He, President Biden, insists he can't pardon $50,000 of student higher education debt. He says he can, constitutionally, pardon $10,000 in debt but not $50,000.
What??
I'm pretty sure if the Constitution says you can forgive 10, you can forgive 50.
Number two. First he does and says this.
Then he backtracks yesterday.
Mr. President, sir, I have to tell you, that first statement weakens you and weakens your position on this issue as far as the Republicans are concerned. You get that, right?
And finally, third today.
A new brief takes an aggressive stance against outspoken Trump critic Omarosa Manigault Newman in a financial disclosure flap.
Check this story out.
The Biden Justice Department is showing no sign of letting up in a two-year-old legal fight against a former White House aide who became an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump.
While the Justice Department has sought to pause or drop a number of high-profile court battles due to the change in administration, government lawyers are pressing on aggressively with a lawsuit claiming that Omarosa Manigault Newman failed to file a required financial disclosure following her attention-grabbing firing in December 2017.
Manigault Newman has described the suit as a vendetta aimed at her for turning on Trump, calling him a racist and making revealing disclosures about the former president and his top aides. She also wrote a tell-all book, “Unhinged,” which chronicles her dealings with Trump as a contestant on “The Apprentice” and later as his most prominent African American White House aide.
In a new brief filed in federal court in Washington just before midnight Thursday, the Justice Department forcefully defended its position in the case, even tangling with Manigault Newman over the contentious circumstances of her dismissal by then-White House chief of staff John Kelly.
“She…made no attempt to file any Termination Report before September 2019, more than a year and a half after it was due and after this litigation was commenced,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “Then, following that submission—in which only half the required fields were even filled out—Defendant made no effort for over a year to correct her submission, despite being promptly advised of its deficiencies…She remains out of compliance with [the Ethics in Government Act] to this day.”
The suit asks U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon to impose a civil penalty of $61,585 on Manigault Newman for willfully refusing to file the financial disclosure. Such suits are rare. Disputes over financial disclosures are typically resolved by an employee updating the forms and, in some instances, incurring a small penalty.
Manigault Newman’s main defense in the case has been that — after her acrimonious departure from the White House — Trump aides refused to return her personal effects, including financial records she needed to complete the required exit report. She also asserts that she is a whistleblower on government wrongdoing and that the lawsuit amounts to illegal retaliation for that.
After her dismissal, Manigault Newman released audio recordings she secretly made of a tense conversation with Kelly held in the highly-secure White House Situation Room — as well as a recording of another conversation where Trump implausibly asserted he was unaware Kelly planned to fire her.
While the new Justice Department brief argues that statement by Kelly was not a threat and maintains that she was fired for “misuse of government resources,” government lawyers also contend those disputes are irrelevant to the ongoing suit.
“Notwithstanding Defendant’s unfounded references to ‘threats’ at the time of her termination, the merits of Defendant’s termination from the White House are not at issue in this case,” the attorneys wrote...
So here's the deal. It looks as though, certainly seems as though, this lawsuit should be thrown out, on its own merits, for starters. It seems clear this is vengeance from the previous President and his administration.
You'd think it would be a no-brainer, right?
But here's the thing. From what I've read, now-President Biden wants to make sure no one in his administration does anything remotely similar to him once he's out of office so he and his administration want the lawsuit to go forward.
Don't get me wrong. We knew what we were getting with Joe Biden, to be sure. And I/we don't think he is or ever was or was going to be perfect in this role as President---and he's a HUGE, huge improvement over the previous occupant of the White House, to state the necessary and obvious but... Geez Let's be a bit tougher, Joe and a bit more consistent.
Could you? Would you work on that?
Please?
More. Another, too, sadly.
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