Trump's world....

[SeaShells21]

4 hours ago, FreeBird said:

Rules for thEeee but not for me, 

hanhh?

[FreeBird]

5 minutes ago, SeaShells21 said:

hanhh?

ARIGATO

[DBP66]

The far right is calling for civil war after the FBI raid on Trump's home. Experts say that fight wouldn't look like the last one.

 

 

John Haltiwanger

Sat, August 13, 2022 at 7:00 AM

 

 

 

Supporters of former President Donald Trump gather near his residence at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on August 9, 2022.Giorgio Viera/Getty Images

• Some on the far right have been calling for civil war since an FBI raid on Trump's Florida home.

• Some experts say the warning signs for civil war have been emerging in the US in recent years.

• But they also say that such a conflict would look very different from the Civil War of the 1860s.

In the wake of an FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home, some far-right figures have been spreading violent rhetoric online — including calls for war.

The Republican party has long portrayed itself as the defender of "law and order," but the aftermath of the raid has seen GOP lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene call for defunding the FBI.

Greene has also made references to "civil war" on social media as her Republican colleagues compare the FBI to the Gestapo and depict the raid as the type of thing that only happens in "third world" countries.

Meanwhile, pro-Trump internet channels have seen a spike in talk of civil war since the raid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 People, coming here. 

 

 

Scroll back up to restore default view.

The FBI raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home came at a historically divisive time for the US, one in which millions of voters continue to believe the false notion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

Such erroneous claims were at the heart of what catalyzed the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol last year, and historians and experts on democracy warn that these lies continue to foster the potential for further violence. They also say that if the US did see civil war, it wouldn't look like the first one.

Fiona Hill, who served as the leading Russia expert on the National Security Council during the Trump administration, said in a conversation with Insider last month that the distrust in the electoral process and government institutions fomented by Trump and his GOP allies has created a "recipe for communal violence." Hill warned the US could ultimately "end up in a civil conflict."

The country is at a point in which "trust in the different communities and authorities" has eroded "to such an extent that people just start fighting with each other," Hill said.

But she also underscored that a civil conflict in the present day would be unlikely to look like the American Civil War, an extraordinarily bloody fight between the Union and Confederacy that left an estimated 618,000 to 750,000 Americans dead.

"I don't think we'd end up in the kind of conflict that we had between the states — the Union and the Confederacy — back in the day," Hill said. "But people's sense of the civil and civic ways of resolving disputes are out the window."

Less than a week after the raid on Trump's home, an armed man attempted to break into the FBI field office in Cincinnati. Authorities have not announced a motive but are reportedly investigating whether the man — who was ultimately killed by police — had ties to far right extremism.

The suspected gunman, Ricky Shiffer, appears to have posted calls for war and violence against the FBI on Trump's social media network Truth Social.

"If you don't hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I.," one post read. The account with Shiffer's name repeatedly parroted Trump's election lies, per CNN, and multiple reports also suggest that the suspect may have been at the Capitol on January 6.

'All of the warning signs for civil war have emerged'

 

Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.Jon Cherry/Getty Images

Barbara F. Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego who specializes in political violence, warned in an April op-ed for the New Republic that over the past six years "all of the warning signs for civil war have emerged in the United States, and they have emerged at a surprisingly fast rate."

Walter, who has done extensive research on civil wars, expanded on this in an interview with The Washington Post last month. Like other scholars looking at these issues, Walter said the US isn't heading toward a conflict akin to the fight between the North and South.

"When people think about civil war, they think about the first civil war. And in their mind, that's what a second one would look like. And, of course, that's not the case at all," Walter told the Post. "What we're heading toward is an insurgency, which is a form of a civil war. That is the 21st-century version of a civil war, especially in countries with powerful governments and powerful militaries, which is what the United States is."

Walter went on to say that an insurgency is "more decentralized" and tends to be a fight between multiple groups. "They use unconventional tactics. They target infrastructure. They target civilians. They use domestic terror and guerrilla warfare. Hit-and-run raids and bombs," she said.

Right-wing extremists have been known to look to "The Turner Diaries," a novel that's been referred to as the bible of the far right, for a blueprint on how to take down a powerful government like the US, Walter said. The book, which is revered by white nationalist groups, tells the fictional tale of a civil war against the US government.

"One of the things it says is, Do not engage the U.S. military. You know, avoid it at all costs. Go directly to targets around the country that are difficult to defend and disperse yourselves so it's hard for the government to identify you and infiltrate you and eliminate you entirely," Walter told the Post.

