Trump -psykoosi

Trumpin kauppasota ei ole onnistunut kauppataseen alijäämän pienentämisessä vaan viime vuonna alijäämä oli historian suurin, myös kauppataseen alijäämä Kiinan kanssa kasvoi edelleen. Yksi syistä alijäämän kasvuun on veroleikkaukset joiden ansiosta valtio joutui ottamaan lisävelkaa ja osa velasta otettiin ulkomailta.
The United States imported more goods than ever last year, including a record amount from China, ballooning America’s trade deficit with the rest of the world to $891.3 billion and delivering a setback to President Trump’s goal of narrowing that gap.

The increase was driven by some factors outside Mr. Trump’s control, like a global economic slowdown and the relative strength of the United States dollar, both of which weakened overseas demand for American goods. But the widening gap was also exacerbated by Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut, which has been largely financed by government borrowing, and the trade war he escalated last year.

The trade deficit is the difference between how much a country sells to its trading partners and how much it buys. Mr. Trump has long boasted that his trade policies would reduce that gap, which he views as a measure of whether partners like China and the European Union are taking advantage of the United States, a diagnosis that few economists share.

Instead, in a year when Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and a variety of Chinese goods, the trade deficit grew by 12.5 percent from 2017, or nearly $70 billion dollars, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The deficit in goods, which Mr. Trump particularly targets, grew to $891.2 billion for the year, its highest level in history.

In December, the overall goods and services deficit rose to $59.8 billion, up 19 percent from the previous month. It was the highest monthly trade deficit in a decade.

The United States also imported a record amount of goods from China last year, despite Mr. Trump’s trade war with China and the imposition of tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods. The trade gap in goods between the United States and China hit $419 billion in 2018, deepening a bilateral deficit that has been a particular source of anger for Mr. Trump.

The widening gap appears to reflect uneven results from the administration’s trade war with Beijing.

American exports to China declined, falling by nearly 50 percent in December, compared to the same month a year before. American companies that sell products in China were hurt by a slowdown in the Chinese economy and retaliatory measures that Beijing has leveled on American goods to counter Mr. Trump’s tariffs. A stronger American dollar and a weaker Chinese yuan also offset some of the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.

Mr. Trump views the trade deficit with China as a sort of economic scorecard for which country is on top. Most economists disagree with this perspective, viewing trade deficits as neither a sign of economic strength nor weakness, but a function of macroeconomic factors like investment flows, fluctuations in the value of currency and relative growth rates.

As the trade deficit widens, Mr. Trump’s focus on it has resulted in a particular irony: By his own metric, the president is failing to right America’s global trading relationships. Yet many of the president’s critics don’t blame him for this, saying some fluctuations in the trade deficit are largely beyond his control.

Several global economic factors explain the widening of the global trade deficit last year. China’s slowdown has reduced consumer appetite for American goods, as has slowing growth in Europe. The strength of the dollar in global currency markets has made it cheaper for American consumers to buy foreign-made goods, and more difficult for foreign customers to buy American-made ones.

The value of the Chinese yuan, which is determined partly by the market and partly by the government, weakened against the dollar last year and started rising again in the fall, as Chinese President Xi Jinping met Mr. Trump in Argentina in November to begin hammering out a trade pact, said Brad Setser, a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“China certainly allowed the market to push the value of the yuan down against the dollar over the summer,” Mr. Setser said.

The relative strength of the United States economy is also a large factor in the widening deficit, along with the $1.5 trillion tax cut Mr. Trump signed in 2017, which helped boost growth last year.

Money from the tax cuts helped Americans buy more imported goods than ever before in 2018. And to finance the tax cuts, the government needed to borrow more dollars, some of which came from foreign investors. Foreigners primarily get those dollars by selling more goods and services to Americans, which will necessarily widen the trade gap, an effect that many economists predicted at the time Mr. Trump signed the tax cuts.

The cuts are also helping to swell the federal budget deficit, which Mr. Trump similarly pledged to reduce — and, in fact, eliminate — as a candidate. On Tuesday, Treasury Department figures showed the budget deficit widening, and is on track to top $1 trillion this fiscal year. Revenue from personal and corporate income taxes was down by 9 percent in January, compared to the same month a year ago.

As with the trade deficit, many economists are growing less alarmed by the budget deficit. However, Federal Reserve officials and some economists warn federal borrowing is on an unsustainable path and will ultimately hurt the American economy. The Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, warned lawmakers at a House hearing last week that the federal debt was on an “unsustainable” path.

Mr. Powell was asked during the hearing if he would also say that the trade deficit was unsustainable. “I don’t think I would say that,” he replied.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/politics/us-trade-deficit.html
 
Viimeksi muokattu:
Michael Cohen antoi kongressin tiedustelukomitealle asiakirjoja joista pitäisi selvitä presidentin lakimiesten osuus hänen valehtelustaan kongressille. Osa lakimiesten tekemistä muutoksista Cohenin kongressille antamassa lausunnosta pyrki vähättelemään Ivanka Trumpin osuutta Moskovan Trump Tower -hankkeessa.
Michael D. Cohen on Wednesday provided new documents to the House Intelligence Committee that he said illustrated changes made at the request of President Trump’s lawyers to a knowingly false written statement that he delivered to Congress in 2017, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Cohen, in what is expected to be his last visit to Capitol Hill, brought multiple drafts of his 2017 statement along with emails with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about its drafting, hoping to back up claims that he made last week at an open hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. In that session, Mr. Cohen testified that there were “changes made, additions” to the original written statement, including about the length of negotiations over a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It was not immediately clear how many changes were made by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, including Jay Sekulow, or how drastic those changes were. Two of the people familiar with the documents, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the closed-door session, said that at least some of the changes appeared to play down the knowledge of the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, about the project.

At the very least, the exchange between Mr. Cohen and the president’s lawyers suggests that the lawyers had detailed knowledge of what he was going to tell Congress. Mr. Cohen said last week that though Mr. Trump did not explicitly direct him to lie, he “made clear to me” through his actions that “he wanted me to lie.”

Other people familiar with the discussions that took place at the time of Mr. Cohen’s original testimony said that it was Mr. Cohen himself who wrote that the Moscow project ended before the Iowa caucuses in January 2016, when Mr. Trump was a candidate.

That statement turned out to be false, and in November 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. In fact, he said, discussions about the project had gone on much longer and Mr. Trump had greater involvement than he had led the congressional committees to believe.

The documents were delivered by Mr. Cohen as he appeared for yet another session with congressional lawmakers investigating Mr. Trump, his campaign and his businesses, his last before he reports for his prison sentence this spring.

CNN first reported that Mr. Cohen had produced the documents on Wednesday. He had alluded to them before the Oversight and Reform Committee, specifically mentioning Mr. Sekulow, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, as someone who proposed alterations to his 2017 statement.

“There were changes made, additions — Jay Sekulow, for one,” Mr. Cohen said in the oversight hearing. “There were several changes that were made including how we were going to handle that message, which was — the message of course being the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive.”

Mr. Sekulow disputed Mr. Cohen’s testimony last week. In a statement, he said that the testimony “that attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false.” On Wednesday, he referred to his previous statement when asked about Mr. Cohen’s documents.

The people familiar with the discussions that took place at the time of Mr. Cohen’s original testimony said that Mr. Cohen’s lawyers had signed off on all of the changes proposed by Mr. Trump’s legal team. They also said that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had at the time no indication that the dates Mr. Cohen cited in the statement were inaccurate.

Mr. Cohen’s team shared his proposed statement with Mr. Trump’s lawyers because at the time they had a formal agreement to work together to defend the president and his personal lawyer.

A spokesman for Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, Patrick Boland, declined to comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/politics/michael-cohen-trump-false-testimony.html
 
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Liittovaltion tuomari päätti kauppaministeri Wilbur Rossin rikkoneen useita lakeja lisätessään kansalaisuuskysymyksen vuoden 2020 väestönlaskentaan. Ross valehteli oikeusministeriön vaatineen kysymystä mutta todellisuudessa yksikään virkamies ei näin tehnyt, tarkoituksena oli peitellä motiivia. Homma koskee väestönlaskennan yhteyttä kongressin paikkajakoon osavaltioiden kesken ja republikaanien pyrkimykseen pienentää latinoiden vaikutusta tähän etenkin Kaliforniassa.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

In finding a breach of the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires a census every 10 years to determine each state’s representation in Congress, the 126-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco went further than a similar decision on Jan. 15 by Judge Jesse Furman in New York.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to review Furman’s narrower decision, with arguments set for April 23, but may now need to expand its inquiry to constitutional dimensions.

The Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The administration has been on the losing end of scores of court decisions involving immigration issues since President Trump took office. But the census case has taken on special significance because it strikes at the heart of the United States’ form of government and because of what Seeborg described as a “strong showing of bad faith” by a Cabinet secretary who, influenced in part by White House advisers, tried to conceal his motives.

The cases against Ross have been brought by jurisdictions with significant immigrant populations. Only two have completed trials, the case heard by Furman and brought by 18 states led by New York, and Wednesday’s challenge, initiated by the state of California and combined with a suit brought by the city of San Jose.

Unable to find any expert in the Census Bureau who approved of his plan to add the citizenship question, Seeborg wrote, Ross engaged in a “cynical search to find some reason, any reason” to justify the decision.

He was fully aware that the question would produce a census undercount, particularly among Latinos, the judge said.

That would have probably reduced the representation in Congress — and thus in the electoral college that decides the presidency — of states with significant immigrant populations, notably California.

Because census data is used to apportion distribution of federal funds, an undercount would also have cheated these same jurisdictions, the judge said.

Seeborg, like Furman, found after a trial that Ross misrepresented both to the public and Congress his reasons for adding the citizenship question last March. Ross claimed he was acting at the request of the Justice Department in the interest of enforcing the Voting Rights Act.

In reality, the “evidence establishes” that the voting rights explanation was just “a pretext” and that Ross “acted in bad faith” when he claimed otherwise.

He pursued the citizenship question after hearing from then-White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Kris Kobach, the vice chair of Trump’s now-disbanded voting fraud commission.

Apart from violating the Constitution, Seeborg ruled, the Commerce Department breached the Administrative Procedure Act by acting “arbitrarily and capriciously” and violated Census Act restrictions on modifying questions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...210e58a94cf_story.html?utm_term=.d9ff2b9a0b87
 
Liittovaltion tuomari päätti kauppaministeri Wilbur Rossin rikkoneen useita lakeja lisätessään kansalaisuuskysymyksen vuoden 2020 väestönlaskentaan. Ross valehteli oikeusministeriön vaatineen kysymystä mutta todellisuudessa yksikään virkamies ei näin tehnyt, tarkoituksena oli peitellä motiivia.
Nyt on kyllä jonkin sortin feikkinewssejä ilmassa?

Jeff Sessions Told DOJ Not To Discuss Citizenship Question Alternatives
Last December, the Justice Department sent a letter to the Census Bureau asking for the hotly contested question to be included on forms for the upcoming national head count.


Homma koskee väestönlaskennan yhteyttä kongressin paikkajakoon osavaltioiden kesken ja republikaanien pyrkimykseen pienentää latinoiden vaikutusta tähän etenkin Kaliforniassa.
Politiikka on hassua. Kun republikaanit haluavat siivota ei-kansalaiset pois kongressin paikkajakoon vaikuttavista tilastoista, demokraatit epätoivoissaan yrittävät vääntää sen tuohon muotoon. Tämä on niin naurettavaa; Demokraatit ovat tainneet ottaa oppia Venäjältä tms. kieroilussa ja asioiden vääntämisessä päälaelleen... :facepalm:

Kongressin paikkajakoa laskiessa kun pitäisi huomioida vain se osa populaatiosta, joka saa äänestää (joka lienee nykyisin käytännössä kansalaiset).
 
Nyt on kyllä jonkin sortin feikkinewssejä ilmassa?

Jeff Sessions Told DOJ Not To Discuss Citizenship Question Alternatives




Politiikka on hassua. Kun republikaanit haluavat siivota ei-kansalaiset pois kongressin paikkajakoon vaikuttavista tilastoista, demokraatit epätoivoissaan yrittävät vääntää sen tuohon muotoon. Tämä on niin naurettavaa; Demokraatit ovat tainneet ottaa oppia Venäjältä tms. kieroilussa ja asioiden vääntämisessä päälaelleen... :facepalm:

Kongressin paikkajakoa laskiessa kun pitäisi huomioida vain se osa populaatiosta, joka saa äänestää (joka lienee nykyisin käytännössä kansalaiset).
Perustuslain mukaan paikkajako tulee osavaltiossa asuvien ihmisten määrän mukaan, kansalaisuudesta tai äänestyskelpoisuudesta ei mainita mitään. Orjat tosin ovat vain 3/5 ihmisen arvoisia.
 
Viimeksi muokattu:
Trumpin entinen kampanjapäällikkö Paul Manafort sai tuomion ensimmäisestä oikeudenkäynnistään joka koski vero- ja pankkipetoksia. Tuomioksi tuli 4 vuotta, 50000$ sakot ja 25 milj.$ korvaukset. Tuomitut korvaukset kattavat suurimman osan Muellerin tutkinnan tähänastisista kuluista jotka viime vuoden lopulla olivat n. 25 milj.$.
Paul Manafort, the political consultant and Trump presidential campaign chairman whose lucrative work in Ukraine and ties to well-connected Russians made him a target of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was sentenced on Thursday to nearly four years in prison in the financial fraud case that left his grand lifestyle and power-broker reputation in ruins.

The sentence in the highest-profile criminal case mounted by the special counsel’s office was far lighter than the 19- to 24-year prison term recommended under sentencing guidelines. Judge T. S. Ellis III of the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va., said that although Mr. Manafort’s crimes were “very serious,” following the guidelines would have resulted in an unduly harsh punishment.

A team of Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors sat glum-faced as Judge Ellis delivered his decision. Mr. Manafort, who has gout and came to the hearing in a wheelchair with his foot heavily bandaged, had asked the judge for compassion. “To say I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement,” he said in a barely audible voice, reading from a prepared statement.

Of the half-dozen former Trump associates prosecuted by Mr. Mueller, Mr. Manafort garnered the harshest punishment yet in the case that came to a conclusion on Thursday — the first of two for which Mr. Manafort is being sentenced this month. While prosecutors sought no specific sentence, some legal experts said a prison term that amounts to one-fifth of the lightest punishment recommended had to disappoint them.

“It’s atrociously low,” said Barbara McQuade, a former United States attorney who teaches law at the University of Michigan and watched much of Mr. Manafort’s trial over the summer. While “many judges do sentence leniently in white-collar cases,” she said, “dropping all the way from 19 years to four years is absurd.”

Mr. Manafort’s allies had long believed that Mr. Manafort had a chance of leniency from Judge Ellis, a Reagan appointee who sparred repeatedly with the special counsel’s team during the trial and has publicly voiced concerns that independent prosecutors have too much power. Minutes after the three-hour hearing started, Judge Ellis, unprompted, noted that Mr. Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election,” the core of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry.

Although Judge Ellis seemed swayed by the defense’s arguments, Mr. Manafort may face a less sympathetic reception next week when he is sentenced in the District of Columbia on two conspiracy counts by Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court. Those charges each carry a maximum of five years. Kevin Downing, one of Mr. Manafort’s lawyers, asked Judge Ellis to order that Mr. Manafort serve both sentences simultaneously. But Judge Ellis said that was up to Judge Jackson.

For nearly two years, prosecutors pursued Mr. Manafort on two tracks, charging him with more than two dozen felonies, including obstruction of justice, bank fraud and violations of lobbying laws. They ultimately won Mr. Manafort’s pledge to cooperate after he was convicted of eight felonies in the Northern Virginia case and faced a second trial in Washington.

But although he met with the special counsel’s office for a total of about 50 hours, prosecutors said on Thursday that Mr. Manafort provided little information of value for their inquiry into how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 presidential race and whether any Trump associates conspired with them.

Most of what Mr. Manafort told the office of the special counsel “we already knew or was already in documents,” Greg D. Andres, the lead prosecutor in the case, said in court. “It certainly wasn’t 50 hours of information that was useful.”

The evidence in the case before Judge Ellis showed that Mr. Manafort hid millions of dollars of income in overseas accounts and lied to banks to obtain millions more in loans — a financial scheme that prosecutors said was rooted in greed and in Mr. Manafort’s sense that he was above the law.

They described him as a hardened, remorseless criminal who never fully accepted responsibility for his offenses and who continued to lie to federal prosecutors even after he pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts in a related case in Washington and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s office last fall.

But defense lawyers cited Mr. Manafort’s age, health problems and lack of a criminal record. He will turn 70 next month.

Judge Ellis said that Mr. Manafort “has lived an otherwise blameless life,” and he cited other tax cases that had resulted in minimal prison time. “The government cannot sweep away the history of all these other sentences,” he said.

The judge ordered Mr. Manafort to pay $25 million in restitution and a $50,000 fine. He also gave Mr. Manafort credit for the nine months he had already spent in jail, which could mean Mr. Manafort would be released in just over three years.

Mr. Manafort was a prime target for Mr. Mueller, who is believed to be winding down his 22-month investigation and is expected to deliver a report soon to Attorney General William P. Barr. While the prosecutions against Mr. Manafort did not involve his five months of work for the Trump campaign, prosecutors clearly hoped for the collateral benefit of winning his cooperation with the Russia inquiry.

At a closed hearing in February, Andrew Weissmann, one of Mr. Mueller’s top deputies, told Judge Jackson that it was highly unusual for the government to strike a plea deal with a defendant like Mr. Manafort who had already put the government through a trial. He alluded to the government’s motives for making such a pact, citing “enormous interest” in “the intelligence that could be gathered in having a cooperating witness in this particular investigation.”

But prosecutors abandoned the plea agreement in November, saying Mr. Manafort had repeatedly lied to them. In a recent ruling, Judge Jackson agreed that Mr. Manafort had deceived investigators about three matters.

One was revealed through an inadvertent mistake in a court filing in January that showed that Mr. Manafort had lied to the prosecutors about his interactions with a Russian associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who has been identified by prosecutors as having ties to Russian intelligence. Those interactions included Mr. Manafort’s transferring campaign polling data to Mr. Kilimnik.

The special counsel’s office had wanted that information kept out of the public eye to protect an open investigation. It remains unclear why Mr. Kilimnik would want such polling data, what exactly he did with it and whether the data transfer might have helped inform the Russian government’s covert operation to interfere with the American election.

It is also unclear why Mr. Manafort lied about it; prosecutors appeared to suggest that Mr. Manafort might have feared that the revelation that he had turned over polling data would have reduced his chances of receiving a presidential pardon for his crimes.

Before Judge Ellis, Mr. Manafort’s lawyers repeatedly suggested that the special counsel’s office pursued their client because of his importance to the Russia inquiry. They said his political consulting work for four American presidents, including Mr. Trump, spoke to his high ideals. And they argued that the special counsel’s office had vilified him for what are essentially garden-variety crimes that for other defendants merited only limited time behind bars.

“Most importantly, what you saw today is the same thing that we have said from Day 1,” Mr. Downing, one of Mr. Manafort’s lawyers, said in a short statement outside the courthouse. “There is absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved in any collusion with any government official or Russia.”

While Judge Ellis faulted Mr. Manafort for not apologizing for his criminal conduct, he also noted that the special counsel’s office had not requested a specific prison term

During the trial, prosecutors put forward exhaustive evidence of how Mr. Manafort had illegally concealed his work on behalf of political parties in Ukraine that were aligned with Russia and of how he hid more than $55 million in payments from that work in more than 30 overseas bank accounts.

Once his income from Ukraine dried up, the evidence showed, Mr. Manafort deceived banks to obtain loans to sustain a lavish lifestyle. At the same time, he worked for the Trump campaign at no cost, apparently hoping his status as campaign chairman would attract deep-pocketed foreign clients. He was fired from the campaign after five months when the scandal over his hidden income from Ukraine broke in August 2016.

“The defendant blames everyone from the special counsel’s office to his Ukrainian clients for his own criminal choices,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.

Mr. Manafort was indicted on 18 counts in the Northern Virginia case, but the jury convicted him on only eight: five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. Because of one holdout juror, the panel deadlocked on the other charges. Mr. Manafort admitted that he was guilty of those as well, though, as part of his plea agreement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
Perustuslain mukaan paikkajako tulee osavaltiossa asuvien ihmisten määrän mukaan, kansalaisuudesta tai äänestyskelpoisuudesta ei mainita mitään. Orjat tosin ovat vain 3/5 ihmisen arvoisia.
Kappas, olin näemmä lukenut virheellisesti. Äänestyskelpoisuudesta sanotaan perustuslain 14. lisäyksessä, että edustajien määrää laskettaessa pitää jättää pois äänestysoikeudettemat, mutta tämä taisikin koske ainoastaan kansalaisia. Eli pitää jättää huomioimatta ne kansalaiset, joilta on erikseen evätty äänioikeus (USA:ssahan esim. vangeilta voidaan evätä äänioikeus).

