Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Melania Trump is implicated in White House cover-up of Trump's COVID test: columnist

The scandal over the White House reportedly covering up Donald Trump's positive COVID-19 test prior to a 2020 debate with Joe Biden has ensnared Melania Trump, according to one political columnist.

The revelations were reportedly made in a forthcoming book by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

"The Trump family has long treated rules and laws as nuisances that are only for the little people. And the news that Donald Trump tested positive for covid-19 before the first 2020 presidential debate shows that this tendency may be even more depraved and malevolent than you thought," Greg Sargent wrote in The Washington Post. "It turns out that this revelation, which comes in a new book by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also implicates members of Trump’s family, including Melania Trump and Donald Trump Jr."

Despite the positive test, the Trump family refused to follow coronavirus protocols at the debate.

"That’s because multiple people around Trump, including his wife, Melania Trump, and his kids Donald Jr. and Eric, all sat maskless at the Sept. 29 debate, according to contemporaneous reports, despite the fact that debate attendees were required to wear masks," Sargent explained. "As numerous reporters personally witnessed at the time, Trump’s family members did this after rebuffing a direct request to mask up from a doctor with the Cleveland Clinic, which helped organize the debate. That doctor even offered them masks, and they declined."

Marianna Sotomayor: "I witnessed a Cleveland Clinic doctor remind Trump's guests to wear a mask, even offering them surgical ones on the off chance they didn't have one. None of them put on a mask.The doctor looked frustrated as she stepped away, prompting a staffer to say, "That’s all you can do.”

Beth Fouhy: "Reminder that the Trump family and their guests sat unmasked in the debate hall Tuesday night despite rules mandating all attendees wear masks. @FLOTUS, who has now tested positive, entered the hall wearing a mask but removed it when she sat down. h/t @MariannaNBCNews

https://www.rawstory.com/melania-trump-implicated-in-white-house-cover-up-of-trumps-diagnosis-report/

[Rick Plant]

Crimnal Donald is the biggest traitor in American history. Not only did he try to steal an election from the American people with an act of violence, he was working behind the scenes to sabotage President Biden's infrastructure bill which revitalizes America and brings good paying jobs as well as boosting our economy. Criminal Donald failed to even write an Infrastructure Bill because he has no clue what he was even doing. He promised infrastructure for 4 years and nothing was even done. So, out of pure jealousy and anger he did whatever he could to prevent the Biden's bill from passing because his fragile ego couldn't handle President Biden passing an historic bill that he never could. So, traitor Donnie was willing to let America have dangerous bridges and roads and to sink our economy out of pure spite. That's the kind of person is and he needs to be locked away for ALL of his crimes so he can no longer destroy our country.

Trump wanted Biden's infrastructure bill to fail so much he was working the phones to stop any Republican votes



A Washington Post profile on Alaska Rep. Don Young (R) revealed that former President Donald Trump was so desperate to kill the infrastructure bill under President Joe Biden that he was working to phones to stop the funding.

Trump spent the majority of his presidency attempting to pass his own version of the bill, with enthusiastic support from Democrats. The idea of "infrastructure week" became a punchline during the presidency, wrote the New York Times in 2019. Trump then torpedoed his years-long effort for an infrastructure package in 2019 because the Democrats were investigating him for his call with Ukraine where he demanded a "favor" for aide.

It was previously reported that Trump was working to kill any Democratic negotiations with Republicans. Trump then began publicly criticizing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for even entertaining the idea of the vote.

A Politico report in July said that Republicans were privately encouraging Trump to tone down his opposition and even consider supporting the effort, which would have allowed him an opportunity to take partial credit in getting the conversation rolling.

But as the vote came close, Trump begged with his allies to kill the effort, allowing Democrats to argue that Trump wants the country to fail. Trump has teased that he may run for president in 2024 and if elected he could have attempted an "infrastructure week" again, so it's unclear if that was his thinking.

"Rep. Don Young knew the call would not end well, as the Alaska Republican forcefully rejected Donald Trump’s plea to oppose the more than $1 trillion infrastructure legislation," the Post report said. "How did the former president take the news?"

“Not well,” Young told the Post, noting that the good news is that there wasn't any shouting. “I think his policy is just so good. Just shut up — that’s all he has to do. He’s not going to. I know that.”

