A top House Republican has denied a request from the federal ethics chief for a public meeting to hear lawmakers’ grievances against him for speaking out against President-elect Donald Trump — but also backed down on calling him to testify in a closed-door interview similar to a deposition.
Instead, Walter Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, is scheduled to meet Monday with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
.. Chaffetz sent Shaub a letter summoning him to appear before lawmakers for a transcribed interview that congressional staffers said would be similar to a deposition in a court case.
.. Chaffetz noted in the letter that the ethics office is up for reauthorization from Congress, a sentence Shaub’s supporters viewed as a veiled threat to strip the office’s funding.
.. Shaub responded to Chaffetz in a letter this week in which he pressed for a public meeting “to ensure transparency.”
Donald Trump’s Impeachment Threat
Rudy Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s most zealous acolytes, echoed this cry to carry the battle forward into a Clinton administration. “I guarantee you in one year she’ll be impeached and indicted,” Mr. Giuliani promised Iowa voters this week. “It’s just going to happen. We’re going to sort of vote for a Watergate.”
.. As nonsensical as this strategy appears, these threats could cause real damage by encouraging Republicans in the next Congress to effectively take the government hostage, exacting revenge by making sure that nothing Mrs. Clinton proposes ever comes to pass. President Obama put it well in underlining the dangers. “Right now, because a lot of them think that Trump will lose, they’re already promising even more unprecedented dysfunction in Washington,” he told North Carolina voters this week. “How does our democracy function like that?”
.. Beyond simple hypocrisy, the Republicans’ impeachment threat demonstrates their gathering disrespect for democracy. If they can’t gain control of government fairly, they’ll simply undermine it. It is the clearest warning yet that voters must deliver a firm rejection of the politics of division that Mr. Trump represents.
Donald Trump Threatens to Sue The Times Over Article on Unwanted Advances
Marc E. Kasowitz, Esq.
Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP
1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019-6799
Re: Demand for Retraction
Dear Mr. Kasowitz:
I write in response to your letter of October 12, 2016 to Dean Baquet concerning your client Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States.
You write concerning our article “Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately” and label the article as “libel per se.” You ask that we “remove it from [our] website, and issue a full and immediate retraction and apology.” We decline to do so.
The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation. Mr. Trump has bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women. He has bragged about intruding on beauty pageant contestants in their dressing rooms. He acquiesced to a radio host’s request to discuss Mr. Trump’s own daughter as a “piece of ass.” Multiple women not mentioned in our article have publicly come forward to report on Mr. Trump’s unwanted advances. Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.
But there is a larger and much more important point here. The women quoted in our story spoke out on an issue of national importance — indeed, an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday night’s presidential debate. Our reporters diligently worked to confirm the women’s accounts. They provided readers with Mr. Trump’s response, including his forceful denial of the women’s reports. It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices. We did what the law allows: We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern. If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.
Sincerely,
David E. McCraw
American Gut Check
But this dangerous man is incapable of bottling up his dark self for a full 90 minutes. And in the end, he finally crosses the one political barrier he had yet to fully cross — trashing democracy itself, we the people.
.. The remaining enablers — Reince Priebus, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pence — had to know that things were bad when the Republican presidential nominee was tougher on the sainted Ronald Reagan than on the Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin.
.. And they had to know the game was over when another 3 a.m. tweet was blasted out by Trump, with his conclusion that he won, because of online polls that could not pass the vetting of Baghdad Bob.
.. He’s become a very tired and confused 70-year-old man feeding nuts to squirrels in the park of his delusions.
.. Steve Bannon, the former head of a fabulist, far-right website — Breitbart. Bannon is not much of a Republican.
.. “I’m a Leninist,” he said in a conversation recounted by Ronald Radosh in The Daily Beast. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
.. His debate-night threat, holding the validity of the election itself hostage, is no surprise. Trump is bereft of patriotism, and seems to hate the country he wants to lead. He’s been talking down this nation and its most cherished institutions throughout his campaign. Time and again, he would rather defend Russia than the United States.
.. He’s gone after free speech — that would be the right granted in the amendment just before the only one he knows — threatening his enemies in the press. That same first amendment ensures that a religious test will not be used to judge us — another thing he has thrown to the side.
.. But in the final debate, his true persona was there for all to see — a self-hating American.