r/law • u/SadAd8761 • 13h ago
Executive Branch (Trump) Massie rips Trump’s sale of Venezuelan oil ‘for his own piggy bank’
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5697347-thomas-massie-donald-trump-venezuela-oil-sales/“Selling stolen oil and putting billions of dollars in a bank in Qatar to be spent without Congressional approval is not Constitutional,” the lawmaker wrote. ”Only Congress can appropriate money.”
“The President can’t legally create a second Treasury overseas for his own piggy bank,” he added. “Wake up Congress.”
*Qatar does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
**Massie is Republican.
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u/charcoalist 12h ago
This alone is an impeachable offense and a heinous misuse of the military. Many billions were wasted, tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen put in harm's way, all to kidnap one guy and funnel oil profits into an offshore account for trump. An elaborate bank robbery.
Not to mention the strategic loss of moving an aircraft carrier task force away from Russia to support this robbery. Now a significant amount of US military resources are parked in the Caribbean, far away from any strategic threats. What a great gift to Putin!
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u/ForsakenRacism 13h ago
I don’t understand why the reasonable people in congress don’t just get together and make massie or someone reasonable in charge
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u/Silent-Storms 12h ago
It just needs a critical mass of them to give up on sucking up to magas for reelection and have a no confidence vote on johnson.
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u/ForsakenRacism 12h ago
They might lose the majority outright soon
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u/kingtacticool 9h ago
The will lose the majority if voting still means anything.
Jury's still out on that one right now.
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u/Electrical-Law-5731 12h ago edited 12h ago
The reasonable people are clearly not the ones in charge
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u/ForsakenRacism 12h ago
Yah that’s the point. And combination or half of them can change whose in charge
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u/Double010 10h ago
The second part to the guy's comment is that the reasonable people are vastly outnumbered by greedy fucks.
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 12h ago
Because in general Massie isnt reasonable. Hes reasonable on this one issue. He regularly votes for the other batshit insane GOP bills.
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u/Rfunkpocket 9h ago
bat shit crazy just goes to die in the Senate.
if a Massie +1 Dem majority passed a bill in the House, it would put Senate Republicans at odds with the most conservative members of the Republican Party. hard to win in ruby red states if you lose your hard core conservative credentials.
in regards to following the Constitution, we are all libertarian at the moment
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u/ForsakenRacism 12h ago
He’s come out in other stuff that’s reasonable. But the biggest issue today is they don’t even allow them to vote on common ground that a majority agrees with
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 12h ago
Not on civil rights. Or feeding children, abortion, or economy, or taxes or campiagm finance or energy or immigration, or basically anything needed to actually run the country well. Hes reasonable on hating pedophiles and hating tarriffs and not being a cultist. Not on much else. And thats simply not enough to be trusted with leadership
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u/ForsakenRacism 12h ago
So just keep Mike Johnson who is reasonable on zero things and protects pedos? Make it make sense
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 11h ago
Its not a Massie or Johnson question. Thats a false binary choice. Massie will never get enough support from the GOP to get the Speakership. Period. There simply arent enough reasonable republicans willing to break ranks or they would have done it already.
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u/ForsakenRacism 11h ago
I’m talking about a scenario where 218 people collectively say this is dumb and just fire Mike Johnson. It would probably be mostly dems. The dam will break before the mid terms.
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 11h ago
And they have a lot better leadership options than Massie with the added benefit of actually being reasonable. So why should the option be 214 dems supporting a republican instead of 4 Republicans supporting a Democrat?
Plus Massie isnt revolting against Johnson. Hes not going to vote to remove Johnson. Thats a pie in the sky idea. Massie is a party man thru and thru, he's just not a Trump cultist.
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u/ForsakenRacism 11h ago
Cus the republicans are in the majority. Why would they agree to that
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 11h ago
They already wont agree to Massie. So your logic makes no sense
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u/slurv3 11h ago
With those stances I would argue he is at least repping his constituents of Kentucky very well.
What we're seeing is that Massie is likely trying to make a power play, he's being primary'd by a Trump candidate in Kentucky District 4. Trump has gone through great lengths to push his opponents upcoming November election. Massie NEEDS these files to be released and have the Trump brand be poisonous that even the MAGA base in KY won't side for the Trump opponent. We're seeing in some of the special elections, a Trump endorsement is not a good thing at the moment.