Only 13 Republicans in the House were willing to support the bill, and Trump has pledged to punish them with primary challenges and an effort to bring them down in 2022. The 13 Republicans, however, seem to be taking the bet that by the midterm election Trump will forget about his opposition and be onto another fight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/young-trump-infrastructure/2021/12/02/c6863870-52dd-11ec-9267-17ae3bde2f26_story.html

[Rick Plant]

Former federal prosecutor: We'll see 'a tidal wave of criminal charges against Donald Trump'



Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner has been speaking the blunt truth about Donald Trump's criminal conduct for years. He's not stopping now just because most of the media, and most Democrats in Congress for that matter, have moved on. I spoke to Kirschner, who is now an NBC News legal analyst, in a recent "Salon Talks" episode about Steve Bannon's indictment and more.

During our conversation, we kept coming back to is Kirschner's conviction that the disgraced former president is still a very real threat to our nation. And Kirschner, who served for more than 30 years as a federal prosecutor, is adamant that the only way to neutralize that threat is by prosecuting Trump for his crimes, ranging from those he may have committed in his effort to overturn the 2020 election to possible crimes arising from his mishandling of the pandemic.

Kirschner believes there's actually a case to be made against Trump for all the lies and misinformation he spread about the coronavirus and how to defeat it, from his intentional falsehoods about the nature of the threat to his disgraceful conduct designed to undermine safeguards, such as mask mandates, entirely because he believed it helped him politically. Kirschner, who formerly headed up the homicide unit of the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C., told me that Trump's "grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to another."

Regarding the possible crimes arising from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Kirschner said this about Trump's apparent role: "If you don't punish an attempted overthrow of the government, an insurrection, a rebellion, we're going to get more rebellions. That's just common sense." Watch my Salon Talks interview with Kirschner here or read a transcript of our conversation below to hear him lay out the case for manslaughter charges against Trump himself, and discuss the likelihood that prominent Trump allies are on their way to prison.

Let's start with Steve Bannon. He's been indicted. Can you explain why there was a delay in this indictment? What do you think actually prompted the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney in D.C to finally indict him?

We were on Steve Bannon indictment watch for 22 days from the day he was voted in contempt and referred for prosecution to the D.C. U.S. attorney's office until the U.S. attorney finally presented it to the grand jury and the grand jury indicted him for two counts of contempt of Congress. Twenty-two days. We know historically it's been done in as few as nine days. It was done to a Reagan-era EPA official named Rita Lavelle. Twenty-two days may sound like a long time. First of all, it wasn't that long. It takes some time to put a quick investigation together, present it to the grand jury and have them vote out an indictment. But I really think the holdup was because there was an acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in place at the front end of that 22-day period.

I've worked for more than 10 U.S. attorneys in D.C. Some of them were acting, some of them were interim, some of them were presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed. Ordinarily when you have an acting U.S. attorney, that person just tries to keep the trains running on time, not make a lot of waves, not take on a lot of high-profile decisions. The new permanent U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate and took over one week before Steve Bannon was indicted. His name is Matt Graves, a former colleague of mine. He's a good man. He's a thoughtful man. He was a public corruption prosecutor when he was in my office. One week after he arrived, bam, Steve Bannon indicted. I think that's an important tell and some foreshadowing about how promptly the new D.C. U.S. attorney is going to go about his business.

Steve Bannon said at his press conference, after going to court for the first time, "They took on the wrong guy this time." He said, "It's the misdemeanor from hell." You know the new U.S. attorney in that district. How do you think he's going to respond to that?

Steve Bannon has a rude awakening coming, because he's going to be convicted if he opts to go to trial. Why? Because the offense he committed, contempt of Congress, requires the prosecutors to prove that he was served a lawful subpoena and that he failed to appear. The fact that he is raising executive privilege — first of all, he doesn't have any. He could say, "I am invoking magical unicorn privilege," and it would be equally persuasive.

I don't want to get down into the weeds of executive privilege, but when you get a subpoena, you have to show up. If you have any privilege — executive privilege, attorney-client privilege, parishioner privilege, doctor-patient privilege — you begin answering questions. If the questions begin to make their way into privileged information, you say, "I hereby invoke the privilege." The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, for example.

