Trump's world....

[DBP66]

53 minutes ago, Troll said:

C'mon man....

a pic ?   Really???

We need video...yano ...

Got any like dis ???

 

 

🤡

 

PS: Bed, Bath, and Beyond pictures ...

...is video.

🤡🤡

 

BTW: Don't always believe yer eyes...

amirite?

🤡🤡🤡

LOL..do you know how many times your silly flick has been de-bunked....and you still swear it's "proof"....LOL...🤡

[GoBigBlack]

Ah, the old “hidden suitcase” video. Unfortunately they don’t play the entire 8 hours for you, but here’s what you see when they do — that official ballot box (not suitcase) is opened and shown to the public and members of the local media, then it’s sealed shut and put underneath a table. Nobody touches it for hours on end, then the video picks up the next time it was touched. So unless they showed the cheating to a dozen cameramen…
 

But that doesn’t fit the argument, so let’s get this out of the way right now with the responses —

“Yeah right!”

”I know what I saw!”

“The videos were altered!” 

“The proof is right there!”

”I don’t care what you say, the election was stolen!”

”They're takin’ our jerbs!”

 

[concha]

Real Wages Under Joe Biden Were Down for the 26th Straight Month in May – A New US Record

[golfaddict1]

[DBP66]

[DBP66]

[golfaddict1]

 

[RedZone]

All 100% true.... donald's tweets on his FLOP social media platform are getting more bizarre by the day. Just freaking weird.

This man is NOT well.

[RedZone]

21 minutes ago, RedZone said:

All 100% true.... donald's tweets on his FLOP social media platform are getting more bizarre by the day. Just freaking weird.

This man is NOT well.

If donald somehow manages to avoid prison and win the presidency he will spend his 4 years going after everyone that didn't kiss his ass or that turned on him...... he makes no secret about it and he has a list that's about 5 miles long.

The great thing about this list is most of the people on it were either his friend or he appointed. Go figure, huh.

Buckle up.

 

 

[DBP66]

Donald Trump Talks Ballot-Stuffing With Fox News’ Bret Baier, Who Then Says, “You Lost The 2020 Election”

1.1k

Ted Johnson

Mon, June 19, 2023 at 5:28 PM EDT

 

 

UPDATE: Donald Trump offered a fusillade of unfounded claims and falsehoods in his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, who seems to have gone into the sit down with a strategy to challenge the the former president on certain topics and move on at other moments.

“Why did you have this very sensitive national security defense documents, like the war plans for a strike on Iran?” Baier asked, referring to a central claim by federal prosecutors in last week’s indictment.

Trump responded, “So like every other president, I take things out, and in my case I took it out pretty much in a hurry but people packed it up and we left. I had clothing in there. I had all sorts of personal items, and they are much, much stuff.” He then went on to bashing his former attorney general William Barr, insisting that he fired him “because he didn’t have the courage to go after so many different things. He was a coward.”

At one moment, when Trump started to talk about ballot box stuffing, Baier told him, “You lost the 2020 election.”

“There were recounts in all of the swing states. There was not significant widespread fraud,” Baier said.

Trump said, “We were trying to get recounts, real recounts.”

Baier then told Trump, “There were investigations of widespread corruption. There was not a sense of that. There were lawsuits, 50 of them, by your lawyers, some in front of judges, judges that you appointed, that came up with no evidence.”

Trump continued to insist that “Wisconsin practically admitted that it was rigged.”

Baier then noted that fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud were found in six battleground states.

“You know why? They were not looking at the right things. They were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballots,” Trump insisted.

Baier then tried to press Trump, “Are you going to go tell this to that independent suburban voter?”

In April, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. Dominion claimed that some Fox personalities and Trump allies amplified claims that the election systems company was involved in rigging the 2020 election. The network’s news side, however, declared Biden the winner the Saturday after the election.

During the interview, Fox News also ran clips of Trump from 2016, where he talked of the importance of protecting classified information. Baier also ran through a list of Trump’s attacks on members of his own administration, while reminding him that he had pledged to only “surround himself with the very best people.”

PREVIOUSLY: Fox News has released a preview clip of anchor Bret Baier’s interview with Donald Trump, the former president’s first sit down since he was indicted last week on federal charges related to his withholding of classified documents.

According to the clip (watch it below), Trump offered another explanation for why he didn’t just return the classified material, even in response to a subpoena: He was too busy to sort through the boxes where they were kept.

Baier also asked Trump about a central claim of the indictment: That he had an aide move the boxes to other locations after telling his attorneys he had fully complied with the subpoena. At least in the clip, Trump did not challenge that version of events.

The first part of the interview will air on Fox News’ Special Report at 6 p.m. ET on Monday, and the second part the following evening.

In the clip, Baier noted to Trump that the National Archives and Records Administration asked for the return of the documents.

“No. And I gave them some,” Trump said.

“Baier responded, “And then they said they went to DOJ to subpoena you to get it.”

Trump responded, “Which they’ve never done before.”

Baier then asked, “Why not just hand them over then?”

“Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you have sort of seen.”

Baier added, “Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you’d fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t.”

Trump responded, “Before I send boxes over, I have to take all my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”

In an interview with Martha MacCallum on Monday afternoon, Baier said that during the hour-long sit down, Trump denied “flatly” some aspects of the indictment, including its account of a 2021 recording in which he acknowledged that documents were still classified and that he could no longer declassify them because he was out of the White House. He also denied having a document with war plans, Baier said. The Fox anchor noted that even though the magistrate judge talk Trump not to talk about the specifics of the case with a list of potential witnesses, he talked extensively about specifics during the interview.

