{"id":177412,"date":"2019-10-01T18:42:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T23:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/01\/this-is-important\/"},"modified":"2019-10-01T18:42:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T23:42:00","slug":"this-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/01\/this-is-important\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Important"},"content":{"rendered":"
This lawsuit predates the impeachment explosion, but this lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking for an injunction preventing the destruction of Presidential call records<\/a> is a big deal.<\/div>\n

Absent an injunction, we can be sure that Donald Trump and his Evil Minions\u2122<\/sup> will be shredding furiously.<\/p>\n

Of particular concern is the DoJ’s arguments against this, in which they appear to say that they have the shredders and burn bags on deck:<\/p>\n

A government watchdog group asked a federal judge on Tuesday to issue an emergency order requiring the White House to preserve records of all of President Donald Trump\u2019s calls with foreign leaders.<\/p>\n

At a court hearing later in the day, a Justice Department lawyer told the judge that she couldn\u2019t immediately commit to assuring that the administration would preserve records of all of Trump\u2019s conversations, as well as other records about how the administration had handled those documents. The judge gave the government until Wednesday afternoon to make a decision.<\/p>\n

The case, which accuses the Trump administration of failing to meet its legal obligations to create \u2014 and properly save \u2014 records of Trump\u2019s and other officials\u2019 conversations with foreign leaders, was originally filed in May. But the plaintiffs are now arguing that the judge needs to take immediate action in light of recent events.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit predates the recent flood of information about Trump\u2019s communications with foreign officials, including a July call with the Ukrainian president<\/a> \u2014 when Trump asked for help investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden \u2014 which the White House sought to keep secret, a whistleblower complaint<\/a> alleges. Recent reporting has also uncovered the Trump administration\u2019s overtures to other countries<\/a> to aid in an inquiry into the origins of the Mueller probe, including records of other calls<\/a> with foreign leaders the White House has sought to restrict access to.<\/p>\n

At Tuesday\u2019s hearing, Justice Department lawyer Kathryn Wyer repeatedly pushed back when US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked why the administration couldn\u2019t voluntarily give its assurance that it would maintain the \u201cstatus quo\u201d and not destroy any documents relevant to the case while the judge decided key legal issues, including whether the court has authority to hear the case at all.<\/p>\n

Jackson, who sits in Washington, DC, has strongly and repeatedly suggested that the government should consider giving a voluntary assurance, as opposed to having her formally rule on the request filed by the challengers for an emergency order and issue a decision that she said one side \u201cmight not appreciate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wyer told Jackson that the department had notified the plaintiffs that it advised administration officials of their obligation to preserve records, and she insisted there was no evidence of any risk that officials would destroy documents in the meantime. Jackson expressed puzzlement at Wyer\u2019s resistance to go a step further and explicitly confirm that documents would remain intact. The government maintains that the assurances the plaintiffs asked for would involve giving up privileged legal advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure I understand that position at all,\u201d Jackson said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s pretty easy to understand.<\/p>\n

Corrupt and shameless covers it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This lawsuit predates the impeachment explosion, but this lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking for an injunction preventing the destruction of Presidential call records is a big deal. Absent an injunction, we can be sure that Donald Trump and his Evil Minions\u2122 will be shredding furiously. Of particular concern is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,573,560,407,454],"class_list":["post-177412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-impeach","tag-justice","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}