If this gets through the Senate (I don’t think it will, but I think it will pass the House), we are officially a banana republic:
A Republican lawmaker has put forth an amendment that would stop funding for the special counsel’s Russia investigation 180 days after it becomes law.
The amendment from Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) would also prevent special counsel Robert Mueller from probing “matters occurring before June 2015,” which is the month Trump announced his presidential bid.
Wapiti
Mueller’s team might want to take a quick look at Congressmember DeSantis’ bank accounts to check for recent, large transfers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MSNBC reporting that Meuller is investigating the crafting of the response to reporting on Fredo I’s meeting with the Russians.
Sounds to this non-lawyer like he’s establishing a pattern of obstruction of justice. I hope.
Manyakitty
I’m surprised it wasn’t Rohrbacher.
Betty Cracker
A WSJ report from a few months ago included an admission by an operative from Rep. Brian Mast’s (R-FL) campaign that he solicited and received data from a Russian hacker. DeSantis is likely compromised too.
debbie
Whether it stays in the House or not, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris, and Al Franken (and others) will have a field day with this. If Paul Ryan’s smart, he won’t let it come to a vote.
GregB
Because if something is totally made up out of whole cloth you’d want to stop any investigation lest it turn up something.
$100.00 bucks says this bill originated in the White House.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Their Clinton hate has made them stupid and it will prove to be their undoing.
JSinLA
Wasn’t expecting a Gwen reference from you Doug
dr. bloor
@GregB: $200 says it was drafted in Moscow, and I’ll lay very generous odds.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: Gyad, I hope so. Evil often triumphs, but evil + stupid not so much, at least in the long run. How sweet it would be to see the whole hateful, corrupt party reap the ruin it has sown.
MomSense
I’m turning into a terrible person. I hate trump, javanka, don jr., eric, their spouses, Melanie, every GOP Rep and Senator, every GOP official and member, most journalists, pundits, every single person who voted for trump, and everyone who voted for Stein or Johnson.
Schlemazel
Someone should remind them how long Kenny had to dig before he could make up some shit to stick on WJC.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense: I don’t see a problem here.
Roger Moore
@dr. bloor:
I don’t think this kind of thing was drafted in Moscow. This has the air of being either something Trump came up with himself or somebody else came up with as a way of currying favor with Trump. Putin is at least a little bit more subtle than this.
Amaranthine RBG
Very interesting that Bannon is supposedly making noises about testifying that it was Kushner who spearheaded the Comey firing.
Cui bono in that effed up scenario?
MomSense
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
They are all truly terrible but I sometimes worry that we are on the path to becoming Rwanda Radio. I just don’t want to be a hateful person but I feel so Fucking angry all the time.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel:
For perspective, the whole Whitewater business deal collapsed about 3 or 4 years before Bill Clinton ran for president.
Clinton Rules at play, as always.
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
If Paul Ryan is compromised, he might.
OTOH, he’s being attacked and probably with WH approval: Breitbart (no link; they don’t need to look more important to ranking algos): “Paul Ryan Throws in with Leftists to Attack President Trump’s Pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio”
Gravenstone
So, first obvious question – how long has Rep. DeSantis been in the employ of Russia? Make the fucker deny it EVERY FUCKING DAY.
JMG
This amendment will never see the light of day. House Rules committee will kill it just so its R members don’t have to answer questions about it. I’m sure the attitude even among the wingnuttiest Rs in Congress is, “if Trump wants to kill the investigation, let him do it himself. Why should we take the heat.”
DeSantis is either really dumb, really corrupt, or both. He’d better hope it’s Option A, since the FBI’s Public Integrity section has not gone out of business and is full of folks who had both Mueller and Comey as their bosses.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gravenstone: Democratic slogan for 2018, “We’ll work for you, not Russia”.
Ken
There are a lot of Republican senators that Trump’s been busily annoying with ham-fisted threats, nasty and obnoxious tweets, and generally treating them like flunkies as opposed to members of a co-equal branch of government.
They may not have the guts to shiv him themselves until his poll numbers with the GOP base softens (which seems unlikely to happen), but I suspect that a lot of them will be more than willing to let Mueller keep digging. At least so long as they don’t think his investigation threatens them personally.
The Turtle is definitely in that camp, and I think Trump is about to receive a lesson on why smart presidents don’t piss on senators. Especially senators of their own party. And especially not on senators of their own party that are very skilled at obstructing the passage of laws and hold the Majority Leader’s office.