Baier said that Trump continued to bash Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, now his chief rival for the GOP nomination. When presented with an extensive list of former Trump cabinet members no longer supporting him, Trump said that they were “just the wrong people for the job.”

This was Trump’s first interview with Baier since 2018. Trump also participated in a Fox News town hall in 2020 that was moderated by Baier and MacCallum and held at the Lincoln Memorial.

[DBP66]

Fox News Analyst Has Damning Description For Trump's Disastrous Interview.

 

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2.2k

Ed Mazza

Tue, June 20, 2023 at 1:26 AM EDT

 

 

Longtime Fox News analyst Brit Hume didn’t hold back on Monday after Donald Trump’s rambling performance during an interview with the right-wing network.

“His answers on the matters of the law seem to me to verge on incoherent,” he told Bret Baier, who spoke with the former president.

Trump, who pleaded not guilty last week to 37 charges related to the classified documents scandal, said he didn’t give back the material when subpoenaed because he’s been “very busy” and hasn’t had the time to go through the boxes to sort out his personal items.

Hume attempted to sum up Trump’s comments to Baier: “He seemed to be saying that the documents were really his, and that he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so and when they were subpoenaed because, y’know, he wasn’t ready to because he hadn’t sorted them and separated the classified information or whatever from his golf shirts or whatever he was saying.”

Eventually, Hume practically gave up trying to decipher it.

“It was not altogether clear what he was saying, but he seemed to believe that the documents were his, that he had declassified them ― evidence to the contrary ― and therefore he could do whatever he wanted with them,” he said. “I don’t think it’s gonna hold up in court.”

Hume also noted that Baier gave Trump a chance to deliver a message to the suburban female voters that turned against him in 2020.

“His answer was to talk about how he didn’t lose the 2020 election,” Hume noted. “I don’t think that’s an appealing message for the future.”

He said the interview probably didn’t go over very well among those trying to advise the former president.

“I’m sure his legal and political advisers were wincing all the way through his answers on both those points.” he concluded.

[DBP66]

Judge sets tentative trial date for Trump documents case

 

Mary Altaffer/AP Photo

476

Kyle Cheney

Tue, June 20, 2023 at 9:10 AM EDT

 

 

Donald Trump’s criminal trial for hoarding military secrets at Mar-a-Lago has a starting date — Aug. 14 — but don’t expect it to hold.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon bookmarked the last two weeks in August for the historic trial, part of an omnibus order setting some early ground rules and deadlines for the case. That would represent a startlingly rapid pace for a case that is expected to be complicated and require lengthy pretrial wrangling over extraordinarily sensitive classified secrets.

But a review of Cannon’s criminal cases since she took the bench in late 2020 suggests this is standard practice for the Florida-based judge. She typically sets trial dates six to eight weeks from the start of a case, only to allow weeks- or months-long delays as issues arise and the parties demand more time to prepare. While her order on Tuesday starts the clock on a slew of important pretrial matters in the Trump case, it’s not likely to resemble anything close to the timeframe that will ultimately govern the case.

Cannon’s order comes after a weekend in which Trump continued to raise eyebrows — and certainly catch the ear of his prosecutors — with a Fox News interview in which he acknowledged intentionally withholding documents from the federal government, claiming he wanted to sift through them for personal items. It was the latest twist in a shifting and meandering narrative Trump continues to tell about his handling of the files, which will surely become part of the pattern prosecutors intend to highlight at trial.

Trump is also under indictment in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to a porn star. The trial in that case is scheduled for March 25, 2024.

[I AM IRONMAN]

Thanks for the thumb work out….been a while since I checked in on your cut and paste mastery!

[DBP66]

Team Trump Suspects His Former Chief of Staff Is a ‘Rat’

648

Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley

Tue, June 20, 2023 at 2:37 PM EDT

 

 

Earlier this year, Donald Trump sent some of his lawyers and political advisers on a “small fact-finding mission,” as a person with knowledge of the matter describes it to Rolling Stone. The former president wanted to know, according to that source and another person close to Trump: “What is Mark doing?”

Trump was referring to his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Justice Department investigators and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office had been keen on questioning Meadows under oath about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and to hoard government documents. And it’s been an ongoing mystery to Trump and his team how much Meadows has given the feds, and whether or not he’s actually cooperating. Months ago, Meadows and his lawyer severed communications with most of Trumpland, in a move that continues to frustrate people working to keep the now twice–indicted former president out of deeper legal peril.

The Trump attorneys and advisers who went looking for answers returned with bad news for Trump: They couldn’t figure out what was going on, leaving them to repeat rumors and speculation.

 

Meadows, his lawyer, and Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment from Rolling Stone.

Meadows’ team is keeping quiet. Early this month, The New York Times revealed that Meadows had indeed testified before the grand jury, but scant details have been unearthed about what he discussed or to which specific topics his testimony was related. And Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger this month offered only vagueness: “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”

That cryptic statement did not sit well with much of Trumpworld. In recent weeks, several lawyers and confidants had already discussed their unconfirmed suspicions with Trump that Meadows was being very useful to the feds in order to reduce Meadows’ own possible legal exposure, two other people familiar with the matter say. Both sources independently tell Rolling Stone that when the topic has come up within the past several months, Trump has at times said that he doesn’t know what Meadows is doing, adding that it would be a “shame” if the MAGAland rumors were true.

