Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Blockbuster Jan. 6 hearings expected to include video of the Trumps' behind-closed-door testimony: CNN

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is finalizing a witness list before June public hearings that are coming into focus, according to a new report by CNN.

The hearings are likely to include video clips of recorded testimony.

"While the setup of the hearings is still a work in progress and evolving, sources note, the presentations will likely feature video clips from January 6, as well as some of the nearly 1,000 interviews the committee has conducted behind closed doors. That could help the committee share more testimony, as well as deal with potentially recalcitrant witnesses," CNN reported. "Among the witnesses whose testimony was videotaped were members of Trump's family, including recent interviews with Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner."

CNN talked to multiple people who expect to be called as witnesses, although none of them have said the select committee has officially notified them about public testimony.

"At least one fact witness who has been deposed by the committee behind closed doors already told the panel they will refuse to testify publicly if asked, according to a source familiar with the matter," CNN reported.

CNN's sources expect former Justice Department officials Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue will be called as witnesses, as well as Mike Pence's former chief of staff, Marc Short, and former general counsel, Greg Jacob.

"Each of the committee's nine members has been assigned to lead presentations of different topic areas, similar to how impeachment managers led certain portions of the two impeachment proceedings against Trump. One source close to the committee told CNN that the panel has drawn on experiences from Trump's two impeachment proceedings. Those hearings have served as a model of both what to do and not to do," CNN reported. "The main goal of the committee in holding the hearings is to show that even though Trump was told repeatedly there was no election fraud, he continued to push forward with his campaign to overturn the election."

Read the full report: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/politics/jan-6-hearings-witness-list-preparations/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Donnie is a coward and a clown. He hid inside a bunker from protesters and was always looking for ways to appear "tough" in public.     

A fuming Trump woke up military officials in the middle of the night after protesters toppled a Confederate statue: book



One consistent thread through many of the post-Donald Trump presidency books is that he was so furious about the news he was rushed to an underground bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests that he spent the remainder of the summer desperately searching for something to make him look tough again.

Mary Trump detailed extensively in her book that the psychology in the Trump family surrounded the necessity of men looking strong. Weakness was the worst possible sin in the eyes of Fred Trump Sr.

In Defense Sec. Mark Esper's book A Sacred Oath, the summer of 2020 resulted in many demands from the president to call in soldiers to Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland and other places.

During one such night, Esper describes being dead asleep when Trump called on the secure line and ordered soldiers be sent into D.C. because statues were being toppled. To Trump, it seemed like an emergency.

“Statues are being torn down in D.C. They’re going after Jefferson and Washington next. You need to get the Guard in there immediately," he said to Esper over the phone.

A groggy secretary agreed, calling Gen. Mark Milley. The two men turned on their televisions and couldn't find the story. Mark Meadows got called too.

Esper got online and found the story, "several people toppled a statue of Confederate general Albert Pike, which had been standing in Judiciary Square since 1901. I never heard of Pike and never even knew there was a statue to a Confederate general in D.C." He noted that many people in the city had been begging to have the statue taken down since 1992.

Milley reported back to them that the crowd was fewer than one hundred people, only a dozen or so were actually causing trouble and they left once the statue was toppled. Police hadn't even asked for help, they were handling it and there was no concern.

The following day Trump tweeted: “The D.C. Police are not doing their job as they watch a statue be ripped down & burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our Country!”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/protesters-washington-dc-topple-statue-confederate-brigadier-general-albert-pike/

[Rick Plant]

For anyone who is confused, this is what a coup looks like.

A new batch of John Eastman emails from Dec. 2020 shows his advice to state legislators seeking to rescind Joe Biden's electors — including his suggestion that they simply retabulate the popular vote to put Trump on top.



'Provide some cover': New Eastman emails shed light on his push to overturn Biden's win
He suggested a way for Pennsylvania legislators to cancel Joe Biden's win.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/10/eastman-emails-pennsylvania-legislators-biden-00031668

[Rick Plant]

Feds looking into Trump's intentionally confusing network of super PACs: 'All of this is totally unprecedented'



The inquiry is linked back to a super PAC named “Make America Great Again, Again!” that was set up after former top aide Corey Lewandowski got fired from another pro-Trump super PAC after allegedly sexually assaulting a major donor but refused to step down, and federal election officials are looking into why some of these groups aren't properly reporting their payments, reported The Daily Beast.

“It is worth emphasizing: All of this is totally unprecedented for a former president,” said Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of good government group Documented. “Even if Trump kept it simple, and just had one hard money PAC, a single super PAC, and a pair of 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) nonprofits, there would be no parallel with any former president in American history.”

Trump's personal financial disclosures reveal ties to more than 500 entities, including nearly 400 that use his name or initials, and many of them have tangled links to one another, and this intentionally confusing structure makes it difficult to trace the billions of dollars he and his accountants move around -- and he has brought the same practices to his political operations.

“Typically, former presidents focus on their presidential library, or start a charitable foundation, but Trump is staying in the political game and raising a staggering amount of cash,” Fischer said.

Trump-aligned super PACs raised hundreds of millions of dollars last year, but it won't be clear how much so-called dark money groups raised or how they spent those funds until after the midterms, and filing on Wednesday showed the Trump campaign isn't even able to follow its own money.

“The central lesson of Watergate is ‘Follow the money,’” said Brett Kappel, a specialist in campaign finance and nonprofit law at Harmon Curran, "and this byzantine structure of different types of legal entities — which are subject to different fundraising restrictions and file different reports with different agencies according to different filing schedules — appears to be designed to make that task as difficult as possible.”

Read more here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-donald-trump-cant-make-sense-of-his-own-dark-money-maze?ref=home

[Rick Plant]

Katie Porter raises awareness about Donald Trump's alleged bribery scheme

Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) is raising awareness about Donald Trump's latest financial debacle: a newly uncovered bribery scheme.

On Wednesday, May 11, Porter appeared on MSNBC News where she offered details about the latest developments involving former Trump Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, and real estate developer, Mike Ingram.

Bernhardt and Ingram reportedly had an off-the-record meeting that is believed to have led to a form of quid pro quo. According to Porter, three major occurrences happened shortly after that meeting. The Army Corp. of Engineers reportedly announced they were reopening the permit process for an area in Arizona that was previously deemed environmentally sensitive

Around the same time, Ingram and a dozen of his business acquaintances donated nearly $250,000 to the Trump Victory Fund and to the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Shortly after the donation was made, a top-ranking Fish and Wildlife official received a call where he was told that a "high-level Politico" wanted him to "reverse his decision that this development would harm the environment.

The Democratic lawmaker also made it clear that this appears to be a quid pro quo because the real estate developer and his friends received a kickback after donating to the former president's "Victory Fund." "This developer was basically able to buy his away around environmental protection law," Porter emphasized.

Porter also tweeted details about the scheme. "New from [Rep. Raul Grijalva] and me: After a real estate developer and his friends made $241,600 in campaign donations, the Trump Administration overruled local environmental experts to greenlight a development near an endangered river," she tweeted. "We're making a criminal referral for bribery."

Porter's remarks on MSNBC came as the House Natural Resources Committee filed a criminal complaint against the U.S. Department of Justice. Porter made it clear that this type of "egregious" situation should indicate to Congress that “reestablishing the rule of law and the expectation that administration officials are going to follow it.”

https://www.rawstory.com/katie-porter-raises-awareness-about-donald-trump-s-alleged-bribery-scheme/

[Rick Plant]

Trump could face criminal prosecution for espionage – according to a Harvard Law professor



Legendary constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe offered his analysis to MSNBC viewers after The New York Times published a bombshell story under the headline, "prosecutors pursue inquiry into Trump's handling of classified material."

Tribe is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, where he taught constitutional law for fifty years.

"On this day of truly historic escalations in those investigations into the ex-president and his inner circle, questions now arise about how the Justice Department will juggle all of it and weather all of it," MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace reported.

"The five sitting House Republicans and close allies of the ex-president are the first members of Congress to receive subpoenas from the Jan. 6th select committee and the DOJ moving ahead with its probe of Donald Trump's sensitive including sensitive government documents. Our next guest says we should see all of it and reassurance that Attorney General Merrick Garland is taking steps to hold Trump accountable. Joining me is Laurence Tribe, professor (emeritus) of constitutional law in Harvard and has argued and won 35 cases in front of the Supreme Court," Wallace said, not noting his loss against her old boss in Bush v. Gore.

Tribe explained his thoughts on the DOJ investigation.

"Nicole, I find that quite reassuring and it really brings back memories back from 2017, I think it was, when Donald Trump, right after firing the FBI director called [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov and [Russia Ambassador to America] Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office by revealing the identity of a Mossad Israeli agent who was involved in an undercover operation to discover an Islamic plot to create methods of going through American airports without detection and carrying bombs," he said. "So we know we're dealing with a guy who is not particularly careful about classified information and if he can get some bragging rights by sharing it with adversaries he's willing to do it.

"Now when we find all of this apparent top secret information finding his way to unsecured boxes to Mar-a-Lago, it's very encouraging that the Department of Justice isn't simply asking who packed the boxes, but what did the president then of the United States on his way out of the Oval Office have in mind in taking that information? Did he use it for his own benefit?: he wondered.

"That would be a serious crime of espionage so there is both a national security angle and a potentially criminal angle and the most encouraging thing to me, because I'm worried about accountability so that we don't have a repeat of all of these things in 2024 of the attempted coup and insurrection," Tribe said. "What is most important to me is that no one should be above the law and the attorney general and his top deputy and associate attorneys general, people like Lisa Monaco should be taken at their word when they say they're going to follow the evidence wherever it leads right into the Oval Office, right into the former guy, so stay tuned."

[Rick Plant]

Grand jury convened to investigate Trump's mishandling of classified documents: NYT

Donald Trump facing another grand jury investigation.

The New York Times reports that prosecutors have convened a grand jury to investigate Trump's mishandling of classified documents that he improperly removed from the White House and brought with him to his resort at Mar-a-Lago after his term ended in January 2021.

"In recent days, the Justice Department has taken a series of steps showing that its investigation has progressed beyond the preliminary stages," the paper writes. "Prosecutors issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration to obtain the boxes of classified documents... The authorities have also made interview requests to people who worked in the White House in the final days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, according to one of the people."

The Times notes, however, that "charges are rarely brought in investigations into the handling of classified documents" and that the DOJ "typically conducts them to determine whether any highly sensitive information may have been exposed so the intelligence community can take measures to protect sources and methods."

The investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents came after the National Archives revealed that it had to go to Mar-a-Lago to obtain documents that were being requested by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol building.

The National Archives sent a letter to Congress back in February in which it confirmed that it has "identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes" that were removed from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could not shield January 6th-related documents from the committee.

Read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/us/politics/justice-department-trump-classified.html