Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Nicolle Wallace sounds the alarm: 'Scariest thing I've heard on this program in a long time'

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace confessed that one of the stories she was covering was "the scariest thing I’ve heard on this program in a long time."

In a recent report by Washington Post reporter Aaron Davis, it was revealed that allies of former President Donald Trump copied files from Georgia's electronic voting systems and then shared them with Trump's lawyers and other election deniers.

Wallace asked if that meant that people like Sidney Powell had her hands on such data. Davis said that they've made inquiries about whether Powell is one of those who has the data, but they haven't heard back yet.

"One interesting thing that you can tell, because of the detail of this particular computer data, is that while it was being taken from Georgia and used and shared among people in Georgia, it was also being shared among, say, Doug Kogan with the Cyber Ninjas working in the Arizona case and being shared with lawyers working on the Antrim, Michigan case," David explained. "So, there was multistate sharing of this data by attorneys who were trying to maintain some kind of arm's length from the Trump campaign itself and make it appear as if these were individual efforts."

He said that it's clear that all of it was being organized by the same pro-Trump sources.

"There are contracts that show — signed by Sidney Powell, signed by Jesse Banal, attorney and outside counsel for the Trump campaign, authorizing this forensic work, and one of the almost laughable parts of the contracts that have turned up now is that the computer forensics firm said, 'We trust that all of this information and stuff is stuff that you're licensed to use,'" Davis cited.

It turns out the info they were evaluating and doing forensic work on belonged to the government.

So, "it is a national issue," Davis continued. "And to your lead-in, you're right. So much of the post-2020 time period was people trying to look back and say, 'what happened before,' and 'was there problems about how the election was taking place?' Here, we're starting years before the next presidential election with a certain segment of the population bent on proving that there are problems with this software, and now have it. And we don't know how they could untangle and use it to manipulate or sabotage future elections."

"That is the scariest thing I've heard said on this program in a long time," Wallace confessed. She then turned to former CIA officer Tracy Walder and asked, "what do you need Russian election meddlers for when you have Sidney Powell?"

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump advisors fear the reason he refused to hand over classified documents: report

Donald Trump's own advisors were worried his refusal to hand over classified documents was essentially "daring" the FBI to come after him.

That dynamic was reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday under the headline, "FBI's Mar-a-Lago search followed months of resistance, delay by Trump."

"Donald Trump’s lawyers received ominous news in an April 12 email from the National Archives: The FBI would soon examine sensitive documents the former president had reluctantly returned to the government from his Florida club three months earlier," the newspaper reported. "The communication, which has been reviewed by The Washington Post, was a crucial pivot point in the probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents that led to the dramatic search of his Mar-a-Lago Club earlier this month."

Trump has reportedly displayed "anxiety" over his precarious legal position.

"In a legal filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers insisted that he had been cooperating with Justice Department requests," the newspaper reported. "In fact, however, the narrative they laid out, as well as other documents and interviews, show that Trump ignored multiple opportunities to quietly resolve the FBI concerns by handing over all classified material in his possession — including a grand jury subpoena that Trump’s team accepted May 11. Again and again, he reacted with a familiar mix of obstinance and outrage, causing some in his orbit to fear he was essentially daring the FBI to come after him."

The newspaper described the situation before the search warrant as a "tortured standoff."

Read the full report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/23/trump-records-mar-a-lago-fbi/



‘Something is different’ as Trump faces legal battle outside of presidency: NYT



Donald Trump is facing a precarious legal situation as his classified document scandal continues to look worse with every new revelation, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

"Mr. Trump has projected his usual bravado, and raised millions of dollars online from outraged supporters, since federal agents descended on the property more than two weeks ago and carted off boxloads of material including highly classified documents," Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer reported. "But something is different this time — and the errant court filing offered a glimpse into the confusion and uncertainty the investigation has exposed inside Mr. Trump’s camp."

Late on Monday, Trump's team revealed an incriminating letter from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent in May.

"The documents investigation represents the greatest legal threat Mr. Trump has faced in years, and he is going into the battle shorn of the protective infrastructure and constitutional armor of the presidency. After years of burning through lawyers, he has struggled to hire new ones, and has a small group of lawyers of varying experience," The Times reported. "He is facing a Justice Department he no longer controls, run by a by-the-book attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, who has pursued various investigations into Mr. Trump methodically and quietly. Mr. Trump is serving as his own communications director and strategic adviser, seeking tactical political and in-the-moment public relations victories, sometimes at the risk of stumbling into substantive legal missteps."