In the days since Terwilliger’s brief statement to media outlets, some of Trump’s longtime allies and close advisers have taken to sardonically referring to Meadows by using the rat emoji in their private conversations, according to a source with knowledge of the situation and a screenshot reviewed by Rolling Stone.

However, others in Trump’s immediate orbit have recently sought to reassure him that, for now at least, he should not read too much into Meadows’ silence, two people with direct knowledge of the matter say. Despite all the rumors that have been flying, these individuals have told Trump that there is no hard evidence yet that Meadows is formally cooperating, and that he could simply be following lawyers’ advice to keep a low profile, answering the feds’ questions when he has to until the special counsel investigation runs its course.
Unfortunately for Meadows and other witnesses, Trump has for years often seen little difference between a witness having an official cooperation agreement with prosecutors, and someone who is legally required to answer questions and in doing so offers up potentially damning information to the authorities, according to sources who’ve spoken to Trump about federal probes and other investigations over the decades. Indeed, Trump was furious over the degree of detail in the notes made by his own attorney, Evan Corcoran, which have since become very useful for prosecutors in this case.

The current state of Meadows’ relationship to Trump and his inner orbit is a dramatic turn away from early on in Trump’s post-presidency. Following the wave of scandal and violence stemming from Trump’s attempt to cling to power after the 2020 election, Meadows mostly stayed in the former president’s good graces. At that stage, Meadows even privately said it was likely Trump would offer him a senior role headed into the next presidential contest — perhaps even as chairman of Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

That never happened — and the once close relationship between Trump and Meadows started to fray, in a number of different ways, beginning in late 2021.

By the summer of 2022, it became clear to Meadows and his associates that some of Trump’s own lawyers and top advisers were trying to set up Meadows as a fall guy, as the Jan. 6-related investigations intensified. According to a source who knows both Meadows and Trump, this had the unintended consequence of causing Meadows and his legal advisers to “take a more skeptical approach, not necessarily towards the [former] president, but towards some of the people around him.”

And then there was the issue of Meadows’ memoir, which, when released at the end of 2021, was aimed at making Trump look good. It backfired spectacularly.Meadows’ The Chief’s Chief — a 330-page love letter to Trump — has so far resulted in three major instances of public-relations damage or serious legal problems for former President Trump.

The book has repeatedly infuriated key Trumpland figures, including Trump himself, since publication, three people with knowledge of the situation say.

“How many times can Mark fucking put the [former] president in a bind because of that book…[that basically] no one read?” a senior Trump aide said last week, the day of the ex-president’s second arrest of the year. (The book sold a disappointing 22,000 copies in its first few months of publication.)

The latest example of Meadows’ book causing trouble for Trump came earlier this month, as the unsealed federal Trump indictment underscored how much Meadows’ book-writing process provided the feds and special counsel with fodder to argue that Trump mishandled classified material that he was not supposed to possess and show off in his post-presidency.

In a recording of Trump speaking with two assistants who were helping Meadows write his memoir, the former president effectively confesses to knowingly keeping classified war plans, as CNN first reported. Referring to an unnamed U.S. military “plan of attack” prosecutors accused him of showing to the two individuals, Trump can allegedly be heard saying “As president I could have declassified it” but that “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

The comments, featured prominently atop the special counsel’s indictment, represent some of the most damning evidence revealed in the documents case yet.

However, the source who knows both Meadows and Trump says any annoyance about this matter from Trump and others is “unfair,” given that the feds obtained audio that Trump himself knowingly created while aiding Meadows’ writing.

Still, in years past, Meadows’ memoir also caused outrage when it revealed Trump engineered a secret cover-up of his COVID-19 infection, potentially putting numerous people — including his 2020 opponent Joe Biden — in danger.

The book also nearly jeopardized Trump’s claims of executive privilege in the effort to stonewall the January 6 House committee.

It wasn’t meant to work out this way. “He thought Trump was going to love it,” a knowledgeable source told The Daily Beast in 2021, of Meadows’ hopes for the memoir when it was still in the works.

But The Chief’s Chief enraged Trump even before it was released and landed Meadows in immediate, temporary exile from his former boss. An early excerpt run by The Guardian showed that Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus a week before the White House officially acknowledged he had contracted it. The revelation showed that Trump and the White House had covered up the potential early diagnosis shortly before the former president’s debate with Joe Biden, endangering staff, the audience, and his opponent.

Behind the scenes, Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid” in late 2021 for disclosing the details in his book and Meadows was left to try to distance himself from his own book, calling reporting about it “fake news” on MAGA cable networks.

The Chief’s Chief may have also hurt Trump’s ability to stonewall the January 6 Committee, in addition to revealing the Trump White House’s stonewalling about COVID.

Like a number of witnesses called before the committee, Meadows argued that executive privilege — the doctrine that presidents are entitled to confidential advice in making decisions — prevented him from being able to share information about his discussions with Trump in the period after the 2020 election. But Meadows’ own book, which shared page after page of information about his conversations with Trump, briefly jeopardized the claim.

When the former chief of staff sued the committee to block a subpoena, lawyers for the panel noted that “Mr. Meadows has published a book addressing a number of these issues and has spoken about them publicly on several occasions,” claiming that those acts represented a waiver of privilege.

