Merged So what's next for Trump?

[Swammerdami]

An unpaid hotel bill could drag Donald Trump’s company back into a major lawsuit over his inauguration expenses, a news report says.

According to the lawsuit, brought by the attorney general of Washington, DC, the 2017 inauguration booked $49,358 worth of rooms at the Loews Madison Hotel. But when the hotel asked the Trump Organization to pay the bill, the company allegedly refused.

A debt collection agency then took up the task of recovering the money, and began pressuring the Trump Org to pay up. In response, the company reportedly arranged for the Presidential Inaugural Committee – a tax-exempt charity – to pay the bill instead. The DC lawsuit says this was inappropriate.

It is striking how petty this self-described "billionaire" is. Proportional to his alleged wealth, a $50k bill is like a $20 tab for most of us, yet he refused to pay; and then arranged to pay it illegally. This despite that Ivanka and other family members "earned" hundreds of millions during the 4-year tenure.

What really struck me, several years ago, was to read about a $7 donation made to the Boy Scouts of America by the "non-profit" Trump Foundation. That's right: $7, not $700. The "donation" was made the same year Don Junior became a Boy Scout, for which the membership fee is ... $7.

The White House is full of heirlooms donated over the decades by visiting heads of state. Have they done a careful inventory to list the heirlooms pilfered by the Trumps?

 

[Keith&Co.]

It is striking how petty this self-described "billionaire" is.

Trump was a guest on The Nanny one time. There's a scene where He and Maxwell (the rich employer of The Nanny) were in agreement on something, and Fran's line was to say, "You millionaires are all alike."

They sent a copy of the script over, for his FYI, not approval.
An aide of Trump's contacted Drescher. "Mr. Trump is a billionaire, not a millionaire. Please correct this line."

Maxwell was a millionaire, not a billionaire. And Fran felt that her character would not really distinguish between billionaires and millionaires. Also it made the line harder to write, if specifying two individuals with discrete traits of simultaneously sharing the same traits.

They settled on 'You zillionaires..." That was okay with Trump.

Personally, i'd have said 'billionaires' and dubbed it 'millionaires' in post. For a guy famous for reneging on contracts, i'd enjoy blowing him off.

 

[ZiprHead]

Now we know why Trump was obsessed with poorly flushing toilets.

White House residential staff reportedly found wads of printed paper clogging Trump's toilet

theweek.com

Whiile Trump was in office, White House residence staff would occasionally discover wads of printed paper clogging a toilet and believed Trump had tried to flush it down, Axios reports, citing Haberman's book. Trump was, at times, fixated on toilets that wouldn't flush, as The Washington Post's Philip Bump noted.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Now we know why Trump was obsessed with poorly flushing toilets.

...andy why they had to take down all those 'do not flush foreign articles down the toilet' signs in the Residence.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

 

[lpetrich]

Trump would eat torn up documents in the Oval Office, ex-White House aide claims | The Independent
Omarosa Manigault-Newman

Mr Trump “loved to tear up those documents,” ...

The former adviser said that there are “certainly things that I’m sure cannot be accounted for because Donald Trump became very, very aware that a lot of these sensitive documents would at some point be made public”.

“After [Trump fixer] Michael Cohen left the office and I walked into the Oval, Donald, in my view, was chewing what he had just torn up,” she told MSNBC. “It was very bizarre because he is a germophobe he never puts paper in his mouth.”

...
“His habit of tearing these things up ... my heart truly goes out to the people responsible for going in the trash bins [and] recovering these things,” she told the cable news network.

noting
“He loved to tear up those documents”: Omarosa spills the tea on Trump’s Oval Office habits

You wouldn’t think that White House officials would need to follow the president around to make sure that he doesn’t destroy documents that belong to the public record – but Omarosa Manigault Newman says that task was part of the job in the Trump administration. “We did a very big briefing about presidential records and management,” Newman says. “And we had been told that if you’re with the president and he throws something away or he hands you something, you have to account for that.” This follows the revelation this week that some documents from the Trump White House were sent to the National Archives taped back together or still ripped up in pieces. “There are certainly things that I’m sure that cannot be accounted for because Donald Trump became very, very aware that a lot of these sensitive docs would at some point be made public.”

 

[Elixir]

Unfitness personified.
There’s not one thing that fucker ever did to benefit the American public at large.
NOTHING.

 

[lpetrich]

Meet the guys who tape Trump's papers back together- POLITICO from back in 2018 - "The president's unofficial 'filing system' involves tearing up documents into pieces, even when they're supposed to be preserved."

National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago - The Washington Post - "The recovery of 15 boxes from Trump’s Florida resort, including letters from Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un, underscores the previous administration’s cavalier handling of presidential records"

Some Trump records taken to Mar-a-Lago clearly marked as classified, including documents at ‘top secret’ level - The Washington Post - "The existence of documents officially labeled as classified in the trove — which has not previously been reported — raises new questions about why the materials were taken out of the White House."

 

[Keith&Co.]

This COULD be fun.
So, Trump has Top Secret files at Mar A Lago.
A defense available for Florida Man is that as President, he could declassify anything he wanted.
So, he can SAY that they werent' really TS (despite still having the markings of TS), because he did the magic hand waive.
But that means that the issue is no longer classified for ANYONE. There's no way to operationally declassify for him, and everyone else in Mar A Lago, while keeping it classified from CNN or Time or Rachel Maddow.