Trump is Trump, and I don’t expect him to learn anything from the lesson.
But it will be administered.
lgerard
@Betty Cracker:
This is the part that really interests me. There were also reports that a republican operative in PA received info as well. There is no way any Russian hackers or Wikileaks would know these people, they would need someone with granular knowledge of republican campaigns…..someone like say…..Rodger Stone.
Ken
@lgerard:
Or maybe Priebus?
different-church-lady
@debbie:
They will be sitting in prison going, “Well, I may be incarcerated, but at least we stopped that bitch from being president!”
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Makes me wonder what the hell Republicans are talking about when they blather on about the rule of law. They’re as committed as they can be to undermining the rule of law.
lgerard
@Ken:
I don’t think Priebus is that stupid. This is exactly the type of thing that Stone would do though.
different-church-lady
@debbie:
a) He’s not
b) Don’t still be under the impression that anything is normal anymore. Banana republic is fine with about half the country as long as “those people” don’t get any bananas anymore.
different-church-lady
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Rule of Law only applies to blow jobs.
Amaranthine RBG
@Ken:
I forget – it wasn’t Palantir – but wasn’t the GOP big data operation controlled by a Mercer company? If you are going to deploy a bot army you need granular info on voters and, while it’s possible that the Russians could have assembled this, it would have been much easier for them to just coordinate with some US company.
Unfortunately, I don’t see any real way to get this info out there since it is 2 or 3 steps at least removed from Trump and his inner circle.
Roger Moore
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
There are two plausible- and not mutually exclusive- answers:
1) They say that because they know it’s expected of them, not because they believe it.
2) They don’t have a fucking clue what it means.
kindness
Republicans. Party of responsibility. Yup, passing laws keeping the US government from investigating fraud/crime is certainly a responsible answer to actual fraud &/or criminal activity. Republicans will claim the law is needed for ‘fairness’. Fox will parrot it night and day. Talking heads will say ‘both sides do it’.
sapient
@MomSense: You are not alone.
Baud
@MomSense: Well then come sit by me.
ruemara
@MomSense: Considering I had one of the elderly Berniebros still claiming the legal judgement that the DNC did not discriminate against Sanders was moot because Harry Reid felt the DNC was unfair to Saint Bernie of the Waggling Finger, I’m at nut punch on sight for everyone you listed.
danielx
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
You know, I don’t think I’ve heard them going on too much about that concept of late. Possibly for fear of being struck by lightning.
lgerard
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Remember “Justice Sundays”? Gatherings of evangelical pastors and their tame politicos bleating “Up or Down Vote”, because all the Presidents appointees deserved a vote in the Senate. That principle went out the window on January 20, 2008.
‘Criminalization of Politics” was a good one too, and I expect that nugget to be revived shortly.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
Join the club.
feebog
Ryan is not going to let this see the light of day. One, he doesn’t want reporters asking the dumber members of his caucus (Louie Gohmert, call for you on line one) any embarrassing questions and two, this would not get through the Senate. Subject to a filibuster, and even if it wasn’t there are enough Republican Senators who have an ax to grind with Dolt45 that hey would torpedo the bill.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
The saddest thing about Whiewater is the media thinks they did an outstanding job telling truth to power in how they beat that story to death, and do not realize right-wing hacks played them like a fiddle.
Ken
@Amaranthine RBG:
Amaranthine RBG,
I think you’re thinking of Cambridge Analytica?
Iowa Old Lady
@ruemara: There’s something very wrong with this kind of cult of personality.
Jeffro
Does any enterprising young reporter want to ask the good representative why he picked that particular date?
Or why he feels this is a matter of national urgency since the president is clearly such an innocent man ?
gene108
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Making sure cops are not held accountable for beating up minorities and hippies, as well as making sure white conservative people get breaks others do not for violations of the law.
Think of Republicans as fascists, who are being held in check by a country with strong democratic institutions. They make a lot more sense that way.
Ken
@MomSense:
Frank Wilhoit
@MomSense: You’re not turning into a terrible person. You’re discovering — doubtless not for quite the first time in your life — that you are a pragmatist with standards. All of which is good. But to the point about not-for-the-first-time, the tipping point was in 1979/1980.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
The GOP is devolving into a fascist party. They are autocrats who only believe in their own power and enriching themselves. Kicking around the poor and minorities as well as liberals is just icing on the cake.
Amaranthine RBG
@Ken:
Yes, that’s it. I just looked it up on Wiki and it is “partly owned” by Robert Mercer.
