Criminal Investigations for 2017

Shiva_TD · Dec 13, 2016

With the end of any necessity for political witch hunts of Hillary Clinton to discredit her based upon (false) allegation by Republicans in Congress fading into the past it's time for us to look into new investigations that would be of value in 2017. I can think of three that I'll list in order of importance (IMHO).

Investigation #1
This is the "biggie" that requires the most explanation for those not familiar with the US Constitution.
Investigation into the possible/probable violation of Emoluments Clause into Section 9 of Article I by Donald Trump that, as of now, has not mentioned anything that would remove himself adequately from his business empire. A couple of news articles address this.

There are federal ethics rules that prohibit members of Congress and Cabinet members from accepting gifts from anyone who has business before their agency, as well as requiring that they recuse themselves from governmental affairs that affect their financial interests. The roles of President and Vice-President were exempted from those rules because it was believed that the office of the President was so vast in its responsibilities that it would be virtually impossible to police. As Kenneth Gross, a partner at Skadden Arps, and a former associate general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, notes, it was also assumed that no President would attempt to run the government and a business simultaneously.

The authors of the Constitution, however, did have insight into the potential abuse of the office of President, and they inserted something called the Emoluments Clause into Section 9 of Article I. It states, in part, that no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. This clause, Gross said, basically means that anything of significant value from a foreign government or a company controlled by one that accrues to the Trump Organization while Trump owns it could provide the seed of an investigation and impeachment. Trump listed five hundred and sixty-four line items on his financial-disclosure form; appearing under Filers Positions Held Outside United States(*)Government are the names DT Marks Qatar LLC, DT Marks Dubai LLC, THC Services Shenzhen LLC, and many other opaque, foreign-sounding entities.

This is not something esoteric. This is an area that the incoming President must address, along with his other conflicts, Gross, who advised Michael Bloomberg on the management of his assets while he was the Mayor of New York City, said. (I formerly worked at Bloomberg L.P.) This is a very unique problem for himwe dont have a very good picture of his financial situation, we really dont know what he owns, we dont know all his entanglements.
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http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/trumps-conflict-of-interest-problem

President-elect Donald Trumps much anticipated Dec. 15 press conference has been postponed to January 2017, according to his spokesperson. He has declined to use a blind trust as other past presidents have done.

I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Trump tweeted on Nov. 30. Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!

Apparently the legal documents arent close to being ready.

Its unclear how far Trump is willing to go to resolve his conflicts of interest. Transferring control of his businesses to his children is likely not enough, because his children are closely involved with his transition team; Trump also knows what he owns in great detail, so having his children take over does not remove potential conflicts of interest. He also still stands to gain or lose financially if he retains ownership of his assets. The international nature of his empire which includes loans from Deutsche Bank and the Bank of China as well as licensing deals in Turkey and Philippines makes the situation even more sticky.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennife...ess-conflict-of-interest-issues/#6dc3c1256147

While an actual violation of this clause is grounds for impeachment and removal from office that's not the purpose of the investigation. The purpose would for our government to get an understanding of Trump's empire so we would know if he violated the Emoluments Clause while in office. Because we don't know the extent of his financial empire currently because Trump has refused to disclose it, and Trump doesn't have any plans that will actually separate himself from his financial empire, the investigation becomes mandatory.

Investigation #2
This is a relatively easy one to address.
What happen to and what are the contents of the estimated 22 million emails from the Bush Administration that were "deleted" from the Republican National Committees private email server.

The plaintiffs soon discovered that Bush aides had simply shut down the Clinton automatic email archive, and they identified the start date of the lost emails as January 1, 2003. The White House claimed it had switched to a new server and in the process was unable to maintain an archivea claim that many found dubious.

Bush administration emails could have aided a special prosecutors investigation into a White House effort to discredit a diplomat who disagreed with the administrations fabricated Iraq WMD evidence by outing his CIA agent wife, Plame. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who was brought in to investigate that case, said in 2006 that he believed some potentially relevant emails sent by aides in Cheney's office were in the administration's system but he couldnt get them.

The supposedly lost emails also prevented Congress from fully investigating, in 2007, the politically motivated firing of nine U.S. attorneys. When the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed related emails, Bushs attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, said many were inaccessible or lost on a nongovernmental private server run by the RNC and called gwb43.com.

Eventually, the Bush White House admitted it had lost 22 million emails, not 5 million. Then, in December 2009well into Barack Obamas administrationthe White House said it found 22 million emails, dated between 2003 and 2005, that it claimed had been mislabeled. That cache was given to the National Archives, and it and other plaintiffs agreed, on December 14, 2009, to settle their lawsuit.(*)But the emails have not yet been made available to the public.
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http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-house-lost-22-million-emails-497373.html

The "lost" emails from the RNC server apparently cover the time period for the start of the Iraq War, the outing of Valerie Plame, and the firing of US Attorney's by the Bush Administration. All of this is of highly significant historical value and the law requires the discloser of these emails. So if they've been actually found then what information can be made public now and if they haven't been found then the government needs to find them. 22 million lost emails is serious and demands a complete investigation.

Investigation #3
This is the last investigation I'd propose but it's also of significance.
The CIA has reported that Russia was involved in trying to tip the 2016 president election in Donald Trump's favor although Russia's hacking of the DNC emails arguably didn't affect the actual election outcome. That's already the subject of possible Congressional investigation. This is what's troubling and needs to be investigated:

MOSCOW The Russian government maintained contacts with members of Donald J. Trumps immediate entourage during the American presidential campaign, one of Russias top diplomats said Thursday.

There were contacts, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. We continue to do this and have been doing this work during the election campaign, he said.

Mr. Ryabkov said officials in the Russian Foreign Ministry were familiar with many of the people he described as Mr. Trumps entourage. I cannot say that all, but a number of them maintained contacts with Russian representatives, Mr. Ryabkov said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/europe/trump-campaign-russia.html

Was Donald Trump's political organization actively or even remotely involved with Russia's attempt to influence the 2016 Presidential election? That warrants a serious investigation.

If anyone else has some good suggestions for "investigations" in 2017 I'm sure we'd all like to hear about them.

Shiva_TD · Dec 15, 2016

I guess if I wanted a response I should have included "Hillary Clinton" in the title.

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Criminal Investigations for 2017

Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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