Trump’s Call for Russia to Hack the U.S. Might Be a Felony

If it wasn't clear before now, it should be obvious that Donald Trump thinks he is above the law and above the moral code that most Americans live by.  He lies incessantly, he cheats and screws people over in business, and now he thinks he can invite a foreign enemy to engage in cyber attacks on America, both to hurt his political rival and to keep himself in the news cycle - something his narcissism demands.  However, as a piece in The Daily Beast notes, Trump may have just committed a felony by inviting such a cyber attack.  The man is a menace and must be defeated in November. Here are article highlights:

Did Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump just call for a felony to be committed? On Wednesday, he urged a foreign government to hack an American citizen and release personal emails.

“Russia, if you're listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from emails that Hillary Clinton turned over to the State Department, Trump said in a lengthy press conference in Doral, Fla. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That will be next. Yes, sir.”

Trump himself has had financial interests in Russia.  He has also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and has said that if Russia were to invade NATO members, the United States might not come to their defense. 

Trump’s incendiary comments came on the heels of the theft and leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee, an operation that, as The Daily Beast first reported, U.S. official believe was carried out by the Russian government and may have been designed to help Trump in the polls.

Trump appeared to urge a U.S. adversary suspected of criminal activity essentially to go further and attack his opponent. The comments drew ire from  across the national security community.

Trump allies were at pains to explain the nominee’s plea for Russian intervention. Newt Gingrich said Trump had simply made a  “joke.”

A top Clinton adviser quickly condemned Trump’s comments. “This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” aide Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, added that the call for illegal hacking “shows staggeringly poor judgment even for him.” 

“With so many unanswered questions about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin, it’s imperative that Trump immediately release his tax returns and disclose his financial ties to Russia,” Schiff added.

“It’s probably the most egregiously stupid thing I’ve ever heard a party nominee say ever,” said Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security law. 

Moss believes that there’s a legal case to charge Trump for his comments, because he was calling for Russia to take “imminent lawless action,” which is speech not covered by the First Amendment.

Moss added that Trump could theoretically be charged as a conspirator under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
“You could argue what Trump was urging Russia to do was hack Hillary’s server and release the contents to the media—conspiring with them to hack into a private server and release confidential information to the public,” Moss explained.

However, it’s unlikely, Moss continued, because the Department of Justice and FBI are unlikely to want to be “diving into a political nightmare.”

Now that Trump is the GOP presidential nominee, he will be eligible to receive classified intelligence briefings, something that top intelligence officials are sweating over, given Trump’s penchant for talking extemporaneously.

Not knowing his intent, such statements could limit the amount of classified information U.S. officials give to Trump, which he is entitled to as a presidential nominee, an official familiar with the process explained to The Daily Beast. Trump and Clinton will reportedly begin receiving classified briefings after this week’s convention.

As Trump called for Russia to infiltrate Clinton’s servers, some of his fellow Republicans were torching the Kremlin for the DNC hack.

"Every American, without regard to political party, must face this grim reality: While the Obama Administration idles with empty platitudes and fantasy resets, Mr. Putin’s Soviet-style aggression has escalated to levels that were unimaginable just a week ago,” Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said in a statement. “America is digitally exposed. The United States must take serious offensive and defensive actions now. Russia must face real consequences."

Trump’s cozyness with Putin and his advisers’ ties to Russia highlight a growing chasm within the Republican Party, which for the last 35 years has lionized Ronald Reagan’ as the ultimate cold warrior who stood up to Soviet expansionism and aggression.

Skepticism of authoritarian governments—and Putin in particular—has been a key feature among conservative foreign policy thinkers. Trump appears to be trying to drag the party toward Putin almost on his own, and traditional forces are pulling back.

The party of Lincoln and Reagan is dead.  Something nightmarish has replaced it.

The Bain of Romney's Campaign

At first blush, it would seem that either Mitt Romney lied in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") or he's lying to the public as to when he left Bain Capital.  What has ignited the issue is the Boston Globe story today that carries a sub-headline of  "Firm’s 2002 filings identify him as CEO, though he said he left in 1999."  In addition to the SEC filings, Massachusetts disclosure filings reflect that Romney remained CEO through 2002.  Romney has gone to great lengths to stress that he was no longer with Bain when it bankrupted a number of companies and threw workers to the wolves.  Yes, you read that right, the filings with the SEC seem to indicate that rather than leaving Bain in 1999 as claimed, Romney may have stuck around for several more years.  Here are highlights from the Globe story:

Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time. 

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

A former SEC commissioner told the Globe that the SEC documents listing Romney as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2002 cannot be dismissed so easily.  “You can’t say statements filed with the SEC are meaningless. This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.

