Sources said the email occurred in June 2016 around the time of the recently revealed Trump Tower meeting where Russians with Kremlin ties met with the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
(snip)
And Dearborn wasn’t the only person within the Trump campaign emailing about potential Russia meetings. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos sent an email to top campaign officials in March 2016 about arranging meetings with Russians, sources said. The subject line was “Meeting with Russian Leadership — Including Putin,” according to the source.
(snip)
Dearborn was later appointed Trump’s deputy chief of staff for legislative, intergovernmental affairs and implementation, cementing his position in the White House as a senior policy aide. He is among the handful of Sessions aides who landed plum jobs in the administration.
Tick tock, tick tock …
))))Just in from the Fake News Specialists, CNN. Jim, I am surprised at you. By the way, what has happened to this phony story lately? I thought Trump was supposed to be found guilty of something and impeached by now.
Patience Edgar, Mueller is on it. đŸ™‚
Seriously though, I don’t think impeachment will result. The most worried person should probably be Paul Manafort.
If this isn’t impeachable I don’t know what is. Even Richard Nixon did not suborn treason.
The Republican representatives and senators of the Nixon era, as partisan as they were (and they most certainly WERE partisan) were icons of probity and integrity in comparison to the Collaborators of today.
The reason Donald Trump is not likely to be impeached is not because he isn’t impeachable.
It is because the gutless, hypocritical, political cowards of the GOP will not vote to impeach him in the House and will not vote to convict him in the Senate.
“What happened to this phony story lately?”
Looks to me as though it’s been pushed off the radar by:
– Donald Trump threatening to initiate a nuclear holocaust in Korea
– Donald Trump pandering to Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville
– Donald Trump hiring and firing “the Mooch”
– Donald Trump doubling down on the never-ending war in Afghanistan by proposing a 50% increase in troop strength — and reversing himself on the YEARS of attacks of he launched against Barack Obama (and everyone else).
Hmm. Maybe there’s a pattern here? Maybe Mr. Trump is “wagging the dog”?
Tom, you are beginning to sound like a late nite tv comedian. Jimmy Fallon, look out!!))))
– Donald Trump pardoning a racist thug and convicted criminal.
Edgar, do you WANT us to think of you as just another Donald Trump supported and defender? Are YOU ok with the mob carrying swastikas and torches? Are YOU ok with your guy pandering to them?
strange, Tom. I don’t remember you pissing and moaning when Obama pardoned this terrorist:During the 1970s, Lopez Rivera headed a Chicago-based cell of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), which waged a futile but violent struggle to win Puerto Rican independence.
The FALN claimed responsibility for more than 120 bombings between 1974 and 1983 in a wave of senseless destruction that killed six and injured dozens. In 1981, a federal court in Chicago sentenced Lopez Rivera, then 37, to 55 years for seditious conspiracy, armed robbery, interstate transportation of firearms and conspiracy to transport explosives with intent to destroy government property.
Oscar Lopez Rivera
FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera peers from an automobile window July 24, 1981, as he is taken to jail after he was convicted on bombing, weapons and sedition charges. (Arthur Walker / Chicago Tribune)
Notably, the seditious-conspiracy charge was not some “thought crime,” as Lopez Rivera’s lawyer has said: The indictment listed 28 Chicago-area bombings, some of which caused injuries, as “overt acts” in support of the conspiracy.
FBI agents discovered dynamite, detonators and firearms at two residences occupied by Lopez Rivera. At trial, a cooperating witness from the FALN testified that Lopez Rivera personally trained him in bomb-making.
So Lopez Rivera is neither a low-level offender nor a nonviolent one. Nor, crucially, is he repentant.
He defiantly challenged the legitimacy of the court that tried him. Shortly after entering federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., he and FALN members on the outside hatched an escape plan; the FBI foiled it by arresting Lopez Rivera’s would-be helpers, who were armed with guns and explosives. A conviction for that escape attempt added 15 years to his sentence.
