Trump Seeks to Manufacturer a "Burning of the Reichstag" Crisis

Hitler used the Reichstag fire in 1933 to seize almost unlimited power.

On the night of February 27, 1933, flames erupted from the Reichstag building in Berlin. It took fire engines hours to quell the fire, which destroyed the debating chamber and the Reichstag’s gilded cupola.  An unemployed Dutch construction worker named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested and accused of arson. More recent research indicates it was actually multiple Nazis who started the fire.  Nonetheless, on February 28, President Hindenburg, incited by Hitler, invoked Article 48 and the cabinet drew up the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State.” The act abolished freedom of speech, assembly, privacy and the press; legalized phone tapping and interception of correspondence; and suspended the autonomy of federated states, like Bavaria. This opened the door for Hitler and his party to establish their dictatorship.  

Fast forward 86 years and we see Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, threatening to declare a "national emergency" and claiming to hold the power to build his southern border wall to thrill his racist, knuckle dragging base and seize the private lands where the wall would be constructed.  Never mind that the alleged border crisis has been manufactured by Trump's own policies, including separating children from the parents and disregarding international law requirements for asylum seekers. In my opinion, the man is pure evil and amoral and every patriotic American should be demanding his removal from office (ditto for his foul acolyte, Mike Pence who feigns piety while trashing Christian principles).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing danger Trump poses to the nation and the need for members of Congress to put the nation and rule of law ahead of party and say "no" to his attempted power grab.  Here are excerpts: 

President Trump on Friday offered his most robust public case for the border wall since the partial government shutdown began two weeks ago, expounding for an hour at the White House about the need for a barrier to keep out terrorists and dissuade migrants while asserting he has the legal authority to build it without congressional consent.

In a forceful but meandering performance that included numerous false or questionable assertions, Trump announced he was considering declaring a “national emergency” to move forward on construction through executive power; argued his administration would use eminent domain to obtain private land along the U.S.-Mexico border; and suggested a steel wall could provide manufacturing jobs to U.S. companies.

Yet legal experts said Trump’s emergency powers under federal law are limited and expressed doubt that such an avenue would solve a mounting political dilemma for a president who, two years into his term, has elevated the fight over the wall into a defining moment for his presidency.

“I can do it if I want — absolutely,” Trump said of his ability to invoke emergency powers to build the wall. “We can call a national emergency because of the security of our country. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly. But if we can do it through a negotiated process, we’re giving it a shot.”

With Democrats beginning to declare their candidacies for the White House in 2020 and some prominent Republicans ramping up criticism of him, Trump is determined to hold out in the shutdown fight, aides said.

“It’s resonating with our base for sure,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally. “This is not really about immigration now. The people who elected Trump believe the wall is a foundation of border security. It’s a statement about sovereignty. When they’re told by the people they hate that this makes no sense, it makes them more determined to get the wall.”

But Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, accused Trump of considering an “unwise, weak and irresponsible legal gimmick” that would divert “substantial resources” from the military to build a wall.

“By abusing this authority, President Trump would be saying that he does not actually believe all money he requests for our country’s defense is needed for legitimate national security purposes,” Smith said. “That would raise major questions about his credibility when he requests his next defense budget from Congress.”

He [Trump] repeated false claims that a renegotiated U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada would provide new revenue to reimburse taxpayers — even though that deal still requires congressional approval to go into effect and any new revenue would benefit private companies.

[Trump] The president told aides he was winning the shutdown politics. But one aide described him as “incredibly sensitive to negative press . . . He’ll be willing to hold out as long as he’s not getting crushed.”

Trump employed foreboding language to warn of terrorists and immigrants intent on exploiting the U.S. immigration system — even though the Department of Homeland Security has not disclosed any evidence that terrorists have been apprehended at the southern border.

Trump aimed to create a sense that his administration was moving forward, declaring that it has built “a lot of miles of wall already” — even though DHS officials said recently they have replaced dozens of miles of aging structures but have not built any new barriers since Trump took office.

