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FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

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Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#111

Post by ipython »

roenxi wrote: post #109
FireBeyond wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago find? It was believed that Trump had improperly stored classified documents there... ... and he had. And was lying about it too. So yeah, how was that not good faith? "These documents are missing. They were last in the possession of the President. He's on video seen with staffers loading up similar documents to take to Florida. We apply for a search warrant when he denies…

Obama famously looked the other way when asked whether the war crimes of the Bush administration were going to be investigated. Trump was impeached for looking in to Biden's Ukraine links and it turned out that the Biden family needed multiple pardons for it although they were very generally worded so they didn't ever admit what exactly they were up to. All these politicians are committing things that are crimes. Rai…

Trump was impeached not because of “biden’s ukraine links” but was impeached (the first time) because trump withheld aid from Ukraine on a phone call - contingent on Ukraine digging up dirt on a political opponent. Thats tinpot dictator stuff.

The FBI raided Mar-a-lago as a last resort. He was asked to return classified documents and lied about it. Then it was shown he ordered others to move the documents so as to obstruct the investigation. As pointed out before. What should happen? If I would do that I would be in jail, rightly so.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#112

Post by FireBeyond »

roenxi wrote: post #109
FireBeyond wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago find? It was believed that Trump had improperly stored classified documents there... ... and he had. And was lying about it too. So yeah, how was that not good faith? "These documents are missing. They were last in the possession of the President. He's on video seen with staffers loading up similar documents to take to Florida. We apply for a search warrant when he denies…

Obama famously looked the other way when asked whether the war crimes of the Bush administration were going to be investigated. Trump was impeached for looking in to Biden's Ukraine links and it turned out that the Biden family needed multiple pardons for it although they were very generally worded so they didn't ever admit what exactly they were up to. All these politicians are committing things that are crimes. Rai…

And your first mistake is assuming I'm okay with a Democrat administration overlooking potential criminal actions.

That's a lot of the times the difference. Many left leaning people will say "and they should be prosecuted too" which is almost ... shocking ... to some on the other side (and not in part because they really see it as 'sides').

> Raiding your opponents house because you think they're improperly storing documents is blatant intimidation

Horseshit. You act as though it's some wild cockeyed theory. There are audit trails for classified documents. The President's office was the last who had them. He and his staffers were shown on national fucking TV carrying boxes that looked identical onto a plane and into his private residence. And then he lied about it, and attempted to conceal evidence and obstruct justice.

Your spin is disingenous at best. "Bullying". And if you think the public mostly thought Trump was being unfairly "bullied" and intimated over those documents, then that says something about your perspective.

Also for complete clarity, since Biden had a very similar thing happen with the improper storing of documents: He shouldn't be doing that either. Why didn't it rise to the same level? Maybe because he didn't actively try to sabotage an investigation into it. But I don't think it should have been ignored because "well, -he- has a '(D)' after his name".

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#114

Post by roenxi »

FireBeyond wrote: post #112
roenxi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama famously looked the other way when asked whether the war crimes of the Bush administration were going to be investigated. Trump was impeached for looking in to Biden's Ukraine links and it turned out that the Biden family needed multiple pardons for it although they were very generally worded so they didn't ever admit what exactly they were up to. All these politicians are committing things that are crimes. Rai…

And your first mistake is assuming I'm okay with a Democrat administration overlooking potential criminal actions. That's a lot of the times the difference. Many left leaning people will say "and they should be prosecuted too" which is almost ... shocking ... to some on the other side (and not in part because they really see it as 'sides'). > Raiding your opponents house because you think they're improperly storing d…

> Why didn't it rise to the same level? Maybe because he didn't actively try to sabotage an investigation into it.

That is tantamount to saying the issue isn't the mis-storing of classified documents, but that Biden didn't feel like threatened by an investigation from the Biden administration. Colour me shocked. That and the lawfare the Democrats were engaging in through the last election cycle was blatant process abuse and it was a relief that the attacks failed in such spectacular fashion.

This is a vocal mob of activists looking for ways to get Trump. If they want to do that by proposing general-purpose anti-corruption improvements and limitations on government then sure, that might be a productive path forward. But in practice it is going to be a bunch of measures that only target Trump because these people aren't worried about the abuse of power, in fact they were cool with it when it targeted their enemies. It has been an ongoing issue for at least the 20 years; since the Patriot act came into action. Probably longer. It hasn't suddenly sprung up because Trump won a second election with a bigger margin than last time. We know for a fact that the people who are serious about it have been unable to get much purchase in the political world.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#115

Post by kyleee »

kristopolous wrote: post #89
sharemywin wrote: post #2

“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” Judge Tanya Chutkan said. Judge Chutkan also ordered the Justice Department to provide the court with details about the alleged fraud, “because I don’t have the credible evidence that’s required.” This whole cal…

