washington to the DC suburbs, according to newly released internal government emails.

“The decision could have financial benefits for the President, whose own hotel is located a block away, critics say.”

“The documents were released Thursday by House Democrats in a letter to General Services Administrator Emily Murphy that suggests she misled Congress about the President’s involvement.”

“New documents provided to the Oversight Committee indicate that President Trump met personally with you, the FBI, and White House officials on January 24, 2018, where he was directly involved with the decision to abandon the long-term relocation plan and instead move ahead with the more expensive proposal to construct a new building on the same site, and thereby prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land,” states the letter by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and other senior Democrats.

“In a statement Thursday afternoon, GSA argued that the emails Democrats cited were taken out of context.”

Oh, out of context. How do you take this out of context?

“The days following the White House meeting included efforts to make the decision to keep the FBI in Washington official, specifically referencing Trump’s wishes.”

“Just one day after the meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, GSA’s acting chief of staff, Brennan Hart, sent an email to Joseph Lai, a special assistant to the President, to emphasize the decision had been made not to relocate the FBI headquarters.”

Days later, GSA’s acting general counsel, Jack St. John, suggested the need to get “something in writing” from the FBI and Justice Department that solidified what had been agreed upon in the meeting with Trump.”

Hart responded in an email, “Ideally, I think it would first recap the oval meeting with what POTUS directed everyone to do then ask Emily [Murphy] to execute POTUS’s orders.”

How do you take “Tell Emily Murphy to do what ‘President Trump’ ordered everyone to do’ out of context?

On January 28, Hart also sent an email to officials in the Office of Legislative Affairs discussing Trump’s role that said, “GSA is going to hold our ground on funding source and that it is a demolition/new construction per the President’s instructions.”

Per the President’s instructions. I don’t care how you want to parse that it’s pretty clear, pretty impossible to ‘take out of context.’

Rick Wilson likes to say everything Trump touches dies. 

Certainly everything and everyone he touches in the federal agencies is corrupted. As I noted in (Chapter C) I think when the Democrats investigate Comeygate-the Democrats need to investigate Comeygate-they ought to also investigate the IG investigation of the investigation namely was it compromised by Trump’s political hires. How much of what they did-in terms of making it more about Peter Strozk’s and Lisa Page’s texts-and delaying it so Trump and the GOP could get a separate report on McCabe-was done specifically ‘per POTUS instructions’ or to ‘execute POTUS” instructions?

FN: My guess is the level of politicization at IG under Trump’s Russia House has reached stunning proportions-note Hannity recently predicted Michael Horowitz, head of the IG, is going down-due to insufficient deference to ‘the President.

End of FN.

Now he’s corrupted Murphy-and as a perjurer, she’s going to pay the price.

“The documents obtained by House Democrats are a preview of the kinds of oversight Democrats might escalate if they win the House majority in November.”

FN: Catalog what Cummings’ committee has in fact done…

Democrats have “serious concerns” about the move on the FBI plan to “replace it with a more costly plan to keep the current location, demolish the existing building, and construct a new facility on the same site,” the letter states.\

“The have also raised questions about why the GSA chief was not more forthcoming with Congress about the White House’s role. In April, Murphy did not disclose she’d met with the President about the project when asked by Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, during a congressional hearing if the President or anyone at the White House was involved in the discussions about the future of the FBI building.”

While Trump and his hacks are claiming it’s being taken out of context the GSA IG says her testimony was ‘incomplete.’

The General Services Administration’s inspector general later said Murphy’s testimony had been “incomplete.”

“We found that Administrator Murphy’s testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on April 17, 2018, was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project,” the IG said in a report in August.

Democrats accuse Murphy in their letter of concealing valuable information from Congress.

“Your meetings with the White House came to light only after direct evidence emerged, including a photograph of you meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, along with other White House, Justice Department, and FBI officials,” the Democrats wrote in the letter Thursday.

“Democrats on the committee argue that Trump had a clear interest in the FBI property being developed before he was President, but after he became President and was not allowed to invest in the project, his interest became ensuring no other developer could buy the property, convert it and compete with the Trump hotel.”

“Many years before becoming President, Donald Trump expressed interest in the FBI headquarters moving out of Washington, D.C. so he could acquire the land on Pennsylvania Avenue and redevelop the property, which is directly across the street from the Trump International Hotel. However, after he was sworn in as President—and became ineligible as a federal employee to obtain the property—he reportedly became ‘dead opposed’ to the government selling the property, which would have allowed commercial developers to compete directly with the Trump Hotel,” Cummings and his colleagues wrote.

This story is obviously important on its own specific terms-that it’s outrageous that Trump has interfered in the decision making at the GSA to change plans on the FBI building project because it’s a better deal for his own business interests-but a worse deal for the American people. This reminds us of the fact that he and his family are violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution on a daily, hourly basis. He is literally always stealing from us.

UPDATE: Speaking of Emoluments the Dems have achieved some progress on the case.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/democrats-win-huge-emoluments-clause-trump-violations-suit/?utm_source=push_notifications

It also highlights something else: Trump is a micromanager. Making it very unlikely that he didn’t know about the Trump Tower meeting  before it happened. 

As we saw in (Chapter E) Steve Bannon speculated to Michael Wollf that Donald Jr must have popped his head into Trump’s office-just upstairs from the meeting after it ended. Of course, this was just speculation-you wonder how much Bannon actually knows for a fact-true he didn’t become the official campaign director until two months later but his very good friend Erik Prince was very much in the loop regarding Russia. Then even after the fact, Bannon may well have learned a lot more than he merely speculated on with Wolff.

As we saw in (Chapter D) Michael Cohen reportedly has stated that he witnessed Don Jr telling Trump about the meeting before the fact. While his lawyer, Lanny Davis, has since tried to pull back on this by publicly outing himself as a source and claiming that somehow he didn’t really know what he was saying-is he saying he was just passing along a rumor?–you get the sense that this was really about covering his you know with Mueller after getting ahead of his skis-to the potential detriment of his client.

And CNN stands by its reporting, pointing out that Davis wasn’t its only source in any case.

But this story of Trump’s meddling in the decision on a new FBI building underscores a fundamental fact about himself-he’s a self serving micromanager. Making it logically slim to none that he didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Indeed, the educated guess here is not just that he ‘knew’ in a kind of passive way but that he was driving the train on the meeting-perhaps he spoke to Aras Agalarov himself before Agalarov directed Rob Goldstone to send Don Jr that email it’s part of the Russian government’s support for your father’s campaign. 

Keeping in mind the fact that Trump is a micromanager also gives us insight into a whole host of other decisions. Indeed, his staff works very hard to give him plausible deniability but it’s pretty clear that behind the scenes he’s driving the train. Which is why in (Chapter F) I argue it must at least be seriously considered wether Trump managed to interfere, compromise, and corrupt the IG investigation into Emailgate-seeing as so much in the report was about his parallel narratives about the Deep State-Lisa Page and Peter Strozk’s texts, the Andy McCabe diversion, etc.

UPDATE:: We now know  per the Mueller Report how much he was driving the train on both finding Clinton’s deleted emails and coordinating and colluding with Wikileaks.

 

 

 

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