Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Democracy under threat from MAGA Republicans.

According to new CBS polling 72% of Americans say our Democracy is threatened.

[Rick Plant]

Why did Trump choose to showcase a Nazi sympathizer as Jan. 6 prisoner at Pennsylvania rally: CNN reporter asks



Among the people who spoke at Donald Trump's rally on Saturday was a woman named Cynthia, who spoke out on the plight of her nephew who attended the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. It turns out, however, her nephew is a Nazi sympathizer. The larger question, however, is how he became Trump's poster-boy at the rally.

Speaking about Cynthia Hughes, CNN's Zachary Cohen told Jim Acosta that she was leaving out a lot of details in her speech to Pennsylvania. At the same time, there were plenty of Jan. 6 attackers who could have been highlighted at the event that were everyday people who were caught up in the crowd and who got light sentences. That isn't who this was.

"He went to the nation's capitol to hear his president speak," Hughs told the crowd. "He dressed in a suit and tie and his favorite hat. Tim wanted to take part in what he thought was going to be a historical event. Instead, he witnessed a horror show."

Tim Cusanelli is the nephew she was talking about. He once explained that "Hitler should've finished the job." CNN reported over the weekend that Cusanelli faced an internal Navy probe, which found 34 of his colleagues believed he held "extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities and women." His phone had racist memes using the N-word on his phone. He also told an FBI informant that he was hoping for a "civil war."

"Cynthia Hughes used her time at this high profile Trump rally to talk about her nephew who, as she says, has been in jail for nearly two years now but holds him up as sort of a poster child for Jan. 6th related injustice. But in reality, the Justice Department has argued that he is a Nazi sympathizer and somebody who the judge, in this case, a Trump appointee was so concerned that his violent neo-Nazi rhetoric would turn from words into violence, that's why the judge decided to keep him in jail while his court process played out," explained Cohen.

He went on to explain that Cusanelli's defense "was that he didn't know Congress met at the Capitol. Clearly, the jury did not buy that. But I think the bigger picture here you got to look at the fact that there is a ton of Jan. 6th defendants that the former president could have chosen from in terms of featuring them to defend or at least try to draw sympathy for people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6th and this was the case that ultimately took center stage during this rally."

See the discussion below:

[Rick Plant]

President Biden is 100% correct when he said MAGA Republicans are a threat to our democracy.

Ex-FBI official explains why he's more worried now than when he was chasing Al Qaeda and ISIS



Former CIA and FBI official Phil Mudd revealed that he no longer works in the intelligence community, but he's still concerned about threats against his life.

While working at the FBI, Mudd served as the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center during the years after Sept. 11. He's written two books on the US's hunt for Al Qaeda terrorists and was on the front lines of the attempts to bring down those who aligned with the group.

Speaking to PBS in 2005, Mudd said, "we would be foolish to assume that there are not people here who either act like Al Qaeda or who want to act like Al Qaeda, who see the world with the same vision Al Qaeda has. ... And again, it would be foolish for us to think they're not here."

Yet, 17 years later, Mudd is worried again, but this time, it's radical right-wing, Republican terrorists from home-grown MAGA cells.

"It makes me nervous. In some ways, I'm glad to be out," Mudd told CNN's Jim Acosta on Sunday. "You're talking about the professional part of this. How do you conduct an investigation with a former president vilifying the FBI? But in a personal level, remember people who are in the service have to go home to a spouse, or a girlfriend or family, including children, and say we're going into a midterm election cycle with there are election deniers who will listen to the president. And maybe more significantly into a 2024 election cycle when it's conceivable, obviously, that you could once again have President Biden versus President Trump. If you have public information, for example, information about your home address, information on social media, and you're an FBI agent, what would you think, Jim?"

He continued, saying that during the days that he was at the FBI and the CIA "chasing ISIS and Al Qaeda. And let me close with this, I would be more concerned about going to my home residence today than I was when I was in the papers with stories about chasing Al Qaeda and ISIS. I don't know how to make it clearer. You have to be concerned about personal security.

"It is that bad?" asked Acosta.

"Yeah," Mudd said frankly.

See the full conversation below:

Trump shouldn't 'be above the law' for taking top secret docs: former admin official



According to CNN contributor Alyssah Farah Griffin -- who served as Donald Trump's White House Director of Strategic Communications -- her former boss should be held to account for taking top secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort and leaving them sitting around.

Sitting on a panel with fellow Trump administration aides Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye -- all of whom expressed disgust with the former president's actions -- Farah Griffin asserted there should not be a separate set of rules for the former president.

Agreeing with former attorney general Bill Barr, who said on Fox News that the DOJ had every right to search the Florida resort for stolen documents, Farah Griffin adamantly claimed Trump is "not above the law."

"Every one of us, I believe, held a security clearance in government," she began. "There are very specific protocols to even handle these documents. If you physically take them out of a building, you need a certified carry card, you need a lead-covered bag so it can evade x-rays."

"He [Trump] has them co-located with his Time magazine covers at a country club in Florida that's been a target for espionage," she exclaimed. "There is no way that this is acceptable if you don't believe in a two-tiered system of justice where a former president is above the law. And I would just note, you know, Trump rallied last night in Pennsylvania and it descended into a 'lock her up' chant about Hillary Clinton."

"The reason Republicans like myself asked for her to be investigated was mishandling of classified information -- exactly what Donald Trump is doing in Mar-a-Lago," she added.

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

To be clear, Trump didn't misspeak on Saturday night. He insisted that "Zuckerberg visited him at the White House last week" and informed Trump that "he's #1 on Facebook."

Trump has been kicked off from Facebook for a long time.

Trump's entire story on Saturday is a hallucination of some kind. He's either hopped up on some drugs or his dementia is getting worse.

Watch the video in the Twitter link below to see this mess. Donnie is out of his mind!


Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski

He is high as a kite. He said Zuckerberg visited him at the WH last week. Dude is flying.

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1566220480905895940

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1566241214600564738

[Rick Plant]

Biden Laid the Trap. Trump Walked Into It.

At his Pennsylvania rally, the former president gave exactly the narcissistic display his Democratic nemesis tried to provoke.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/trump-pennsylvania-rally-republicans/671344/

[Rick Plant]

MAGA Republicans keep proving they are anti American. How can you not "notice" that large anti American flag?

A lame excuse by Hernandez after he got caught and received severe backlash.

These right wing militias are the MAGA Republican base and they were at the Capitol on January 6th rioting and attempting to overthrow the government.

President Biden is right about MAGA Republicans being a danger to democracy.       


Michigan GOP candidate deletes photo of him standing in front of anti-government militia's flag



The Republican candidate for Michigan's lieutenant governor is apologizing after he posted a photo to Twitter showing him in front of a flag associated with an anti-government militia, Fox 2 Detroit reports.

Shane Hernandez was blasted by Michigan Democrats after posting the photo on social media.

"As Michiganders spend their holiday weekend celebrating the freedoms earned by American workers, Shane Hernandez proudly stood by the anti-government, extremist Three Percenters flag. His shameful support for the anti-American militia fits right in with Tudor Dixon’s dangerous, wrong-for-Michigan agenda to slash funding for law enforcement and undermine democracy," the party said in a statement.

In response, Hernandez "disavowed" the Three Percenters militia group's flag and "any such sentiments" it's affiliated with.

"Regarding my last post, I bought 8oz of honey from a small business owner, and he wanted to take a picture with me at his booth," Hernandez wrote on Twitter. "When I posted the picture, I did not notice the flag in the background."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group's "perceptions of tyranny emanate from the radical conspiracy theories and paranoia rooted in the decades-old antigovernment extremist movement, and have repeatedly led to violence against America’s law enforcement, citizens and residents."

Hernandez is Tudor Dixon's running mate and was nominated to be the Republican lieutenant governor candidate in August.

