Trump’s absence (or minimal references to him) on twitter and the news has been wonderful. (I’m sorry if these words and this post ruins this moment.) But there is a really serious question about how the Biden DOJ, Congress, and State AGs should proceed–specifically, with regard to convicting Trump of impeachment charges and investigating and prosecuting him for federal and state crimes. (Note: I’m starting a separate thread instead of including this in the Biden Administration threat because I didn’t want to mess that one up with this topic.)

This op-ed by George Conway lays out the potential state and federal crimes. I highly recommend reading this article, as it provides a good overview of these potential crimes, and the costs and benefits with pursuing or forgoing prosecution. It’s important that Americans understand the number and seriousness of potential crimes and misdeeds. These are not trivial issues. Here are some general points that I think are important:

Continue reading “What Should the Biden Administration, Congress, and State AGs Do About Trump Now?”

Thread that will follow the Biden and his administration.

A thread to discuss foreign policy under the Biden Administration.

"I will lead efforts internationally to bring transparency to the global financial system, go after illicit tax havens, seize stolen assets, and make it more difficult for leaders who steal from their people to hide behind anonymous front companies."

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) January 21, 2021

A thread to discuss the events of the day, as well as thoughts and reflections that come up.

This will be a thread to discuss the Biden/Harris transition. I mostly want to opine about the cabinet positions and other staffing.

In the past, when I heard money laundering, I’d think of organized criminals taking elicit money and finding ways to secure it and make it usable. But money laundering on the international level, involving authoritarian regimes, and the oligarchs and organized criminals within those regimes finding people in liberal democratic countries to help them launder their money has a national security component as well–at least if my understanding is accurate. The people in Western countries helping these people are doing something wrong, if not illegal. This can be used as leverage against them to not only continue the money laundering, but maybe do other things to help the authoritarian regimes. This is obvious if the people assisting with money laundering have political positions, but if they have any position of influence in the society–e.g., legal, media, academic, business, technology, etc.–bad actors can use the leverage with these people to harm national security and national interests. At least that’s what it seems like to me. Anyway, I started to this thread because I couldn’t find the other threads or posts that discussed this, and I wanted to post an article on this topic. The article is from Just Security and it’s called, Global Kleptocracy as an American Problem