Research shows that terrorists like the Oklahoma City bomber have been inspired by "The Turner Diaries."

During a recent meeting at the White House, a group of historians warned President Joe Biden that the US is facing threats not unlike those the country saw in the pre-Civil War period, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Historian Michael Beschloss, who has made the case that US democracy is in existential danger, was reportedly among the academics who spoke to Biden. Though he's sounding the alarm about the threats America's democracy is facing at present, Beschloss also says that a civil conflict in the US would be unlikely to resemble the devastating war of the 1860s.

Beschloss said in a social media post on Thursday that "if any kind of civil war faces Americans (may God forbid), it is unlikely to be two armies fighting over one paramount issue (slavery), as in 1861-1865, but sporadic, mounting bursts of violence against our federal government as it tries to enforce rule of law."

[Troll]

On 8/11/2022 at 6:52 AM, DBP66 said:

LOL....no you silly Trumpers got played...once again...

 

still at it, eh?

LOL

[DBP66]

26 minutes ago, Troll said:

 

still at it, eh?

LOL

things have only gotten better!...welcome back...stay tuned!.....😉

[Troll]

3 hours ago, DBP66 said:

things have only gotten better!...welcome back...stay tuned!.....😉

What are you drinking now ?  LOL

 

[DBP66]

11 minutes ago, Troll said:

What are you drinking now ?  LOL

 

I drink from the fountain of truth...😉

[Troll]

17 minutes ago, DBP66 said:

I drink from the fountain of truth...😉

 

 

[DBP66]

Trump Demands FBI Give Back Documents He Rightfully Stole

Cristina Cabrera - 47m ago

React

Finders Keepers!

The ex-president took to his fake Twitter app, TRUTH Social, on Sunday to demand that the feds return the White House records he’d stashed away at his Mar-a-Lago resort that the FBI took back in a raid last week:

© Provided by Talking Points Memo(Screenshot: TRUTH Social)

Trump’s likely referring to this Fox News report claiming that some of the documents the FBI took were, in Fox’s terms, “covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege.”

The ex-president’s dumbass request (“By copy of this TRUTH” lol) is almost certainly inspired by Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy, but you gotta love the “Oh great!” opener. Oh bother, the classified records I pilfered that the FBI seized seems to have been privileged and I want it back! Ah jeez!

[DBP66]

Trump's Shifting Explanations Follow a Familiar Playbook

 

FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally Friday, Aug. 5, 2022, in Waukesha, Wis. The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate marked a dramatic and unprecedented escalation of the law enforcement scrutiny of the former president, but the Florida operation is just one part of one investigation related to Trump and his time in office. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

 

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maggie Haberman

Mon, August 15, 2022 at 7:29 AM

 

 

WASHINGTON — First, he said he was “working and cooperating with” government agents who he claimed had inappropriately entered his home. Then, when the government revealed that the FBI, during its search, had recovered nearly a dozen sets of documents that were marked classified, he suggested the agents had planted evidence.

Finally, his aides claimed that he had a “standing order” to declassify documents that left the Oval Office for his residence and that some of the material was protected by attorney-client and executive privilege.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

Those are the ever shifting explanations that former President Donald Trump and his aides have given regarding what FBI agents found last week in a search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

 

Trump and his allies have cast the search as a partisan assault while amplifying conflicting arguments about the handling of sensitive documents and failing to answer a question at the center of the federal investigation: Why was he keeping documents, some still marked classified, at an unsecured Florida resort when officials had sought for a year to retrieve them?

The often contradictory and unsupported defenses perpetuated by Trump and his team since the FBI search follow a familiar playbook of the former president’s. He has used it over decades but most visibly when he was faced with the investigation into whether his campaign in 2016 conspired with Russians and during his first impeachment trial.

In both instances, he claimed victimization and mixed some facts with a blizzard of misleading statements or falsehoods. His lawyers denied he had tied his administration’s withholding of vital military aid to Ukraine to Trump’s desire for investigations into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

When information contradicting that defense emerged in a forthcoming book by Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, Trump’s lawyers switched to insisting that he hadn’t connected the aid to the investigations, but that if he had, it wouldn’t have been an impeachable offense.

Of the multiple investigations Trump currently faces — including a state inquiry in Georgia and two federal grand jury investigations, all related to his efforts to cling to power at the end of his presidency, as well as civil and criminal inquiries in New York related to his company — the federal investigation into his handling of sensitive documents taken from the White House has emerged as one of the most potentially damaging.

A search warrant made public Friday revealed federal agents had recovered top secret documents when they searched Trump’s Florida residence earlier in the week as part of an investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act and other laws.

Among the 11 sets of documents taken were some marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — shorthand for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” according to an inventory of the materials seized in the search. Those types of documents are meant to be viewed only in secure facilities. The inventory of documents included other material, some described as “confidential.”

The stunning revelation made clear the gravity of the Justice Department’s inquiry months after the National Archives and Records Administration said it had discovered classified information in documents that Trump had held onto after leaving office.

“What he doesn’t have the right to do is possess the documents; they are not his,” said Jason Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives for more than a decade. “There should be no presidential records at Mar-a-Lago, whether they are classified or unclassified or subject to executive privilege or subject to attorney-client privilege.”

Documents covered by executive privilege are meant to be kept within the government.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Trump used Hillary Rodham Clinton’s mishandling of classified material, as seen in a Justice Department investigation into her email practices in 2015 and 2016, as political fodder during his first campaign. He is considering another national campaign for 2024, and questions about whether he mishandled the nation’s secrets could be problematic for him, even absent an investigation.

After officials with the National Archives tried for several months to retrieve material from Trump, he turned over 15 boxes of documents in January. The next month, the National Archives confirmed the discovery of the classified information and referred the matter to the Justice Department.

Over the following months, officials came to learn that Trump still had additional material at Mar-a-Lago that some of his advisers urged him to hand over.

Trump described the handover of the 15 boxes as “an ordinary and routine process.” But administrations have been required to turn over documents to the National Archives before leaving office for more than 40 years, as part of the Presidential Records Act that was created in response to President Richard Nixon’s attempt to take his documents and recordings with him after resigning in disgrace.

Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, subsequently justified the handling of the documents by saying Trump had declassified them before leaving office — a claim echoed by Trump last week.

In an appearance on Fox News on Friday night, right-wing writer John Solomon, one of Trump’s representatives for interacting with the National Archives, read a statement from the former president’s office asserting Trump had a “standing order” during his presidency that “documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.”

That claim would not resolve the investigation. Two of the laws referred to in the search warrant executed last week criminalize the taking or concealment of government records, regardless of whether they had anything to do with national security. And laws against taking material with restricted national security information are not dependent on whether the material is technically classified.

Bolton, who served as Trump’s third national security adviser over 17 months, said he had never heard of the standing order that Trump’s office claimed to have in place. It is, he said, “almost certainly a lie.”

“I was never briefed on any such order, procedure, policy when I came in,” Bolton said, adding he had never been told of it while he was working there and had never heard of such a thing after. “If he were to say something like that, you would have to memorialize that, so that people would know it existed,” he said.

What’s more, he pointed out, secure facilities for viewing sensitive material were constructed at Trump’s clubs in Florida and New Jersey, where he often spent weekends as president, meaning that the documents wouldn’t need to be declassified. And if they were declassified, Bolton said, they would be considered subject to public-record requests.

He added: “When somebody begins to concoct lies like this, it shows a real level of desperation.”

The claim that the documents held in the Florida residence were declassified also undercut an assertion one of Trump’s lawyers made in June. In a written declaration, the lawyer’s team said all material marked as classified and stored at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government.

Last week, Trump again accused the Justice Department of acting as a tool for his political opponents, a familiar tactic for a former president who had tried repeatedly to politicize the department during his four years in office. Describing the FBI as corrupt, Trump suggested that its agents had planted incriminating material at Mar-a-Lago during the search, and he demanded they return documents that he said were protected by executive privilege.

Such accusations of political motivation prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to defend the bureau’s agents during brief remarks last week. Trump’s unverified accusations also came as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security last week issued an intelligence bulletin that warned of an increase in threats against federal law enforcement after the search of Mar-a-Lago, including general calls for a “civil war” or “armed rebellion.”

[Troll]

24 minutes ago, DBP66 said:

Trump

 

[DBP66]

25 minutes ago, Troll said:

 

Denzel fan??...LOL....🤡

[DBP66]

Judge: Sen. Graham must testify in Georgia election probe

KATE BRUMBACK

Mon, August 15, 2022 at 8:58 AM

 

 

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Monday said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws while trying to overturn his narrow 2020 general election loss in the state.

Attorneys for Graham, R-S.C., had argued that his position as a U.S. senator provided him immunity from having to appear before the investigative panel and asked the judge to quash his subpoena. But U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May wrote in an order Monday that immunities related to his role as a senator do not protect him from having to testify. Graham's subpoena instructs him to appear before the special grand jury on Aug. 23, but his office said Monday he plans to appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year, and a special grand jury with subpoena power was seated at her request this year. Last month she filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates.

Prosecutors have indicated they want to ask Graham about phone calls they say he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks following Trump's election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Graham had argued that a provision of the Constitution provides absolute protection against a senator being questioned about legislative acts. But the judge found there are “considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” that fall outside that provision’s scope. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.

Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances necessary to compel testimony from a high-ranking official. But the judge disagreed, finding that Willis has shown “extraordinary circumstances and a special need” for Graham’s testimony on issues related to an alleged attempt to influence or disrupt the election in Georgia.

May, the judge, last month rejected a similar attempt by U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., to avoid testifying before the special grand jury. Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani had argued he couldn't travel to Atlanta to testify because of health issues, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who's overseeing the special grand jury, instructed him to appear on Wednesday.

Graham's office said in a statement Monday that the senator disagrees with the judge's interpretation of the provision of the Constitution he believes protects him from being questioned by a state official. His lawyers have said that he was making inquiries that were clearly part of his legislative duties, related to certification of the vote and to the proposal of election-related legislation.

But the judge wrote that that ignores "the fact that individuals on the calls have publicly suggested that Senator Graham was not simply engaged in legislative factfinding but was instead suggesting or implying that Georgia election officials change their processes or otherwise potentially alter the state’s results.”

In calls made shortly after the 2020 general election, Graham “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition.

Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote.

Republican and Democratic state election officials across the country, courts and even Trump's attorney general found there was no evidence of any voter fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of his 2020 presidential election loss.

Trump-allied lawmakers were planning to challenge the tallies from several battleground states when Congress convened on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the results under the Electoral Count Act, but after the Capitol attack that day Georgia’s tally was never contested.

Willis has confirmed that the investigation’s scope includes a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Raffensperger during which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in Georgia.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has described his call to Raffensperger as “perfect.”

[DBP66]

Trump Says The FBI Took His Passports In Its Mar-A-Lago Search

Jennifer Bendery

Mon, August 15, 2022 at 2:35 PM·2 min read

 

 

In this article:

 

President Donald Trump said Monday that FBI investigators took his passports when they raided his Florida home last week in search of classified documents that he may have held onto illegally after leaving office.

“In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”

 

Former President Donald Trump said the FBI took his passports when it raided his Mar-a-Lago property. (Photo: Truth Social)

Former President Donald Trump said the FBI took his passports when it raided his Mar-a-Lago property. (Photo: Truth Social)

It’s not clear why the FBI may have taken his passports or why he apparently has three of them. Trump said one was expired; it’s possible that he has a regular non-expired passport in addition to a second special issuance passport as a former U.S. president.

Trump has loudly condemned the FBI ever since the bureau executed a search warrant to comb his Mar-a-Lago property last Monday. His criticisms incited his extremist base of supporters to threaten and attack FBI officials ― and resulted in top Republicans in Congress instigating violence and mocking the Justice Department.

The FBI can’t reveal many details about its search since it is part of an ongoing investigation, but agents were reportedly searching for highly sensitive documents related to nuclear weapons. A warrant released Friday showed that Trump is under investigation for possibly violating the Espionage Act, among other potential crimes. Their probe is also entirely legal, as a federal judge signed off on a search warrant before the raid took place.

For all his accusations of the FBI investigating him for political reasons, Trump has not mentioned that FBI director Christopher Wray is a Republican, that he appointed Wray to his post and that Senate Republicans unanimously voted to confirm him.

An FBI spokesperson declined to confirm whether Trump’s passports were taken, and if so, why.

[Bormio]

Passports being taken an “accident”.  God, the FBI can’t even lie well.  Probably some hotshot agent thought he’d be a smart ass.  A simple thing like that shows how rotten that agency is to the core.  And one of the worst things was what Comey did to Hillary.

[DBP66]

Trump's angry words spur warnings of real violence

DAVID KLEPPER

Tue, August 16, 2022 at 4:53 PM

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man armed with an AR-15 dies in a shootout after trying to breach FBI offices in Cincinnati. A Pennsylvania man is arrested after he posts death threats against agents on social media. In cyberspace, calls for armed uprisings and civil war grow stronger.

This could be just the beginning, federal authorities and private extremism monitors warn. A growing number of ardent Donald Trump supporters seem ready to strike back against the FBI or others who they believe go too far in investigating the former president.

Law enforcement officials across the country are warning and being warned about an increase in threats and the potential for violent attacks on federal agents or buildings in the wake of the FBI’s search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

Experts who study radicalization and online disinformation — such as Trump's aggressive false claims about a stolen election — note that the recent increase was sparked by a legal search of Trump's Florida home. What might happen in the event of arrests or indictments?

“When messaging reaches a certain pitch, things start to happen in the real world,” said former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer, a onetime federal prosecutor who now directs the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. “And when people in positions of power and public trust start to echo extremist rhetoric, it’s even more likely that we’re going to see real-world consequences.”

Amplified by right-wing media, angry claims by Trump and his allies about the search are fanning the flames of his supporters' distrust of the FBI — though it's led by a Trump appointee — and the federal government in general. And at least a few of Trump's supporters now appear to be acting on his anger.

Last week a man wearing body armor and armed with an assault rifle and a nail gun tried to breach the FBI's Cincinnati office. He was later shot and killed by police after exchanging fire with officers. Authorities say they believe the man had posted dark messages on Truth Social, Trump's online platform, including one that said federal agents should be killed on sight.

Another man drove his car into a U.S. Capitol barricade Sunday and began firing gunshots into the air before he fatally shot himself.

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of a Pennsylvania man who had made repeated threats on the lives on FBI agents on Gab, a platform popular with Trump supporters.

“You’ve declared war on us and now it’s open season on YOU,” he wrote in one post shared by authorities.

A joint intelligence bulletin from the FBI and Homeland Security warns about an increase in violent online threats targeting federal officials and government facilities. Those include “a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI headquarters,” along with calls for “civil war” and “rebellion,” according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press.

Mentions of “civil war” on platforms including Facebook and Twitter increased tenfold in the hours immediately after last week's search of Mar-a-Lago, according to an analysis by Zignal Labs, a firm that analyzes social media content.

Many of the posts contained baseless claims suggesting President Joe Biden ordered the FBI to search Trump's home, or that the FBI planted evidence to incriminate Trump.

“Biden sending the FBI to raid a former President, Mr. Donald Trump’s home is a declaration of WAR against him and his supporters," wrote one poster on the Telegram platform.

The intelligence bulletin also noted federal law enforcement officials have identified multiple threats against government officials involved in the Mar-a-Lago search, including calls to kill the magistrate judge who signed the search warrant.

The names and home addresses of FBI agents and other officials have been posted online, along with references to family members who could be additional targets, according to the intelligence documents.

The threats are ominously similar to the online rhetoric that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, says Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Jan. 6 committee and the Committee on Homeland Security.

“These threats of violence and even civil war – coming predominantly from right-wing extremists online – are not only un-American but are a threat to our democracy and the rule of law,” Thompson said.

The search of Trump's residence was executed based on a lawfully obtained warrant signed by a judge. But that's beside the point for Trump and his allies.

“This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country," Trump wrote Monday in a post on his Truth Social. "Third World!”

Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona equated the investigation with “tyranny” and tweeted, “We must destroy the FBI.”

Another Arizona congressman, Republican Andy Biggs, sought to place some blame on the individual agents who executed the search. “This looked more like something you would see in the former Soviet Union," Biggs said this week. "Why did all those agents willfully go along?”

Republican Sen. John Thune told reporters in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Tuesday that though the Justice Department has shown it followed legal protocols in obtaining the search warrant, its reticence about the Trump investigation has caused people to question law enforcement's motives.

“There’s just a lot of unanswered questions that, left to a vacuum, create lots of suspicions among the American people, and the one thing you don’t want is people not trusting law enforcement," Thune said.

Other Republicans have tried to temper the rhetoric, as Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson did during an appearance over the weekend on CNN. “We need to pull back on casting judgment on them,” Hutchinson said of the agents. ”The FBI is simply carrying out their responsibilities under the law.”

But many in the conservative media haven't heeded that advice.

“The raid on Mar-a-Lago was not an act of law enforcement, it was the opposite of that,” Tucker Carlson said on his Fox News show Monday night. “It was an attack on the rule of law.”

Fox also shared a doctored photo that falsely depicted the judge who signed the warrant receiving a foot massage from Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell was sentenced in June to 20 years for helping her boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein abuse underage girls. The original photo was not of the judge but of Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial. Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade later said the doctored image was shared as a joke.

