Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Trump news – live: FBI found foreign nation’s nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago, report says

Rolling coverage of latest developments in legal battles of former president

FBI agents found a document describing a foreign government’s military defences, including its nuclear capabilities, when they searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last month, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday night.

The revelation could severely undercut Mr Trump’s defence that the documents are harmless or meant for a future presidential library or other projects.

Meanwhile, former attorney general Bill Barr believes Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling on having a special master review the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago was wrong, deeply flawed, and should be appealed by the government.

Elsewhere, former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon is expected to surrender to New York state prosecutors on Thursday to face a new criminal indictment, according to reports.

This comes just weeks after a federal jury convicted him of two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for intentionally defying a subpoena related to the assault on the US Capitol last year.

And the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton told CBS News that she believes Mr Trump led and encouraged a criminal seditious conspiracy against the US, comparing Mr Trump’s reaction to losing in 2020 to her own measured response to losing the 2016 election.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-nuclear-codes-fbi-impeachment-steve-bannon-b2161452.html

[Rick Plant]

Mar-A-Lago nuclear revelations make it 'almost impossible' for Trump to escape charges: legal expert

The revelation that Donald Trump kept materials related to a foreign nation's nuclear capabilities puts intense pressure on the Department of Justice to bring charges against the former president.

FBI agents found those highly classified documents -- which many high-ranking national security officials aren't even aware of -- at Mar-A-Lago during a search last month, and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade told "Morning Joe" that prosecutors had to indict Trump for holding onto those top-secret government records.

"I think there are two things about this that are very significant," McQuade said. "One is, regardless of classification level, it is clear now that this relates to national defense information, and that's the language of the Espionage Act. So Donald Trump can claim to have declassified documents all day. He might even have been successful, and that would be no defense to the claim. The other thing that I think is significant about this is it makes it almost impossible for the Justice Department to decline to bring criminal charges."

McQuade said this situation called for strong action, compared with similar violations by other former government officials after they had left office.

"Sometimes there are technical violations, but unless there are aggravating factors, sometimes they'll decline and just get their documents back and be on their way," McQuade said. "Something as egregious as this it would be impossible for them to decline."

The other thing that should worry Trump is the sourcing for this report, which McQuade said did not appear to have come from investigators but instead from sources close to the former president.

"I think there's speculation by Trump's lawyers who are hollering that this is a leak by the government," she said. "I think it's highly unlikely in such a sensitive case. In my experience, when leaks came out, it was not government officials identified in reporting, it's people familiar with the investigation. Most often, it is a witness who is offended at what is happening, wants to deflect any information from themselves and shares that information with the media."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

‘Clear and present threat to democracy’: Republican former defense secretary suggests Trump should be prosecuted



Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen says he agrees Donald Trump a “clear and present threat to democracy,” and adds his possession of classified documents including one revealing the nuclear capabilities of a foreign government is “offense enough” for him to be “subject to criminal prosecution.”

Cohen, a Republican and former U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from Maine, served as President Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary. He noted that if he had the same documents in his house where he left office as Donald Trump did, “I would be in handcuffs.”

Late Tuesday night The Washington Post reported that a “document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.”

“Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them,” the Post continued. “Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs.”

Secretary Cohen, who endorsed both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for President, told MSNBC Wednesday morning, “We go back to the January 6th committee, where Judge Luttig — a very conservative judge — said that Donald Trump is a ‘clear and present threat to democracy,’” Mediate reported. “That’s been confirmed over and over.”

“The notion that the former president had documents, highly classified documents, in his possession and in unsafe circumstances, or any circumstances, puts our nation at risk, potentially. So, I think there’s no justification. There’s no way they can say, ‘oh, it’s a mistake.’ I think that’s been disproved, and anyone who says that is flat-out lying.”

Cohen also suggested the discovery of the nuclear document is a game-changer for how Attorney General Merrick Garland will move the investigation forward.

“I think the Justice Department is going about it very methodically and very deferentially,” Cohen said. “I think that time has come to an end.”

https://www.rawstory.com/clear-and-present-threat-to-democracy-republican-former-defense-secretary-suggests-trump-should-be-prosecuted/

[Rick Plant]

William Barr says judge’s ruling for special master in Trump documents probe is ‘deeply flawed’

Former Attorney General William Barr slammed as “deeply flawed” the decision by a federal judge to appoint a special master in the Mar-a-Lago top-secret documents probe.