The way you don't handle it is to thumb your nose at a subpoena and refuse to show up. This is going to be a very easy criminal case to prove. Steve Bannon will be convicted. And under the statute, if he's convicted of contempt of Congress, each count carries a minimum of one month in jail and a maximum of one year in jail. He will see jail time in the event he's convicted.

In your view, it's clear he has no legal defense. What about the case of Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff? He seems to be communicating, through his legal counsel, with the Jan. 6 committee, but he seems very reluctant to respond to a subpoena. Does Meadows have a potentially more valid defense?

Mark Meadows has no defense for failing to appear on the subpoena. Now, he may have a more legitimate, more viable executive privilege claim, because he was actually part of the administration at the time these communications were had. But what he was required to do under the subpoena is to appear and assert, question by question, whether he was invoking executive privilege or not.

I'll give you an example, Dean. The first question is going to be, "Sir, please state your name." "No, I invoke executive privilege." Mark, you have no executive privilege over your name. And the questions would have progressed in that fashion until maybe questions involving executive privilege got asked. That's when you invoke the privilege. What that does is it creates a record and defines the parameters of what the witness is actually invoking executive privilege on, and then that can be litigated.

You make a great point for people who think, well, maybe Mark Meadows has executive privilege, as he was White House chief of staff until the very end. You've got to go there, and you or your counsel invoke the privilege. You don't just blow off a subpoena. I saw you tweeting about Stephen Miller, yukking it up on Fox News. He was served as well. Maybe Meadows sends a message to Miller, Kayleigh McEnany, Bernard Kerik and all the rest, because I imagine they're going to follow suit. If nothing happens to Meadows, they're going to claim the same things.

You are far more likely to see the McEnanys and the Stephen Millers appear on the subpoenas now and then maybe try to invoke whatever privilege they believe they have. I do predict that, as you say, other witnesses are now going to begin appearing and they're going to challenge the subpoena in other ways. That's why this was a really important step for both the House Select Committee and the Department of Justice to have taken against Steve Bannon.

I want to shift gears a little bit. A lot of people have talked about the potential criminality of Donald Trump in connection with Jan. 6, which we'll talk about in a minute. But everyone has just forgotten or not even addressed the idea of Trump's potential criminal culpability for his lies and what could be manslaughter charges around COVID. You just put out a video on this very point. Please tell people why you think, as a former federal prosecutor who was chief of the homicide unit in D.C., why Trump may have committed crimes in connection with his handling of COVID.

If you look at a relatively low level of homicide, every jurisdiction, every state has its own laws, its own statutes. They call the crime different things. Some jurisdictions call it negligent homicide. In D.C. we call it involuntary manslaughter, but it's a relatively low level of homicide. Donald Trump's conduct, even just what we've seen publicly reported, satisfies — in my opinion as a former career homicide prosecutor — the three elements that we're required to prove to hold somebody accountable for involuntary manslaughter.

Those are that somebody acted in a grossly negligent way. Donald Trump acted in an intentionally criminal way when he lied to the American people about the nature, the transmissibility and the way that you can protect yourself against contracting COVID. He lied to the American people about that. We can prove that because he told Bob Woodward, on tape, the true state of affairs and then he walked right out to the cameras and he lied to us.

The one incident that really sticks with me, that I think would be a marquee piece of evidence in a Donald Trump prosecution for avoidable COVID deaths, would be when he told Jeff Mason, wonderful reporter standing in the Rose Garden during a press conference. He told him, "Take off the mask." And Jeff Mason said, "Mr. President, I choose to protect myself. I'll speak up my more loudly but I'm not going to take off the mask." Trump then mocked him and said, "Oh, I guess you want to be politically correct."

Dean, what message did Donald Trump's base, the people who for whatever reason, decide to listen to and credit what Donald Trump says, what message do you think they took away from that? "Oh, the president just told me I don't need a mask. And beyond that, he would mock me. He would belittle and demean me and call me 'politically correct' if I wore a mask. I am not wearing a mask." Donald Trump put people in harm's way unnecessarily.

The three elements: that he acted in a grossly negligent manner. He did. That his grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to another. When we're dealing with a deadly pandemic, you can check that element off the list. The third element is the one that sounds more complicated or harder to prove, which is that your grossly negligent conduct caused the death of another. But causation has a legal definition. It is that your conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the death of another. And Donald Trump's conduct was a substantial factor in people declining to protect themselves against the coronavirus. That is a strong case for involuntary manslaughter. It just takes some strong, brave prosecutors to bring the charge and then put it in front of a jury. As long as it's a fair and impartial jury, they will hold Donald Trump accountable, in my opinion.