The roots of Republican anger at the FBI go back to the 2016 election and investigations of the Trump campaign's alleged ties with Russia and of Hillary Clinton's handling of classified material in a private email account. That fury has only increased as new investigations focus on Trump, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified material since leaving office.

Baseless claims that the FBI secretly framed Trump supporters for their violent actions on Jan. 6 also stoked the ire of conservative social media users.

“Well guys you started this civil war," wrote one poster on Gab “And others are going to sure end it for you.”

[DBP66]

Trump is struggling to find good lawyers who are still willing to represent him: WaPo report

Cheryl Teh

Wed, August 17, 2022 at 3:51 AM

 

 

• Donald Trump is struggling to find lawyers willing to represent him, per a Washington Post report.

• The Post spoke to several lawyers, some of whom described Trump as an impossible client.

• Others said they feared they would not get paid after representing him.

Former President Donald Trump is having trouble finding a good lawyer to represent him, per a new report from The Washington Post.

The Post spoke to several lawyers who commented under the condition of anonymity on Trump's struggle to find seasoned counsel to defend him. "Everyone is saying no," a Republican lawyer told The Post, weighing in on how lawyers are turning down the Trump camp's cases.

Also speaking under anonymity, another lawyer spoke about the difficulties faced when representing Trump. They said that during his presidency, Trump would tweet about the Mueller probe against his legal team's advice. Several other people also told The Post that Trump was an impossible client, and worried if they would be compensated for their work.

"In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit because they could advertise off it. Today it's not the same," said Michael Cohen, a former Trump lawyer who has since become a fierce critic of the former president.

"He's also a very difficult client in that he's always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally," Cohen added.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told The Post that the Trump legal team includes individuals like Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran, who have "decades of prosecutorial experience and have litigated some of the most complex cases in American history."

"President Trump is represented by some of the strongest attorneys in the country, and any suggestion otherwise is only driven by envy," Budowich said.

Trump is currently represented by Trusty and Corcoran — as well as Alina Habba, a New Jersey parking garage lawyer, and former One America News anchor Christina Bobb.

Trump is facing several major legal challenges this year, including an investigation in New York into whether the Trump Organization violated banking, insurance, and tax laws and whether it engaged in financial fraud. Trump pleaded the fifth more than 440 times during his deposition in the case.

Trump could also be facing potential criminal charges following an investigation from the Department of Justice into whether he mishandled confidential documents. While executing a search warrant on Trump's Mar-a-Lago last Monday, the FBI removed 11 sets of classified documents — some of which were marked "top secret" and concerned nuclear weapons. According to the warrant, the Justice Department is looking into whether Trump broke three federal laws, including the Espionage Act.

A representative at Trump's post-presidential press office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

[DBP66]

Trump resisted requests to return stash of documents at Mar-a-Lago, saying 'it's not theirs, it's mine,' NYT reports

Mia Jankowicz

Wed, August 17, 2022 at 7:00 AM

 

 

• Trump pushed back on requests to return documents, calling them "mine", several sources told NYT.

• A report said Trump's lawyers tried in vain to have them returned. Many were later seized by the FBI.

Under US law, all White House records belong to the government, not the person who was president.

Former President Donald Trump railed against attempts by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to retrieve a trove of documents, saying "it's not theirs, it's mine," according to The New York Times.

That is the response that several advisors told the paper that Trump gave to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin.

The two men were given the job of dealing with NARA in the chaotic closing weeks of Trump's presidency.

The Times, citing unnamed sources, described their interactions with Trump as the FBI investigated what became of the information.

Trump ended up taking several dozen boxes with him when he left the White House, moving them to his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.

Fifteen boxes were returned in January 2022, NARA confirmed in a statement in February.

Further materials on June 3 after the Justice Department issued a subpoena, per The Times, while more were taken on August 8 when the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.

The Times' reported claim suggests Trump considers the materials to be his personal property.

In fact, all documents accrued by a US president in the course of his work belong to the government itself under the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

The Times report added to a series of reports and rumors around Trump's attitude to presidential documents, which ranges from careless to shrewd. Trump has variously been reported to have torn up, burned, flushed, and even eaten documents — some of them sensitive.

In response to the report, published in The Times, that Trump flushed documents away, he said in a statement that he had been advised he was "under no obligation" to preserve them.

This is contrary to the Presidential Records Act, which requires presidents to preserve such materials.