A judge ultimately dismissed the case and Meadows later agreed to provide documents and text messages to the committee while withholding others on the grounds of executive privilege.

[RedZone]

😄

That's just too funny.

 

[DBP66]

This is for @Slotback Right @Troll @Nolebull813 and the rest of the tin hat crew who knew this was voter fraud based on Rudy's accusation...🙄 Here is some reality....

Georgia poll workers accused in Trump-backed conspiracy theories cleared of election fraud allegations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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796

LUCIEN BRUGGEMAN

Tue, June 20, 2023 at 6:23 PM EDT

 

 

Allegations of election fraud against two Georgia election workers who became the subjects of a Trump-backed conspiracy theory in the aftermath of the 2020 election were found to be "false and unsubstantiated," according to an investigative report released Tuesday by the Georgia Elections Board.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, both former election workers from Fulton County, faced threats of violence from conspiracy theorists after their election-night conduct on a polling place livestream proliferated online among right-wing election deniers who believed Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

MORE: Mother-daughter election workers describe how they lived through Trump-backed accusations of conspiracy

In one video clip, online commentators accused Freeman of handling a suitcase of fraudulent or stolen ballots.

"The suitcases they claim we had were issued ballot boxes that we use every election," Moss explained on an episode of ABC News' IMPACT x Nightline last November.

 

PHOTO: Former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman, left, and her daughter Shaye Moss appear on the ABC News program Impact x Nightline, Nov. 3, 2022. (ABC News)

Another clip showed Freeman handing her daughter a small item, imperceptible on the grainy livestream footage, that led some online commentators to accuse the two of exchanging a USB drive, which was allegedly meant to somehow manipulate votes. Freeman said it was just ginger mints that she kept in her purse.

The following week, Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appeared before a committee of the Georgia state legislature to advocate for their intervention in the electoral college certification -- and told the legislators that a video circulating online showed "Ruby Freeman and Shaye Freeman Moss ... quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports, as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine."

Testifying last year in the House select committee's Jan. 6 hearings, Freeman said, "I've lost my name and I've lost my reputation, I've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen."

Freeman told ABC News' Terry Moran that she subsequently received so much harassment from conspiracy theorists that she was forced to pack up and leave the suburban Atlanta home where she lived for 20 years.

As part of their probe, Georgia Elections Board investigators interviewed a social media user who "admitted he created a fake account and confirmed the content that was posted on the account was fake," the new report said.

Von DuBose, the attorney representing Freeman and Moss, said in a statement following the release of the report, "This serves as further evidence that Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss -- while doing their patriotic duty and serving their community -- were simply collateral damage in a coordinated effort to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election."

"Lies about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss have been proven false over and over again, and those who perpetuate them should be held accountable," DuBose said.

"We are glad the State Election Board finally put this issue to rest," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement.

"False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm," Raffensperger said. "Election workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines."

[DBP66]

Trump receives first batch of evidence against him in classified documents case, including audio tapes

 

Alex Brandon/AP

961

Tierney Sneed

Wed, June 21, 2023 at 9:26 PM EDT

 

 

Special counsel Jack Smith has begun producing evidence in the Mar-a-Lago documents case to Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday court filing that hints that investigators collected for the case multiple recordings of the former president – not just audio of an interview Trump gave at Bedminster for a forthcoming Mark Meadows memoir.

Prosecutors in the filing used the plural “interviews” to describe recordings of Trump – made with his consent – obtained by the special counsel that have now been turned over to his defense team. It is unclear what the additional recordings may be of or how relevant they will be to the Justice Department’s case against the former president, though the recordings include the Bedminster tape where Trump speaks about a secret military document to a writer and others, the prosecutors said in the filing.

The prosecutors’ update to the court on Wednesday night marks another swift move toward trial, which the Justice Department has said should happen quickly, and captures at least some of the extent of the evidence investigators secured to build their historic case against Trump.

The first batch of discovery production – made up of unclassified materials – includes transcripts of witness testimony in front of the grand juries in Washington, DC, and Florida that were probing the mishandling of government documents from Trump’s White House. It also includes materials collected via subpoenas and search warrants; memos detailing other witness interviews given through mid-May in the investigation; and copies of the surveillance footage investigators obtained in the probe.

 

The first batch of evidence, provided on Wednesday, “includes the grand jury testimony of witnesses who will testify for the government at the trial of this case,” the special counsel’s office wrote.

“Defense counsel can contact the government to arrange for inspection of unclassified items seized at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022,” the filing said.

The new submission indicates that Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta has not yet received discovery, but the Smith team said they will promptly provide it once a lawyer enters an appearance for him in the case. Nauta is scheduled to be arraigned next Tuesday.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges Smith has brought against him, which include charges for willful retention of national defense information as well charges stemming from alleged obstruction of the investigation.

[DBP66]

Looks like things are getting real for Donny...panic is setting in...LOVE IT!.....😉

Trump Melts Down as DOJ Turns Over Evidence It Plans to Use Against Him

3.3k

Ryan Bort

Thu, June 22, 2023 at 9:38 AM EDT

 

 

Donald Trump fired off a series of desperate pleas on Truth Social, including multiple appeals to for Congress to bail him out, hours after news broke that the Justice Department had turned over the first batch of evidence it plans to use against him. The former president was indicted earlier this month on charges related to his handling of classified material after leaving the White House.

“CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS AGAINST ME CURRENTLY BEING BROUGHT BY THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI, WHO ARE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL,” Trump wrote Thursday morning.

The former president also dusted off the idea that the DOJ framed him by planting the classified at Mar-a-Lago — despite the fact that he’s claimed repeatedly that he somehow declassified the material before bringing it to Florida himself. “Congress will hopefully now look at the ever continuing Witch Hunts and ELECTION INTERFERENCE against me on perfectly legal Boxes, where I have no doubt that information is being secretly “planted” by the scoundrels in charge,” he wrote in another post before griping about his other legal woes.

 

Trump’s indictment is damning, with the DOJ alleging that the former president knowingly took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, stored them in unsecure locations, and then conspired to lie to authorities about what he was hoarding while suggesting the material should be destroyed. The indictment also outlines a recording it obtained featuring Trump bragging about having a “secret” plan against Iran.

The evidence the DOJ turned over on Wednesday includes more recordings of the former president, described as “interviews” recorded with his consent. It’s unclear what is on the additional tapes. The evidence also includes grand jury witness testimony — which means Trump now knows who testified against them and what they said — as well as material obtained through subpoenas.

Trump, understandably, seems pretty nervous. “THIS CONTINUING SAGA IS RETRIBUTION AGAINST ME FOR WINNING AND, EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY TO THEM, ELECTION INTERFERENCE REGARDING THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” he added on Thursday morning. “IT WILL BE THERE UPDATED FORM OF RIGGING OUR MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION. LOOK AT THE POLLS – THEY CAN’T BEAT ME (MAGA!) AT THE BALLOT BOX, THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IS TO CHEAT. STOP THEM NOW!”

Trump pleaded not guilt to all of the charges against him. The DOJ has asked for a speedy trial, and  Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this week told both sides to file all pre-trial motions by July 24 while slating the trial to begin on Aug. 14. Trump’s team will almost certainly move to delay the start date as long as possible — maybe even until he can retake the White House and appoint an attorney general who will drop the case.

[DBP66]

Can you get any dumber than this Trumper?!?.....f*in moron!

Jan. 6 rioter who electroshocked Michael Fanone shouts 'Trump won' after he's sentenced to 12½ years

 

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4.9k

Ryan J. Reilly

Wed, June 21, 2023 at 4:39 PM EDT

 

 

WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump supporter who drove a stun gun into the neck of a Washington police officer who was abducted by the mob during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol shouted "Trump won" after he was sentenced to 12½ years in prison Wednesday, multiple people present in the courtroom said.

Daniel "D.J." Rodriguez, a California man who traveled to Washington with fellow Trump supporters who belonged to a Telegram group called the "PATRIOTS 45 MAGA Gang," pleaded guilty in February to felony conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, tampering with documents or proceedings and inflicting bodily injury on officers using a deadly or dangerous weapon.

"There will be blood," Rodriguez wrote in a "MAGA Gang" Telegram chat on the night of Jan. 5, 2021, just hours before he attended Trump's rally at the Ellipse near the White House. "Welcome to the revolution.”

On Jan. 6, after having joined the fight in the Capitol's lower west tunnel — where some of the most violent scenes of the day played out — Rodriguez attacked Officer Michael Fanone, later bragging about his actions in the Telegram chat.

“Omg I did so much f---ing s--- [right now] and got away,” he wrote to fellow members of the Patriots 45 MAGA Gang. “Tazzed the f--- out of the blue.”

 

Daniel Rodriguez (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia)

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed Rodriguez's 151-month sentence, saying he was a “one-man army of hate, attacking police officers and destroying property,” on Jan. 6. Rodriguez was responsible for his own behavior even if Trump had been making "irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election had been stolen," she said.

Fanone, Jackson said, was "protecting the very essence of democracy," and Rodriguez was "among the most serious offenders" on Jan. 6. "He's not just a follower; he calls for action," Jackson said, referring to Rodriguez's violent rhetoric immediately after Trump lost the 2020 election. Jackson said there was no indication that Rodriguez had any mental or cognitive impairments, referring to him as "a man of average intelligence."

Ahead of his sentencing, Rodriguez spoke for about 20 minutes in a rambling speech, saying he “truly” thought a civil war was going to begin and that he believed the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers formed because police were standing down across the country. He acknowledged his actions against Fanone but stopped short of an apology.

"Life has always seemed unfair to me," Rodriguez said, speaking of inequality in the country before referring to himself as "an American supremacist." If he were allowed to go home, Rodriguez said, he would go back to "driving a forklift with my GED and living with my mom," claiming he did not present a future threat.

Fanone, speaking after Rodriguez's subsequent outburst, said, "It’s been clear by the defendants' own behavior that there is no remorse, at least for the individuals in which I came in contact with on Jan. 6 who are criminally charged."

Fanone said Rodriguez's "half-hearted attempt to apologize for his conduct" and later outburst showed that stiff sentences were "the best assurance that we have that this won’t happen again."

"These are Americans that engaged in seditious activity," Fanone said. "I believe that they were traitors, and they should be sentenced accordingly. We need to stop treating these people as anything other than enemy combatants of our democracy."

Before Rodriguez's sentencing, Fanone called Rodriguez's life story "pathetic" and said he himself had lost his career, friends and faith in the criminal justice system because of what he went through that day.

"I don’t give a s--- about Daniel Rodriguez. He ceased to exist to me as a person a long time ago," Fanone said. "Any compassion or empathy I felt toward those who laid siege to our Capitol, whose actions I felt were at least in part influenced by their leader, Donald Trump, and his lies, has been eroded — eroded by the attacks directed at me and my family by supporters of Donald Trump and the right-wing media."