No onhan se tavallaan "lohdullista" huomata, ettei Suomen "kaikille perusturvan lupaava" perustuslaki ole ainoa perustuslaki, joka olisi remontin tarpeessa. Mitään järkeähän siinä ei ole, että myös laittomat maassaolijat kasvattavat osavaltion painoarvoa kongressissa. Asiantila vain luo moral hazardin, jossa poliitikoilla ei ole erityisemmin kannustimia laittoman maahantulon kitkemiseen.
 
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Trumpin mukaan eilen Paul Manafortille mm. veropetoksista tuomion antanut tuomari sanoi "No Collusion" ja ollensa erityisen otettu tuomarin sanoista. Todellisuudessa tuomari kertoi ettei tämä kyseinen oikeudenkäynti koskenut Venäjän toimintaa vaaleissa. Kyseessä tuskin oli tahaton väärinymmärrys sillä Trump twiittasi väittensä sekä myöhemmin kertoi myös toimittajille saman asian.
As part of an ongoing effort to convince the public that his campaign did not collude with Russia, President Trump on Friday dramatically misrepresented comments made by the judge who presided over the sentencing of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Manafort was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on Thursday for cheating on his taxes and bank fraud. The case was prosecuted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office but was unrelated to his core mission of investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

During Thursday’s proceedings in a courtroom in Alexandria, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III noted the distinction, saying that Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election.”

In a tweet and later when talking to reporters, Trump incorrectly suggested that Ellis’s comments had cleared his campaign of wrongdoing.

“Both [Manafort’s] lawyer, a very respected man, and a highly respected judge, the judge said there was no collusion with Russia,” Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House en route to Alabama to view hurricane damage.

Trump said he was “very honored” by the judge’s words, adding: “It’s a collusion hoax. It’s a collusion witch hoax. I don’t collude with Russia.”

A tweet sent earlier Friday morning sought to make the same point.

“Both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia,” Trump wrote. “But the Witch Hunt Hoax continues as you now add these statements to House & Senate Intelligence & Senator Burr. So bad for our Country!”

Trump’s tweet and comments to reporters referenced Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing, who told reporters outside the courthouse that “there is absolutely no evidence Paul Manafort worked in collusion with any government official from Russia.”

Trump’s tweet prompted immediate pushback from lawmakers, including Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).

“This case doesn’t prove there was no collusion because that wasn’t the subject of the trial,” King said during an appearance on CNN.

At a trial last year, Manafort was found guilty of hiding millions he made lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian politicians in overseas bank accounts, then falsifying his finances to get loans when his patrons lost power. Prosecutors highlighted his lavish lifestyle, saying his crimes were used to pay for high-end clothes and multiple properties.

Manafort’s sentence Thursday was substantially less than the roughly 20 years he had faced under federal sentencing guidelines.

“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “I think it’s been a very, very tough time for him.”

Manafort contends he is mere collateral damage in Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller is expected to send a report in coming weeks to Attorney General William P. Barr regarding his findings related to election interference.

The House Intelligence and Senate Intelligence committees are continuing Russia-related investigations as well. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate panel, whom Trump referenced in his tweet, has said he has seen no direct evidence of collusion.

Democratic lawmakers have said Burr’s assessment is premature.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...01ffb5bd5e6_story.html?utm_term=.ec39c0386a5d
 
Manafortin tuomio oli ällistyttävän lyhyt suhteessa yleisiin oikeusjärjestelmän tuomioraameihin. Tuomari harjoitti "itsenäistä harkintaa", mikä toki on tuomarille sallittua.

Voi olla, että syynä on se, että Muller tutkii Venäjä-kuviota, ja tämä Manafortin tuomio tuli "prosessin sivutuotteena". Muita rikoksia venäläisten oligarkkien kanssa, jotka Manafort oli tehnyt. Tuomari oli esittänyt tämän suuntaista kritiikkiä Muellerin tutkintaa kohtaan jo aikaisemmin.

Eihän sen tietenkään näin pitäisi toimia. Rikos on rikos, riippumatta siitä, missä yhteydessä se tulee esiin. Tuomarin ratkaisu on herättänyt hämmennystä.

Tuomari totesi, ettei tässä prosessissa ja tuomiossa otettu kantaa Venäjä-tutkintaan. Trump väänsi asian niin, että tuomari totesi, ettei ole mitään Venäjä-yhteyksiä.

