Trump Appeals Ruling Which Upheld Subpoenas for His Bank Records

President Donald Trump filed an appeal on May 24 seeking to overturn a federal judge’s ruling which upheld two Democrat-issued subpoenas seeking the president’s financial records from two banks.

The president’s attorneys filed the appeal (pdf) with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf Trump, his children—Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump—and several of their companies.

On May 22, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said that Trump and his company’s argument that the subpoenas were unconstitutional would unlikely succeed and that the subpoenas have “a legitimate legislative purpose.”

The appeal is the second test of congressional subpoena power sent to the circuit courts this week. On May 20, Trump appealed a federal judge’s ruling which upheld a subpoena seeking the president’s financial records from account firm Mazars LLC. The decision to uphold the subpoena was also issued by an Obama appointee, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

“It’s totally the wrong decision by obviously an Obama-appointed judge,” Trump said after Mehta upheld the Mazars subpoena.

The Democrats on the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees say they need the president’s financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One Bank in order to investigate possible “foreign influence in the U.S. political process,” among other matters.

Trump argues that the Democrats are insisting on a “do-over” of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who concluded that there is not enough evidence to establish that Trump or anyone on his campaign colluded with Russia. In addition to Mueller, three separate investigations in the House and Senate concluded there is no evidence of collusion.

The House lawyers argued in a written submission prior to the hearing on May 22 that the president’s effort to block the subpoenas was “flatly inconsistent with nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent.”

Trump’s attorneys responded that accepting the House committee’s arguments would mean “Congress can issue a subpoena on any matter, at any time, for any reason, to any person, and there is basically nothing a federal court can do about it.”

Late last month, the president pledged to fight all subpoenas from the Democrats. In the month that followed his comments, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin defied a subpoena for the president’s tax returns and Attorney General William Barr defied a subpoena seeking a fully unredacted version of the Mueller report.

When the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee moved to start the procedure to hold Barr in contempt for defying the subpoena, the White House, at Barr’s request, asserted executive privilege over the entire Mueller report. The White House also instructed former White House counsel Don McGahn to not testify before the committee.

The Democrats are also attempting to negotiate testimony by Mueller, but talks have stalled because Mueller has demanded to testify only in private.

“I don’t know why the Radical Left Democrats want Bob Mueller to testify when he just issued a 40 Million Dollar Report that states, loud & clear & for all to hear, No Collusion and No Obstruction (how do you Obstruct a NO crime?) Dems are just looking for trouble and a Do-Over!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-appeals-ruling-which-upheld-subpoenas-for-his-bank-records_2935625.html

West-backed think tanks threaten new Ukrainian president with disturbing list of ‘RED LINES’

When President Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in the free and undisputed April elections, most accepted that he was given a fairly strong mandate to lead Ukraine. But it seems not everyone is so democratically-minded.

Particularly unmoved by the democratic process are a collection of Ukrainian 'civil society' groups, who have just issued a lengthy list of “red lines not to be crossed” by the new president, lest he risk provoking a new wave of political instability – that they would presumably instigate.

Issuing their catalog of demands on Thursday, the groups claim to be “politically neutral” but “deeply concerned” about the first actions taken by the comedian-turned-politician Zelensky, including his decision to appoint members of former President Viktor Yanukovych's government to positions within his own government.

A scan of the undersigned reveals that many of these “civil society groups” are anything but politically neutral. In fact, quite a few of them are partly funded by the US government, various EU governments (including the UK), the European Commission itself – and, of course, the omnipresent liberal billionaire George Soros.

Lhe list includes the notorious Euromaidan Press, Stop Fake and Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, to name just a few. In their heyday, many of these groups acted as propaganda tools of the Western-backed government of Petro Poroshenko, rather than the watchdogs they claim to be. They now confirm that a pesky election isn’t going to stand in the way of their agenda, reaffirming that their own “principles and positions” on issues remain unchanged and warning:

Should [Zelensky] cross these red lines, such actions will inevitably lead to political instability in our country…

This statement, which precedes the wide-ranging list of red lines, reads like a threat: Do what we say, or there will be trouble. Isn’t that a strange, almost dictatorial approach for groups purporting to be interested in "democracy," "freedom," and "dignity”? Did we all miss the part where a group of think tanks were collectively elected president of Ukraine?

https://www.rt.com/news/460210-ukraine-ngos-zelensky-red-lines/

Crooked Dem Senator Mark Warner Lashes Out at AG Bill Barr Following Trump’s Declassification Order

President Trump really sent the rats scurrying with his declassification order — every corrupt official involved in Spygate is panicking.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) lashed out at Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday following the President’s declassification order of Spygate documents.

The incredibly corrupt Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Panel accused Bill Barr of “selectively releasing information” in order to mislead the American people.

“We still don’t have the full Mueller report, so of course the President gives sweeping declassification powers to an Attorney General who has already shown that he has no problem selectively releasing information in order to mislead the American people,” Mark Warner said in a tweet Friday morning.

We still don’t have the full Mueller report, so of course the President gives sweeping declassification powers to an Attorney General who has already shown that he has no problem selectively releasing information in order to mislead the American people.

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) May 24, 2019

President Trump stunned the Deep State-media complex Thursday evening when he ordered declassification of the intelligence related to the spying on his presidential campaign in 2016.

President Trump on Thursday evening announced that at the recommendation of Attorney General Bill Barr, he has directed the Intel Community to quickly and fully cooperate with Barr’s investigation into surveillance activities.

The first batch of declassification documents are said to include the ‘bucket 5’ — FBI documents of recorded conversations exonerating Trump campaign officials George Papadopoulos and Carter Page prior to the FBI obtaining their first FISA warrant.

Mark Warner’s panel investigated so-called ‘Trump-Russia collusion’ for over two years so he knows there was no such conspiracy.

Trump’s declassification order will expose the truth which is why Warner, who tried to set up a secret backchannel to dossier author Christopher Steele is panicking.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/05/crooked-dem-senator-mark-warner-lashes-out-at-ag-bill-barr-following-trumps-declassification-order/

‘Not even White Helmets confirm it’: Russian MoD rubbishes Washington’s Syria chemical attack claims

Moscow has blasted the US State Department’s claims about an alleged chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib province, saying the allegations totally lack proof and haven’t even been confirmed by Western-backed groups on the ground.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that Washington’s attempts to “impose another lie on this world” about the situation in Syria were “not even surprising anymore” as it denied that any such attack in Idlib took place.

The military also called out the US over the lack of evidence. When the State Department first reported an alleged attack on Tuesday it limited itself to saying that the US saw some “signs” it might have happened while failing to provide any details about the incident, except for the date on which it supposedly took place.

https://www.rt.com/news/460208-us-idlib-chemical-attack-russia/

Madera County Woman Pleads Guilty to Aiding and Abetting Production of Child Pornography

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/madera-county-woman-pleads-guilty-aiding-and-abetting-production-child-pornography

Listen To The Awkward Moment This Clinton Advisor Realized Her Book Was Based On A Falsehood

A former advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore may have set a record for fastest discrediting of a book when a BBC interviewer showed her the central thesis was based on a misreading of legal terminology.

Naomi Wolf’s book, “Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love,” which is not even out for another month, makes the claim that the British government continued to execute people for sodomy long after it was previously thought the practice ended. Wolf looked at records from the Old Bailey and saw the term “death recorded,” a term she realizes in this interview actually refers to cases in which a sentence of death is passed but suspended.

Wolf claims to have found “several dozen executions.” Her research, she claims, “corrects a misapprehension that is in every website that the last man was executed for sodomy in Britain in 1835.”

“I don’t think you’re right about this,” the BBC’s Matthew Sweet replied to her in the interview.

The presenter pointed to the case of Thomas Silver in 1859. Wolf claims in her book that Silver was executed, but he was not. “Death recorded” meant that a judge used judicial discretion to suspend a death sentence, a practice in use since the 1820s.

“I don’t think any of the executions you’ve identified here actually happened,” Sweet added.

“That’s a really important thing to investigate,” Wolf replied. (RELATED: The Trumpire Strikes Back)

Sweet also added that the offense in question hardly makes a good example of same-sex love being criminalized, as it involved a 14 year-old’s “indecent assault” on a six year-old boy.

Wolf is a Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar who did graduate work at Oxford.

Sweet, for his part, has since started a thread on Twitter explaining more in depth where he thinks Wolf went wrong.

https://twitter.com/thymetikon/status/1131702577878503425

https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/24/naomi-wolf-bbc-interview-book-clinton-advisor/

Supremes Block Rulings Ordering GOP To Redraw District Lines In Two Key Swing States

The Supreme Court temporarily blocked two decisions Friday requiring Republican-controlled legislatures in Michigan and Ohio to produce new legislative district lines ahead of the 2020 election.

There were no noted dissents from the Friday orders. The decision was not surprising, as the justices are currently deciding whether federal courts should even hear partisan gerrymandering disputes.

Three-judge panels in both cases said the current district lines are unconstitutionally rigged to the benefit of Republicans. The GOP has strong majorities in the congressional delegations of both states, though Democrats and Republicans run competitively in Michigan and Ohio.

Both decisions set fast-moving schedules for the legislatures — the Michigan ruling gave the state until Aug. 1 to draw new lines, while the Ohio decision required a remedial plan by June 14. Friday’s order from the high court means that neither state will have to create new district maps in the short-term.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/24/supreme-court-gerrymandering-michigan-ohio/

https://www.theblaze.com/news/transgender-powerlifter-stripped-of-world-record-titles-says-competing-in-special-transgender-category-would-be-discrimination