Rx – Theory of a Deadman

Roads Untraveled – Linkin Park

In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company – The Dead South

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Islam’s Prophet Mohammed dies; James Earl Ray caught, wanted for killing civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; Architect Frank Lloyd Wright born; The N.Y. Yankees retire Mickey Mantle’s number.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God’s gift, that’s why we call it the present.

Joan Rivers

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US-Mexico talks: Agreement to avoid tariffs reached, says Trump

Mexico has agreed to take “unprecedented steps” to help stem the flow of migrants to the US in order to avoid trade tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump revealed that a deal had been reached to suspend the tariffs “indefinitely” in a series of tweets.

He had threatened to implement import duties of 5%, rising every month, unless Mexico acted to curb migration.

The tariffs were due to come into effect on Monday.

Minority rule: Michigan loophole allows activists to push through abortion bans

A state law that foregoes a vote if a proposal has signatures from just 4% of the electorate is being used by special interest groups

Tom Perkins in Detroit

Sat 8 Jun 2019 07.00 BST

Michigan is a state in which Democrats drubbed Republicans in the 2018 midterms, a Democrat governor has promised to veto anti-abortion legislation, and polling shows the population is solidly supportive of reproductive rights.

Still, it could soon effectively ban abortion.

Conservative activists here with Right To Life and the Michigan Heartbeat Coalition are planning to team up with Republican lawmakers to exploit a constitutional loophole that allows groups to use citizen ballot initiatives to dodge a governor’s veto and implement anti-abortion laws without putting them to voters.

Sudan suspension, African Union’s bold move against strongmen

The African Union’s suspension of Sudan over a paramilitary massacre of civilians this week has been welcomed by the international community. But can the bloc succeed in delivering African solutions to African problems?

Misinformation swirling around Dutch teenager’s death ignites debate over euthanasia

By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN

Updated 0800 GMT (1600 HKT) June 8, 2019

A Google walkout organizer just quit, saying she was branded with a “scarlet letter”

Claire Stapleton’s disillusionment with Google captures America’s disillusionment with Silicon Valley.

By Alexia Fernández Campbell @AlexiaCampbell [email protected] 

An employee who helped organize the worldwide Google walkout last year says she’s quitting — because her managers have been punishing her for her activism.

“I made the choice after the heads of my department branded me with a kind of scarlet letter that makes it difficult to do my job or find another one,” wrote Claire Stapleton in a note she shared with her colleagues this week and published Friday on Medium. “If I stayed, I didn’t just worry that there’d be more public flogging, shunning, and stress, I expected it.”

CHINA BANS THE INTERCEPT AND OTHER NEWS SITES IN “CENSORSHIP BLACK FRIDAY”

June 8 2019

THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT appears to have launched a major new internet crackdown, blocking the country’s citizens from accessing The Intercept’s website and those of at least seven other Western news organizations.

On Friday, people in China began reporting that they could not access the websites of The Intercept, The Guardian, the Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, and Breitbart News.

It is unclear exactly when the censorship came into effect or the reasons for it. But Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and Chinese authorities have reportedly increased levels of online censorship to coincide with the event.

Koch Bro Bill was the only one of the 4 to support Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio, hosting lavish campaign fundraisers that included such luminaries a Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary already in hot water for being a general asshole, a grifter, a mooch, and unilaterally withholding Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s Tax Returns from exactly the same Congressional Committees that are specifically legal authorized to have them, which isn’t even his job anyway- it belongs to IRS Commissioner, Chuck Rettig.

“Koch Bro” is the lede and David Cay Johnston kind of misses it. Where Bill lives doesn’t really matter.

IRS abruptly stopped criminal investigation of Mar-a-Lago member accused of massive tax fraud months after Trump took office
By David Cay Johnston, DC Report
June 6, 2019

<

Bill Koch has enjoyed hundreds of millions of dollars of untaxed profits from his carbon-based businesses, having shifted profits earned in the United States to a subsidiary in the Bahamas. A 2016 whistleblower complaint prompted an IRS criminal investigation, but the IRS halted all communication with the whistleblower’s attorneys shortly after Trump became president.
…
Koch’s businesses withheld critical documents, stymying IRS auditors. We’ll also publish the contents of the June 2017 email that signaled the IRS had stopped pursuing the complaint against Koch’s businesses, five months after Trump took office.
…
Before auditing two years of Koch’s Oxbow Carbon LLC business tax returns in 2014, a team of Internal Revenue Service auditors sent routine requests for information to determine whether additional taxes were due. For simplicity we will refer to the various companies as Oxbow America and Oxbow Bahamas.