To remind people, because so much has gone on since then, on Feb, 7, 2020, Trump told Bob Woodward point blank that COVID-19 was "deadly stuff," noting it was five times more deadly than even the most serious flu. Then, on Feb. 26, Trump goes before the cameras, when America's looking for answers, and says, "We view this the same as the flu." He lied to the American people, knowing the risks. That's really where the crux of the criminality could be in this: knowingly misleading people when you know the risk, you know people are looking to you, you have an obligation. You're not some random guy. You're the president of the United States and people are misled to their death because of this. What would it take for a prosecutor to have the courage to file that complaint against Trump?

If I were still at the D.C. U.S. attorney's office, working murder cases on Jan. 21, I would have begun presenting evidence to the grand jury of Donald Trump's responsibility for avoidable COVID deaths. The Department of Justice could not have stopped me. They could have fired me. That's the only way they could have stopped me, because it's the right thing to do to honor the victims and to the community.

What is it going to take, Dean? I think nobody, no prosecutor in New York or Georgia, at the Department of Justice or elsewhere, wants to be the first person to bring criminal charges against a former president. I predict, though, he will be charged and then every prosecutor will want to be the second one to bring charges, because the white-hot glare of media and political and citizen attention will be on the first prosecution. But because Donald Trump committed crimes in virtually every jurisdiction in our nation, anywhere someone died of COVID and they didn't have to, there is criminal liability. You're going to begin to see a tidal wave of criminal charges against Donald Trump, I suspect, once the first jurisdiction indicts him.

There's two other buckets of potential criminal liability against Donald Trump that I want to cover. One is the lead-up to Jan. 6. We've learned more about what we saw that day. We keep learning more and more information about Donald Trump behind the scenes, working with people, trying to get the DOJ to help him overturn the election based on a lie. There was no good faith. It was corrupt. It was bad motive. What potential criminality could Trump face?

There is one overarching conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States that I believe Donald Trump and Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman and Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, Mo Brooks — all the people who participated in not only the run-up to Jan. 6, lying to the American people to gin them up, to get them upset about their vote being stolen when in fact it wasn't stolen, but then also participated in the events of Jan. 6 and beyond. I believe there is a very easy charge and it's been brought in the recent past by Bob Mueller. It's called conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States.

I urge everybody to go to the DOJ website because it sets out in a paragraph, in layman's terms, just how broad and sweeping a criminal offense that is. Remember Bob Mueller indicted the Internet Research Agency in Russia on that charge. Why? Because they interfered in our free and fair elections. That is precisely what Donald Trump and company did. They tried to overthrow election results, overthrow our democracy.

That is one overarching conspiracy charge that they're on the hook for. There are lots of other pigeonhole crimes. There is a seditious conspiracy, rebellion. There are any number: Inciting an insurrection is a crime I maintain that Donald Trump fulfills all those federal criminal statutes. I'm optimistic that the Department of Justice is quietly, the way they should be, investigating all these crimes. It's not just a House select committee. I believe in my heart of hearts, knowing many of the people at the Department of Justice, that they're quietly going about their business. How can you not? When you see all this evidence of criminality and there's clearly what we call adequate predication — enough evidence to open a criminal investigation — I don't believe for a minute DOJ is turning a blind eye and saying, "We're happy to give our republic away to Donald Trump. We're not going to investigate these crimes." I don't believe that for a minute.

For Jan. 6, you touch on the idea of seditious conspiracy, which is a crime. But what about the simplest one, incitement to riot? Because we're learning more and more that it seems that it really was, I'm not going to say organic. Those people showed up because Trump lied to them for two months. He radicalized them like an ISIS recruiter. They came there for that but it doesn't seem they planned it, "We're going to attack the Capitol this way or that way." Trump's speech, the fact that he brought them there, incited this. That was what lit this fuse. What rises to the level of inciting a riot? Which was on federal property so it would be a federal crime.