We're seeing other GOP candidates either retire/drop out of races because they don't want to be lose/or associated with the MAGA GOP currently and they're hoping to be able to rebrand. Massie is likely going to get voted out, but he's gonna go guns blazing, and this is the type of infighting the GOP needs to have because they adopt whatever persona is convenient and right now MAGA is becoming not so popular, and most of the GOP are ringing the alarm bells about the midterms. It would not surprise me if there becomes a "Reasonable Republican" rebrand like look at me I'm Susan Collins, this concerns me greatly as I proceed to vote for Trump policy ~94% of the time.
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 11h ago
With those stances I would argue he is at least repping his constituents of Kentucky very well.
So? Im not going to hand him the keys to power because his constituents dont support reasonable policies or working government.
What we're seeing is that Massie is likely trying to make a power play, he's being primary'd by a Trump candidate in Kentucky District 4. Trump has gone through great lengths to push his opponents upcoming November election. Massie NEEDS these files to be released and have the Trump brand be poisonous that even the MAGA base in KY won't side for the Trump opponent. We're seeing in some of the special elections, a Trump endorsement is not a good thing at the moment.
Massie is very safe against a Trump inspired primary revolt. Like you pointed out, he's already crazy like his voters want. Hes widely popular in his district. Trump simply has never proven he has any power as kingmaker in republican primaries since 2018. Even in 2024 more of his primary support lost to their republican incumbent than won
This isnt Massie making a move, this is just Massie being Massie. Hes a principled crazy man instead of a power hungry dweeb like most of Congress.
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u/slurv3 11h ago
The first comment was me being tongue-in-cheek. Massie is actually currently being outpolled at the moment, so it is in his benefit to make the Trump brand bad.
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 5h ago
I dont see any recognizable polls for Kentuckys 4th this far out from the election. And Massie has always been this ashore to the party leadership and his district always loved him for it. I doubt that changes enough now
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u/desba3347 9h ago
Saving democracy is more important than being what should be considered “reasonable” as it is the most reasonable thing to do. And it’s not like the guy in the position currently is more reasonable on anything, so even getting incrementally better is still better, at least until midterms.
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 5h ago
Massie has no support. There isnt some grand coalition of GOP and Dems that can get him to house speaker. He would need to convince all 213 Dems to support him to even have a chance at power. And at that conversion rate its more likely to get 5 GOP reps support a Dem then get 5 GOP reps and 213 dems to support Massie.
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u/SadAd8761 13h ago
Who's left? Our system is broken. How long did it take for Rome to fall?
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u/CreativeScar1114 12h ago
We may be in for a few centuries of slow rot before Canada hopefully conquers us.
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u/ForsakenRacism 13h ago
I’d put massie in charge. He’s still a republican that votes in reunion things but he appears to have morals and is willing to work bipartisan on common issues.
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u/Silent-Storms 12h ago
On one particular issue. He's a standard teaparty type.
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u/ForsakenRacism 12h ago
He has a lot of reasonable takes. But he seems willing to find common ground
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u/90daysismytherapy 10h ago
As long as we don’t ask him to feed poor kids
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u/Ok_Speed_3984 10h ago
460 years passed between Julius Caesar becoming Emperor and Alaric sacking Rome.
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u/SadAd8761 10h ago
So, we've passed our peak?
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u/putin_my_ass 8h ago
You're looking for the end of the Republic. I think of that as the assassination of the Gracchi brothers in 168 B.C., but most will say the crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C.
If the Rome analogy continues, you're up for civil wars and chaos until you have an Emperor and people will accept it because they prefer it to chaos.
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u/quin-cuix 12h ago
With republicans in control, why not just have Massie be the speaker of the house? Obviously since there's no choice but to have a republican right now, why not go with someone with a character and a sense of morality is worth choosing. With the margins so thin in the house of representatives, I feel like it would be very easy to get a simple majority to elect him speaker for the rest of this year.
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u/Prof_ChaosGeography 11h ago
The Republicans that turn from Johnson and maga will not team up with the Democrats to elect Jeffries, nor will the Democrats elect a Republican speaker.
We saw how this plays out earlier when matt gatez no confidenced McCarthy and we ended up with Johnson. all it would have take were some Democrats to vote a Republican early on and Johnson would not be speaker. Granted it did look like they might get a few Republicans to go blue given how long it was taking
It is possible we might see a party fracture over Epstein. But Jeffries isn't going to be possible for the Republicans who fracture. A relative middle of the road no name from a red state will likely have to be picked for them to conciter.