Fanone, referring to special counsel Jack Smith's ongoing investigation of Trump's actions leading up to Jan. 6, called for the Justice Department to pursue indictments against Trump and anyone else responsible "regardless of their wealth or current political position" and prove the mantra that no one is above the law.

"Your honor, we must all join in the fight against Donald Trump and the destructive, divisive movement he has come to represent," Fanone said. "We must offer him no safe harbor and to his enablers — whether in business, in politics and the media — give no quarter. In the fight to preserve our Republic, there can be no spectators."

Federal prosecutors wanted Rodriguez to spend 14 years in federal prison — an upward departure from his sentencing guidelines, which suggested a sentence of roughly eight to 10 years — saying he committed an act of terrorism. Rodriguez’s “egregious” conduct “displayed a clear intent to stop Congress from certifying the results of the election” and was “calculated to stop the peaceful transfer of Presidential power for the first time in the nation’s history,” argued prosecutors, who called his efforts “a quintessential example of an intent to influence government conduct through intimidation or coercion.”

Rodriguez’s federal public defenders said that Trump’s “incendiary lies” about the election “created a frenzy of anger and uncertainty” and that Rodriguez’s “unwavering belief in the words of the former president ... drove him to lose all sense of right and wrong.” Rodriguez “deeply respected and idolized Trump,” whom he saw “as the father he wished he had,” they wrote, saying Rodriguez “believed Trump was someone to be admired: a multimillionaire who graduated from Wharton Business School, with his name massively displayed in gold on buildings across the United States.”

Forrest Rogers, an American living in Germany on Jan. 6, first surfaced evidence that Rodriguez electroshocked Fanone after having pored over online video frame by frame as part of his work for Deep State Dogs, one of the groups of online Sedition Hunters that popped up in the wake of Jan. 6 to identify Capitol rioters. After Rogers tweeted video of the incident, Rodriguez was identified by activists who knew the MAGA-hatted man from a protest scene in Beverly Hills, California.

Rodriguez was then identified in a February 2021 HuffPost story, and the FBI arrested him the next month. In an FBI interview, Rodriguez called himself a "f---ing piece of s--t" and said he was "not smart." Rodriguez said he was influenced by the far-right conspiracy theory website Infowars, as well as conservative commentators like Steven Crowder, Mark Dice and the "Hodgetwins" brothers duo. Rodriguez, who believed Trump's lies about the 2020 presidential election, told the FBI that Trump had "called us" to Washington on Jan. 6 and that he felt a duty to respond to the commander-in-chief.

“Are we all that stupid that we thought we were going to go do this and save the country and it was all going to be fine after?" Rodriguez said in his FBI interview. "We really thought that. That’s so stupid, huh?”

 

Daniel Rodriguez (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia)

More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and nearly 600 have pleaded guilty. Of the approximately 524 defendants who have been sentenced, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, about 310 have been sentenced to periods that have ranged from a few days to nearly two decades in prison. The sentences continue on a nearly daily basis: Washington chiropractor David Walls-Kaufman was sentenced to 60 days after he admitted he "scuffled" with officers inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, including an officer who died by suicide nine days later.

The longest sentence for a Jan. 6 defendant to date — 18 years in federal prison — went to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November. Federal prosecutors had sought a sentence of 25 years in federal prison.

Two other Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted Fanone have received significant sentences. Kyle Young — a Jan. 6 rioter who was accompanied by his teenage son when he handed Rodriguez the electroshock weapon used to attack Fanone, whom Young grabbed during the attack — was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison in September. Albuquerque Head — a Jan. 6 rioter who yelled "I got one!" when he seized Fanone and dragged him into the mob — was sentenced to 7½ years in federal prison in October.

In addition to his violence against Fanone, Rodriguez entered an office space inside the Capitol through a broken window and urged the mob ahead. Using a pole, Rodriguez smashed out a window in the private "hideaway" office of Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho. Months after his arrest, Rodriguez was indicted along with two co-defendants: Ed Badalian, who was found guilty of three counts in April, and a man known to online sleuths as #SwedishScarf, who has been identified by the FBI but who prosecutors have said is believed to have fled the country.

[DBP66]

The walls are closing in....reality is winning....

Fake Trump Electors Strike Deal to Testify in DOJ’s Jan. 6 Probe: Report

1.4k

Nikki McCann Ramirez

Fri, June 23, 2023 at 2:39 PM EDT

 

 

Special Counsel Jack Smith may have already charged Donald Trump for hoarding classified material, but the Mar-a-Lago probe is not the only Justice Department investigation into the former president. According to CNN, Smith has traded partial immunity for the testimony of two fake electors in the probe into the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The individuals reportedly testified before a Washington, D.C., grand jury empaneled by Smith to investigate Trump’s efforts to override his election loss and his role in the events of Jan. 6.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump and his allies allegedly engaged in a scheme to provide an “alternate” set of pro-Trump Electoral College electors for states where Biden had secured a narrow victory. These states included Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

 

According to sources who spoke to CNN, Smith and his prosecutors have in recent weeks sought to compel the testimony of various, yet unidentified individuals involved in the plans, and have interviewed at least half a dozen witnesses in the past few days.

Smith’s office has also honed in on various key Trump allies in recent weeks, including his former attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Jefferey Clark. Clark, a Trump DOJ appointee, pressured the department to falsely inform the Georgia legislature that they had uncovered “significant fraud” in the state and encourage them to put forth an alternate slate of electors.

It’s unclear if Trump will be indicted in the probe, but if he is it would be the second time Smith brings criminal charges against the former president. Earlier this month, Trump was arrested and arraigned on 37 federal charges related to his post-presidency hoarding of classified documents. The charges against Trump include conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a record or document, and concealing a document in a federal investigation.

Trump may also face charges from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is widely expected to reveal an indictment in her own investigation into election interference in Georgia sometime this August.

[DBP66]

He's paying for his lies...

Giuliani Ordered to Pay Georgia Election Workers’ Attorney Fees

484

Zoe Tillman

Fri, June 23, 2023 at 4:58 PM EDT

 

 

(Bloomberg) -- Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay the attorney fees of two Georgia election workers suing him for defamation, after a judge found he failed to comply with his obligations to turn over evidence in the case.

US District Judge Beryl Howell entered an order on Friday directing Giuliani to cover what it cost the lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss to pursue their successful motion to compel him to produce information.

 

The order doesn’t specify the amount he’ll owe; the judge directed the plaintiffs to disclose that in a later filing. Howell wrote that Giuliani had failed to show that his resistance to the plaintiffs’ discovery requests was “substantially justified,” which meant he was required to pay their attorney fees.

Freeman and Moss became the subject of 2020 post-election voter fraud conspiracy theories that Giuliani, former President Donald Trump, and other Trump allies promoted. Earlier this week, the Georgia State Election Board announced it had formally cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing.

Freeman and Moss had sued Giuliani in federal district court in Washington in December 2021. In recent months, their attorneys had argued to Howell that Giuliani was dragging his feet in turning over evidence and had failed to perform adequate searches.

Read more: Giuliani Records Row in Election Suit a ‘Murky Mess,’ Judge Says

Giuliani maintained that he tried to fulfill the evidence requests in good faith. But Howell wrote in her latest order that until the fight came before her, Giuliani had “arbitrarily limited” how he searched certain sources of information, performed “imprecise” manual searches of his electronic accounts, and delayed making productions.

“We are pleased with the court’s order, and look forward to our clients having their day in court,” Michael Gottlieb, a lead attorney for Freeman and Moss, said in a statement.

Giuliani’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[DBP66]

Experts: Trump begs fans for campaign donations — but diverts them “for his own personal benefit”

506

Areeba Shah

Mon, June 26, 2023 at 2:59 PM EDT

 

 

 

Donald Trump; MoneyPhoto illustration by Salon/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump is diverting money he has raised from his 2024 presidential campaign into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees, according to The New York Times.

The disclosure text on the WinRed digital fundraising platform for the Trump presidential campaign was updated to state that 10% of the money raised will be sent to the Save America PAC, which has funded Trump's legal bills in the past. When Trump first launched his campaign, 99 cents of every dollar went to his campaign while just one cent was directed toward the Save America PAC.

"President Trump's Save America PAC has had a dubious track record of fundraising," Temidayo Aganga-Williams, partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg and former senior investigative counsel for the House Jan. 6 committee, told Salon. "Now, President Trump continues to exploit his political base by raising money once again for his own personal benefit.

The impact of Trump's legal battles is evident in the increased legal expenditures of the Save America PAC, according to Federal Election Commission filings. These expenses reportedly surged from $1.9 million to $14.6 million in 2022.

The former president's legal bills have piled up after he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on charges related to a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels and another indictment including violations of the Espionage Act arising from his possession of classified material and government records after he left the White House.

"The New York trial is scheduled for March and the federal trial for August 2024," Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of Los Angeles-based West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Salon. "Trump will try to push the dates out, of course, but he needs to be prepared for the possibility that the judges won't agree and he must face a jury before the November 2024 election. There also is the possibility of a Georgia indictment, so for both legal and political reasons, Trump has shifted his priorities to financing his legal battles for now."

Since his second indictment, several lawyers have left Trump's legal team with two resigning hours after he was charged with "felony violations of our national security laws" and "participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice."

His history of treating attorneys like personal fixers and not paying their fees has made him a difficult client to work with, experts say.

"Any lawyer who takes Trump's case must be prepared to take the case all the way to trial because Trump won't take any deal, nor will the Department of Justice offer one," Rahmani said. "There also is the possibility the lawyer will lose other business because Trump is a controversial client. Federal judges make it difficult for lawyers to withdraw from a case due to client nonpayment. Lawyers may be asking for a significant up-front retainer to represent Trump in his federal case, and Trump needs money to cover his legal expenses now."

It remains unclear whether Trump will try to use his campaign funds to pay for lawyers and whether such a course of action would potentially violate spending regulations, but his track record remains under scrutiny.

"After the 2020 election, President Trump's political operation raised hundreds of millions of dollars by claiming the funds were needed to fight election fraud," Aganga-Williams said. "Despite the stated purpose, Trump's team diverted much of the money to his Save America PAC, spending very little on actually fighting the election results."

He added that federal officials, including the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission, will continue to closely scrutinize Trump's political fundraising.

[DBP66]

Right from the horse's mouth....what a f*in dope...🙄

Exclusive: CNN obtains the tape of Trump’s 2021 conversation about classified documents

 

 

 

Scroll back up to restore default view.