I think one of the most important evidentiary components of what Donald Trump did on Jan. 6 that makes him criminally responsible for what his supporters did after he ginned them up is that everything he said and did came from a place of fraud and lies and deception. He took that group of people and he said to them, "Your vote was stolen from you. Your election was stolen from you. Your president is being stolen from you and if you don't go up the street and fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

Then Rudy Giuliani said, "Go down there, trial by combat." Mo Brooks, Don Jr.: They said, "Go down there, kick ass and take names." This all came from a platform of lies, fraud and deception, which gives not only the act that you need but gives the mental state, because he lied to the people about all of it. He basically used that angry mob as a weapon in his hand. He pointed that weapon at the Capitol and pulled the trigger. And that bullet headed up the street and they attacked the Capitol. To do what? To stop what was going on in the certification of the Electoral College vote count.

That's what Donald Trump told them to do. He gave them a directive, an action word: Go up there and stop it. And the fact that he called it a steal, he was saying, "Stop the vote count" — that is an attack on our democracy. He used the word "steal," which is a fraudulent word. That's what gives him the corrupt intent necessary to hold him accountable for those crimes.

And think about what came before this: His Department of Justice officials telling him, "Mr. President, there is no systemic fraud that undermines the election results." Donald Trump said, "I don't care. Just say there was and leave the rest up to me and my Republican friends in Congress." Dean, what I've just described in the last three minutes is the opening statement in the trial of Donald Trump for inciting the riot and the insurrection. It's right there plain as day, we just need to present it to a jury.

Let's take it a little broader. Right now we're seeing violence from people on the right against school board members, against nurses and doctors over COVID mandates, even against Republican officials who speak out against Donald Trump. If Trump is not prosecuted criminally for his actions — the fact that he's not been prosecuted so far, is that emboldening his people to do this?

Yeah, not only is it emboldening everybody because, listen, if we didn't punish bank robbers, we'd have a whole lot more bank robberies. If you don't punish an attempted overthrow of the government, an insurrection, a rebellion, we're going to get more rebellions. That's just common sense. But even beyond emboldening people, here's how Donald Trump will spin it if he is not indicted by the Department of Justice for the many crimes he inarguably committed. He will say, "The Department of Justice has given me a stamp of approval for everything I did because if it was a crime, they would have prosecuted me. They didn't. That means they vouch for me in everything I did. It wasn't criminal and I'm going to do it again." Again, this is not rocket science. This is just common sense law enforcement.

When you take a big-picture look at where we are now as a nation, how concerned are you for our democracy given that Trump has not been prosecuted and people on the right are celebrating, including Republican elected officials. We're seeing Republicans who are more upset with other Republicans who vote for the infrastructure bill than with Congressman Paul Gosar, who put out a video cartoon where he's literally killing AOC. It seems that the GOP has embraced violence or at least has no problem with it. And at the same time, they're passing laws — at least 33 laws in 19 states — to make it harder to vote.

Here's something that I think is a positive that is likely to come out of all of this. I think the Republican Party is writing its own obituary because I don't believe that what they're doing is sustainable. I don't believe it's a way to grow the party or even to keep the Republicans that have thus far not walked away. When everything you're banking on involves voter suppression laws and demonizing minorities, whether immigrants or African Americans, or when you have no actual agenda to offer, all you have is hate and division and propping up a criminal former president, that's not a winning formula for the future. It may be the only thing they feel like they have at this moment to try to retain power, but it's not a long-term winning strategy.

I think the Republican Party falls and there's probably a new version of it that is born from the Liz Cheneys and the Adam Kinzingers of the world, who retain their conservative principles but they also retain their morality and their love of country and their defense of democracy. That is where the future of the Republican Party is. But the old Republican Party is dying. I think it has to die completely and then a new Republican Party has to come up from the ashes to replace it. That is what I see as the long-term strategy, as long as we can keep our democracy up and running in the meantime. That, I think, is the challenge.

https://www.rawstory.com/former-federal-prosecutor-we-ll-see-a-tidal-wave-of-criminal-charges-against-donald-trump/

[Rick Plant]

Mark Meadows was 'mission control' for Trump's 'wingnut' election schemes and must be forced to testify: CNN analyst

On CNN Thursday, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig weighed in on the new allegations against former President Donald Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows — and what he could offer the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.

