Walter Schaub was the director of the United States Office of Government Ethics from 2013 -2017. Watching how Trump adminstration officials were playing fast and loose with government ethics rules, he quit because he knew that he could not do his job the way it should be done.
Since then he has been reminding people in whatever forum he can, just how dangerous Trump is, and the threat he poses to American Democratic norms of behavior.
It will get worse as we are seeing worthless whores White House employees like Kelly Anne Conway openly mock her repeated violations of the Hatch Act. I don’t care what party you are affiliated with, this is not a habit you want in White House Senior Staff.
And yet it continues.
Which brings us back to Schaub, who has quite correctly pointed out how things are going off the rails:
In an extensive Twitter thread Schaub has laid out the violations of both law and norms of Presidential behavior that Trump has violated or and where it leads. To make reading it easier, I have transcribed the warning signs he lists here:
-Trump allies in congress are either lying about the Mueller report or haven’t read it
-Trump allies in congress are trying to prevent Mueller & others from testifying because they know their base hasn’t read the report and right wing media has kept them from hearing about it
-Trump obstructed justice -A McConnell-packed SCOTUS says precedent can be changed more easily than previously thought
-AG Barr is an open partisan and slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre beneficiary
( If you deny that Trump obstructed justice, Mr. Mueller set you straight on that earlier this week. He did.-SS)
-White House ignores congressional subpoenas, document requests
-Mnuchin is violating a law on turning over taxes to House
-Barr & Senate allies want to investigate officials who investigated Trump to retaliate against them and deter future efforts to hold him to the rule of law
-State Dept is setting up a commission to supplant human rights with “natural law”
-An Inspector General found standing room only in border detention cells, with detainees standing on toilets to breathe
-children stolen from parents at the border are dying in internment camps
-Trump is still resisting setting up defenses against foreign election interference
-Trump’s personal attorney solicited foreign govt investigation of current Trump political rival Biden
-AG Barr said something in a weird interview about investigating former Trump rival Clinton
-There’s cause for concern Trump/Kushner personal interests may be influencing middle east policy
-Ignoring Congress, Trump declared fake emergency & abused authority to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia to continue its atrocities in Yemen, after it murdered a Washington Post reporter
-There’s cause for concern Trump/Kushner personal interests may be influencing middle east policy
-Ignoring Congress, Trump declared fake emergency & abused authority to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia to continue its atrocities in Yemen, after it murdered a Washington Post reporter
– some public voices are normalizing Trump admin conduct -voicemail from Trump lawyer to Flynn shows a disturbing carrot/stick approach (or worse)
-Trump has seemed to dangle pardons to buy silence or worse
-Trump admin officials are violating records laws to conceal actions
-a foreign prince is reported to have said he has Kushner in his pocket (but denies saying that)
-Helsinki
-Trump’s behavior is erratic and is marked by frequent lies, bizarre public outbursts, name-calling and confusion -no press conferences, and no transparency
-Trump admin & Graham inexplicably advocating war in Iran/Venezuela
-DOJ experimenting with new legal theory for prosecuting those who publish classified information (raising a question as to whether the theory will be limited to hostile foreign actors or expanded to journalists)
And that is not even a complete list.
I can’t stress this enough, THIS IS NOT NORMAL. No one should support this behavior, because if you do, it means you don’t care about your country and the rule of law. It is NOT “just politics”. And before anyone says, no, both sides don’t do it. Schaub is right, our Republic is in grave danger. You should not dismiss or ignore these signs, because if you do, you are turning your back on your own country.
“All of the virtues depend upon truth, and truth depends upon them all. Final truth in this world is unattainable, but its pursuit leads the individual away from unfreedom. The temptation to believe what feels right assails us at all times from all directions. Authoritarianism begins when we can no longer tell the difference between the true and the appealing. The cynic who decides that there is no truth is the citizen who welcomes the tyrant.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America