Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Bannon is in 'a great deal of trouble' with NY prosecutors — and can't get out of it this time: former Trump lawyer



On Wednesday's edition of CNN's "OutFront," former Donald Trump attorney Ty Cobb outlined how the new charges in New York against longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon for the We Build The Wall scheme could be a legal dead end for him.

Bannon, who just received a federal conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the House January 6 Committee, was previously pardoned by Trump for his role in the same scheme for which the state charges were filed.

"You worked at the White House at the same time as Steve Bannon," said anchor Erin Burnett. "The charges in this case are new charges, related to his fundraising scheme to build a border wall. He raised $25 million and took $1 million for his personal use, and that's fraud. How much trouble do you think he's facing?"

"I think he's in a great deal of trouble," said Cobb. "Two of the three colleagues with whom he was charged federally have pled guilty in that case and will be sentenced. The third went to trial, they had a mistrial. He'll be tried again. But I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the colleagues who pled guilty show up on the witness list for the government, assuming the government even needs them."

The facts of the case, Cobb added, "seem straightforward."

"They raised $25 million, assuring people that it would all go to the wall-building project," said Cobb. "Bannon siphoned out $1 million, according to the allegations, and the allegations that the other individuals pled guilty to. I don't think that Bannon has much of a chance in that case. And it will likely result in his conviction and incarceration."

The new charges come as the IRS strips tax-exempt status from a dark money group run by Bannon, which allegedly received some of the money diverted out of We Build The Wall.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

The DOJ can get Trump's hand-picked judge removed from the case — here's how

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe joined Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday night, and after hearing him address some of the legal matters facing Donald Trump, another law scholar was aghast anyone has to take the matters as if they're serious. But former acting-solicitor general, Neal Katyal, came up with a strategy for how the Justice Department can circumvent the Trump-appointed judge the ex-president shopped to get from the beginning.

Andrew Weissmann, who served as general counsel for the FBI and a prosecutor on special counsel Robert Mueller's team, began the discussion by saying that the Justice Department appeal the injunction but not necessarily the special master. The documents that fall under executive privilege are going to be very easy to suss out from those involving personal attorney-client privilege. At the same time, nothing that is in a classified or "top secret" folder is going to fall under privileged information for Donald Trump.

"This is like a thief taking documents then saying, 'Judge, I want them back,'" Weissmann said. "This is a complete farce. And to have somebody like Laurence Tribe and Neal Katyal have to address this, as if it's a serious argument, just tells you the depths that we are in. And just to be very serious for a moment the notion that in the documents there are state secrets involving nuclear capabilities — it means that there is present harm to national security. Our allies and countries that want to quietly cooperate with us are looking at all of this and making decisions about whether they should continue to do so if we cannot keep secrets. That is how we protect this country. It is how we thwart terrorist attacks. It is how we conduct important, lifesaving undercover operations."

That's why it's so important to get the information back, he explained, and the national security piece of the story is likely a factor in how Merrick Garland will act moving forward. He will do what is in the best interest of national security and get to a decision in reversing that piece of Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling quickly.

Katyal conceded that appeals take a very long time to deal with. Trump will also likely appeal to the Supreme Court and that will take even more time. It isn't clear, however, if due to this involving national security, and now we learn it involves nuclear secrets, if the courts would be willing to move faster. Given there are questions about whether Trump still has documents, based on the empty folders found, there could be even more search warrants issued.

His second point is that the more information that comes out the worse Judge Cannon looks, and it's only going to get worse.

"Every day, every week, we learn a new fact about just how bad Trump's behavior was. Now, it is nuclear secrets. That also underscores just how bad the decision was by this judge in Florida. So, appointing a special master is one thing, but stopping a criminal investigation of this magnitude in its tracks because you think, as a federal judge, that some documents might be privileged. That is insane. That is a bazooka when one needs, at most, a scalpel. And if you have lost Bill Barr, and Bill Barr is -- God. That is...." Katyal said, trailing off.

The other option, he suggested, is seeking clarification from the judge. Already it has been argued that the judge will likely have to issue an edit to her opinion because she misquoted a case.

"She said the current president, President Biden has not waived executive privilege," she obviously didn't read the last part of the government's brief saying that he'd said so. But the government, the solicitor general, can have a document from Biden saying, 'I hereby wave executive privilege.' They could then ask her to narrow the scope of the injunction, so that the investigation can proceed. The downside: this judge doesn't seem all that amenable to reconsideration or logic," Katyal continued.

The last option, he said, is one he suggests the Justice Department go with, and that is Judge Cannon basically argued that she shouldn't be overseeing the case to begin with.

