Connect with us

News

Trump Campaign Has ‘Learned Nothing’ as 2020 Manager Brad Parscale Gets Caught Taking Money From Foreign Nationals

Published

on

“The appearances are terrible.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, which concluded in March, raised many questions about what is and isn’t appropriate when it comes to interactions between presidential campaigns and foreign entities. And a March visit to Romania by Brad Parscale, manager for President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, is being scrutinized by legal experts in a Washington Post report by Michael Birnbaum and Ioana Burtea.

In Romania, Parscale delivered a paid speech to Romanian politicians and policy experts. Doing so, according to the Post’s report, is perfectly legal as long as Parscale does not do any lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of foreign clients without registering. But the political figures the Post interviewed expressed different views on how advisable it is or isn’t for a presidential campaign manager to be accepting money from foreign entities.

Richard Painter, who served as an ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, was critical of Parscale’s actions, telling the Post, “The appearances are terrible. You would certainly think that a campaign manager would not take money from foreign nationals in this political environment.”

Kayleigh McEnany, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, told the Post that Parscale’s speech in Romania was fine because he was doing so “as a private citizen” and “followed the Trump campaign’s approval process governing invitations for outside speaking engagements.” But Republican political strategist John Weaver, who worked on the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush and Sen. John McCain, was critical of Parscale’s speech in Romania and told the Post, “I’ve never heard of anything like this before. There are too many opportunities where there could be potential conflicts between a presidential campaign and the policies that the candidate could espouse and potential income. It is a conflict-of-interest zone that you just never enter into.”

Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, was critical as well and told the Post, “It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel’s entanglement with foreign money.”

Related: Trump’s 2020 Campaign Manager Attacks NBC, CNN and Facebook for Not Running Ad That’s Too Racist Even for Fox

Nonetheless, Romania is a former Eastern Bloc country that has enjoyed friendly relations with the U.S. since the 1990s. After the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s notoriously oppressive communist dictatorship in 1989, Romania became a democracy and went on to join the European Union (EU) in the 1990s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004. Romania still has its own currency, the leu, but is expected to adopt the euro as its currency during the next decade.

Parscale, according to the Post, made “little reference to Romania” during his speech and spoke about the United States’ presidential campaigns of 2016 and 2020. When he was asked about current U.S. policy toward NATO, Parscale declined to comment and told the Romanian attendees, “That’s way too policy for me. I don’t work for the administration.”

RELATED STORIES:

‘HOW ABOUT 17 BILLION!’: INTERNET MOCKS TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN CHIEF FOR INSANE FEAR-MONGERING CARAVAN TWEET

TRUMP’S 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER TO FRESHMAN DEMOCRATS: ‘TURN ON SPEAKER PELOSI’

SENIOR TRUMP OFFICIAL: ‘WE HAVE THREE MAJOR VOTER SUPPRESSION OPERATIONS UNDER WAY’

 

Image by Diarmuid Greene/Web Summit via Flickr and a CC license

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

‘Fool or a Liar’: GOP Knives Out for ‘A–hole’ Matt Gaetz as Vote to Oust McCarthy Appears Likely to Succeed

Published

3 hours ago

on

October 3, 2023

By

House Republicans are expressing outrage at one of their own, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who by day’s end may succeed or come close to ousting Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for relying on Democrats’ votes to keep the federal government from shutting down Saturday night.

“I prefer, you know, common sense over chaos,” Republican Congressman Anthony D’Esposito, who referred to Congressman Gaetz as an “a–hole,” told Fox News on Tuesday.

“I think that we should be focused on governance rather than grandstanding, and the fact that we have one a–hole that is holding us up and holding America up is a real problem,” D’Esposito added.

Far-right Republican Derrick Van Orden told CNN’s Manu Raju that Gaetz is “either a fool or a liar.”

“I’m telling you,” warned Republican Andy Barr of Kentucky, “it definitely puts the majority in jeopardy when you see disunity.”

READ MORE: Trump Has Now ‘Crossed the Line Into Criminal Threats’: Top Legal Scholar

GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said, “I think it’s sending a terrible message to the electorate in advance of the 2024 election that this Republican majority could not govern itself.”

On camera, another Republican called Gaetz “a chaos agent,” and another said: “I don’t have tolerance for some pseudo psycho political fetish.”

Still another warned, “I think it’s sending a terrible signal to the electorate in advance of the ’24 election, that this Republican majority cannot govern itself.”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’: ND Republican Unleashes Anti-LGBTQ Christian Nationalist Rant Calling for ‘Christ Is King’ Laws

Continue Reading

News

‘Probably So’: McCarthy Says His Speakership Likely Will End After Vote

Published

4 hours ago

on

October 3, 2023

By

The Republican Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is acknowledging his leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives “probably” is about to end.

“If five Republicans go with Democrats, then I’m out,” McCarthy, sounding resigned to his possible future, told reporters late Tuesday morning. The Speaker acknowledged that if all Democrats vote against him in a vote schedule for Tuesday afternoon, and just five Republicans join them, he will lose his job.

“That looks likely,” ABC’s Rachel Scott told McCarthy.

“Probably so,” he responded.

There are currently at least five Republicans who say they will vote to oust McCarthy, according to CNN’s Haley Talbot, as of last Monday night.

Democrats on Tuesday have said they will not support McCarthy.

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has been on a campaign to oust McCarthy, who was elected Speaker in January but only after the House voted 15 times before granting him the gavel. That gavel came with public and private concessions, among them, that any one member of the House could initiate a “motion to vacate,” which Gaetz did Monday night.

Gaetz claims he is working to strip McCarthy of the Speakership because he reached across the aisle and accepted votes from Democrats very late on Saturday to avoid what had been an almost-certain shutdown of the federal government. But McCarthy has long contended for Gaetz it’s “personal,” because the Speaker would not intervene to save Gaetz from a re-opened House Ethics Committee investigation into possible violations including sexual misconduct, unlawful drug use, and public corruption.

if Republicans do succeed on the motion to vacate, there currently is no one named to replace McCarthy. That would leave the position that is second in line to the presidency vacant.

Watch today’s House session live below, starting at 11:45 AM, see his remarks to reporters above, or watch both at this link.

Continue Reading

News

Trump Has Now ‘Crossed the Line Into Criminal Threats’: Top Legal Scholar

Published

6 hours ago

on

October 3, 2023

By

As Donald Trump’s rhetoric grows increasingly menacing and threatening, experts are again sounding the alarm.

It’s been weeks since Special Counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose a narrow limitation on the ex-president in the case charging him with attempting to overturn the 2020 election. It likely will be weeks until that Judge Chutkan announces a decision.

In the mean time, Trump continues to make disparaging remarks and what some have suggested are thinly-veiled threats or calls to action to his supporters against those he perceives as his enemies.

Trump recently suggested that his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, “in times gone by” would have been executed for treason.

READ MORE: Gaetz Needs Just Five Republicans to Oust McCarthy – He Already Has Three

Milley’s perceived “treasonous” crime, according to Trump? Making a White House approved call to China to let them know Trump wasn’t planning to attack China, as the AP reported.

Last month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that General Milley “was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith included that post in his communication with Judge Chutkan on Friday.

Monday morning, inside a Manhattan courthouse before the start of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud case, Trump unleashed an angry rant in front of news cameras, saying, “You ought to go after this attorney general.” He also called New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron a “rogue judge.”

He added, “now I have to go before a rogue judge, as a continuation of Russia, Russia, Russia, as a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. And I don’t think the people of this country are going to stand for it.”

These were just Trump’s remarks at the start of the day. He faced the cameras two other times, during the lunch break and after the day’s proceedings had ended.

READ MORE: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’: ND Republican Unleashes Anti-LGBTQ Christian Nationalist Rant Calling for ‘Christ Is King’ Laws

Describing Trump’s remarks, Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin wrote: “Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Trump called the case a ‘witch hunt’ and ‘a disgrace,’ saying, ‘You ought to go after this attorney general,’ because if there’s one thing the man loves, it’s a not-so-veiled threat against his enemies.”

Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar and expert on the U.S. Constitution, on Monday warned Trump’s remarks “crossed the line into criminal threats.”

“Trump’s 1st Amendment freedom of speech includes the right to express his racist views about anyone, including Attorney General Letitia James,” Tribe wrote. “But he has no right to foment violence against her. He crossed the line into criminal threats when he said ‘you ought to go after this attorney general.'”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob, responding to the video, writes: “When Trump says “you ought to go after this attorney general,” we know what he means. Some call it stochastic terrorism, but I call it puppetmaster terrorism. He’s telling his crazed followers who the targets are.”

See the post and video above or at this link.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.