Trump is going into this battle without the protections of the presidency.

"Now, as in the days after he lost the 2020 election, Mr. Trump is relying on an ad hoc team of advisers with varying levels of experience and judgment, and trying to use his political support as both a shield and a weapon to be aimed at the people investigating him," the newspaper reported. "But even as he fuels outrage in sympathetic media outlets and tries to turn attention to Mr. Biden and the so-called deep state, Mr. Trump is to some extent walking on the phantom limbs of his expired presidency, claiming executive privilege still applies to him even though he’s out of office and maintaining he had a sweeping, standing order to declassify some documents, which his aides have declined to produce."

Trump is also experiencing a shrinking inner circle.

"Mr. Trump’s court filing on Monday requesting the special master to review the seized documents was styled as a legal motion, but it sounded more like a news release drafted by Mr. Trump himself," the newspaper reported. "His concentric circles of political advisers, several layers deep when he held power, are also shrinking. Mr. Trump is thinly staffed as he sits at his private club at Bedminster, N.J., or at Trump Tower in New York City for the summer, and sometimes makes decisions without keeping his close advisers in the know."

Read the full report: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/us/politics/trump-struggles-strategy.html



‘There is no fall guy’: George Conway says Trump’s fingerprints are ‘literally' on the documents

Prominent conservative attorney George Conway described Donald Trump's legal maneuvering as "incomprehensible" during a Tuesday evening interview on CNN.

"So here's the question, did one of Trump's allies actually further implicate the former president of a potential crime?" CNN's Laura Coates asked. "After all, it was this letter that Trump ally John Solomon disclosed last night that revealed alarming new details about those 15 boxes of materials investigators received back in January."

Coates asked Conway why Trump's team released the letter.

"It's incomprehensible to me," Conway replied. "Basically that — and the motion he filed yesterday — are essentially admissions of guilt."

"And it's inexplicable to me other than you have a deranged client and bad advisers, both legal and political, Conway said. "That's the only explanation I have for it, but he is basically -- what he should be doing with this documents case is what he did in the New York attorney general case, which is pleading the Fifth Amendment and keeping his mouth shut."

Coates noted the reporting that Trump personally went through the boxes and concluded, 'That is very, very bad."

Coway said, "There is no fall guy."

"He can't dump it on [Mark] Meadows, there's no Allen Weissberg here," Conway explained. "He did this. His fingerprints literally and figuratively are on these documents and we have not heard a defense, we have not heard a single coherent defense. the only one they could possibly posit would be that he lacks the literacy skills to understand what was in the boxes."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump whines over classified documents: 'I don't understand why I can't have these things'

Former President Donald Trump said he doesn't understand why he can't have classified and top secret documents that were seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, according to a report.

A source told The Wall Street Journal that Trump wants the FBI to return about two dozen boxes that included 11 sets of classified information.

“He has said, ‘People put this stuff in their library. How can they put it in their library if it has to go back to the Archives? I don’t understand why I can’t have these things,’ ” the source said.

The search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate came after the former president refused to return documents belonging to the National Archives.

Trump has claimed that he declassified all of the documents but has not presented any evidence of the declassification.

Read more here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-search-of-trumps-mar-a-lago-heads-to-court-11661342557

[Rick Plant]

DOJ isn’t naming the prosecutors involved in the Trump case — legal experts think it's for their own safety



Former federal prosecutor and Los Angeles Times legal expert Harry Litman and Robert Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann noticed a key piece of information missing on the case around former President Donald Trump.

Weissmann pointed out that the Justice Department hasn't named the prosecutors who are on the case around the Mar-a-Lago search and investigation, which is a dramatic shift from previous cases, like his. When Weissmann was working under special counsel Robert Mueller his name as well as the names of other prosecutors were named in court documents. Now, they're not.

Weissmann wondered if this is an indication that there is a fear of physical threats and character assassination from supporters of the former president. Thus far they've done that with the judge who approved the search warrant of Mar-a-Lago. They not only attacked him, but they searched for his children and went after his Synagogue, forcing them to cancel Shabbat services.

Litman explained that it's a kind of caution that he's "never seen before."