With all due respect and with due recognition of the consequences of filing untrue documents with the SEC (i.e., it's a felony), it would appear that Romney and his campaign are lying.  Andrew Sullivan neatly summarizes the issue this way:

The relevant question is why Romney was listed as CEO and sole owner and chairman for three years after he says he stopped having anything to do with Bain. I don't believe he was SuperMan, running the Olympics and a political campaign while involved in Bain's day-to-day operations. But either you own the company or you don't. And saying one thing to the SEC and another thing to us needs to be reconciled. Even if the shift was abrupt with Romney's departure for the Olympics, it's stunning to see it took Bain three years to correct the record. Legally, Romney is responsible for everything that happened while he was sole owner of the company. Which is what he told the SEC.

A piece in Politico looks at the political turmoil that the Bain issue may be starting to ignite.  Here are some excerpts:

The problem for the Romney campaign, when it comes to the Bain issue, is that things are reaching the point where the facts don’t really matter. The bigger problem is that the Bain cloud now hanging over the former Massachusetts governor is growing daily, and the Romney campaign still hasn’t found a compelling way to respond to what’s becoming the driving narrative, fairly or unfairly, of the 2012 campaign.

After the Globe reported that Romney formally led Bain longer than he’d previously acknowledged — an allegation that Team Romney adamantly contests — Republicans worried that their soon-to-be nominee hasn’t sufficiently answered numerous questions swirling around his Bain tenure.

But Republicans warned that none of that would make Bain go away as a political issue.  “Mitt Romney had an opportunity to answer these questions during the primary,” said Rick Tyler, who ran the pro-Gingrich super PAC that spent millions attacking Romney on the Bain issue. “ He did not answer these questions and now they’re coming up again.”  Tyler warned that the newest Bain twist has the potential to inflict real harm if Romney doesn’t start providing answers.

 Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist who worked for Jon Huntsman during the primary, said the controversy could be solved if Romney were to release his tax returns, acknowledging that no one wants to put their financials out there but that it has become necessary.  .   .   .   “He should just release the stupid taxes and eliminate the Obama campaign tactic of insinuating he’s got something to hide. The Obama people are going to keep the issue alive and it has the potential of mushrooming into a bigger issue,” she said. “It’s time to just pull off the band-aid.”

“It could be a real problem,” said GOP strategist Mark McKinnon. “The accumulation of stories about taxes and Bain and offshore and Swiss accounts and secrecy begin to put glue into the narrative Team Obama is pushing that could make it really start to stick.”

Not answering has the potential to eat away at Romney’s support in swing states.  “We’re starting to see evidence in some of the battleground states that this is working in the favor of the president,” O’Connell said. “There are only so many more of these chinks in the armor Romney can take.”

As I have noted before, the more I see about Romney, the less I like the man whatsoever and I trust him less and less by the day.

Do Log Cabin Republicans Support the Sodomy Laws?

I frequently take the Log Cabin Republicans ("LCR") to task for their deranged support of the Republican Party in the face of all the objective evidence that the Party (i) will not ever be changed by their efforts, (ii) has strayed far from the fiscal policies they claim to support, and (iii) would make many of them potential felons again by re-enacting the sodomy laws. I do not know where many of the yahoos in the LCR live, but let me assure you that here in Virginia every gay was subject to potential arrest and a felony prosecution up until the decision in Lawrence v. Texas. Does anyone want to return to that scary status? Apparently some in the LCR do because they support John McCain who has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justice of a mindset that would overturn Lawrence v. Texas (and many other important decisions). For the life of me, I cannot understand the LCR. Are they just plain stupid or self-hating and seeking punishment for being gay? 365gay.com has a column that looks at this idiocy on the part of the LRC. Here are some highlights:

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I’m confused by Log Cabin Republicans. I see their booths at gay events, I even became friends with one or two in law school, but still, the idea of voting for a party that works against your equal rights amazed me.

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The next election may choose four years of economic and social policy, but it will also make one other important choice that will affect the rights of gays and lesbians for at least three generations to come: Supreme Court appointments. Today, the Court has four liberal justices, Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer. And four conservative appointments who tow the party line, Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. Kennedy, a conservative appointment who waffles, has often been the necessary vote to tip the balance in the liberals’ favor.

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He was in the most recent Roe v. Wade challenge and again in Lawrence v. Texas. This is important to understand, Lawrence v. Texas is the same decision that allowed Log Cabin Republicans to have sex at all, legally, in many of their home states.

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If Obama becomes president he would, at least, be able to maintain the status quo, maybe put a woman or two up there, and create a few more years of an even fight for those hoping for progressive judgments. If McCain wins, two conservative appointments would shift the majority, leave us with six conservative votes, and little hope for the rights of gay men to engage in sexual intercourse legally. It’s not just gay men who will suffer.

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Log Cabin Republicans may advocate gradual legislative change, but when the very act of love that defines your personal identity (and membership in your group, I assume) is threatened, perhaps sacrificing a few years of small government is worth it.