"Now we know Mark Meadows was calling the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon and others and, among other things, wanted to look into an alleged plot by China to change the thermostats in voting machines and change the vote totals," said anchor Erin Burnett. "Meadows at one point was an elected member of Congress, and this stuff happened."

"My first reaction is just, wow," said Honig. "As a human being, a sane, rational human being, wow, how can this be? When you step back, though, this is really why Mark Meadows is the single most important witness to the January 6 investigation other than Trump himself, and he's never going to realistically testify."

Honig went on to say that Meadows was "running point" for the election theft operation, and thus must be compelled to appear before the committee.

"He was mission control for a whole of government effort to try to steal this election," he said. "This wasn't some one-off or something he did once. He was reaching out to our most serious agencies, to the Pentagon, the FBI, DOJ, the National Security Advisers, to try to get them to put their stamp on this craziness. The fact is it sounds like wild conspiracy wingnut stuff, but it was coming from the chief of staff of the White House, that is incredibly dangerous. I think it tells you exactly why Meadows is such a key focal point here."

"So Meadows is giving over those emails, but making it clear he's going to exert executive privilege over a lot of stuff," said Burnett. "So is he really cooperating or not?"

"I'm a little bit skeptical here, Erin," said Honig. "When I was a prosecutor, we used to say, there are cooperators and then there are cooperators. I know on paper maybe it looks good and sounds good, Meadows is cooperating, but is he really? What did you do, Mark Meadows, in relation to the FBI and DOJ? What was Donald Trump's involvement? If Mark Meadows gets to say no, guys, not answering that, then this is a bogus deal. What are they going to talk about, what color were the drapes in the Oval Office? What did you eat for lunch January 6? This is what they need to know. So if this is out of bounds, the committee got played here. We'll see if they're able to get it out of Mark Meadows."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Feds could release 'alternative' Mueller report soon
"Primary processing" of compendium mentioned in Mueller aide's book should be complete next month, court filing says.

An unpublished investigative compilation sometimes referred to as the "Alternative Mueller Report" has been located in Justice Department files and could be released soon, according to a letter filed in federal court Thursday.

A top deputy to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, revealed in a book he published last year that the team he headed prepared a summary of all its work — apparently including details not contained in the final report made public in 2019.

"At least for posterity, I had all the [team] members ... write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation, and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files," wrote Weissmann in "Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation."

The reference prompted the New York Times to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for the document in January and to follow up in July with a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan told Judge Katherine Polk Failla in a letter Thursday that officials have figured out what document Weissmann was alluding to and have begun reviewing it for possible release.

"Since Plaintiff filed its complaint, Defendant has located and begun processing this record and intends to release all non-exempt portions to Plaintiff once processing is complete," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Jude wrote. "Defendant estimates that primary processing of the record will be complete by the end of January 2022 at which time Defendant expects to send the record to several other DOJ components for consultation."

Jude did not provide an estimate of how long those consultations could take, but proposed updating the court by mid-February.

The pledge to process the so-called alternative Mueller report is no guarantee that what's released will contain significant new revelations. The Justice Department can use a variety of exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act to shield parts of the document from disclosure, including by deeming it attorney work-product or part of an internal deliberative process. Current DOJ leaders could waive those exemptions, but releasing other contents such as grand jury information could be more difficult due to legal restrictions.

The group Weissmann supervised in the special counsel's office was called "Team M" after its primary target — former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. The team more directly focused on the ties between Russia and former President Donald Trump was known as "Team R."

It's unclear whether investigative teams other than Weissmann's also prepared compilations that were not contained in Mueller's final report.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/02/mueller-report-alternative-release-523703

[Rick Plant]

So much for the "Liberal Media" that right wingers keep lying about. Like I've said before many times, there is no such thing as a "Liberal Media". Most of the media is owned by right wing billionaires and the MSM only now exists for ratings and profit.

Trump-Biden coverage data shows reporters are ‘accessories to the murder of democracy’:



President Joe Biden's press coverage has been as negative as — and sometimes more negative than — former president Donald Trump's, according to a new data-based analysis.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reports that the analysis, covering more than 200,000 articles from 65 news websites, rated the coverage Biden received in the first 11 months of 2021 versus the coverage President Donald Trump got in the first 11 months of 2020.

"The findings ... confirmed my fear: My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy," Milbank writes. "After a honeymoon of slightly positive coverage in the first three months of the year, Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020."