Harry Litman @harrylitman

That’s an abundance of caution I’ve never seen before. It also keeps us from surmising some important facts, especially if there is an AUSA assigned from SDFL, which would suggest they really mean business

https://twitter.com/harrylitman/status/1562507088869306369


Andrew Weissmann@AWeissmann_

DOJ Lesson Learned? DOJ has not revealed names of line prosecutors on Trump investigations (MAL, J6) in contrast to practice in other high profile matters like Special Counsel investigation. Protection from physical threats and reputational assassination, one has to assume.

https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1562482551167787008

[Rick Plant]

The majority of Americans now feel that the threats to our democracy by the radical right is the #1 important issue in the upcoming midterm election as it should be. MAGA Republicans tried to end our democracy by stealing the 2020 election for Criminal Donald and are doing everything possible to turn America into a fascist country like Hungary. Republicans are in trouble with democracy as the #1 issue that's important to voters. 

New NBC News poll finds “threats to democracy” has overtaken the “cost of living” as the most important issue facing the country.

[Rick Plant]

'That's not what our report said': Mueller lawyer nails Bill Barr for lying in bombshell Trump memo



Last week, a Washington court of appeals ruled that former Attorney General Bill Barr lied about Donald Trump's involvement in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign cycle. Just days prior to Mueller's report being released, Barr said that he'd read the report and Trump did nothing wrong.

The Justice Department released the memo on Trump's obstruction of Mueller's prob revealing that it was more than clear he believed that Trump committed a crime in several cases when he tried to obstruct justice.

Speaking to MSNBC about the release of the memo on Wednesday, former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the memo, penned by Barr's two top deputies Steven Angel and Ed O'Callaghan, provides new evidence that Barr covered up for Trump.

"Essentially it lays out a lot of what was redacted and we know it was a heavily redacted form of this before and it lays out the basics," explained NBC News justice reporter Ryan Reilly. "It does seem to be making what amounts to a defense argument for Trump in a lot of these cases. There's one line in here regarding the line where this was [former FBI Director James] Comey telling the president that he hoped that he could let this go, and they actually write in here that there was not -- it was not directing a, quote, clearly directed particular action in the investigation and Comey did not react at the time as though he had received the direct order from the president."

He went on to call it "defensive" and make a case for what Barr had already decided: that Trump wasn't going to be guilty of anything.

But it was Weissmann who gave inside information into what he experienced while working for Mueller. The Mueller report made it clear that there were at least 10 instances of obstruction of justice by the former president. Barr, on the other hand, wrote there was no obstruction.

"This memo, as you said, is a doozy because it has been kept under wraps and the Department of Justice thought even giving it to the district court for [the judge] to read, there is a reason when she read it that her decision was that this needs to be made public. The court of appeals agreed with her. Now to the substance. Why did they try and keep this under wraps? There is a sentence in here that is astounding to me," Weissmann continued. "The two senior staff, say to Bill Barr that the reason he should make the decision is because if the memo comes out it might be read to imply that the president committed obstruction. Let me just repeat that: that the reason Bill Barr needs to say something is because if the memo because if the report comes out it could be read to say that the president committed obstruction."

He explained that it's noticeable that there's no discussion on the memo about Bill Barr telling Mueller that he wants the special counsel to conclude whether Trump committed any obstructions of justice in his investigation or not.

"We now know clearly from his memo did not send it back to Mueller — who reported to him — was because he knew exactly what the answer would be. Because it says in black and white that this memo could be read to conclude that the president committed obstruction," Weissmann concluded.

There is another point, he explained, that is simply "dead wrong." At one point in the memo it says that Trump didn't commit obstruction of justice because you can't obstruct justice when you're not guilty of the underlying crime.

"That is legally wrong," he explained. "Our report actually addresses that. We cite all cases including the Arthur Anderson case which I know very well and this memo simply does not successfully, at least in my view, address the legal precedents, and it is not the case that you cannot be guilty of obstruction if you didn't commit the underlying crime."

Finally, he said that the point the memo gets completely wrong is that Mueller's report found no evidence of an underlying crime or conspiracy with the Russians.

"That's not what our report said," Weissmann concluded. "It said that there's evidence. It's just that we didn't think there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. So, the sort of upshot, Nicolle is, I can understand why the department has fought long and hard not to have this see the day and it's quite a shocking document."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump was an absolute failure. He said one thing and did another.

One of his main bogus claims was that he would bring back jobs from overseas. That never happened. More jobs went overseas under his 4 disastrous years.

President Biden made a campaign promise that he would bring jobs back from overseas. And now jobs are coming back to the United States in record numbers. Another promise has been kept as Biden continues rebuild America from the Trump disaster.     