In 1999, Lopez Rivera was one of 16 imprisoned Puerto Rican terrorists to whom then-President Bill Clinton offered executive clemency.
He refused, reportedly because Clinton’s offer did not include one of the FALN members who had tried to break him out of Leavenworth.
In addition, Clinton required the Puerto Ricans to renounce violence as a condition of receiving clemency.
Obama’s offer this week came with no such requirement — in puzzling contrast not only to Clinton’s policy in 1999, but also to White House statements that Chelsea Manning deserved clemency because she accepted responsibility and showed remorse.
Not so for Lopez Rivera. True, the 74-year-old probably no longer threatens the community; and yes, 35 years is a long time, perhaps even “a sufficient amount of time,” as a senior administration official put it. Lopez Rivera served honorably in Vietnam before undergoing what today might be called “self-radicalization.”
Jose E. Lopez shares his thoughts after hearing that President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentence of his brother Oscar Lopez Rivera. Lopez Rivera was serving 70 years for his role in FALN, an organization that plotted bombings, prison escapes and armed robberies in an effort to secure independence for Puerto Rico. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
Still, unconditional release, for someone who claimed a right to wage war on the United States and repeatedly put innocent civilian lives at risk?
“I don’t see the guy as a threat,” Rick Hahn, the now-retired FBI special agent who helped investigate the original case against Lopez Rivera, told me. “But people I know who were victims of the FALN say that if the guy would just say he’s sorry, they’d all say, ‘Fine, let him go.’ ”
The voices Obama heeded instead were those of activists including celebrities such as Lin-Manuel Miranda and South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu, the latter of whom said that Lopez Rivera’s only crime was “conspiring to free his people from the shackles of imperial injustice.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., referred to Lopez Rivera, bizarrely, as “one of the longest-serving political prisoners in history — 34 years, longer than Nelson Mandela.”
The presidential pardon descends from similar power wielded by British kings. Alexander Hamilton wanted it in the U.S. Constitution, partly for use “in seasons of insurrection or rebellion … when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth.”
The FALN’s season of insurrection is long over. But for the group’s victims, as well as for all Americans concerned with the consequences our government applies to terrorists, this last-minute get-out-of-jail-free card for Oscar Lopez Rivera seems anything but well-timed.
Washington Post
Charles Lane is a Post editorial writer specializing in economic and fiscal policy, a weekly columnist, and a contributor to the PostPartisan blog.
Related stories:
Lin-Manuel Miranda says he’ll play ‘Hamilton’ in Chicago for Oscar Lopez Rivera
Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning, who gave Army documents to WikiLeaks
Clemency for Leonard Peltier? Never
Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune
Barack Obama Bill Clinton Chelsea Manning Lin-Manuel Miranda Nelson Mandela
This is informative, but unfortunately it also violates fair use.
Also, 34 years is nothing to sneeze at. Trump pardoned Arpaio ahead of his sentencing. He hasn’t served a day.
Sorry about the posting violation. I tried to edit it back, but i couldn’t find a way to do so after posting.
And several murders is nothing to sneeze at either.
This is not informative. It’s crap. Lopez Rivera was not pardoned. His sentence was commuted. He spent 35 years in prison. His release was demanded by 10 Nobel Peace Prize winners.
The pardon of Marc Rich is probably a better comparison, though we may have been doing a solid for Mossad. Clinton was roundly criticized by everyone for doing so.
Arpaio was pardoned and never served a day for his crimes. The sole reason for his pardon: he is a racist.
Serious question, Edgar. Take Trump out of the picture for a second. Are you OK with his campaign officials e-mailing Russian officials in the context of helping with Trump’s campaign? That doesn’t disturb you a little?
It probably would, if not for the fake dossier having been financed suspiciously by the the backers of Clinton. As my grandmother used to say, “What is good for the goose is good for the gander.”
The dossier doesn’t really enter into what I asked you about, but whatever, you pretty much answered.