The IRS was supplied with innocuous documents. The IRS was also given a study by the Grant Thornton accounting firm that blessed Koch shifting Oxbow money abroad, based on inaccurate information Oxbow provided.

IRS auditors asked in writing for other documents they considered crucial to a proper examination. These documents would explain how Oxbow America shifted profits earned in America by mixing and selling petroleum coke to Oxbow Bahamas, where no income tax would be owed.
…
Oxbow America executives told the IRS auditors that their requests were “overly broad…burdensome and resource intensive,” the Koch Papers reveal. The papers show that Bill Koch participated in meetings, emails and phone calls in which the IRS was also told that documents could not be located or did not exist.

After initially finding grounds for a criminal investigation more than two years ago, the IRS appears to have abandoned it.

Another Koch Papers document directs Oxbow America’s executives to “do whatever possible” to conceal profitability data the IRS auditors requested.

The IRS audit team never saw many requested documents. Without having seen these important documents, the IRS closed its audits in 2014, accepting the 2011 and 2012 business tax returns as filed.

Near the end of the audit, Charles Middleton, then the company’s chief tax executive and a specialist in international transactions, grew suspicious about assertions that the requested documents were too hard to find. One day he sat down at an Oxbow computer. He logged into a database that Oxbow America had paid a vendor to create.

With a few keystrokes Middleton located all the documents. Middleton promptly notified Koch and other top executives.

The reaction was swift.

“When I suggested Oxbow take action to correct the false statements and amend the fraudulent 2010 tax return, I was immediately removed from the audit team and prohibited from having further contact with the IRS,” Middleton wrote, not saying who issued the order. His attorney, William Cohan, said such action would not have occurred unless Bill Koch directed it or agreed to it.

Once the IRS formally closed the two audits, Oxbow America fired Middleton. The company, in a statement, said Middleton was fired for cause without specifying the reason.
…
The documents include internal discussion about whether the tax strategy is lawful and the prospect of massive penalties if IRS auditors understood how profits earned in America were siphoned out of the country. Some executives and advisers expressed concern that even if the strategy might work legally, it was not being done with the precision required to lawfully slip profits past the IRS.

Middleton calculated that our federal government is now due $350 million in taxes, penalties and interest for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Shifting Oxbow America profits out of the United States continued at least through late 2015, the Koch Papers show. There is no reason to believe the tax practices stopped.

Assuming the strategy is still in place, my analysis of the Koch Papers and other documents indicates that our federal government is owed hundreds of millions of taxes, penalties and interest.
…
Middleton’s whistleblower claims detailed what he says were “tax crimes” both in the offshore tax strategy and hiding documents from IRS auditors. His first claim was filed in 2016, his most recent in May 2018.

“Substantial false, fraudulent and misleading information was provided to the IRS” about shifting of American profits to the Bahamas, Middleton told the IRS Whistleblower Office in 2016.

The Koch papers estimate that the shift would eliminate $21 million annually in federal income taxes. Other documents cite $40 million to $50 million annually of taxes that would not be paid if the strategy worked. Any fraud penalties would add 75 percent to those sums.

“Oxbow fraudulently withheld material documents properly requested by the IRS” during the audit of its 2011 and 2012 tax returns and, Middleton wrote, “Oxbow knowingly made false statements to IRS personnel.”

“I was the Senior Vice-President of tax for Oxbow at the time of the audits,” he added. “When the false statements were initially made, I was unaware they were false. I subsequently discovered documents that established with 100% certainty that Oxbow willfully made false and misleading statements.”

“Oxbow’s response to many of these” document requests “was to deny the existence of responsive documents despite the fact that many responsive documents existed and Oxbow’s senior leadership … were aware of these documents,” Middleton wrote, naming Bill Koch and four other senior executives.

Middleton listed 15 documents. He called them “a small percentage of the documents fraudulently withheld from the IRS. The total of documents withheld numbers in the hundreds or thousands. I have enclosed some of these documents with this submission; there are many more in my possession and on Oxbow’s computers.”

