Rim Country Gazette: Growing ethical crimes of Sarah Huckabee-Sanders

Friday, September 15, 2017

Growing ethical crimes of Sarah Huckabee-Sanders

This week WH spokeshill Sarah Huckabee-Sanders seems to be intent on building a greater and greater pile of ethical and moral gaffes and crimes than any other Press Secretary in History. First of all she advocated for an ESPN reporter to be fired because she had said the Donald “There are Nice Nazis/Both Sides/The Alf-Left came Charging/My father doesn't rent to Niggers/I don’t like black people touching my money/The Central Park Five should have been executed/Look at my Black Guy/Mexicans are Rapists/Muslims cheered 9/11” Trump is a “White Supremist.”

I mean who could ever get an impression like that?

According to former Federal Ethics Watchdog Walter Schaub that may have been a crime.

This law essentially states certain government employees -- including the president, vice president and "any other executive branch employee" -- are prohibited from influencing the employment decisions or practices of a private entity (such as ESPN) "solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation."
Breaking this law can lead to a fine or imprisonment up to 15 years -- possibly both -- and could lead to disqualification from "holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States."

Whoopsie!

Now it might be argued that Huckabee-Sanders suggested that Jemele Hill be fired wasn’t “solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation” because we don't really know what her party is, but we do know what part Trump is in and that that party has had a direct association with White Supremacy ever since the KKK supporting Dixiecrats split off from the Democratic Party because Truman desegregated the military and their nominee for President in 1948, Strom Thurman, became a Republican.

Also the fact that former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana as a Republican is a bit of a hint of which party they think is on their side.

On top of this, Huckabee-Sanders also this week openly claimed that former FBI Director James Comey should be prosecuted by the DOJ because they didn’t like that he leaked his own notes to the press and he gave testimony that Trump doesn’t like.

Speaking yesterday in the White House’s daily media briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Comey had violated the Privacy Act, a law regulating how personal information can be used and publicized by federal government agencies.
Huckabee Sanders said the Department of Justice (DOJ) should look into prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey.
In response, close Comey confidant Ben Wittes told The Hill the charges against his friend were a “disgusting abuse” by the White House and its press secretary.
“It is, substantially, completely frivolous and it would warrant nothing more than amusement were she not doing it from the White House podium,” Wittes, a legal journalist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said.
Democrat Representative for California Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee which is investigating the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, said he believed the White House was engaged in a smear campaign.
“This is not what cooperative, innocent people do,” he said. “Cooperative innocent people work with prosecutors, not against them,” Swalwell added.

Her claims just by complete and total coincidence were also repeated by Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekoluw and interestingly it was noticed by Preet Bharara.

As i’ve previously written these actions by Sanders and Sekolow could be themselves considered witness intimidation and obstruction.

As the news broke, I was on the phone with Stephen Kohn, partner at a law firm focused on whistleblower protection. We’d been talking about where the boundaries lay for Comey in what he could and couldn’t do with the information about his conversations with the president. Kohn’s response to the story about Kasowitz, though, was visceral.
“Here is my position on that: Frivolous grandstanding,” he said. “First of all, I don’t believe the inspector general would have jurisdiction over Comey any more, because he’s no longer a federal employee.” The inspector general’s job is to investigate wrongdoing by employees of the Justice Department, which Comey is no longer, thanks to Trump — though the IG would have the ability to investigate an allegation of criminal misconduct.
“But, second,” he continued, “initiating an investigation because you don’t like somebody’s testimony could be considered obstruction.And in the whistleblower context, it’s both evidence of retaliation and, under some laws, could be an adverse retaliatory act itself.”

And lastly in the very same press conference Huckabee-Sanders also claimed that Trump’s debt ceiling deal with Schumer and Pelosi was greater bipartisanship than Obama was able to accomplish in his entire 8 years, (Full Briefing Video)

Huckabee Sanders said, “This president has done more for bipartisanship in the last eight days than Obama did in eight years.”

But of course that’s just plain bullshit.

Here are the facts.

Because of divided government, Obama relentlessly pursued Republican votes, and almost all of his domestic policy achievements came from bipartisan deals.

Here is a brief list of Obama’s bipartisan deals via a Real Clear Politics article:

1), The Recovery Act

2). Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

3). Dodd Frank

4). Surveillance reform

5). Food Safety Bill

6). mandatory prison sentence reform

9). 2010 tax cuts

10). 2012 tax cut deal to raise taxes on the very wealthy

11). the sequester

12). numerous CRs negotiated with Republicans to keep the government open

The list above is partial, and there are dozens of more legislative accomplishments during the Obama years that were bipartisan and never got the credit or attention that they deserved.

So to sum up, in one single presentation Sarah Huckabee-Sanders may have violated federal ethics rules, committed witness intimidation and also full on slander against a former President.

Well, aren’t we glad that Trump likes to give high profile heavy responsibility jobs to strong “smart” capable women like Huckabee-Sanders and WH communications director Hope Hicks (only after he’s previously fired guys like Sean Spicer and Anthony “Bannon wants to suck his own cock” Scaramucci that were his first choices for those exact same jobs)?