Day: January 4, 2018

Good news, bad news for voting rights

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While the media fixates on a gossipy insider book on the Trump White House, there is some good news that you may have missed.

The Secretaries of State of numerous states refused to cooperate with Donald Trump’s fraudulent voter fraud commission headed by the GOP’s voter suppression specialist, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and several lawsuits were filed, including by members of the commission.

This was all too much for our Dear Leader who gave up and pulled the plug on his fraudulent voter fraud commission. Trump abolishes controversial commission studying alleged voter fraud:

President Trump announced Wednesday that he is disbanding a controversial [and fraudulent] panel studying alleged voter fraud that became mired in multiple federal lawsuits and faced resistance from states that accused it of overreach.

The decision is a major setback for Trump, who created the commission last year in response to his claim, for which he provided no proof, that he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of millions of illegally cast ballots.

The commission met only twice amid the series of lawsuits seeking to curb its authority and claims by Democrats that it was stacked to recommend voting restrictions favorable to the president’s party.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there is “substantial evidence of voter fraud” and blamed the ending of the commission on the refusal of many states to provide voter data sought by the panel and the cost of ongoing lawsuits.

This slack-jawed hillbilly from Arkansas is, as always, full of shit. And score one for the Resistance.

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(Update) Congressional Republicans are running interference on the Russia investigation

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The Republican congressman who has been the most visible and aggressive in seeking to undermine the Russia investigation and to turn the House investigation into chasing conspiracy theories concocted by the conservative media entertainment complex and Donald Trump is Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team.

The personal actions of Rep. Nunes come perilously close to making him an accessory to a cover-up and obstruction of justice. He should be removed from his position as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee because he is compromised and is incapable of conducting an objective investigation. His only goal has been to block any objective investigation in the House from going forward.

You remember Rep. Nunes from early last year, don’t you? Mark Sumner of Daily Kos has a good summary of the obstruction of justice Rep. Nunes has been engaged in. Devin Nunes should be the subject of an investigation, not running one:

In November, 2016 Devin Nunes took a top slot in the Trump transition team—one that put him in a position to recommend and vet cabinet officials. In January, 2017 Nunes announced that the House Intelligence Committee would conduct an investigation into Russia’s efforts to impact the 2016 presidential election.

Between Nunes’s acceptance of a post in the Trump transition team and the start of the House investigation, multiple contacts occurred between the Trump transition team and Russian officials, including several communications between Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador. And between the Russian ambassador and Nunes’s partner in “clearing” Trump’s nominees—Jared Kushner.

All the evidence suggests that Devin Nunes began the House investigation both knowing that contacts had occurred, and deliberately working to cover them up.

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By March, Nunes completely derailed the House investigation after leaping from an Uber car, making secret visits to the White House, and holding a pair of press conferences in which he claimed to have evidence that Obama officials had improperly “unmasked” members of the Trump team—statements that Donald Trump used to support his contention that Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. Though Nunes refused to say where he was getting this information, it eventually emerged that he had been working with Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a Michael Flynn assistant who had been singled out by intelligence officials for his incompetence. However, Donald Trump overruled Cohen-Watnick’s superiors, keeping him in place so he could act as a conduit to Nunes.

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