President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday wouldn't allow reporters to see piles of documents displayed at his press conference, which he and lawyers said detailed his plans to disentangle himself from his business.

“These papers are just some of the many documents I’ve signed turning over complete and total control to my sons,” Trump said during his press conference, standing next to a table stacked with manila folders.

“They are not going to discuss [the business] with me,” Trump said of his sons. “Again, I don't have to do this. They're not going to discuss it with me.”

CNN reported that the press was not allowed to take a closer look at the documents. The Associated Press similarly reported that Trump staffers blocked journalists from looking at the folders.
Trump announced Wednesday that he is handing control of his business empire to his two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and placing his assets into a trust. The press conference was the first Trump has held since the election and included long-awaited details of how the president-elect plans to avoid conflicts of interest when sworn into office.
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A top BBC Washington correspondent has just revealed that there is a secondary source that appears to confirm the allegations filed by a former British MI6 intelligence agent that the Russian government has kompromat – compromising information – about Donald Trump and are blackmailing the President-elect with it.
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Donald Trump held his first press conference Wednesday to directly answer the question of what he plans to do to inoculate himself from his many conflicts of interest. His answer: pretty much nothing.

Trump’s plan, as his lawyer Sheri Dillon outlined, is to put his businesses in a trust managed by his two adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr., and the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.

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Trump hasn’t addressed how he will tackle domestic conflicts of interest in policymaking. He will oversee lenders who have lent money to him, appoint members to a labor relations board who rule on disputes at his properties, and hire the next head of the Government Services Agency, which rents him his DC hotel.

On the foreign policy front, Trump claims he’ll donate foreign profits from his hotels to the Treasury. But he’d still be profiting, even if he gets rid of the proceeds. (He still earned the money; he’s just using it in in an altruistic way.) Trump could also make money off other foreign business deals. All of this, ethics lawyers argue, would violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

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(Go to article to see a great statement by Schumer. He reads a letter to then Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Harry Reid, signed by McConnell and other Repugnants about documentation required of Presidential nominees to conduct a proper review of Presidential nominations. Schumer points out that McConnell's letter mirrors the very requirements Democrats are now asking Trump nominees to meet and which the Trump transition team and Repugnants in general seem to consider optional. Schumer stated he will be sending the letter to Sen McConnell to indicate the Democratic Senators requests are not capricious.)


WASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans used to care about Cabinet nominees making full disclosures ― at least they cared when President Barack Obama was the one doing the nominating.

So concerned with the potential for foreign conflicts of interest that, in 2013, Republicans demanded unprecedented disclosures from a member of their own party: former Sen. Chuck Hagel, Obama’s nominee for secretary of Defense.

“This Committee, and the American people, have a right to know if a nominee for Secretary of Defense has received compensation, directly or indirectly, from foreign sources,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), then one month into the job, wrote in a letter to Hagel that was signed by 25 additional Republican senators. “Until the Committee receives full and complete answers, it cannot in good faith determine whether you should be confirmed as Secretary of Defense.”

But now that President-elect Donald Trump looks apt to retain a financial stake in his multibillion-dollar business enterprise ― with deals connected to foreign businesses and a hotel that is being rented out by foreign governments ― the GOP no longer seems to care.

Republicans in both the House and Senate have refused to hold hearings on Trump’s conflicts of interest, and there is no apparent concern that some of the nine Cabinet nominees scheduled to testify this week have so far failed to properly disclose their financial holdings or reach the customary agreement with the Office of Government Ethics.
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Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today spoke on the Senate floor about the updated confirmation hearing schedules for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees as well as the ongoing concern for their proper vetting. Below are his remarks:


As hearings for the President-Elect's nominees get under way starting today, I wanted to reiterate that a fair and thorough investigating process is a top priority not only for my caucus, but for the American people.

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And today, there are reports in the media that under Rex Tillerson’s leadership, Exxon conducted business with Iran, potentially in violation of U.S. sanctions law. So there are really serious questions that need to be answered. In this particular case, Mr. Tillerson should release all his tax returns and promise to answer any questions on the Iran dealings that members ask.

This is too serious a subject to have questions ducked. It demands a completely open airing of all relevant information.

Did Mr. Tillerson go around our Iran sanctions simply to line Exxon’s pockets? That would be a very bad thing. The American people ought to know about it before the Senate has to vote to confirm.

For Rex Tillerson to answer the questions -- and particularly questions about Exxon setting up a separate subsidiary to get around our Iran sanctions -- is what the founding fathers wanted us to do when they enumerated in the advise and consent process.

Mr. President, this is not a partisan game. We're not doing this for sport. These aren't obscure procedural complaints. This is standard process. And as I reminded my friend, the Majority Leader, yesterday, this is the same exact process my counterpart demanded in 2009 when the shoe was on the other foot. Just as then-Minority Leader McConnell laid out in his 2009 letter to then-Majority Leader Reid, Democrats expect each nominee to have all the prerequisites with time to review before we move forward with the hearings. President Obama’s nominees completed all of their paperwork in 2009 before the hearings.

We expect nothing less from President-Elect Trump's nominees. Particularly, we expect that the paperwork to be all in with time to review. Having the paperwork in at 7:00 a.m. and holding a hearing at 10:00 a.m. is unacceptable, and we expect there will be adequate time for follow-up questions on a second day of hearings if senators are unable to finish their questions.

Now, today my colleague, the Majority Leader, said well, most of the cabinet nominees were in already when this letter came out, but the letter doesn't specify who. It includes cabinet members, and there were future cabinet members that would come forward. It's a good standard. We're all for it. We're asking our friends on the other side of the aisle to stick with it. What was good for them in 2009 is good for the country in 2017.

So, Mr. President, we are insistent on the process because it's the right thing to do.

It's the American thing to do. We don't hide nominees and rush them through. They have huge power, huge power.

If President-Elect, our Republican colleagues are as proud of the nominees as they state, then they should be happy to have them answer a lot of questions in a hearing that is not rushed. It's how we'll ensure that cabinet officials who are imbued with an immense power in our government are ethically and substantively qualified for these positions.

And, Mr. President, if there is any group of cabinet nominees that cries out for this process, it's this group of nominees. This proposed cabinet is unlike any other. It is wealthier than any other. It has a complex web of corporate connections.

So many of the nominees that pose huge potential conflict of interest problems. And frankly, it is the most hard right cabinet in its ideology. Quite different from the way President-Elect Trump campaigned.

The potential conflicts of interest for multimillionaires like Rex Tillerson or Betsy DeVos or Steve Mnuchin are enormous.

As I have said, the nominees have views so far to the right of what the President-Elect campaigned on.

The most glaring example is Representative Price. His whole career has been focused on ending Medicare as we know it. My colleague, the Majority Leader, said the American people want us to move forward and give President-Elect Trump his nominees.

If they knew that one of the nominees had been dedicated to basically getting rid of Medicare, would they want us to vote for him? I’ll bet not. But it sure explains why they want to rush these nominees through.

They don't want all of these things brought to life, but that is the wrong thing to do, and we're going to fight for the right thing to do.

The American people have a right to know if they voted for a president who might be going back on one of his key campaign promises. They deserve nothing less than open and deliberate hearings going forward.
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"Democrats probing for explosive revelations"

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Shaub also sent out emails about possible conflicts of interest for new White House staff members, saying these new hires could run the risk of inadvertently breaking the law if they hadn’t been briefed on ethics guidelines, writing that the office wouldn’t “be able to help them after the fact.”

The issue of Trump creating a blind trust for his business interests without seeking advice from ethics officers was also brought up, saying that efforts by the Trump team to create one could be moot because the government wouldn’t consider trustees independent if Trump didn’t consult the office. Also, [font color="red"]Shaub stated that a trust can only be blind if assets were “sold off,” which it appears Trump is trying to avoid[/font].

MSNBC received the info via a FOIA request and was provided with hundreds of pages of correspondence between the Trump team and the ethics office. Additional emails showed the difficulties the office had in getting in touch with Trump’s counsel, along with a lack of anything from the Trump team regarding the president-elect divesting from his businesses.

As incendiary and dangerous as he is — and he is very dangerous — and as much of a main event as he has been in this election season, Donald Trump is largely a distraction from what really ails our political discourse. Long after he is gone from the scene, the Republican Party that engendered him, facilitated him, and now supports him — despite a severe case of buyer’s remorse — will no doubt still thrive, booting up for a future candidacy of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan. And the media will still act as if Trump were an aberration, a departure from so-called “sensible” conservatism. If so, it will be yet another act of media dereliction.

