Tag Archives: ethics

Donald Trump and Buyable Politicians

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Donald Trump openly boasts that he donates to politicians so he can exact favors from them after they reach office.

After all, he got his BFF and rented woman, Hillary Clinton, to dance at his wedding as a result of a “donation.” Or so he says.

There’s an actual fact, though, that contradicts his boast.

It seems Trump wanted to build one of his casinos in Florida in conjunction with the Seminoles. The casino, though, would have expanded the range of gambling beyond the bingo that Florida law then allowed. To get support for changing the law, Trump did then-gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush a solid, hosting a fund-raiser in Trump Tower for Bush’s campaign benefit, and he donated 50 stacks of his own money to the campaign.

Once elected,

Bush maintained his hardline stance against gambling in the state, delivering a death blow to Trump’s hopes of building out a multi-million dollar casino endeavor with the Seminole Tribe of Florida and prompting him to abandon those plans.

Bush said,

I am opposed to casino gambling in this state, and I am opposed whether it is on Indian property or otherwise…. The people have spoken, and I support their position[.]

The people had spoken three times, in fact, rejecting three separate referendums on the matter.

Maybe this explains Trump’s slavering animosity toward Bush.

Hmm….

Irrelevant Questions?

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An 11-year-old successfully defended himself, his 4-year-old sister, and his home during an attempted mid-afternoon home invasion by a 16-year-old and an accomplice, by shooting the 16-year-old and driving off the accomplice. The children’s mother was out at the time.

Now the police are questioning the mother—no word on what they’re doing with the accomplice, who was caught a short time after the successful defense.

[P]olice want to know why the children were home alone and why the 11-year-old had access to a gun.

What’s the problem with being home “alone?” The 4-year-old was being babysat.

Why shouldn’t the boy have access to a weapon? He’s eleven years old, and there’s no indication he’s not been properly trained. He fired a single shot to effect his defense, though—that’s either a potful of luck, or perhaps he’s had the training.

Police believe the mother bought the gun after prior break-in attempts.

There’s a hint there.

The police are wasting resources.

More Obama Administration Stonewalling

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President Barack Obama’s State Department is resuming its efforts to delay release of Hillary Clinton’s email collection, which she created on the private server she used in substitution for State’s legally mandated government-controlled server while she sat in the SecState chair.

State filed, in the records-release case brought by Citizens United (yes, that Citizens United), a request that all such cases be consolidated under one Federal judge, and the filing added

A significant amount of time is required to process the records and determine which documents are responsive and what portions of the documents are exempt….

I agree that a significant amount of time is required for this. State has had that significant amount of time afforded it already: some of these cases have been in progress for years, and it wasn’t until a Federal judge earlier this year ordered State to stand and deliver on a regular schedule that those deliveries began.

No, State has already had the time it’s requesting. Produce the emails. Full stop.

Clinton’s Emails

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State released 7,000 more of Hilary Clinton’s emails, those…documents…transmitted via her private, unprotected email server. One hundred fifty of them contained classified information.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the emails in question were “subsequently upgraded” to classified. He stressed that none of the emails was considered classified at the time.

This is so utterly disingenuous as to be outright lies. The material in the emails were not “subsequently upgraded” to classified; they were only marked classified after the fact. The material was classified all along.

[S]ome of the information on Clinton’s server was inherently classified. Fox’s analysts cited a memo transmitting information provided by foreign diplomats about Sudan peace talks.

As Shannen Coffin explained, because such information is substantive and comes from foreign diplomats, it is “born classified.”

Information from other sources also is born classified. Recall the first set of emails discovered to be classified (if unmarked as such): they passed along information derived from Talent Keyhole programs.

There are two things about this. All the folks sending, receiving, and reading those emails—TO, FROM, CC, and BCC senders and receivers (and relayers—that’s one reason why the email headers (available only in the electronic copies) are so important), every single one of them—knew or should have known that the material was classified, regardless of their markings. All the folks sending, receiving, or reading those emails should have squawked to the classification authorities of the sender’s office and of State, and to the Security facilities of both offices, about the security violations those emails represented, both by their lack of markings and by their existence on an unclassified, unprotected server.

The other thing is that the mere transmission of such information via unsecured means, or the mere retention of them, however briefly, on unsecured media, is a felony, whether or not the information was properly marked. Everyone in that sequence of transmittal—TO, FROM, CC, and BCC senders and receivers and relayers—who did not so report committed a felony.

Every single one.

What Really Happened?

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Regarding the cell phones used by Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, both aides to Hillary Clinton during the latter’s stint as Secretary of State, and other devices,

[T]he State Department said in a court filing that BlackBerry devices used by two former Clinton aides during her time as secretary of state have most likely been destroyed or sold off by the agency.

The devices, used by Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, have not been located by the agency, State Department Executive Secretary Joseph Macmanus wrote in a filing submitted in DC Federal Court, adding that the agency’s “standard procedure upon return of such devices is to perform a factory reset (which removes any user settings or configurations) and then to re-issue the device to another employee, to destroy it, or to excess it.”

“Because the devices issued to Ms Mills and Ms Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed,” Macmanus wrote.

And

[Macmanus] also said that Clinton did not have a BlackBerry from the State Department or any other device. That means she did not have a department-issued device certified as secure, raising new security questions as the devices she carried would not have been government-encrypted.

The guy who currently sits in the SecState chair, John Kerry, chimed in through his State Spokesperson John Kirby:

…it is “standard practice” that when employees leave, their personal devices undergo a “factory reset,” as they’re often given to other employees.

“And it’s our understanding that that’s what happened in this case. It’s also likely that because this was a while, ago and that those devices were probably—may have been destroyed,”

“Most likely,” “standard procedure,” “standard practice,” “not State issued,” “often given,” “may have been….”

Yes, yes. We fully understand the speculations. Now stop stonewalling and evading: say what actually happened to the devices. Say, also, what device Clinton actually used and where it is, since you’ve known all along her device(s) weren’t government issued.