Traditionally when people are on an endless campaign of accusation, they are actually up to their ears in whatever they're accusing others of. The anti-gay politician is exposed as gay, the evangelical pastor is leading a life of excess and vice, people talking about fake news fabricate deceptions and try to pass it off as news... This is generally so reliable, you can just change the pronouns from "They" to "We" and…

I suspect Epstein was not motivated by sex, rather he was likely some sort of spook. We will probably never know unfortunately

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#116

Post by FireBeyond »

roenxi wrote: post #114
FireBeyond wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your first mistake is assuming I'm okay with a Democrat administration overlooking potential criminal actions. That's a lot of the times the difference. Many left leaning people will say "and they should be prosecuted too" which is almost ... shocking ... to some on the other side (and not in part because they really see it as 'sides'). > Raiding your opponents house because you think they're improperly storing d…

> Why didn't it rise to the same level? Maybe because he didn't actively try to sabotage an investigation into it. That is tantamount to saying the issue isn't the mis-storing of classified documents, but that Biden didn't feel like threatened by an investigation from the Biden administration. Colour me shocked. That and the lawfare the Democrats were engaging in through the last election cycle was blatant process ab…

> but that Biden didn't feel like threatened by an investigation from the Biden administration

He perhaps didn't feel that way because he didn't lie under oath about having said documents.

The same sworn statement the FBI gave to the judge before getting a search warrant for, y'know, the president's private residence.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#117

Post by kyleee »

marcusverus wrote: post #95
kristjansson wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes yes American nonprofits, with their mandatory annual public financial disclosures including key individuals salaries, famously a great and easy way to misappropriate monies.

Have you read any of the disclosure forms? They're a joke. I read the 990 for one organization (NLIHC [0]), a mostly-government-funded organization with >10M in "revenue". They're required to list their three most cost-intensive activities in field 4a of the 990, and brother, those people don't do a damn thing. They listed 1) they helped local governments spend tax money 2) made 8 pamphlets (the one I saw was ~10 pag…

Good work if you can get it. That is partly how the politicians and their friends and family get in on the grift.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#118

Post by xboxnolifes »

marcusverus wrote: post #95
kristjansson wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes yes American nonprofits, with their mandatory annual public financial disclosures including key individuals salaries, famously a great and easy way to misappropriate monies.

Have you read any of the disclosure forms? They're a joke. I read the 990 for one organization (NLIHC [0]), a mostly-government-funded organization with >10M in "revenue". They're required to list their three most cost-intensive activities in field 4a of the 990, and brother, those people don't do a damn thing. They listed 1) they helped local governments spend tax money 2) made 8 pamphlets (the one I saw was ~10 pag…

I'm really not sure how to take the comment on the CEO's salary. Some days on HN, 400k is called one good software engineer's salary. Other day's its alluded to as being to as being an overpaid CEO. And then other days people try to justify CEOs making 100M a year.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#119

Post by kyleee »

beebaween wrote: post #82
beebaween wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a private bank hoarding government (tax payer) dollars for seemingly no reason. The money sure as heck wasn't being used for "climate action". As an environmentalist and just someone who thinks the gov shouldn't be offshoring billions of dollars I fully support gov orgs looking into this... It's easy to let politics color the perception of this but I for one although I dislike the current president support th…

Idk why anyone who's "anti establishment" wants to rail against the gov or any reg body looking into... banks doing sketchy things with taxpayer money that should... improve the environment and tax payer's lives. What on earth happened to ppl on HN?

Most of the hackers got rich, and also a bunch of people who aren’t hackers/nerds/curious people jumped on the tech bandwagon for money, and have done well enough to view themselves as equals to the politicians and bigwigs. It has really changed the dynamic here and elsewhere, as you note

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#120

Post by Aloisius »

roamerz wrote: post #88
not2b wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A president can revert an executive order from the previous administration. But the Inflation Reduction Act is a law, not an executive order. If Trump doesn't like it, he can get Congress to repeal it. But he isn't the king. The constitution requires that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". It isn't fraud when funds that were allocated by the act were distributed according to the act. If s…

>>The constitution requires that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". You mean like Biden enforcing our border laws?

Em. Deportations increased substantially under Biden.

That said, laws generally permit some leeway to the executive to set spending priorities/focus. It can be pretty limited since Congress tends to specify what department and sometimes program money must be spent on, but it still it allows for things like deciding you're going to prosecute more drug dealers even though they're long shot cases rather than easier to win fraud causes. This is done at all levels of government.

Shifting spending priorities as the law allows, though, is rather different from actively breaking the law.

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