In fact, worse than dereliction, because the Republican Party, with its history of dog-whistle racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, and gun addiction, salted now by incipient fascism, has been legitimized by the mainstream media for years. One could say that the GOP and MSM have operated in collusion to the great detriment of this country. One could say that and not even be a liberal, just a commonsensical American.

Today’s GOP is closer to a religious cult than a political institution

The MSM continue to treat the Republican Party as if it were just another constellation of ideology and policy — another way of governing the country, even though this campaign season, if not the last 30 years, should have disabused journalists of that notion. Today’s GOP is closer to a religious cult than a political institution. It operates on dogma, sees compromise as a moral failing, views enemies as pagans who must be vanquished, and considers every policy skirmish another Götterdämmerung.

That isn’t politics; it’s a modern version of the medieval Crusades, and as the ancient Crusades did to Europe, it has inflicted untold damage on our country. Because it is deep in the bones of the Republicans, it won’t end with Trump, who is a non-believer himself when it comes to conservative orthodoxy. It can only end with the extinction of the party itself as presently constituted — Cruz, Ryan, Rubio, McConnell, et al. — and the rise of a new conservative party, not a cult.
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Journalism, regardless the system of delivery, was once a method of inquiry that played the role of a public service to disseminate and analyze news and information based on principles of truth, accuracy, and facts. America’s corporate-owned media has become an extension of the Republican Party tasked with propagandizing conservative talking points and perpetuating lies to keep the public misinformed and ignorant conservatives in a state of rage. It was little surprise then, that when the New York Times played the traditional journalistic role with an in-depth investigative report on the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi that claimed four American lives it was attacked mercilessly by Republicans desperate to keep their phony Benghazi scandal alive.

The Times report revealed that an anti-Islam video created by American Christians played a major role in inciting anti-American rage that precipitated the attack, and disabused conservatives of their assertion that al-Qaeda planned and carried out the attack. Republicans could hardly admit their year-and-a-half fabrication was a blatant lie, so they attempted to shift attention away from the truth and characterize the Times story as something it was not; a pro-Hillary Clinton and revisionist opinion piece. Over the past few days conservative media tasked with propagating the phony Benghazi scandal took to print and the airwaves to assail the reporter responsible for the Times piece in a concerted effort to perpetuate Republicans’ lies that al-Qaeda planned and carried out the Benghazi attack.

On Thursday, Fox & Friends hosts assailed the Times and reporter David Kirkpatrick for reaching conclusions that contradicted Republicans’ version of the attack and implied that paper had blood on its hands for not summoning military reinforcements and concealing the identity and location of the attackers. Fox’s Steve Doocey said, “Clearly, what they’re saying is somebody that works for The New York Times knows the identity of the people who murdered our Americans. Have you seen that headline in The New York Times? No. You haven’t seen it. But all we know is, no Al Qaeda involved and that video had something to do with it. But, you know what, it has been widely pooh-poohed since they came out with it.” It has only been pooh-poohed by Republicans because it verifies Susan E. Rice’s initial report on the attack, and condemned by conservatives who were not on the ground and as they are well aware, slimy Darrell Issa knows the video played a major role in inciting protestors to violence.

What conservative media is claiming to discredit the Times story is that it is a “clean-up job” to “whitewash” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in the attack, and that it is an admission of culpability by the reporter on the ground for failing to alert authorities and call in reinforcements. To put an end to the assertion the Times reporter had an obligation to summon reinforcements and help authorities apprehend the attackers, it is reasonable to check in with real journalists who explained to Fox’s pretend journalists what a field reporter’s job entails.
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Does Hillary Clinton have a serious legal problem because she may have transmitted classified information on her private e-mail server? After talking with a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers, I think this “scandal” is overstated. Using the server was a self-inflicted wound by Clinton, but it’s not something a prosecutor would take to court.

“It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information.

“There are always these back channels,” Smith explained. “It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables.” People who need quick guidance about a sensitive matter often pick up the phone or send a message on an open system. They shouldn’t, but they do. {"they shouldn't"??... they do it in order to do their jobs. Sometimes there is no time to get something encrypted. A late answer is NO ANSWER AT ALL. IOW: YOU DIDN'T DO YOUR JOB._B USA}

“It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.

(and what about the server?)

First, experts say, there’s no legal difference whether Clinton and her aides passed sensitive information using her private server or the official “state.gov” account that many now argue should have been used. Neither system is authorized for transmitting classified information. Second, prosecution of such violations is extremely rare. Lax security procedures are taken seriously, but they’re generally seen as administrative matters.