 
Manafort saa myöhemmin tuomion muista rikoksista eri tuomarilta, ja ne liittyvät kiinteämmin Venäjä-tutkintaan. Sieltä ilmeisesti olisi periaatteessa noin 10v tulossa. Saapi nähdä, miten käy.
 
En tiedä kuinka todennäköistä tämän toteutuminen on, mutta Trump haluaisi periä paljon lisää rahaa liittolaisilta joiden maaperällä on jenkkien tukikohtia. Amerikkalaiset nostivat jo Etelä-Korealta perimäänsä maksua, tosin vain 8%.
 
Trump haluaa julistaa meksikolaiset huumekartellit terroristiorganisaatioiksi. Luultavasti tuottaisi vaikeuksia oikeusistuimissa sillä kartellien toiminta ei sovi kovin hyvin terrorismilakeihin joissa lähdetään siitä että toiminnan motiivi on poliittinen tai ideologinen.
President Trump in an interview published Tuesday said his administration is thinking “very seriously” about designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

“We are. We are,” Trump told Breitbart News. “We’re thinking about doing it very seriously. In fact, we’ve been thinking about it for a long time. . . . As terrorists — as terrorist organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”

His comments come in the wake of his declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border last month, a move designed to spend more money on border barriers than authorized by Congress.

According to the State Department, a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) must be a foreign organization that either practices or has the means to practice terrorism and “threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States.”

Republican lawmakers have pushed legislation to allow such a designation for drug cartels. Last month, Reps. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Chip Roy (R-Tex.) presented a similar proposal to the State Department, seeking to apply terrorist sanctions on cartel members and third parties providing them assistance.

“Mexico, unfortunately, has lost control of the cartels,” Trump said during his Oval Office interview with Breitbart editors and reporters, conducted Monday. “They’ve totally lost control of the cartels.”

During the interview, Trump reiterated that he likes Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, calling him a “wonderful guy.”

But Trump said he was concerned with the country’s rising murder rates, adding that “a lot of it is drug-induced.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-very-seriously-considering-designating-mexican-drug-cartels-as-terrorists/2019/03/12/9bfc30f0-44cb-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.04676211c03f
 
Kukaan ei ole kertonut Trumpille että tavalisimmat syyt lento-onnettumuuksiin ovat ihmillliset eikä automaation.
Muistuu mieleen eräs keissi tv-ohjelmasta lento-onnettomuuksista jossa ranskalainen kone tippui. Pilotille ei oltu opetettu kaikki hienoudet koneesta ja kun kone alkoi tippua ja lentäjä teki kaikkensa oikoakseen niin hän tappeli koneen automatiikkaa vastaan, oikea toimenpide olisi ollut päästää ohjaimista irti ja automatiikka olisi oikonut koneen.
 
Kukaan ei ole kertonut Trumpille että tavalisimmat syyt lento-onnettumuuksiin ovat ihmillliset eikä automaation.
Muistuu mieleen eräs keissi tv-ohjelmasta lento-onnettomuuksista jossa ranskalainen kone tippui. Pilotille ei oltu opetettu kaikki hienoudet koneesta ja kun kone alkoi tippua ja lentäjä teki kaikkensa oikoakseen niin hän tappeli koneen automatiikkaa vastaan, oikea toimenpide olisi ollut päästää ohjaimista irti ja automatiikka olisi oikonut koneen.

Jos muistelet tätä, niin täsmälleen ottaen meni vähän eri tavalla eri syistä: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Francen_lento_447

Sen sijaan tuoreeseen Boeingiin liittyy se, että koneen automatiikka tappeli pilottia vastaan ainakin silloin aikaisemmassa onnettomuudessa 2018 lopulla.
 
Trump haluaa julistaa meksikolaiset huumekartellit terroristiorganisaatioiksi. Luultavasti tuottaisi vaikeuksia oikeusistuimissa sillä kartellien toiminta ei sovi kovin hyvin terrorismilakeihin joissa lähdetään siitä että toiminnan motiivi on poliittinen tai ideologinen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-very-seriously-considering-designating-mexican-drug-cartels-as-terrorists/2019/03/12/9bfc30f0-44cb-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.04676211c03f

Miksi näin? Mitä Trump ajaa takaa? Onko Trumpilla tietoa poliittisten vastustajien yhteyksistä huumekartellien toimintaan? Jos näin, terrorismirikoksista sotaoikeuteen ja gitmoon? Aika näyttää?
 
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