The Offshoring of U.S. Jobs Increased on Trump’s Watch
October 22, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-10-22/supply-chains-latest-the-hard-data-on-trump-s-offshoring-record

U.S. Companies on Pace to Bring Home Record Number of Overseas Jobs
American companies are on pace to reshore, or return to the U.S., nearly 350,000 jobs this year… That would be the highest number on record since the group began tracking the data in 2010
August 23, 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-companies-on-pace-to-bring-home-record-number-of-overseas-jobs-11660968061

[Rick Plant]

Trump Tells His Lawyers: Get ‘My’ Top Secret Documents Back

The ex-president is desperate to recover the classified trove taken from Mar-a-Lago — and is pushing his legal team on a long-shot maneuver to return them



IN THE WEEKS after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement.

Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds during the raid, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover “all” of the official documents that Trump has long referred to as “mine” — including the highly sensitive and top secret ones.   

Sources close to Trump agree with outside legal experts that such a sweeping legal maneuver would be a long-shot, at best.  “I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back,” says one Trump adviser. “That ship has probably sailed.”

Further, several longtime Trump advisers say they want absolutely nothing to do with the now-infamous boxes of documents, fearing that any knowledge of them could invite an unwanted knock on the door from the feds. “Who would want any of that back? … If it is what they say it is, keep them the hell away,” a second adviser says.

Still, the former president’s legal team appears to be working to retrieve at least some of the papers seized during the Aug. 8 federal search. In recent days, the Trump team — led by former federal prosecutor Evan Corcoran — has been quietly prepping additional legal arguments and strategies to try to pry back material that the feds removed from the ex-president’s Florida abode and club, the sources say. Those measures include drafting a so-called “Rule 41(g) motion,” which allows  “a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property” to “move for the property’s return,” according to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

This would be a follow-up measure to the lawsuit, filed Monday by Trump and his attorneys, calling for the appointment of a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago materials for potentially privileged materials. It is unclear when the ex-president’s lawyers plan to file a subsequent motion, which people close to Trump expect to be more narrowly tailored than what the former president apparently wants.

“The motion he already filed is so absolutely terrible, that it’s hard to contemplate him filing something even more aggressive and even more unlikely to succeed,” says Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.

“However,” White added, Trump is “basically trying to litigate the ultimate issue in the case, which is whether he had the right to possess and keep those things, even after he was asked to return them. It’s very unlikely that the court would accept that invitation to litigate that…He would have to prove that those things were illegally taken, and — based on what we know — that is going to be very difficult to prove…He’s going to have to make some very unusual legal arguments, which, if they’re anything like the motion that was just filed, is going to be a very uphill climb.”

In the suit filed on Monday seeking the appointment of a special master, Trump’s attorneys signaled that a 41(g) motion could be forthcoming. A special master should, they argued, should provide Trump’s attorneys with a more detailed inventory of the items taken from Mar-a-Lago so that “the President can properly evaluate and avail himself of the important protections of Rule 41.”

The Trump legal team also asked Judge Aileen Cannon to appoint a special master with a “fair-minded approach to providing defense counsel with information needed to support any Rule 41(g) filing.”

Judge Cannon has yet to rule on those requests but suggested she had some questions about it. In an order posted Tuesday afternoon, Cannon instructed Trump’s attorneys to respond to questions about whether she even had jurisdiction to offer the kind of relief they seek and whether granting their demands would affect Trump’s ongoing litigation in another case seeking to unseal the Justice Department’s evidence supporting the search warrant application.

The potential Rule 41(g) motion comes amidst a series of odd and, at times, seemingly self-defeating moves by Trump allies seeking to defend the former president’s conduct.

The former president’s office claimed recently that Trump had issued a so-called “standing order” to automatically declassify any materials taken from the West Wing in order to facilitate a flexible work schedule for the then-president. Thus far, no Trump administration veterans have come forward to attest to the existence of the legally questionable order. But it has prompted, as Rolling Stone reported last week, FBI agents to begin questioning former members of the Trump National Security Council about whether they have any recollection of such an order.

And in a May 10 letter, Justice Department officials revealed that Trump took 15 boxes of classified materials to his Mar-a-Lago residence with documents classified “up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program,” in addition to those documents seized by the FBI. Special Access Programs are among the most closely-held secrets in the federal government covering sensitive intelligence, operations, and technologies and are strictly limited to smaller numbers of individuals on a “need to know” basis.

The letter, posted by MAGA reporter John Solomon, appeared in an article by Solomon insinuating that President Biden had intervened in the efforts to retrieve the documents. But the correspondence — sent to Solomon, who Trump designated as his liaison with the National Archives — confirmed that Trump had taken Special Access Program materials — among the most sensitive secrets held by the government — to his private residence after leaving office.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tells-lawyers-get-my-top-secrets-documents-back-1234580501/