The onetime loyalist of former President Donald Trump didn’t mince words as he predicted the decision of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon would be overturned on appeal.

“The opinion I think was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it.” Barr said on Fox News. ”it’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.”

Using a baseball analogy, Barr predicted that even if the special master decision is upheld, it would only slow down the case.

“I don’t think it changes the ballgame,” Barr said. “We’ll just have a rain delay for a couple of innings.”

Barr also suggested it was likely that his ex-boss will eventually be indicted for mishandling classified documents — and rightfully so.

“The government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether to file charges,” Barr said. “Government documents were taken. Classified information was taken. Classified documents were not handled appropriately.”

Worst of all, Barr said prosecutors may be able to prove obstruction of justice.

“There’s some evidence to suggest they were deceived,” he said.

Barr said in some ways the government’s potential case against Trump is very simple.

“It relates to the fact that (the documents) were there and the fact that they were classified,” he said. “And the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered.”

The salvos from Barr marks the second time in recent days that he has effectively given his blessing to the Department of Justice’s handling of the Trump probe.

On Friday, he defended the search of Mar-a-Lago as appropriate given Trump’s actions.

Barr broke from Trump in late 2020 when he refused to join the former president’s effort to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to President Biden.

© New York Daily News

[Rick Plant]

Former CIA director worries what Trump has already done with the 'Top Secret' documents

Former CIA director John Brennan is worried about particular documents in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago trove that make him even more nervous about the former president's possession of top secret information.

Trump has a tendency to brag and there is a general fear that he would reveal classified information in trying to impress someone, Brennan explained.

"It's clear that Donald Trump was always susceptible to flattery, and that's one of the things that foreign intelligence services do in terms of having individuals as she pointed out bumping up against him, and trying to get into his good graces so that he would then talk and basically show off in terms of what he might know or what he might have, which really worries me in terms of what he might have already done with those documents," Brennan explained to MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday.

"Did he show them to people down in Mar-a-Lago as a way to impress others?"

It was reported last month that a Russian-speaking woman pretending to be the heir to the Rothschild family fortune got into Mar-a-Lago. She was photographed with both Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Luckily, Graham doesn't sit on any of the intelligence committees in the Senate.

Brennan explained that a damage assessment would walk through who was at Mar-a-Lago, who was in the room with the documents and how that could damage national intelligence.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Criminal Donald damaged our national security. Who knows what damage he caused to America and our allies.

Lock Him Up for treason!   

“I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC.

“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”

[Rick Plant]

Reporter recalls Trump's bizarre fascination with nuclear information



One of the more unsettling obsessions the former president had was with his power over nuclear weapons, according to Washington Post reporter Ashly Parker. She spoke with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday about the long-running history of Donald Trump consuming information about American nuclear capabilities, which continued until the final days of his administration.

Parker recalled that in the very early days of the reports about the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago there was a conversation about nuclear information included in the documents that Trump had. Trump immediately called the story "fake news" and said that it was a lie.

"Having covered President Joe Biden for two years was interesting to be reminded that oftentimes Trump repeatedly says things that are just fundamentally not true," she recalled. "And when he comes out against a scoop or against an explosive piece of news, what it actually ought to mean is that it's dead accurate, and he wishes it hadn't been public, which is what the second Washington Post scoop shows."

The photo that was part of the DOJ's response revealed at least one document that had markings on it that it had been formerly classified under the Atomic Energy Act, but had been moved to the Pentagon. Former intelligence agents and officers have explained that the document is related to nuclear information.

Another story that Wallace recalled was that Trump wondered if he could nuke hurricanes. From tweets or statements Trump or his top advisers talked about using nuclear weapons on North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Russia, recalled BusinessInsider in 2018. Trump was also held in violation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons due to some of his threats.

"The thing that jumps out to me that you sort of outlined, Nicolle, is not just that he took these documents with him in a way that should have never been allowed to happen, but there were three times when documents went back to their rightful place," said Parker. "The first is when the National Archives got some early on in January. The second time was in June when it became clear that Trump and his team had not turned over all of these documents and there were pretty high-level and serious negotiations. And the fact that this final set of documents was recovered in this third batch during the FBI having to go into Mar-a-Lago and against the former president's wishes, searched the property, seems to show, and again, there's a lot we don't know — but this was specifically something that, for whatever reason, he was incredibly reluctant to turn over."

Watch: