Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

~~~

General John Kelly: "He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law."

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

PRIVATE CITIZEN FLORIDA GUY GETS CAUGHT WITH TOP SECRET DOCS THAT BELONG TO US GOVERNMENT -- GOES ON A RANT -- PROVES HE'S AN UNSTABLE KOOK!

 












This is from Fox!: 

 Steve Doocy: “Keep in mind, according to the filing, the agents found three classified documents in Donald Trump’s desks.  What were they doing in the desk?!”



This:

DOJ in new filing last night regarding Mar-a-Lago search: 

Luke Broadwater, NYTimes: “The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”


Luke Broadwater, NYTimes Congressional correspondent:


“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the “diligent search” that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made…”

A key moment: "The former President’s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained"

Another important point from the filing: The documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago were so sensitive that "even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents."









Donald Trump, his attorneys and maybe others, conspired to hide documents that did not belong to them. That alone is illegal. The fact that they were top secret puts the entire nation that they all swore to protect at risk. 

Trump is a criminal and a danger to our country. What verbal and mental gymnastics are his co-conspirators in the Trumpblican Party and on FAUX NOOZ going to go through now? 

Lindsay Graham said that if Trump is indicted there will be riots in the streets. Then so be it. As all those so called “patriots” have said many times. Freedom isn’t free.

If these apparent criminal offenses are not prosecuted as they would be for any citizen, then Trump will have succeeded in damaging America's justice system. 

ETTD!



LOL!


Donald Trump wants to know why people are so mean. I want to know why people who lead an armed Insurrection to overthrow the United States Government then steal Classified Top Secret Documents are not behind bars.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Lindsey Graham: "Nice country you have here. Shame if something happened to it if you administer justice where justice is due."

 

Senator Graham threatening America if Trump is brought to justice should he be indicted and convicted of crimes (implying that Trump is above the law):


Graham: “If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham on Fox News, there will be “riots in the streets.” 




Graham compared what happened to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton with what could happen to Trump. But there is no "bothsiderism" in this case:


"Clinton was not charged because the facts did not merit it. We don’t yet know whether Trump will be criminally charged. But if the Justice Department decides in this case that the facts do merit charges — which of course should be the foundation of any determination to charge — the disparity in charging decisions cannot by itself constitute unequal treatment."

[skip]


"...there’s a more pernicious danger here that shouldn’t escape notice. Underlying Graham’s threat is another attack on the rule of law, one that more Trump propagandists will resort to when their man’s legal perils deepen. It’s an effort to discredit the idea that the law can be applied to the former president at all."


[skip]



"...in both cases, the facts would be dictating the outcome. That might seem obvious on its face. But it’s precisely the point that Trump and propagandists such as Graham want to obfuscate. 

 Let’s be clear: Their argument, effectively, is that equal treatment constitutes refraining from prosecuting Trump regardless of whether investigators conclude that the facts add up to evidence of crimes that prosecutors believe would sustain a conviction!"




My understanding of this false bothsiderism claim: 

I believe the Clinton and Trump cases are entirely different. 

For one thing, Clinton turned over all her devices voluntarily; there was no need for a search warrant. 

For another, the laws governing the records Clinton and Trump were dealing with were different. 

Clinton was dealing with Federal records, covered by the Federal Records Act. Very few are permanent; most must be retained only as long as necessary to serve their legal purpose, as prescribed by official records schedules. 


Trump is dealing with Presidential Records, covered by the Presidential Records Act. All of these are permanent, and belong to the American people, under the auspices of the National Archives. 



"... there are at least four unique aspects to Trump and his administration’s apparent PRA violations.

First, the purported violations are more brazen. Previous administrations sought to wage the PRA battle through implementation guidelines with suspect classifications of what counted as a “Presidential record,” as well as through decision-making about whether to create a record in the first instance. The Trump administration, in contrast, issued facially valid (albeit skeletal) PRA implementing guidelines but appears to have proceeded to violate those guidelines flagrantly and routinely. In addition to Trump’s shredding habits, ample evidence suggests that Trump officials used messaging services with automatic message-deleting apps to communicate, as well as personal email accounts. There have been other instances of individual officials violating the federal records laws in one-off heists, but nothing quite like the reportedly routine and open violations of the PRA by the president himself.

Second, and relatedly, Trump and his aides were warned about their violations of the PRA early on in his administration. The Washington Post reports that “[a] former senior administration official said Trump was warned about the records act by McGahn, as well as his first two chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John F. Kelly, who lamented to allies that Trump would ‘rip up everything,’ according to a person who heard his comments. Passantino also warned other aides about preserving documents.” But Trump and his aides continued to destroy records in spite of those warnings.