3.1k

Jeremy Herb

Tue, June 27, 2023 at 4:38 AM EDT

 

 

CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify.

The recording, which first aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” includes new details from the conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information, including a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran.

“These are the papers,” Trump says in the audio recording, while he’s discussing the Pentagon attack plans, a quote that was not included in the indictment.

In the two-minute audio recording, Trump and his aides also joke about Hillary Clinton’s emails after the former president says that the document was “secret information.”

“Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails,” Trump’s staffer said.

“No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner,” Trump responded, referring to the former Democratic congressman, prompting laughter in the room.

Trump’s statements on the audio recording, saying “these are the papers” and referring to something he calls “highly confidential” and seems to be showing others in the room, could undercut the former president’s claims in an interview last week with Fox News’ Bret Baier that he did not have any documents with him.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said on Fox. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The audio recording comes from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster resort for people working on the memoir of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff. The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance – a writer, publisher and two of Trump’s staff members – were shown classified information about the plan of attack on Iran.

The episode is one of two referenced in the indictment where prosecutors allege that Trump showed classified information to others who did not have security clearances.

CNN has previously reported that Trump at the time was furious over a New Yorker article about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley that said Milley argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump would set in motion a full-scale conflict.

The special counsel’s office declined to comment.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in statement that “the audio tape provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.”

‘I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up’

The recording obtained by CNN begins with Trump claiming “these are bad sick people,” while his staffer claims there had been a “coup” against Trump.

“Like when Milley is talking about, ‘Oh you’re going to try to do a coup.’ No, they were trying to do that before you even were sworn in,” the staffer says, according to the audio.

The next part of the conversation is mostly included in the indictment, though the audio makes clear there are papers shuffling as Trump tells those in attendance he has an example to show.

“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, Isn’t it amazing?” Trump says as the sound of papers shuffling can be heard. “I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this – this is off the record but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”

The indictment includes ellipses where the recording obtained by CNN shows where Trump and his aide begin talking about Clinton’s emails and Weiner, whose laptop caused the FBI to briefly re-open its investigation into her handling of classified information in the days before the 2016 election she lost to Trump.

Trump then returns to the Iran document, according to the audio recording and indictment transcript.

“I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he said, ‘He wanted to attack Iran, and what…,’ ” Trump says.

“These are the papers,” Trump continues, according to the audio file.

“This was done by the military and given to me,” Trump continues, before noting that the document remained classified.

“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump says. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

“Now we have a problem,” his staffer responds.

“Isn’t that interesting,” Trump says.

While that’s the last line included in the indictment, the audio recording obtained by CNN includes several additional lines from the conversation:

Trump: “It’s so cool. I mean, it’s so, look, her and I, and you probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me.”

Writer: “No, I believed you.”

Trump: “It’s incredible, right?”

Writer: “No, they never met a war they didn’t want.”

Trump: “Hey, bring some, uh, bring some Cokes in please.”

[DBP66]

Trump must face narrowed New York fraud case; Ivanka dismissed as defendant

 

FILE PHOTO: Ivana Trump funeral held in New York

245

Jonathan Stempel

Updated Tue, June 27, 2023 at 1:11 PM EDT

 

 

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A New York appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump's bid to dismiss state Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit accusing him and his family business of "staggering" fraud, but narrowed the case and dismissed all claims against Trump's eldest daughter.

James's civil case filed last September accused Trump of lying from 2011 to 2021 about asset values at the Trump Organization, as well as his own net worth, in order to obtain better terms from lenders and insurers.

The lawsuit seeks at least $250 million in damages, and to stop the Trumps from running businesses in New York. Trump's adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric are also defendants.

 

Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 presidential election, has denied wrongdoing. He has also called James' case and two unrelated criminal indictments, where he has pleaded not guilty, part of a Democratic "witch hunt."

In a 5-0 decision, the Appellate Division in Manhattan said state law gave James power to police alleged "repeated or persistent fraud or illegality," and conduct lengthy and complex investigations many years after suspected misconduct began.

But it said statutes of limitations prevented James, who had probed Trump's business dealings for three years, from suing over claims that arose before July 13, 2014, or Feb. 6, 2016, depending on the defendant.

It also said all claims against Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump should be dismissed because James filed them too late.

The court returned the case to Justice Arthur Engoron of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan to determine which parts could proceed. An Oct. 2 trial is scheduled. Trump was questioned under oath for the case in April.

"There is a mountain of evidence that shows Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for significant economic gain," a spokeswoman for James said. "This decision allows us to hold him accountable for that fraud, and we intend to do so."

Lawyers for the Trumps did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

During oral arguments on June 6, Donald Trump's lawyer Christopher Kise said James lacked broad authority to "interject" herself into successful, private transactions dating back several years.

James' office countered that the transactions didn't occur in a vacuum, and that letting Trump commit fraud hurts honest participants in banking, insurance and real estate markets.

In the criminal cases, Trump faces a 34-count indictment obtained by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over hush money payments to a porn star, and a 38-count U.S. Department of Justice indictment saying he mishandled classified documents.

The New York civil case is New York v Trump et al, New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, 1st Department, No. 2023-00717.

 

[concha]

Politics aside, there's just no denying this guy is a total piece of shit as a human being.

Hunter Biden privately SETTLES with baby mama over child support payments for their four-year-old daughter: President's son's contributions drop from $20K to $5K a month and daughter cannot use family name