Few, if any, of the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege, he wrote, referring to broad claims of privilege the company made during the audit to withhold documents from the IRS. One key document, Middleton wrote, was written by a nonlawyer and was widely distributed within the company, which would invalidate any claim of attorney-client privilege.

One of the many pregnant observations in Middleton’s report is that “Oxbow chose to ignore the advice” of one of its outside lawyers, who was also terminated. A consultant report stated that the “Rotterdam tax people are very aware of DUTCH law and fear that when a contract transfer is made Oxbow may be exposed to significant tax exposure in Holland.”
…
The whole claim to tax-free profits rests on the assumption that the Bahamas was the main center of business activity and that Oxbow Bahamas is a Swiss company doing business in Nassau.

The Swiss government issued a formal ruling that Oxbow Bahamas isn’t subject to Swiss tax because it doesn’t do business or make any money in Switzerland. Middleton says that means it cannot benefit from the United States-Swiss tax treaty, an issue that the IRS has never tested in court even though many companies rely on that treaty to reduce or eliminate taxes on their profits.

Oxbow America’s operations earned $229 million of profit in 2009, the year before the Bahamas gambit began. By 2015, the parent company reported losing money in the United States.

The tax avoidance work appears to have been very sloppy.

Oxbow Bahamas did not pay for its offices, about 1,200 square feet in a Nassau shopping center where three to five people worked, some part-time. The office and staff are much too small to handle just the invoicing and record keeping for hundreds of millions of dollars of petroleum coke deals, never mind all the other work that keeps more than 300 people employed by Oxbow America.

Not even a pound of petcoke was produced in the Bahamas. Most of the millions of tons of petcoke, one of the dirtiest carbon fuels, came from American oil refineries, was processed and mixed in the U.S. and sold by American sales agents.

Middleton told the IRS that much of the executive time recorded on the books of Oxbow Bahamas books was really golfing trips and that one key executive spent at most 15 days a year working there, while another worked from New York.

“I’ve always wanted to be the biggest real estate man to come down the pike,” Leona Helmsley.

Thus the need for Congressional Investigation to gather the information necessary to draft legislation and inform debate, the inherent Article I subpoena power to compel testimony and the production of documents.

Giuliani is so screwed.

House Dems Preparing Investigation of Rudy Giuliani for Ukraine Shenanigans
by Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng, Daily Beast
06.07.19

Top congressional Democrats are actively discussing opening a probe into Rudy Giuliani for his overseas political and consulting work, including a recent attempt to uncover dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, a source with direct knowledge tells The Daily Beast.

The contours of a potential probe are still under consideration. But it would likely look at whether Giuliani’s relationships with foreign politicos interfered or intersected with American foreign-policy efforts.

Asked about the prospect of lawmakers investigating his foreign work, President Donald Trump’s lawyer had a defiant response: Bring it on.

“If they want to come after me, I gladly accept it, because we could just make the Biden stuff bigger news,” Giuliani told The Daily Beast. “Do it! Give me a chance to give a couple speeches about it and hold a press conference. I’d love that… I think it’d be a fun fight. I’ll just compare it to all the things they’re not investigating… If they want, we can have a big fight over this.”

The former New York City mayor insisted there was “nothing illegal or unethical about” any of his overseas trips or foreign work in the Trump era, and accused Democrats on Capitol Hill of “trashing the Constitution” and potentially engaging in the “biggest misuse” of congressional power “since Joe McCarthy.”

The news of a potential Giuliani probe comes as Democrats on the Hill are attempting to ramp up their investigations into President Trump. Several congressional committees, including judiciary and oversight, have called on former Trump officials to cooperate in their investigations. But the White House has stonewalled those efforts, refusing to acquiesce to witness-interview and document-production requests.

In response, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler’s (D-NY) plans on introducing a resolution next week that would allow committees to sue the Trump administration and witnesses from the Mueller probe who do not comply with subpoenas, according to Democratic aides.

Giuliani would be, perhaps, the highest-profile investigative target to date. The president’s lawyer ultimately canceled his trip to Ukraine amid a backlash from Democrats and some disapproval from Republicans. But prior to that, he’d been open about his plans to go to the country to help uncover information on the origins of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and to encourage investigators to look into whether Biden had influenced a case that had been brought against his eldest son. As The New York Times first reported, Giuliani was seeking information on the involvement of Hunter Biden in an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch. During the Obama administration, Vice President Biden had pushed for the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor whose office controlled the inquiries into the company, on which Biden’s son had a seat on the board.

Giuliani, much of pro-Trump media, and President Trump himself had tried to frame the Biden story as a major political scandal. But it has since fizzled out. A Bloomberg News report noted that testimony from a former Ukrainian official and internal documents did not match the timeline or narrative that Biden had intervened to benefit Hunter. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close [the] cases,” the former official said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”
…
In addition to Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine, congressional Democrats are also said to be interested in the trips he has taken to Armenia and Romania.

Giuliani sent a letter to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in August 2018 recommending changes to the country’s anti-corruption program. The contents of that letter diverged from the official State Department stance on the issue. He told Politico that he was paid for writing the letter by a global consulting firm. In October 2018, Giuliani appeared in Armenia, reportedly invited there by an Armenian businessman who lives in Russia. At the time, Giuliani said he was in Armenia as a “private citizen.” He spoke at a conference alongside a sanctioned Russian official.

Shenanigans. That’s one way to put it I guess. Felonies? Disbarrable Acts? Torts?

The thing to remember about Giuliani is he’s mean to the bone and he’s also stupid.

Klepper.

Guns, Race, and Activism

Broadcast.

Podcast.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

James Byrd, Jr. dragged to death in Texas; Communists complete takeover of Czechoslovakia; Israel destroys an Iraqi nuclear power plant; ‘Grease’ opens on Broadway; Singer-songwriter Prince born.

Technology is cool, but you’ve got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.

Prince

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He was arrested at 13. Now Saudi Arabia wants to execute him

By Muhammad Darwish, Tamara Qiblawi and Ghazi Balkiz, CNN

‘The last fight for Hong Kong’: activists gear up over extradition law

I’ll simply assume that everyone is aware that revolting Guaidó, err… the Guaidó Revolt, is nothing more than a CIA Op because the U.S. doesn’t want a scary “Socialist” leading any nations in the Western Hemisphere. There are plenty of corrupt Dictators in Latin America (see Brazil) and we do nothing. Venezuela is a special case.

In secret recording, Pompeo opens up about Venezuelan opposition, says keeping it united ‘has proven devilishly difficult’
By John Hudson, Washington Post
June 5, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered a candid assessment of Venezuela’s opposition during a closed-door meeting in New York last week, saying that the opponents of President Nicolás Maduro are highly fractious and that U.S. efforts to keep them together have been more difficult than is publicly known.

“Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult,” Pompeo said in an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post. “The moment Maduro leaves, everybody’s going to raise their hands and [say], ‘Take me, I’m the next president of Venezuela.’ It would be forty-plus people who believe they’re the rightful heir to Maduro.”
…
Pompeo said he was confident Maduro would eventually be forced out, but “I couldn’t tell you the timing.”

He said the difficulty of uniting the opposition has not only played out in “public for these last months, but since the day I became CIA director, this was something that was at the center of what President Trump was trying to do.”

“We were trying to support various religious . . . institutions to get the opposition to come together,” he said.

He expressed regret that during a failed April 30 bid to incite a military uprising, competing interests among Maduro’s enemies and rivals prevented the socialist dictator’s swift exit.

“You should know, [Maduro] is mostly surrounded by Cubans,” Pompeo said. “He doesn’t trust Venezuelans a lick. I don’t blame him. He shouldn’t. They were all plotting against him. Sadly, they were all plotting for themselves.”

The remarks represent a sharp departure from the Trump administration’s official line touting the unity and strength of the opposition led by Juan Guaidó, the National Assembly leader recognized by some 60 countries as interim president.

“This is the first senior official I’ve heard be so publicly candid about the opposition’s weakness and how it may make bringing democracy back to Venezuela so much harder,” said Shannon O’Neil, a Venezuela expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It is a sobering but accurate view,” she added. “They remain divided over how to take on the Maduro regime — whether or not to enter into dialogue, whether or not to engage with the military, whether or not to run a presidential candidate or boycott elections. They don’t even retweet each other.”

They don’t RE-TWEET! Quelle horreur ! Très gauche!

Pompeo also conveyed how difficult it would be to bring change to Venezuela even in the event that Maduro were ousted.

“Maduro’s departure is important and necessary but completely insufficient,” he said.

Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Pompeo’s remarks were surprisingly unguarded but “absolutely true.”

“The sad truth is that too many in the opposition are more interested in setting themselves up to be the Nelson Mandela figure than in finding a pragmatic path forward,” he said.

A representative of Guaidó disputed the characterization of disunity and said the young leader has brought together a diverse democratic movement.

“Guaidó is the most popular local figure in the country right now. Any poll will tell you that,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Pompeo’s off-the-record remarks. “He’s been able to coalesce a movement to put the fight against Maduro and achieve change. That’s the current status now.”
…
Pompeo said that solidifying Guaidó’s position has taken a long time but that the situation remained “tenuous.”

“We’ve been working, and it took this long to get to where we are today, where you have a leader — tenuous as it may be — who could’ve been arrested while we’re sitting in this room, who has managed to cobble together the opposition,” he said.
…
As the effort to remove Maduro has dragged on, the humanitarian situation has worsened, with a health system in “utter collapse with increased levels of maternal and infant mortality,” according to an April report by Human Rights Watch. The group tracked an uptick in vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles and diphtheria, and “high levels of food insecurity and child malnutrition” — all factors that have contributed to an exodus of more than 3.4 million Venezuelans in recent years.

Venezuela’s current economic condition is due in no small part to U.S. Sanctions and bad mouthing.

Faced with the dire circumstances, some countries that initially pledged support for Guaidó have begun exploring negotiations with Maduro, ignoring U.S. calls against dialogue. Leaders of European and Latin American countries met at the United Nations on Monday and issued a communique supporting Guaidó, as well as efforts to find a negotiated solution and increase contacts with all sides in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, the United States is stepping up pressure against Venezuela’s backer Cuba, issuing regulations Tuesday that place new restrictions on travel to the country.

In his remarks, Pompeo stressed his view that “Cubans are at the heart of the economic woes” in Venezuela. “I think we’ve got to find a way to disconnect them from Venezuela,” he said. “We’re working our tail off to try and deliver that.”

Recent thoughts from Pravda and Izvestia.

Here are seven reasons Trump should be impeached
By Max Boot, Washington Post
June 3, 2019

Article 1. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has obstructed the administration of justice:

1. He attempted to fire Mueller. The Mueller report found “substantial evidence . . . that the President’s attempts to remove the Special Counsel were linked to the Special Counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the President’s conduct.”

2. Trump attempted to curtail Mueller’s investigation. Mueller found “that the President’s effort to have [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”

3. He ordered White House counsel Donald McGahn to falsify the record to conceal his attempts to fire Mueller. Mueller found that Trump “acted . . . in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the President’s conduct.”

4. He fired FBI Director James B. Comey, Mueller found, because of “Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the President was not personally under investigation.” Moreover, Mueller wrote, by firing Comey “the President wanted to protect himself from an investigation into his campaign,” because he knew “that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.” Trump showed awareness of guilt by advancing “a pretextual reason to the press and the public for Comey’s termination.”

5. He tried to dissuade Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and other witnesses from cooperating with the government. The non-cooperation of Manafort and Stone, in particular, made it impossible to establish the exact nature of the relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Article II. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, failed to defend America from foreign election interference. As a candidate, he welcomed Russian intervention in the 2016 election and refused to notify the proper authorities of contacts between his campaign and representatives of Russia and WikiLeaks. As president, he denied that the Russian attack had even occurred, accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s false denials of responsibility, and showed no interest in determining the full scale of the attack. He repeatedly called the Russia investigation a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” even though Mueller determined “that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election” and that “the matters we investigated were of paramount importance.”

Article III. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, attempted to investigate and prosecute his political opponents. On three occasions, Mueller found, Trump asked the Justice Department to initiate investigations of Hillary Clinton. More recently, Trump and his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, attempted to initiate an investigation of Joe Biden.

Article IV. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, failed to produce papers and testimony as duly directed by Congress. Trump obstructed at least 20 inquiries relating to his taxes, business records, the Mueller investigation and other matters.

Article V. Donald J. Trump, in violation of federal campaign finance laws, conspired with his attorney Michael Cohen in order to conceal alleged relationships with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal before the 2016 election.

Article VI. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to uphold Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution (“No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law”), attempted to misuse his emergency powers to spend funds on a border wall that Congress did not appropriate.

Article VII. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to uphold the emoluments clauses (which forbid the president from accepting benefits from foreign and state governments without the permission of Congress) retains ownership of a global business empire which allows him to benefit from dealings with foreign and state governments.

That Trump is guilty of these offenses – and more – is not necessarily an argument for moving forward with impeachment. That could backfire politically if it results, as it surely would, in a failure to convict by the Republican-controlled Senate. But don’t pretend, as do 249 out of 250 Republican members of Congress, that there is insufficient evidence to even open an impeachment inquiry. Trump has committed more criminal and unconstitutional conduct than any previous president in U.S. history. If they refuse to impeach him, members of Congress will violate their own oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

That goes for you too Nancy.

The Articles of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump: A Draft
By Ian Prasad Philbrick, Editorial Staff of The New York Times
6/5/19

Article I

The Russian government engaged in a sophisticated campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. On May 17, 2017, a special counsel was appointed to investigate Russian interference, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. The special counsel was also given “the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the special counsel’s investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses.” Subsequent thereto, Donald J. Trump, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede and obstruct the investigation of such Russian contacts and potential obstruction of justice; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.

The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:

• withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative employees of the United States, including congressional committees;
• approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and encouraging witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;
• interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of the special counsel, and congressional committees;
• endeavoring to misuse the Department of Justice, an agency of the United States;
• making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of the Trump 2016 campaign, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such misconduct; or
• endeavoring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favored treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony or endeavoring to intimidate individuals who offered testimony.

In all of this, Donald J. Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Article II

Using the powers of the office of president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purpose of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

• He misused the Department of Justice, and other executive personnel, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office.
• He has failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed by failing to act when he knew or had reason to know that his close subordinates endeavoured to impede and frustrate lawful inquiries by duly constituted executive, judicial and legislative entities concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the cover-up thereof.
• In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch, including the Department of Justice, in violation of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

In all of this, Donald J. Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Article III

In his conduct of the office of president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, contrary to his oath faithfully to execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 19, 2019, April 22, 2019, and May 21, 2019; the Committee on Oversight and Reform of the House of Representatives on April 15, 2019; the Committee on Financial Services of the House of Representatives on April 15, 2019; the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives on April 15, 2019, and May 8, 2019; and the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives on May 10, 2019, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas. The subpoenaed papers and things were deemed necessary by the committee in order to resolve by direct evidence fundamental, factual questions relating to presidential direction, knowledge or approval of actions demonstrated by other evidence to be substantial grounds for impeachment of the president. In refusing to produce these papers and things Donald J. Trump, substituting his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the inquiry, interposed the powers of the presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.

In all of this, Donald J. Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, Donald J. Trump by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Calls for President Trump’s impeachment are getting louder. Since the release of Robert Mueller’s report, White House stonewalling of congressional subpoenas and Mr. Mueller’s first public comments, almost 60 House Democrats, a quarter of the caucus, have said they support an impeachment inquiry.

If Democrats do move to impeach Mr. Trump, the articles of impeachment drafted against past presidents will probably guide them. The Constitution leaves “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the term that describes impeachable offenses, vague, notes the historian Timothy Naftali, a co-writer of a recent book on impeachment. “So if you are doing your constitutional duty as an elected member of Congress, how do you define high crimes and misdemeanors?” he asked. “One of the ways you do it is by looking at past practice.”
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Impeachment is often said to be a political process. But when you assess Mr. Trump’s conduct by the bar for impeachment set by past Democratic and Republican lawmakers for past presidents of both parties, the results are striking. The pathway to a possible Trump impeachment is already mapped out.
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These rewritten articles against Mr. Trump don’t include other potentially impeachable offenses that lack a clear precedent in the Nixon and Clinton cases, such as hush-money payments to women or possible violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
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(T)here is no question that by the standards for high crimes and misdemeanors applied to past presidents in living memory, Donald J. Trump has committed impeachable offenses.