Third, Trump’s destruction of presidential records is part and parcel of a modus operandi that he has apparently adhered to for decades to avoid transparency and accountability. Trump has long eschewed email use, reportedly for fear of being hacked and, more importantly, “to shield himself from lawsuits.” He has also championed the use of non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements to prevent individuals with knowledge of his affairs from coming forward, and continued to do so while in office. (In the interests of transparency, the authors note that their organization, Protect Democracy, is representing former Trump campaign staffer Jessica Denson in an ongoing class-action challenge to the campaign’s non-disclosure agreement.) Most recently, former President Trump has (unsuccessfully) attempted to invoke executive privilege to try to shield his administration’s records from the Jan. 6 select committee. As much as Trump purports to value free speech (and especially his own), he has long taken draconian measures to silence perceived enemies and to prevent the public from ever learning facts that do not comport with his narrative.

Fourth, Trump is the only president of the United States to have condoned an insurrection that unfolded while he was in office. As a federal district court observed in denying President Trump’s attempt to prevent the Jan. 6 committee from obtaining his records, “discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the January 6 attack is a matter of unsurpassed public importance.” His apparent willful destruction of presidential records critical to that inquiry may exacerbate his damage to the rule of law in this country. 

Monday, August 29, 2022

Lord Dampnut is in Deep, Deep Trouble


UPDATE:


“Boxes of documents even came with Trump on foreign travel, following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries considered foreign adversaries of the United States.”  Uh-oh. Alarm bells! Shades of his Oval Office mtg w/ Lavrov and Kislyak!



Brookings Institution scholar Norman Ornstein points out that we quickly learned from the redacted affidavit that there was no lock on Trump’s storage area. 

Beyond that, Ornstein says, “There is no revelation here beyond what we knew — which is just devastating to Trump.” 

The former president had “documents, including the most sensitive national security secrets, handled in a slapdash fashion, kept in multiple unsecured locations, intermixed with photos and family stuff.” 

Ornstein observes the plethora of “lies about what had and had not been returned [and] laughable assertions about Trump’s ability to declassify unilaterally.” 

He concludes, “It reinforces how dangerous Trump is to the nation, and that is without any information yet about what malign reasons he had for grabbing these documents.”

vs. a Trump cultist blog whining:

Mar-A-Lago Raid………..


So if I was as corrupt as Biden’s White House, DOJ, and the FBI are, and I had Midterms coming and a presidential election down the line,  I’d do this:

I’d raid Trump’s private home with little reason stated for doing so, but let hints out like “Nuclear code,””highly classified information,” etc etc,  as the reason for the raid….terms that really shake people up.

Then I’d mention the affidavit, get it released, and redact most of it before releasing it, not having to disclose any truth at all behind what I’ve done.    Just redact most of it, let people believe there are words like NUCLEAR CODE and HIGHLY CLASSIFIED and even more behind those black redact stripes, and other things which should bother the average American enough that voting for Republicans OR the former president would be out of the question.

 

 
Why do we read Trump cultist blogs? Because that's how we know what they're thinking and what their reasons are for continuing to support him. 

The above comment shows us that they slavishly support Trump and that they have zero evidence for what was posted on their blog. It's all weak, paranoid speculation and pathetic whining because Trump is in deep, deep trouble, and they just can't bring themselves to believe what a corrupt and colossal disaster he is for America. 

They make up stories to shield themselves from the truth. Because THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH about Trump.


1)   There were a LOT of documents 

Of the 15 boxes Trump staffers returned to government possession in January, 14 contained super-secret information. “A preliminary triage of the documents with classification markings revealed the following approximate numbers: 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET.” 

 2)   The claim of declassification is evidence against Trump It is telling that the government wants to highlight the argument from Trump’s team, raised in particular by Kash Patel, that Trump had a standing order to declassify the materials. (“FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 asked DOJ to consider a few ‘principles,’ which include FPOTUS COUNSEL 1′s claim that a President has absolute authority to declassify documents.” This is nonsense both factually and legally. It is also irrelevant to the retention of any government documents. There are no such principles that would help Trump here. 

 3)   We don’t know how the government knew Trump still had more documents This portion of the affidavit is redacted, a necessary (and expected) measure to protect the investigation and identity of witnesses. If the Trump brain trust thought they were going to get the name of a “mole,” they really are living in fantasy land. 

 4)   Trump had no right to keep top-secret documents in an unsecured location 

 5)   We don’t know what actions might have violated the obstruction statute (Section 1519) and the mutilation statute (Section 2071) The latter subjects to criminal punishment “Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing ...”). We know from news reports that certain documents were torn. But we do not know whether Trump attempted to destroy or alter other documents. (His handwriting was found on some.) The New York Times previously reported that subpoenaed surveillance “footage showed that, after one instance in which Justice Department officials were in contact with Mr. Trump’s team, boxes were moved in and out of the room.”


Saturday, August 27, 2022

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

  


Fred and Rita dance to Led Zeppelin: