Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

'Presidents are not kings': Federal judge rules Jan. 6 committee can access Trump's records

In a significant setback for former president Donald Trump, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection can access his White House records related to the attack.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a 39-page decision in which she rejected arguments from Trump's lawyers that the documents should be kept from the committee based on executive privilege.

Chutkan wrote that Trump's argument appeared to be "premised on the notion that his executive power 'exists in perpetuity.'"

"But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff (Trump) is not President," Chutkan wrote.

CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins called Chutkan's ruling "huge news."

The National Archives is facing a deadline of Friday to begin handing over the documents, but Trump is expected to appeal the ruling.

"The ruling, if upheld, could greatly speed the work of the committee. Of nearly 800 pages of documents that Trump has sought withheld, many such as White House visitor and call logs are unavailable elsewhere," the Washington Post reports. "Other responsive records identified by the National Archives include emails and other communications; draft speeches and talking points on election irregularities; and memos regarding potential lawsuits against states Biden won."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-capitol-riot-records-2655528818/

[Rick Plant]

Coalition demands AT&T sever all ties with far-right Trump propaganda outlet OANN
https://www.rawstory.com/what-is-oann/

[Rick Plant]

How Trump's appointees continue to dismantle the US Postal Service
https://www.rawstory.com/us-postal-service/

[Rick Plant]

A Trump-aligned think tank's pre-election war game gets exposed — and it's not a pretty picture
https://www.rawstory.com/claremont-institute-2655534701/

[Rick Plant]

A flashback to how the orange draft dodger treated our vets. Absolutely disgusting! The only loser is this career criminal not our vets who served our country.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

September 3, 2000

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.

Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the f**k are we doing that for? Guy was a f****ng loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment.

Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)

When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting se**ally transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)

On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

I’ve asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)

Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t see the heroism in fighting.” Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

[Rick Plant]

REVEALED: Trump's CIA director warned of 'right-wing coup' as White House tried to corrupt military

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received an ominous phone call on Election night and then another warning after Donald Trump fired his secretary of defense a few days later.

Milley heard from a fellow four-star general and close friend shortly after polls closed to remind him that "your loyalty is to the Constitution," and that he represented the "stability of this republic," and then-defense secretary Mike Esper also issued dark warnings of his own -- until he was abruptly fired six days later, according to the new book, "I Alone Can Fix It," excerpted by Newsweek.

"We are on the way to a right-wing coup," CIA director Gina Haspel told Milley after Esper's ouster.

The firing had been orchestrated by a political appointee in the White House office of personnel, whose purge of anyone deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump had accelerated since the election, both Milley and Haspel feared they would be next on the chopping block.

"In the 'tank,' the military-only chamber famous for deliberations and private discussion, the seven joint chiefs, plus Milley and the vice chairman, quietly and privately began talking about what their options would be if they had to block an unlawful order from the commander-in-chief," Newsweek reported, based on the book. "According to a retired general officer who spoke to one of the participants, in the tank the discussions were frank and emotional. 'They grappled with wide-ranging questions,' the senior officer said. 'Not just how to protect the republic should Trump threaten, but also ways to protect the military institution, a goal that didn't always easily mesh with what needed to get done.'"

Milley gave a public speech on Veterans Day 2020 that gave voice to his concerns and served as a reminder to active-duty troops that they did "not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator" or any individual, but behind the scenes the remaining heads of the military and national security apparatus took steps to prevent their services and agencies from being corrupted by the White House.

"What was unfolding, though, was unique among coups," Newsweek reported, based on the book. "Nobody really thought the disorganized and isolated Trump was capable of organizing anything. And the president didn't have the support of the military or the CIA or the FBI, or any of the other national security agencies, perhaps, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, which had become embarrassingly partisan. Milley even remarked privately that a coup wasn't possible because his camp had all the guns — a comment that was both comforting and chilling, one that showed how perilous the post-election period had become."

In a sense, the military did undertake a coup -- against the sitting president's unconstitutional efforts to overthrow the democratic will of the voters.

"Ultimately, the uniformed military and other permanent national security professionals did take it upon themselves to decide how to defend the nation from this prospective coup, disregarding the new secretary and the other Trump cronies filling leadership positions in the Pentagon," the magazine added. "[Newly installed acting defense secretary Chris] Miller was ignored except in cases where the Secretary of Defense's approval or signature was required. Flouting the hallowed tradition of civilian control of the military that is at the core of the Constitution, and ignoring the commander-in-chief, Milley set the uniformed military as a bulwark against disaster."

[Rick Plant]

Georgia Prosecutors Are Treating Trumpworld Like a Crime Syndicate

An expert explains how the same tactics that have brought down mob bosses could work to prosecute Trump’s team for election interference



January 2nd, 2020, Donald Trump made Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger an offer he hoped the Georgia official couldn’t refuse. “I just want to find 11,780 votes — which is one more than we have, because we won the state,” the former president said during the now-infamous phone call at the center of a possible racketeering investigation unfurling in Fulton County, Georgia.

“I felt then — and still believe today — that this was a threat,” Raffensperger wrote in his memoir, “Integrity Counts,” released last week. Among those who appear to agree with Raffensperger is Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Earlier this year, Willis’ office sent letters to a number of Georgia officials whom Trump attempted to enlist in his efforts to overturn the state’s election, including Raffensperger and Gov. Brain Kemp, requesting they preserve any records that “may be evidence of attempts to influence the actions of persons who were administering that election.”

Now , that investigation appears to be shifting into high gear. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that a special grand jury could be impaneled soon, and on Monday, Raffensperger confirmed that his office has been cooperating with the inquiry. “The district attorney, they have interviewed some of our people here, and they have asked for documents, which we have supplied,” Raffensperger told MSNBC’s Stephanie Rhule. (A spokesman for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)

Even as the inquiry appears to move forward, it remains cloaked in secrecy — the D.A.’s office has offered no information about when a special grand jury might be convened, or which potential crimes it may be charged with investigating. But Willis’ background, her hires, and her communications with Georgia officials all seem to indicate the Fulton County D.A. is aiming to use Georgia’s sweeping Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO act, typically used to prosecute members of a crime syndicate, to go after the former president and his allies.

As an assistant district attorney, Willis cut her teeth building a RICO case against Atlanta teachers and principals who were later found guilty of conspiring to cheat on the state’s standardized tests. Her office has retained the services of John Floyd, an expert on Georgia’s racketeering laws, who worked with Willis to secure 11 convictions in the cheating scandal.

“This prosecutor has tried Georgia RICO cases before in politically sensitive situations, has done so effectively, has won convictions, and has retained, perhaps, the leading Georgia expert on RICO to be a part of her team,” says Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. “When you put all of that together, it demonstrates that not only is a RICO charge possibly fitting, but also likely.”

Eisen was among the six co-authors of a report released last month that lays out in detail the various criminal statutes that Trump and his associates may have violated while working to overturn the election. The analysis includes a section that focuses specifically on Georgia’s RICO law, which Eisen says is even more expensive than the federal racketeering statute.

"The point of doing RICO,” Eisen says, “is because it allows the prosecutor to charge a broad range of activities, and that’s certainly what you have here with the former president in his attack on the election outcome in Georgia. This wasn’t just a call to Secretary Raffensperger — it was a whole array of acts, both before and after that call, and involving other individuals, and possibly other entities, including the campaign. And the RICO statute is there to allow that kind of a sweeping set of activities to be charged.”

Unlike a regular criminal prosecution where only facts relevant to the charges at hand can be introduced to build a case, a RICO prosecution is focused on establishing a broader pattern of misconduct. In that way, as Eisen says, such a prosecution “lets you tell the jury the full story of what happened.” It comes with harsher penalties too. If convicted under the law, the former president and his associates could face up to 20 years in prison in addition to substantial fines. But in order to win a RICO conviction, prosecutors have to demonstrate two or more of the 40 offenses covered under the statute have occurred.

Eisen and his colleagues identified at least five RICO-eligible offenses that Trump may have committed in his campaign to overturn the election results. A jury might be convinced, for example, that the former president committed the crime of false statements not only when he insisted he won the election on his call with Raffensperger, but when he invoked debunked conspiracies — that thousands of pounds of ballots had been shredded, drop boxes delivered late, and dead people allowed to vote — to bolster his case. When he asked the secretary of state to overturn the election on the basis of those lies, he may have been soliciting false swearing. He might be found guilty of influencing a witness for telling Raffensperger and his general counsel they were at ‘big risk’ for insisting the election was fair.

RICO, Eisen says, “is a very, very serious set of allegations that really should only be used for the most serious possible misconduct. But I think we have that here. What could be more serious than a president allegedly attempting to overturn a lawful election, and seize power?”

It's worth noting, however, that a special grand jury like the one that is reportedly imminent in Georgia can only issue subpoenas and gather information. Once prosecutors have what they deem sufficient evidence of a crime, they’ll have to present it to a regular grand jury in order to secure criminal indictments. (A spokesman for Willis’ office did not respond to questions about the inquiry’s timeline, and whether, if sufficient evidence of guilt were discovered, the D.A. would be able to convene a regular grand jury in a reasonable time, given the present backlog in Fulton County.)

But that evidence appears to be mounting: in addition to cooperation from the Secretary of State’s office, Willis’ team is reportedly working with Congress’ January 6th committee to secure White House documents relevant to the investigation. Late Tuesday night, a federal judge rejected the Trump’s administration’s efforts to block the committee from accessing those documents.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-election-interference-investigation-rico-1255763/

[Rick Plant]

Trump ally Steve Bannon indicted for contempt of Congress over Jan. 6 probe subpoena
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/12/trump-ally-steve-bannon-indicted-for-dodging-jan-6-probe-subpoena.html