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/republican-candidate-for-lieutenant-governor-deletes-post-with-extremist-militia-flag

[Rick Plant]

Judge Cannon 'engaged herself in obstruction of justice': Experts sound the alarm on Trump documents ruling



Donald Trump's hand-picked judge in Florida put a hold on the documents seized by the Justice Department at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In an opinion that is likely to be challenged by the DOJ, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ordered that a special master be appointed to review the documents that investigators said have already been filtered and sifted through by those with the proper security clearance.

Cannon writes that executive privilege, in addition to Trump's attorney-client privilege, is on the table for the special master and that all of the documents can be reviewed. But some legal experts think that it is likely to be challenged.

Berkeley Law Professor Jonah Glbach explained that as well as the special master, "Cannon has entered a temporary injunction restraining the government from review or use of the items seized from Mar-a-Lago for 'criminal investigative purposes.'" That puts a stop to the progression of the investigation, which certainly delays any possible indictment of the former president.

Gelbach noted that Cannon listed off four elements that Trump must establish to get an injunction, and then doesn't find that Trump has some of them.

"Her basis for finding 'a' likelihood is, she says, contained in part III of her Discussion, at pages 14-18," he continued. "But part III is full of couched language like 'arguably' and 'the Court is not convinced' and 'evidence from which to call that premise into question.'"

It made him ask how "likelihood" could be part of a court ruling. "In sum, Judge Cannon *correctly (sic) stated the legal requirement of a substantial likelihood *then declared only that she'd found 'a likelihood,' based on a discussion in which she makes no such finding, repeatedly indicating uncertainty about the merits of the review process. That alone looks like [an] abuse of discretion and thus reversible error to me. I assume that will be one point in DOJ's inevitable appeal of the preliminary injunction to CA11."

"This is one of the strongest critiques — that the order doesn’t address the threshold issue of how executive privilege applies against executive inquiry," wrote attorney Ken White, who goes by "Popehat." He disputes that the decision is a "catastrophe" for the Justice Department and some seem to think that it will be overturned anyway. "Even if the order isn’t a catastrophe, I think the observation that the court bent over backwards for Trump on every issue is a fair assessment."

The piece of the ruling he thinks are worthy of the "freakout" is what will likely be part of the reason for the appeal to ensure there's no written case law.

"Those would include (a) the identity of the special master, (b) the scope of their assignment, (c) her further orders ruling on the special master’s findings, (d) 11th circuit or SCOTUS emergency action," White wrote. He also noted that any MAGA Republicans saying that the judge stopped the criminal investigation is woefully ill-informed.

"The judge shut down, for now, [the] review of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. The criminal investigation existed before that and will continue on other channels as before," said White.

American Enterprise Institute's Norm Ornstein noted that Cannon shouldn't even have taken the case to begin with.

"It was in the hands of the magistrate judge, she was picked by Trump's lawyers solely because she was a Trumpist, in a jurisdiction nowhere near Mar-a-Lago. She has an effect engaged herself in obstruction of justice," he alleged.

Steve Vladeck, who serves as the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas Law School, similarly called the ruling "preposterous." He highlighted "the part where it blocks the government from continuing to use materials already in its possession. At the very least, that last ruling creates an immediately appealable injunctive-like order, which DOJ can now take to the Eleventh Circuit."

While the 11th Circuit isn't exactly the most friendly to progressive causes, the law is written clearly, the analysts agree. Taking the case to the Supreme Court would require a revisiting of whether the existing president is the official "executive" and thus rules "executive privilege." Trump allies like Allen Dershowitz has argued that all presidents should govern their own executive privilege and that the existing president shouldn't have any power over past president's documents and information.

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Kayal called it outright "Crazytown," with former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance posting her own agreement.

But it was a former prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, who issued a blistering takedown.

"I truly hoped Judge Cannon would adhere to the rule of law, but she in fact is now another illustration of the insidiousness of Trump and the Big Lie. And how he has infected formerly mainstream Republicans," he said on Monday.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-judge-cannon-obstruction-justice/