Milbank suggests the results are alarming given that among other things, Trump presided over the world's worst response to COVID-19, embraced violent white supremacists, and refused to accept the results of a free and fair election, sparking the Capitol insurrection.

"We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy?" Milbank writes. "The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians. ... Too many journalists are caught in a mindless neutrality between democracy and its saboteurs, between fact and fiction. It’s time to take a stand."

Read more here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/03/biden-media-coverage-worse-trump-favorable/

[Rick Plant]

MAGA is a violent domestic terrorist cult and I can't understand how anybody could support what they are calling for. And then you have psycho anti American traitor Michael Flynn leading the way with his Qanon religious cult. Hard to believe how far America has fallen in the last 5 years due to Trump and his psychos.   

MAGA conspiracy theorist calls for mass hangings of US senators: 'The gallows are getting wider'



On Friday, far-right activist Joe Oltmann called for the mass hanging of U.S. senators who, in his view, are "traitors" to the country — including Republicans who voted to avert a government shutdown this week.

"There's your list of 19 traitors to the American People, along with all the other traitors to the American people," said Oltmann on the Conservative Daily podcast. "I want people to go out there and get some wood. The gallows are getting wider and longer. We should be able to build gallows all the way from Washington, D.C. to California."

Oltmann, based in Colorado, is the leader of FEC United, a right-wing group that has its own militia. He has frequently peddled in violent and extremist rhetoric, asserting that he "sees a war coming."

READ MORE: 'I see a war coming,' says militia leader with Colorado GOP ties

He is also a purveyor of conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, and claimed in an email with embattled pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell that "several" Colorado clerks loyal to Trump have "infiltrated" voting machines in the state to try to confirm that the election was stolen.

He is currently being sued by a former worker of Dominion Voting Systems, a common target of far-right conspiracy theories, whom he claimed was on an "Antifa conference call" promising that the voting machines would not allow Trump to win.

Watch video below:
https://www.rawstory.com/joe-oltmann/


A former Trump aide is trying to build a violent right-wing Christian takeover of the US



Michael Flynn is always in the news for the worst reasons.

Today, it’s because of the former Trump advisor’s feud with Lin Wood and the leaking of text messages and audio recording during which he calls QAnon “total nonsense” as well as a CIA psy-op. Last time, he was calling for a single religion in the United States. Time before that, QAnon members accused him of being a Satanist for a sermon at a church drawing from a former New Age apocalyptic leader.

Next time, it may be for something worse. In any case, everything Flynn has been doing suggests that QAnon or not, his audience, his rhetoric and his goals are far more concrete and far more sinister than the mocking media coverage suggests. Let’s start in September.

On September 17, Flynn was at the “Opening the Heavens” Conference at the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska. That event claimed to be “an annual, multi-day event where the prophetic heart of God and the manifestation of His supernatural power are demonstrated to those in attendance and those viewing online around the world!”

Flynn spoke alongside a number of “prophetic” pastors, including Gene Bailey, executive director of Kenneth Copeland ministries, whose spiritual warfare preaching got the heavy-metal treatment last year.

Flynn’s speech made news due to QAnon’s reaction to it. It was said to be Satanic, ironic given QAnon’s resemblance to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Flynn’s speech resembled a 1984 sermon by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, founder of the Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age apocalyptic group best known for their move to bunkers in Montana to await a prophesied nuclear apocalypse in 1990. Not only was it a failed doomsday cult, but it was a theosophic movement, something associated with Lucifer by its 18th-century founder.Flynn said he felt called to St. Michael, the archangel and his namesake. While the link between Prophet and Flynn is interesting, the text of Flynn’s “Archangel Prayer” is all by itself not so great:

We are your instrument
Of those sevenfold rays
And all your archangels, all of them
We will not retreat, we will not retreat
We will stand our ground
We will not fear to speak
We will be the instrument of your will
Whatever it is
In your name, and in the names of your legions
We are freeborn, and shall remain freeborn
And we shall not be enslaved by any foe
Within or without
So help me God.

"Seven rays” is a concept used in theosophy and in the Summit Lighthouse. Prophet’s prayer to Archangel Michael, which people have compared Flynn’s sermon, is not only part of the theosophic movement, but an aggressively anti-Communist talk, ending:

Archangel Michael, Stand with me!
Save my child!
Save my household!
Save my nation and bind those Communist hordes!