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It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

[font color="red"]Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care.[/font] This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was "bring it on!"

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
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We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

[font color="red"]The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.[/font]

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
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In phone calls, meetings and cables, America’s European allies have expressed alarm to one another about Donald Trump’s public statements denying Moscow’s role in cyberattacks designed to interfere with the U.S. election. They fear the Republican nominee for president has emboldened the Kremlin in its unprecedented cybercampaign to disrupt elections in multiple countries in hopes of weakening Western alliances, according to intelligence, law enforcement and other government officials in the United States and Europe.

While American intelligence officers have privately briefed Trump about Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. election, he has publicly dismissed that information as unreliable, instead saying this hacking of incredible sophistication and technical complexity could have been done by some 400-pound “guy sitting on their bed” or even a child.

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Western intelligence has also obtained reports that a Trump associate met with a pro-Putin member of Russian parliament at a building in Eastern Europe maintained by Rossotrudnichestvo, an agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that is charged with administering language, education and support programs for civilians. While the purpose of that meeting is unclear, and there is no evidence that Trump was aware it took place, it has become another fact that has alarmed officials from at least one NATO ally. Finally, Trump’s repeated glowing statements about Putin throughout the campaign—and his shocking comment that the Russians were not in Crimea—have perplexed some foreign officials, who fear that under a Trump presidency, the United States would no longer stand with Western Europe in regard to Moscow.

Trump and his campaign have also spread propaganda created as part of the Kremlin's effort, relying on bogus information generated through traditional Russian disinformation techniques. In one instance, a manipulated document was put out onto the internet anonymously by propagandists working with Russia; within hours, Trump was reciting that false information at a campaign rally. The Trump campaign has also spread claims from Sputnik, another news outlet identified by American intelligence as part of the Russian disinformation campaign. For example, almost immediately after the posting of an article by Sputnik attacking this Newsweek reporter, the Trump campaign emailed a link to the piece to American reporters, urging them to pursue the same story.
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WASHINGTON — A day after the release of a damning intelligence report on Russia’s wide-ranging efforts to influence the American election, President-elect Donald J. Trump called on Saturday for a closer relationship between the two nations, saying only “stupid” people or “fools” would think this was unwise.

The United States, Mr. Trump wrote in a series of Twitter messages Saturday morning, has “enough problems around the world without yet another one.” He pledged that Russia would “respect us far more than they do now” after he is sworn in as president, and said that the two nations could perhaps work together on the international stage.

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700: Days since the start of this Republican Congress as of December 8, 2016.

Only 276: Days the GOP House has been in session, 46 of which were pro-forma days in which the House gaveled in & out in a matter of minutes & no legislative business was completed.

53: Days the House was in recess this summer – the longest Congressional Summer Recess in modern history.

Only 254: Number of bills signed into law, with 227 of these bills (or 89 percent) being minor, noncontroversial bills passed under suspension. Only 21 of the bills signed have been significant, major bills – such as the SGR fix, Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, Omnibus Anti-Human Trafficking Bill, Bipartisan Budget Act, Every Student Succeeds Act, reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Puerto Rico Debt Restructuring bill.

16: Times House Republicans voted for measures attacking women’s health care so far this Congress. (2016 Vote #595, 2016 Vote #443, 2016 Vote #390, 2016 Vote #342, 2016 Vote #53, 2016 Vote #6, 2015 Vote #568, 2015 Vote #538, 2015 Vote #527, 2015 Vote #524, 2015 Vote #506, 2015 Vote #505, 2015 Vote #223, 2015 Vote #194, 2015 Vote #93, 2015 Vote #45)

12: Times the House GOP voted so far this Congress to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act. (2016 Vote #563, 2016 Vote #351, 2016 Vote #53, 2016 Vote #6, 2015 Vote #568, 2015 Vote #376, 2015 Vote #375, 2015 Vote #183, 2015 Vote #142, 2015 Vote #58, 2015 Vote #45, 2015 Vote #14)

65: Times House Republicans voted to repeal or undermine the ACA since 2011.

231: House Republicans voted against bringing a bill to the floor to ban registered lobbyists from serving on presidential transition teams including President-Elect Trump’s transition team.

235: House Republicans voted against allowing a vote on H.R. 5386 to require all presidential candidates to release their tax returns.

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