Lie after lie after lie by Trump with Lindsey Graham, the Palmetto Queen, seemingly positioning himself to be the Hermann Goering of the Trump/Pence regime.  The only honest statement was Graham admitting that hatred motivates Trump's base.  

Why Hillary Clinton Isn’t Getting Indicted

With the announcement today by FBI Director James Comey that no prosecution or indictment of Hillary Clinton would be recommended by the FBI in respect to the partially media manufactured "e-mail scandal," it goes without saying that the GOP and right wing talk radio noise machine immediately laundered into over drive claiming that the system was "rigged."  Naturally, Donald Trump, perhaps the most unfit candidate for the White House in memory, tried to jump on the bandwagon trashing Hillary Clinton, James Comey and all things smacking of the Washington, DC, political establishment.   Such rants and posturing, of course, ignore the realities faced by would be federal prosecutors, including the burden they would of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt and how Clinton's conduct would stack up against that of some of her predecessors who likewise failed to follow strict compliance wit Department of State requirements.  Why worry about proving the case and prevailing in  any potential prosecution when the chance for demagoguery and dishonestly is so readily at hand.  Here are excerpts from Think Progress:

Tuesday morning, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency’s investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of a private email server while she was Secretary of State has come to a close. He also added that the FBI will recommend against criminal charges for Secretary Clinton, stating that “no reasonable prosecutor” could determine that charges were warranted here. It’s an announcement that will surprise no one who is familiar with the underlying law and ordinary Justice Department practices in a case such as this one.

Nevertheless, in part because calls for a Clinton indictment were amplified by Republicans at the highest levels, and in part because of what Josh Marshall described as the media-industrial complex’s quest for “wingnut page views,” the idea that Clinton may face criminal charges has lingered for months. Here’s what you need to know about why such charges were never a realistic possibility. 

Clinton, like her two most recent predecessors Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, maintained at least two email accounts: one specifically set up to receive classified information and the other for other communications. Clinton’s non-classified email was hosted on a private server (as opposed to Powell’s non-classified email address, which was an AOL account), while the classified email could only be accessed if Clinton complied with a byzantine array of security rules. 

Clinton says that the emails she received at her non-classified address “were not marked classified,” although she acknowledges that “there are disagreements among agencies on what should have been perhaps classified retroactively.” Government officials also confirm that “none of the emails the State Department redacted, or any other emails made public, contained classification markings at the time they were sent.” Although the FBI determined that 110 emails did contain classified information.

This matters because of a legal concept called mens rea. As a general rule, most crimes require prosecutors to prove that an individual acted with a particular state of mind before they can be convicted of a specific crime. Most federal laws dealing with classified information require someone to “knowingly” violate that law in order to sustain a conviction. Thus, Clinton cannot be charged with transmitting or receiving classified information based on that fact alone.

[A]s ABC News Legal Analyst Dan Abrams explains, several key words in this provision also weigh against charging Clinton. For one thing, a 1941 Supreme Court decision interprets the phrase “relating to the national defense” to require “‘intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation.’ This requires those prosecuted to have acted in bad faith.” That’s a high bar — there’s no apparent evidence that Clinton had reason to believe that her use of a private server would cause information to be obtained that advantaged a foreign nation or that would have caused injury to the United States.

Additionally, the phrase “gross negligence” also requires prosecutors to clear a high bar — “a lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people’s rights to safety.”

Indeed, as Comey noted in his announcement, the FBI could not “find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts” as “all the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an interference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.”   “We do not see those things here,” he added.

Setting aside the bare language of the law, there’s also a very important practical reason why officials in Clinton’s position are not typically indicted. The security applied to classified email systems is simply absurd. . . . ndicting Clinton would require the Justice Department to apply a legal standard that would endanger countless officials throughout the government, and that would make it impossible for many government offices to function effectively.