Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

[Rick Plant]

Trump took documents too highly classified to describe back home with him to Mar-A-Lago: report
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2656793264/

[Rick Plant]

NY Attorney General Letitia James continues civil probe, deposition of Trump family ‘without fear or favor’

NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday said she was ready for a monthslong standoff with former President Donald Trump and his adult kids — who are attempting to dodge sitting for a court-ordered deposition on appeal.

“Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were ordered by the court to comply with our lawful investigation into Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization’s financial dealings. While they have the right to seek a delay, they cannot deter us from following the facts and the law wherever they may lead,” James said in a statement.

“Make no mistake: My office will continue to pursue this case without fear or favor because no one is above the law.”

Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Trump and his adult kids had to sit for the depositions in the investigation by March 10. James’ posturing follows an indication by Trump’s lawyers to Insider that he would appeal the decision to the Appellate Division, First Department. The process typically takes months.

The judge said he didn’t buy Trump’s argument that James opened the probe due to bias or discrimination against Trump but rather because of Michael Cohen’s comments to Congress in 2018 that the company was “cooking the books.”

Among other leads, the state attorney general is examining whether the Trump Organization manipulated the value of at least 10 of its properties to the IRS, lenders and insurers — from the size of Trump’s luxury Manhattan penthouse to the value of his golf clubs in Los Angeles and Scotland — to enrich itself.

Engoron’s ruling came three days after Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA cut ties and remarkably announced that a decade’s worth of his company’s financial statements could “no longer be relied upon.”

James’ investigation runs parallel to a three-year criminal probe by the Manhattan district attorney, in which at least two of her investigators have been embedded. The DA has charged the Trump Organization and its long-serving Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with skirting more than $1.7 million in income tax during a 15-year “audacious” tax fraud scheme.

The company and Weisselberg asked a judge to dismiss the felony charges against them in filings Wednesday. In part, arguing that the evidence against them was fabricated by a “vendetta”-wielding Cohen, who has spent more than 300 hours cooperating in the probe.

Whatever testimony James ultimately procures during her civil probe can be used by the DA. But the abrupt Wednesday departures of veteran investigators Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne questioned the likelihood that District Attorney Alvin Bragg will make history by bringing criminal charges against the former president.

A source on Wednesday pushed back at the suggestion Trump’s alleged criminality was not a priority for the new DA.

“He (Bragg) is just following the facts,” said the source, noting that Pomerantz and Dunne’s withdrawal from the case did not signal that it would disappear. “There’s a whole team of lawyers.”

Trump has decried all of the allegations as a politically motivated “witch hunt.” James and Bragg are Democrats — as was former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who first launched the criminal probe.

Lawyers for Trump and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

© New York Daily News

[Rick Plant]

Donnie is Putin's puppet so of course he will continue to praise his master.

Trump's former military advisers break with him on Putin

This week, Donald Trump praised Russian President Vladmir Putin for waging a full-scale invasion into Ukraine on Thursday, calling the Russian leader's incursion, which has already resulted in hundreds of casualties, "genius." But few of Trump's former advisers appear to share that same perspective, with many of them claiming that Putin should not be looked upon favorably at all.

On Thursday, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told CNN he was in "disbelief" over the Republican support for Putin.

"[Putin] is a tyrant. He's a murderer," Kelly said in an interview. "He has attacked an innocent country whose only crime is that they want to be free and democratic and they're working in that direction and have been working in that direction."

"Is Putin smart?" the former adviser added. "Yes. I mean, tyrants are smart. They know what they're doing. But … I can't imagine why someone would look at what's happening there and see it [as] anything other than a criminal act."

H.R. McMaster, Trump's former national security adviser, echoed a very similar stance, telling CNN that Putin is "certainly not someone to be praised."

Putin, he added, is a "man who has enabled serial episodes of mass homicide" and has "subverted Europe by weaponizing migrants."

"This is one campaign in his larger effort to drag everybody else down," McMaster concluded.

Former White House Chief of Staff Marc Short also joined the chorus of condemnation on Thursday, arguing that "no one in the GOP should be praising Vladimir Putin."

"He's a former KGB officer and a dictator and a thug," Short told The Washington Post. "We should be clear about that."

https://www.salon.com/2022/02/22/trump-former-secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-praise-putin-while-bashing-biden

[Rick Plant]

AS RUSSIA ATTACKED UKRAINE, FOX NEWS DECIDED IT WAS A GREAT TIME TO HEAR FROM DONALD TRUMP, WHO SPENT ALL WEEK PRAISING PUTIN
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/02/russia-ukraine-fox-news-donald-trump

[Richard Smith]

"A new NPR/PBS/Marist College poll, more than half -- 56% -- of Americans said that Biden's first year in office was a "failure,"

[Rick Plant]

'Trump's brain isn't normal': Conservative trashes 'deranged' former president for Putin praise



In a blunt-talking column for the Daily Beast, conservative columnist Matt Lewis ripped into Donald Trump, claiming the former president lives in some sort of "sick universe" after he praised Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Lewis, who has long been a critic of Trump, hammered the former president and insisted Trump's praise of the brutal Russian president -- along his history of expressing his admiration for other violent dictators -- is "deranged" and should be cause enough to bar him from ever setting foot in the Oval Office again.

Noting Trump described the invasion of Ukraine by Putin as an act of "genius," Lewis wrote, "A normal person might condemn Putin’s illegal and immoral invasion and the shameful propaganda that sought to justify it; Trump’s first impulse was to praise how well Putin lied about the bogus pretext."

Pointing out that Trump -- and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo -- approved of the technical aspects of the invasion without "technically" endorsing it, Lewis asked, "So what explains Trump’s deranged interpretation of events?"

The answer, he suggested, is, "Trump has a soft spot for authoritarians and strongmen who use violence."

"This is, after all, the same guy who said of Saddam Hussein, 'He was a bad guy, really bad guy, but you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good,'" the columnist recalled. "Of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Trump said, 'It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one. I mean this guy doesn’t play games. And we can’t play games with him.'"

"Trump’s brain isn’t normal. He majors in the minors and minors in the majors. He fetishizes feats of strength and obsesses over “process”—how somebody does something—while downplaying the much larger question—should they be doing this in the first place?" he wrote. "At this point, I am sick of debating whether Trump’s praise for Putin is strategic or simply the product of a twisted mind. Either option is disqualifying."

"This is the millionth reason why Trump should never again be allowed within 100 miles of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," he added before concluding, "If you think Citizen Trump poses a threat to the current world order, just imagine how dangerous President Trump would be in the White House again."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2656797174/