So whatever it was he tried to hide or keep tabs on when they vacated the WH, he cannot threaten or punish anyone for revealing the contents or his interest in them.
The option is that he does NOT claim to have declassified this shit, in which case he's guilty of mishandling classified.

I'd just love to be in the reporter pool for his next performance.

 

[ZiprHead]

This COULD be fun.
So, Trump has Top Secret files at Mar A Lago.
A defense available for Florida Man is that as President, he could declassify anything he wanted.
So, he can SAY that they werent' really TS (despite still having the markings of TS), because he did the magic hand waive.
But that means that the issue is no longer classified for ANYONE. There's no way to operationally declassify for him, and everyone else in Mar A Lago, while keeping it classified from CNN or Time or Rachel Maddow.

So whatever it was he tried to hide or keep tabs on when they vacated the WH, he cannot threaten or punish anyone for revealing the contents or his interest in them.
The option is that he does NOT claim to have declassified this shit, in which case he's guilty of mishandling classified.

I'd just love to be in the reporter pool for his next performance.

Isn't there a specific procedure that must be followed to change the classification?

 

[Elixir]

he does NOT claim to have declassified this shit

Declassification is a process, not a proclamation. (You know this very well I'm sure)
A declassified document would be stamped/labeled "declassified". These aren't.
Another day, another Trump felony...

 

[Keith&Co.]

This COULD be fun.
So, Trump has Top Secret files at Mar A Lago.
A defense available for Florida Man is that as President, he could declassify anything he wanted.
So, he can SAY that they werent' really TS (despite still having the markings of TS), because he did the magic hand waive.
But that means that the issue is no longer classified for ANYONE. There's no way to operationally declassify for him, and everyone else in Mar A Lago, while keeping it classified from CNN or Time or Rachel Maddow.

So whatever it was he tried to hide or keep tabs on when they vacated the WH, he cannot threaten or punish anyone for revealing the contents or his interest in them.
The option is that he does NOT claim to have declassified this shit, in which case he's guilty of mishandling classified.

I'd just love to be in the reporter pool for his next performance.

Isn't there a specific procedure that must be followed to change the classification?

For mortals, yes. I mean, if i got permission to declassify something in my safe, i'd have a process.
He can say he told 'someone' to perform those steps and was assured they'd been done. When questioned as to who he told.... more fun.

 

[Keith&Co.]

he does NOT claim to have declassified this shit

Declassification is a process, not a proclamation. (You know this very well I'm sure)
A declassified document would be stamped/labeled "declassified". These aren't.
Another day, another Trump felony...

yeah, but from a prosecution point of view, they need to PROVE INTENT in this sort of thing, rather than negligence or inadvertent mistakes.

 

[TomC]

Isn't there a specific procedure that must be followed to change the classification?

Reminds me, painfully, of some security high muckety muck during the early Reagan years.
"If the President orders it, it's legal."
Tom

 

[Keith&Co.]

Isn't there a specific procedure that must be followed to change the classification?

Reminds me, painfully, of some security high muckety muck during the early Reagan years.
"If the President orders it, it's legal."
Tom

That was Nixon.

 

[TomC]

Isn't there a specific procedure that must be followed to change the classification?

Reminds me, painfully, of some security high muckety muck during the early Reagan years.
"If the President orders it, it's legal."
Tom

That was Nixon.

Oops, I'm old. 63.
Maybe I just heard about it in the Reagan era. I was in grade school when Nixon resigned.
Tom

 

[Keith&Co.]

Isn't there a specific procedure that must be followed to change the classification?

Reminds me, painfully, of some security high muckety muck during the early Reagan years.
"If the President orders it, it's legal."
Tom

That was Nixon.

Oops, I'm old. 63.
Maybe I just heard about it in the Reagan era. I was in grade school when Nixon resigned.
Tom

I was in 6th grade. Full disclosure, i don't remember Nixon saying it. I remember Frank Langella portraying Nixon saying it.

 

[ZiprHead]

Nixon said it on the David Frost Show.

In part 3, Frost asked Nixon whether the president could do something illegal in certain situations such as against antiwar groups and others if he decides "it's in the best interests of the nation or something". Nixon replied: "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal", by definition.

 

[Elixir]

…when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal", by definition.

I don’t think Nixon was correct. Also don’t think Cheato was President when he stole those documents.

 

[jab]

National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of Trump White House documents from Mar-a-Lago

• The National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of White House records that had been sent to former President Donald Trump’s resort-home Mar-a-Lago.
• All of those records should have been handed over to the National Archives directly from the White House once Trump left office, as required by the Presidential Records Act, NARA said.
• The documents include a letter to Trump from President Barack Obama, as well as Trump’s self-described “love letters” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, according to The Washington Post.

Noting
National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago - The Washington Post - "The recovery of 15 boxes from Trump’s Florida resort, including letters from Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un, underscores the previous administration’s cavalier handling of presidential records"

...and those are just the records he didn't rip up or burn.

or eat or flush down the toilet