I guess it’s possible to find direct evidence of vote tampering at the precinct level by the Russians, but I would think that coordination/collusion more likely took place on the data operation side. Just my admittedly uninformed speculation. I hope where is some way the Mueller et al. can get into that.
CaseyL
I’m not sure if there is more or less to this than meets the eye.
Any Congressperson can submit a bill, or an amendment to a bill, without it ever seeing the light of day. He could be doing this to placate his base, with no expectation that it will go anywhere.
OTOH, it’s a lot easier to slip this kind of crap in as an amendment to a bill – particularly a must-pass bill, like the spending authorization. How many times have we found out after the fact about some hideous bit of legislative garbage a GOPer snuck into a bill that hardly anyone knew about?
On the other other hand, this could be meant as a poison pill to kill the spending bill. Amendment passes on GOP-only votes, and then Democrats have to decide whether to vote against the spending bill – and have the government shut down – in order to protect the Mueller investigation.
Millard Filmore
@kindness:
Sure, and small government. Which is why all the multimillionaires hide their wealth and activity behind the corporate veil and corporate bankruptcy laws. So when one of their business blows up killing 20, wounding and maiming 200, destroying 500 homes … they can throw up their hands, say “the company is bankrupt”, and walk away.
Ken
@Amaranthine RBG:
My guess is that if Mueller gets into that, then it’ll be through the back door.
Get somebody cold for some other misconduct in the campaign, and get him\her to roll over on some aspect of vote tampering. Quite possibly without Mueller looking for that.
That said, remember the steady retreats on attacks on the voting machines\systems? It looks almost like things were being stumbled across and mentioned, and then someone decided to stop talking about it.
One reason to stop talking is if it has turned onto an ongoing criminal investigation, whether part of Mueller’s efforts or an independent one.
JaneE
The criminal conduct continued long after 2015. Still is, for that matter. Even so, someone should ask him what criminal activities he is trying to shield.
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense: Would it be a problem if you hated Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, and Heydrich?
No.
Matt McIrvin
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): “Rule of law” is code for “white supremacy”, and specifically police stomping on black people and brown people. When the law is enforced against white people, they go on about government on your back and repealing laws and become fond of pardons and jury nullification.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
When you put it that way.
mai naem mobile
@Wapiti: not his bank account. They need to look at his emails. His emails. His emails. They they can lock him up. Lock him up.
Ksmiami
@MomSense: I was already there- hence my byline- “I used to be a nice person but…”
Laura
@MomSense: YOU are not terrible. However, you are highly skilled in discerning terrible people.
Feebog
@CaseyL:
It’s not even a question. You vote against the bill, shut down the government, and shout loudly and proudly why you did it.
trnc
@dr. bloor: Who says it has to be mutually exclusive? In other words, crafted with input from both Moscow and DT’s White House? Hell, Cohen could have drafted it while sitting in the oval office and finished it in the Kremlin.
Captain C
@JMG: I’m going with both.
Captain C
@Roger Moore: Plus keeping Those People down.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
I think you’re thinking of “Law and Order”, not “Rule of Law”. “Law and Order” is all about order rather than law.
Central Planning
@Millard Filmore:
Yup. They were responsible for _their_ money. Tough shit for those sick/injured/killed. They should have been richer.
satby
@MomSense: that just makes you normal, not bad.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: @MomSense: I do. She forgot about the people who didn’t vote at all! :-)
J R in WV
@MomSense:
Whew, I slid by. I don’t fit into any of those categories, so you don’t hate me, yet.
J R in WV
@gene108:
FTFY
stinger
Is there anything to prevent We the People from funding Mueller’s probe? If he starts a GoFundMe, I’m in for all I can muster up.
Citizen Alan
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I object to the word “devolving.” They are what they have been since 1964 and arguably what they have been since the 1930’s if not even earlier than that. I honestly wonder what percentage of Republican politicians, if asked, would have said that Hitler and Mussolini were great men with good ideas we should consider for America right up until the morning of Pearl Harbor.
Citizen Alan
@MomSense:
I have said many times that the thing I hate most about the Republicans is that they made me hate them. I can honestly say that prior to 2000, I never hated anyone in my life as much as I have come to hate an increasingly long list of Republicans since then. What I felt in the fourth grade for the bully who picked on me relentlessly is nothing compared to burning hate I now feel for perfect strangers who talk about “supporting the President” on Facebook.