Donald Trump is the process of showing the country how a leader can destroy careers of any Republican who even speaks against him. POTUS also shows us what happens when the leader of the free world can operate completely outside of the law. It is hard to believe the range of his atrocities with no one to hold up the guard rails, yet this just happened.
The House of Representatives has been investigating the president for impeachment. Rather than defend himself or even go silent, Trump doubled down. When a federal judge ordered that he preserve a great number of papers indicating evidence against him, what did he do?
A subpoena from the House did not budge him to produce documents and staff to testify. What would the odds be of him destroying all the records, especially his phone conversations with foreign leaders like Putin?
U.S. District Judge Any Berman Jackson has issued an order, which forced Trump’s White House officials to preserve all records, to not destroy any other them, according to Politico:
‘[M]eetings, phone calls, and other communications with foreign leaders.’
She was specific about requesting “presidential conversations foreign leaders.” She noted his special system used to hide them from the eyes of the many. He hid them in an ultra-secret, stand-alone computer system.
The judge ordered the White House to keep:
‘[A]ll records of efforts by White House or other executive branch officials to return, “claw back,” “lock down” or recall White House records.’
This judge was appointed by President Barack Obama and has been overseeing a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which is a watchdog group. There were two other organizations that filed with CREW: the National Security Archive and the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations. These two organizations focus on history.
The lawsuit claimed the White House officials had refused to keep the president’s records as set forth by the Presidential Records Act. This suit was filed in early summer and well before the Ukraine issue occurred.
The judge just issued a restraining order on the records of the president’s conversations with world leaders. It began with the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr (Vladimir) Zelensky. Then, it went on to cover all of his conversations with world leaders.
Trump’s people stashed the records in a strange location, a database normally used for ultra-secret documents about operations such as the Osama bin Laden take-down. The judge specified that all of these phone call records be maintained.
When Zelensky came to the White House, Trump suggested that the Ukraine president have a conversation with Russia and work this war thing out with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian president, of course, had no interest in working things out. The recipient of Trump withholding direly-needed weapons of war form Ukraine was, of course, Putin.
He invaded and seized Crimea and has started a war along the eastern border of Ukraine. Putin has been telling the world that Crimea was Russia. Now it is. Recently, Trump called Ukraine a “big, wide, beautiful wall” between Europe and Russia, according to Politico:
‘In reality, it is the thinnest of shields.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