A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

[DBP66]

Trump Org. CFO to plead guilty, testify against company

MICHAEL R. SISAK

Wed, August 17, 2022 at 7:32 PM

 

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s chief financial officer is expected to plead guilty to tax violations Thursday in a deal that would require him to testify about illicit business practices at the former president's company, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Allen Weisselberg is charged with taking more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation from the Trump Organization over several years, including untaxed perks like rent, car payments and school tuition.

The plea deal would require Weisselberg to speak in court Thursday about the company's role in the alleged compensation arrangement and possibly serve as a witness when the Trump Organization goes on trial in October on related charges, the people said.

The two people were not authorized to speak publicly about the case and did so on condition of anonymity.

Weisselberg, 75, is likely to receive a sentence of five months in jail, to be served at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island complex, and he could be required to pay about $2 million in restitution, including taxes, penalties and interest, the people said. If that punishment holds, Weisselberg would be eligible for release after about 100 days.

Messages seeking comment were left with the Manhattan district attorney’s office and lawyers for Weisselberg and the Trump Organization.

Weisselberg is the only person to face criminal charges so far in the Manhattan district attorney's long-running investigation of the company's business practices.

Seen as one of Trump's most loyal business associates, Weisselberg was arrested in July 2021. His lawyers have argued the Democrat-led district attorney’s office was punishing him because he wouldn’t offer information that would damage Trump.

The district attorney has also been investigating whether Trump or his company lied to banks or the government about the value of its properties to obtain loans or reduce tax bills.

Former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who started the investigation, last year directed his deputies to present evidence to a grand jury and seek an indictment of Trump, according to former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who previously led the probe.

But after Vance left office, his successor, Alvin Bragg, allowed the grand jury to disband without charges. Both prosecutors are Democrats. Bragg has said the investigation is continuing.

The Trump Organization is not involved in Weisselberg's expected guilty plea Thursday and is scheduled to be tried in the alleged compensation scheme in October.

Prosecutors alleged that the company gave untaxed fringe benefits to senior executives, including Weisselberg, for 15 years. Weisselberg alone was accused of defrauding the federal government, state and city out of more than $900,000 in unpaid taxes and undeserved tax refunds.

Under state law, punishment for the most serious charge against Weisselberg, grand larceny, could carry a penalty as high as 15 years in prison. But the charge carries no mandatory minimum, and most first-time offenders in tax-related cases never end up behind bars.

The tax fraud charges against the Trump Organization are punishable by a fine of double the amount of unpaid taxes, or $250,000, whichever is larger.

Trump has not been charged in the criminal probe. The Republican has decried the New York investigations as a “political witch hunt,” has said his company’s actions were standard practice in the real estate business and in no way a crime.

Last week, Trump sat for a deposition in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ parallel civil investigation into allegations Trump’s company misled lenders and tax authorities about asset values. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times.

[Slotback Right]

[OldTerrapin]

hmmm Interesting.. written in 1971 story taking place in 1999..

 

[OldTerrapin]

 

Who ya got in the Cee dubya two?

 

 

 

 

 

[Wildcat Will]

2 hours ago, Slotback Right said:

Love the originality 

[concha]

 

And down goes the eunuch!!!!

 

 CNN's woke purge begins! Media 'hall monitor' Brian Stelter is OUT as new boss Chris Licht cleans house ... days after legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin left. So is Don Lemon next?

 

[DBP66]

Another Trump Mystery: Why Did He Resist Returning the Government's Documents?

Maggie Haberman

Thu, August 18, 2022 at 8:06 AM

 

 

For four years, former President Donald Trump treated the federal government and the political apparatus operating in his name as an extension of his private real estate company.

It all belonged to him, he felt, melded together into a Trump brand that he had been nurturing for decades.

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“My generals,” he repeatedly said of the active-duty and retired military leaders who filled his government. “My money,” he often called the cash he raised through his campaign or for the Republican National Committee. “My Kevin,” he said of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader.

And White House documents?

“They’re mine,” three of Trump’s advisers said that he stated repeatedly when he was urged to return boxes of documents, some of them highly classified, that the National Archives sought after Trump took them with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, in January 2021. A nearly 18-month back-and-forth between the government and Trump ended in an extraordinary FBI search for the documents at Mar-a-Lago last week.

The question, as with so much else around Trump, is why? Why did he insist on refusing to turn over government papers that by law did not belong to him, igniting another legal conflagration? As with so much else related to Trump, there is not one easy answer.

Here are the main possibilities.

Exciting documents

Trump, a pack rat who for decades showed off knickknacks in his overstuffed Trump Tower office — including a giant shoe that once belonged to basketball player Shaquille O’Neal — treated the nation’s secrets as similar trinkets to brandish. White House aides described how excited he was to show off all the material he had access to, including letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which he routinely waved at visitors, alarming his advisers.

Some of those letters were among the trove that Trump had with him at Mar-a-Lago.

The former president’s thrills over the intelligence started early. In May 2017, Trump blurted out classified intelligence provided by Israel during a meeting with two high-level Russian government officials, horrifying his national security team.

Two years later, when his intelligence briefers showed him a sophisticated and sensitive photo of a failed Iranian rocket launch, Trump was gleeful. “I want to tweet this,” he told the CIA director, the national security adviser and the director of national intelligence, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event.

Officials tried to stop him, but Trump went ahead and shared the photo with what were then his 63 million Twitter followers.

‘L’état, c’est moi’

Efforts intended in previous administrations to prevent conflicts of interest in the presidency were viewed derisively by Trump, who never divested from his company and kept an eye on his properties, even as he said publicly he had turned over all management to his sons.

Trump embodied Louis XIV’s phrase “L’état, c’est moi,” or “I am the state,” his own advisers and several outside observers said.

“From my own experiences with him, which is bolstered by those around him who are speaking in his defense, his actions seem to fit the pattern that as ‘king,’ he and the state are one and the same,” said Mark S. Zaid, a lawyer who frequently handles cases related to national security and security clearances, including during the Trump presidency. “He seems to honestly believe that everything he touches belongs to him, and that includes government documents that might be classified.”

Trump rarely used a Twitter handle that was assigned to the president, @POTUS, and instead preferred to have his digital director, Dan Scavino, promote the one in Trump’s own name.

The former president also regularly rejected any attempts to try to enforce outside rules, regulations or norms on the White House, and maintained that his close advisers had absolute immunity from some congressional subpoenas.

“Presidents are not kings,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote as a federal court judge in Washington in 2019, when over White House objections she ordered Donald McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel, to testify about what House Democrats said was a pattern of presidential obstruction of justice. She added, “They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.”

Ripping up paper

Although Trump White House officials were warned about the proper handling of sensitive material, aides said Trump had little interest in the security of government documents or protocols to keep them protected.

Early on, Trump became known among his staff as a hoarder who threw all manner of paper — sensitive material, news clips and various other items — into cardboard boxes that a valet or other personal aide would cart around with him wherever he went.

Trump repeatedly had material sent up to the White House residence, and it was not always clear what happened to it. He sometimes asked to keep material after his intelligence briefings, but aides said he was so uninterested in the paperwork during the briefings themselves that they never understood what he wanted it for.

He also had a habit of ripping up paper, from routine documents to classified material, and leaving the pieces strewn around the floor or in a trash can. Officials would have to rummage through the shreds and tape them back together to recreate the documents in order to store them as required under the Presidential Records Act.

On some occasions, Trump would rip up documents — some with his handwriting on them — and throw the pieces in a toilet, which occasionally clogged the pipes in the White House. He did the same thing on at least two foreign trips, former officials said.

Outside the White House, secure rooms where Trump could review sensitive documents were set up at both Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, although he did not always use them.

Trump was meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago in early 2017, for example, when North Korea launched a missile test. Rather than retreating to a secure room, Trump and his advisers reviewed security documents in the open air on the patio, using the flashlight from an iPhone. Paying members and their guests looked on at the show, taking photos and posting them on social media.

“No other president has lived in a hotel,” said John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser.

Over time, Trump bristled against the guardrails people tried placing on him, particularly his second White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who tried to impose a more rigid system for classified information.

Personal information

Trump, Bolton said, never told him he planned to take a document and use it for something beyond its value as a memento.

It was “sort of whatever he wants to grab for whatever reason,” Bolton said. “He may not even fully appreciate” precisely why he did certain things.

But officials worried, particularly about the documents falling into the wrong hands.

Other advisers wondered if Trump kept some documents because they contained details about people he knew.

Among the items that presidents are given on overseas trips are biographies of foreign leaders, a former administration official said. One version is unclassified and fairly routine. But the other is classified and can contain numerous personal details.

One of the files the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago was marked “info re: President of France,” about Emmanuel Macron.