Others can analyze the I AM movement and its issues, but the use of militant religious language and the comparison to an aggressively apocalyptic, anti-Communist doomsday cult is bad enough.

Then in early November, Flynn and Wood had a series of exchanges -- people have focused on the audio recording of Flynn calling QAnon a CIA disinfo operation — but more worrying was the fact that he told Wood, on November 3, to read an article proving QAnon is a fraud.

Why more worrying? Because it was written by Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi radio host who’s promoted various QAnon conspiracies and served time for threatening elected officials -- he advocated murder repeatedly. The article is incredibly scary. It included this passage:

The Trump Anon believers want SOMEBODY ELSE to do it for them. Well, I’ve said this before and I will say it again now: Nobody is coming to save them/us. Nobody is coming to save the country. If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. And until someone (but not me) decides that it is finally time to throw away all the comforts of this life, and brutally slaughter the people who are doing all these things, (and by “slaughter” I mean exactly that) then all these things will continue, unabated, to the destruction of our country and our oh-so-comfy lives.

This is standard Turner fare -- to preserve white nationalist power, people have to murder others, including elected officials -- but to have someone with Flynn’s background and his elite status within QAnon conspiracy and other movements promoting it is infinitely more terrifying than the entertainment value of seeing him bashing QAnon.

A week later Flynn and Wood were in Springfield, Missouri, at a “Preserving America” event billed as “Come and listen to America’s tier-1 patriot speakers and learn about preserving America under the Constitution.” Outside of the Springfield News-Leader, it garnered little press -- but one local sheriff attending claimed he had, “A great conversation with General Flynn. He wanted me to know the American Sheriff is the last line of defense for our free

Flynn has spoken with Richard Mack for the “Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association” podcast, an anti-government extremist group that works to recruit sheriffs into the “patriot” militia movement. The comment should be taken in that light.

Then there is Flynn’s ongoing “Reawaken America” tour, the most recent news items before the Wood blowup. On November 13, the tour was at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, John Hagee’s church.

Hagee is an apocalypse minded Christian Zionist and his son and executive pastor of the church, Matt, was on stage for the event. The “Reawaken America Tour,” a QAnon speaking tour, has numerous pastors presenting -– Dave Scarlett, Mark Burns, Phil Hotsenpiller, Leon Benjamin, Greg Locke, Jackson Lahmeyer, Brian Gibson among them. All have pushed the Big Lie and Christian Nationalism.

On stage, Flynn said, “if we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” The clip got widespread media play, but it is much more important in that broader context. “Reawaken America” has events in Dallas in December at Elevate Life Church in Frisco, where Pastor Keith Craft runs men-only “Warrior Nights,” dresses in militant garb, and mocks mask-wearing and the government.

In January, they’ll be at Dream City Church in Phoenix, which had hosted a Trump rally in 2020 and had been sent a cease-and-desist about promoting a fraudulent air filter system that June.

In February, they’ll be at Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio, where Pastor Dave Lombardi tweeted out on November 3: “‘King Cyrus’ will prevail! Christian principles will prevail!,” and “the ‘Walls of Jericho’ will fall tonight! The Gospel message will prevail! The March continues!”

Both ideas have violent overtones — the fall of the walls of Jericho is followed by the massacre of all inhabitants. “King Cyrus,” a reference here to Donald Trump, destroyed the empire of the Babylonians.

These events are linking congregations nationwide in a specific project -- to build an ultranationalist Christian right to take control of America.

Flynn’s fall events show it is not as simple as whether or not he’s a grifter who pretends to believe in QAnon. He is. He’s a fraud. He’s corrupt. And we already knew this. But he’s also a corrupt fanatic, who believes in overthrowing the government and imposing a theocracy. He certainly seems comfortable reading and promoting neo-Nazi articles advocating the literal slaughter of enemies while doing so.

Stop laughing at Michael Flynn.

He’s dangerous.

Driving him out of QAnon is great, but the other groups he’s engaged with, the other ideologies he’s a part of, are no laughing matter.

https://www.rawstory.com/a-former-trump-aide-is-trying-to-build-a-violent-ultranationalist-right-wing-christian-takeover-of-the-us/