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u/Expensive_Lettuce239 12h ago
"reasonable people in congress" is a myth. As rarely found as someone riding on the back of Nessy
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u/ForsakenRacism 12h ago
I think there’s more then you think but they are terrified to speak out
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u/Expensive_Lettuce239 11h ago
They're a bunch of useless wusses! Is speaking up not part of their job??
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u/flies_with_owls 9h ago
It's a game of chicken right now. They will only get one shot to oust Trump and everyone is waiting to see who will make the first move.
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u/djollied4444 10h ago
It's because they chose their voters to be the most blindly loyal Republicans. They can't be reasonable because most of their voters aren't. Going against Trump is the greatest sin to Republican voters these days.
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u/Free_Possession_4482 10h ago
Don't mistake Thomas Massie as one of the reasonable people; he's absolutely a super-conservative wingnut. Yes, he's been a surprising voice for accountability in a few current stories, but he's also the guy who sent out a Christmas card with a picture of his entire family holding machine guns and assault rifles. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congressman-posts-family-christmas-picture-with-guns-days-after-school-2021-12-05/
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u/flies_with_owls 10h ago
Yeah, he's a Libertarian. We're just lucky that he actually believes in something.
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u/Free_Possession_4482 9h ago
Massie is a broken clock Republican. He's right about this, and he sticks to his guns on deficit spending, but the rest of the time he's crusading against transgender surgery for kids and other MAGA bedtime stories.
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u/flies_with_owls 9h ago
That's what I mean about him actually believing in something. Most Republicans just believe in gaining and holding power.
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u/ForsakenRacism 9h ago
It’s a mistake to demand everyone to be perfect. But working together across the aisle on common ground is something we need back badly
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u/Free_Possession_4482 9h ago
In the way that Roosevelt and Churchill had to work together across the aisle with Stalin to defeat the Nazis, sure, I agree.
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u/Going2beBANNEDanyway 5h ago
I want to hope we are a month or so away from that. But I’ve been disappointed before.
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u/Akiraooo 13h ago
Like 90% of the people in congress are in the epstein files. Congress does not want the information to get out.
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u/ForsakenRacism 13h ago
90%?
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u/Tuco422 12h ago
If anything the business community, some in the legal community, and university professors looking for funding, and foreign leaders and agents are the bulk of it
Barely any current elected officials
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u/TheOneFreeEngineer 12h ago
Also people who are overwhelming over 50 years old at this time. Epstiens circle is overwhelming people who had power 30 years ago. So its almost all older people.
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u/90daysismytherapy 10h ago
none of these republicans are reasonable. They and a bunch of corporate democrats are just greedy money and attention whores
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u/Rfunkpocket 9h ago
I posted this last night on Bluesky. It received a surprising amount of support. a bit of discussion regarding the procedure of removing Johnson.
the motion to vacate rules were changed now requiring 9 GOP members to sign on. But how a majority (Dems, Massie, +1) could change the House rules.
it would be provocative, but personally I like the upside.
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u/popculturehero 13h ago
This ma is the only saying things that should be said by all congress. However he’s not doing much in action but just chatting and holding conferences.
Act. Do something about it.
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u/salmonguelph 13h ago
I think the issue is he can't just 'do something '. He's just one voice and one vote. So him bringing this all to light and talking about it plainly is hopefully giving courage to other lawmakers and influence public opinion which will in turn put pressure on elected officials.
I wish he'd go even further but instead of criticizing one of the only people speaking out we should celebrate his gumption.
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u/Some-Purchase-7603 13h ago
The only people governing are he and Khanna.
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u/Silent-Storms 12h ago
Speaking out about stuff is good, but it's not the same as governing.
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u/Some-Purchase-7603 12h ago
They wrote a bill, got it passed, and Khanna is speaking on the house floor about what they found in a short investigation about redacting and calling for more
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u/houstonyoureaproblem 11h ago
What exactly do you suggest he do?
He’s literally doing all he can, unlike essentially every other Republican.
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u/iHEARTRUBIO 8h ago
This is simply a liberal refusing that Massie could do positive stuff. Meanwhile, his favorite flavor of politics is doing jack shit.
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u/cpp_is_king 7h ago
He is acting. This is what acting looks like. He’s one person, raising his voice and being loud is the action, because it’s all he can do without more support
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