"She pleaded herself out of her own court," said Katyal. "Because she planted remedies to the special master via the Presidential Records Act. And she has a footnote on this, Footnote 16, which says basically, the Presidential Records Act says that you can only bring these cases in Washington D.C. and only Washington D.C. judges can oversee them. So, that maybe that's what the Justice Department, I think, should do here. Get this case before judges who are experts on presidential records and executive privilege and the like."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

'Lock him up': Nuclear, government and legal experts call for Trump to be indicted



Should Donald Trump be indicted for his retention and refusal to return highly classified documents and documents that "detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them"?

That's how The Washington Post described its bombshell revelation Tuesday night, reporting that FBI agents found a "document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities," at Mar-a-Lago when it seized over 100 classified documents last month.

"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," the Post explained.

Nuclear, government, and legal experts agree: Donald Trump should be indicted., especially given the top secret nature of the documents and what's at stake with nuclear weapons.

"The man stole nuclear secrets and should be in prison," wrote attorney Walter Shaub, the former Director of the U. S. Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday.

Jon Wolfsthal served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama for National Security Affairs including serving as his nuclear advisor and as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, where he set nuclear policy. Wolfsthal even worked for the United States Department of Energy as an on-site monitor in North Korea.

"I worked in the US Government on nuclear weapon issues for 11 years," says Wolfsthal, now a senior policy advisor at Global Zero, which works for a nuclear-free world. "If anyone I worked with or I took any one of these documents home, we would be in prison. Trump must be indicted or the entire classification system will be at risk."

Global Zero's Managing Partner Derek Johnson in a statement sent to NCRM, painted a picture of what's at stake.

"That an ousted president could run off with highly sensitive documents, in clear violation of federal law, is stunning — but the fact that these secrets are about weapons that can kill hundreds of millions of people is orders of magnitude more consequential. Americans should be demanding an investigation: How could this happen, and why were there no safeguards in place to prevent it?"

Johnson warns, “the man who carted off state secrets on a foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities is the same one who had absolute authority to launch a nuclear attack at any time — and is doing everything he can to regain that power."

“This isn’t solely about Donald Trump: it’s an indictment of the inherent flaws and fragility of the nuclear system. Nuclear risks require an unattainable level of perfection and control. If the system to manage those risks is inadequate in the United States — and it’s impossible to conclude otherwise — the same is true in every nuclear-armed nation. The world we live in is simply too dangerous and unpredictable for nuclear weapons; the case for abolishing them makes itself.”

On Twitter Tuesday night Johnson served up a less serious response, writing: "I have a security clearance as high as Donald Trump's, which is to say, none at all. I'd already be in prison if the government discovered I had top secret documents about nuclear weapons."

Attorney Tristan Snell, who successfully prosecuted the Trump University case for the Manhattan DA's Office, says, "Yes, Trump stole nuclear secrets. And US defense intel so sensitive that the president was one of the only people to know about it. Indict him. Try him. Convict him. Lock him up."

An expert in government and media, David Rothkopf has an opinion piece in The Daily Beast Wednesday that says, "contrary to the measured pace of the [DOJ's] investigation to date, when documents like these are stolen the issue must shift from caution and deference to a former president to swift containment of what could be a grievous national security breach. It is time for action and the severest penalties the law allows."

Read More Here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-need-to-know-trumps-motive-for-taking-classified-documents

[Rick Plant]

Law professor sounds the alarm about the new plot to overthrow elections



Donald Trump's legal adviser John Eastman, the author of the so-called "coup memo," which made a legal case for why Vice President Mike Pence can stop the 2020 election certification, also penned a case that state legislatures could overturn the will of voters. This new idea is being funded by conservatives to the tune of over $1.3 billion.

Sounding the alarm on Wednesday was UCLA School of Law professor Rick Hasen, who said that even the so-called "Independence Day Legislature Theory" wouldn't support some of what Eastman is arguing in his new plot.

As MSNBCs Chris Hayes explained it, Eastman basically said, that "state legislatures, according to the Constitution, are the ultimate final arbiters are of how elections are decided. They have, as they like to say, plenary power, government power. The state supreme court that interprets the election on the state doesn't matter. Only the state legislature regulates federal elections which, in its most extreme form would mean the Wisconsin legislature which we discussed last night, widely gerrymandered, could just decide it wanted to give its electors to Donald Trump, even though state law in the state Constitution are required to give that -- popular vote in the state. They can say, no, we don't want to do that."

It's a "crank" theory, he explained, but it's one that is being not only promoted but planned by a group of Republicans who fear that they're about to lose power to the majority of Americans. Hayes went on to call it "a loaded gun aimed directly at the heart of American self-governance."

Hasen, who runs the Safeguarding Democracy Project, explained that there's no legal basis for what Eastman is proposing, but the question remains, who is going to stop them?

What Eastman is proposing is "even after the legislature had chosen, we are going to have a popular vote for president, you could take that back and start over," said Hasen. "So, that is more extreme, and I didn't see any of the amicus briefs going quite that far."

"First they would be pretty dire even putting aside the potential for election subversion," Hasen explained. "It means that state supreme courts couldn't apply the state Constitution to limit the state legislature from violating peoples voting rights. It would empower two bodies. One, it would empower state legislatures that could run roughshod over election administrators and overall state actors. So, they would be empowered. And the other would empower is the United States Supreme Court because it would turn every dispute about what an election law means in the state, as applied to the federal election, into a federal constitutional question. And the ultimate arbiter of that is, of course, the U.S. supreme court. It is a kind of feedback loop where the court is kind of not only giving more power to state legislatures. It would be giving more power to itself."

The overall question about giving power to choose the election to the Supreme Court, however, is whether they'd choose the same candidate the people would.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

DOJ appeals Trump judge’s special master ruling: 'Irreparably harm the government and the public'

The U.S. Dept. of Justice on Thursday filed a notice of appeal against U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling allowing Donald Trump the “special master” his legal team requested. The order also halted DOJ from taking any investigative steps in conjunction with the 13,000 items, including more than 100 classified documents federal agents seized during the August 8 search warrant execution of Mar-a-Lago.

“The Justice Department also argued that a former president cannot assert executive privilege after he leaves office, and that it is not possible for one part of the executive branch to assert privilege to shield documents from another part,” The Washington Post reports, but notes that the “appeals process could take longer than any document review by the special master.”

CBS News Congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane adds that DOJ has also asked the court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, to stay Judge Cannons decision.

Judge Cannon’s “order would irreparably harm the government and the public by unnecessarily requiring the government to share highly classified materials with a special master,” DOJ states.

Read More Here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/08/justice-appeals-trump-documents-special-master/



Trump social media company loses vote to go public and raise money to keep running: report

Digital World Acquisition Corp., a so-called "blank check" company, failed on Thursday to garner enough shareholder votes to take Donald Trump's Truth Social public.

"Former President Trump's social media company has another potentially big problem on its hands: It's struggling to complete a stock market listing that would allow it to raise more than $1 billion it needs to keep running," NPR reported. "Trump Media and Technology Group, which includes the Truth Social app it launched earlier this year, had been planning to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange through a complicated process known as a SPAC merger."

The Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve the merger.

"Instead of pursuing a traditional IPO, the Trump Media and Technology Group decided to merge with a blank check company that is already listed on the Nasdaq," NPR reported. "These kinds of deals have became popular in recent years, when interest rates were near zero. In effect, they give private companies a shortcut to going public — requiring less transparency than traditional IPOs."

Axios reported, "Truth Social says it currently has enough cash to maintain options through April 2023, and that it soon plans to begin generating revenue via advertising."

Trump had 89 million followers on Twitter when his account was permanently suspended. Trump has 4 million followers on Truth Social.

AFP

[Rick Plant]

Watch: Steve Bannon gets 'perp walked' in handcuffs over money laundering case



Former Trump aide Steve Bannon was treated to a proper "perp walk" in handcuffs after he was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges.

Minutes before being arraigned on Thursday, police officers escorted Bannon down a hallway lined with journalists.

"This is what happens the last days of a dying regime!" he shouted. "They will never shut me up. They will have to kill me first! I have not yet begun to fight!"

Bannon surrendered to authorities earlier in the day.

Watch the video below from ABC's Olivia Rubin.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1567939525602844672

[Rick Plant]

Steve Bannon charged with money laundering, conspiracy

The former White House adviser faces state charges in a charity fraud case after a Trump pardon let him evade federal counts.



NEW YORK — Longtime Trump ally and right-wing firebrand Stephen Bannon, who dodged federal charges in a charity fraud case thanks to a last-minute presidential pardon, must now face the music in New York state court.

Bannon, 68, arrived in handcuffs to a crowded arraignment in Manhattan’s New York County Supreme Court Thursday afternoon, hours after surrendering to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Moments before the controversial former White House adviser entered, Bannon remarked, “They will never shut me up, they’ll have to kill me first.” But inside, he said little, other than acknowledging a judge’s instructions — a heavy contrast to the bombastic and inflammatory persona that has become his trademark.

A six-count indictment charges Bannon with money laundering, conspiracy and scheming to defraud for his alleged role in We Build the Wall, a group that raised at least $15 million to construct a barrier along the border with Mexico but skimmed the donations.

The group publicly told donors its president and CEO, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, would not be compensated for his efforts. But Bannon allegedly arranged to pay him by moving money from We Build The Wall through a company he controlled. Kolfage previously pleaded guilty in the federal case. Only Bannon and the company were charged by the state.

Bannon pleaded not guilty Thursday. If convicted on the top charge, he faces a maximum 5 to 15 years in prison, according to Bragg.

“The simple truth is that it is a crime to profit off the backs of donors by making false pretenses,” Bragg said at the press conference. “We are here to say today in one voice that in Manhattan and in New York you will be held accountable for the defrauding of donors.”

Addressing reporters and bystanders outside the courthouse, Bannon suggested that the case was politically motivated. Reporters peppered him with questions about the pardon, his alleged co-conspirators’ guilty pleas and his relationship to the former president — in turn, Bannon called the crowd “paupers … in bondage” and urged them to check out his podcast.

His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan ordered Bannon to surrender his passports. Prosecutors argued he has the means and the disposition to flee, citing his recent, unrelated contempt of Congress conviction for defying a subpoena related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The judge also warned Bannon that if he is willfully absent during court proceedings, they could move forward without him.

In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Bannon of pocketing some $1 million in donations, using them to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own personal expenses. That year, federal agents arrested Bannon on the charges while he was aboard a luxury yacht off the coast of Connecticut. He pleaded not guilty, but was dropped from the case after Trump issued the pardon in the twilight hours of his presidency.

Presidential pardons apply only to federal charges and cannot shield Bannon from a state prosecution. Former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance opened a state investigation that his successor, Bragg, continued when he took office last year.

At a press conference announcing the charges, New York Attorney General Tish James said Bannon’s presidential pardon unfairly leveraged his political connections.

Kolfage and another federal co-defendant pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. Their sentencing scheduled for this week was pushed back to December. A mistrial was declared in a third alleged co-conspirator’s trial when a jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Bragg wouldn’t say whether Bannon’s alleged co-conspirators in the federal case were cooperating in the state’s prosecution.

Federal prosecutors previously said the group raised over $25 million, but the state’s indictment Thursday only referred to about $15 million. Likewise, the state did not allege Bannon used donations to cover personal expenses, as federal prosecutors had.

Bragg chalked the discrepancies up to the differences between state and federal jurisdiction, as well as the laws Bannon was being charged under. State investigators only looked at money raised through GoFundMe, where they could be certain donors saw a disclaimer that no proceeds would go to Kolfage.

When pressed whether Bannon allegedly pocketed any of the money, James told reporters, “I think your inference is correct,” suggesting he had.

As Bannon arrived at the DA’s office Thursday morning, some onlookers lobbed insults at the far-right iconoclast, who has stoked controversy at frequent turns. In the past, Bannon has suggested Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, should be executed. He has also echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

“Stop hurting America, you greasy grifter,” one woman yelled as Bannon entered the building, his brief remarks drowned out by the heckling.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/08/steve-bannon-surrenders-to-manhattan-da-00055427



Why Trump won't like Steve Bannon's New York indictment

Bannon’s legal fate is a portent for his old boss, former President Donald Trump.



Former White House staffer Steve Bannon turned himself in to New York authorities Thursday morning to face a set of charges that should be intensely familiar to him: money laundering, scheming to defraud and conspiracy.

It’s the second time in as many years that Bannon's been accused of bilking donors with promises to construct a wall on the southern border. He was indicted by a federal grand jury that accused him of the same in August 2020. While these new New York state charges threaten to interrupt his current role as a Christian nationalist election army assembler, they also serve as a reminder to his onetime boss, former President Donald Trump, about the limits of protection from the law that even the presidency can afford.

Importantly, Bannon’s legal fate is a portent for his former boss. It indicates that even if Trump had issued himself a “self-pardon” in the closing days of his term, as he reportedly considered, it wouldn’t protect him from the state and local investigations into him and his businesses. As he prepares to take another run at the presidency, Trump is likely to become more convinced than ever that only the Oval Office can provide the legal safety he craves.

Bannon was first indicted along with three others in August 2020 in relation to the “We Build the Wall” organization. Federal prosecutors claimed in their affidavit that the men raised $25 million under the guise of being a “volunteer organization.” Rather than building a wall on the border with Mexico, according to prosecutors, they built up massive personal bank accounts “using fake invoices and sham 'vendor' arrangements.” Bannon pleaded not guilty to those charges.

I’m obligated to say that Bannon “allegedly” did these things as he has never stood trial for these accusations. In one of his last acts as president, Trump issued Bannon a pardon that absolved him of the two federal charges he faced: conspiring to commit wire fraud and conspiring to commit money laundering.

It was an affront to justice, but an act the White House said at the time was justified because Bannon “has been an important leader in the conservative movement and is known for his political acumen."

Since then, Bannon has kept himself busy continuing to promote Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, agitating the base with talk of dismantling the deep state, and organizing reactionaries to intimidate voters at the polls. He’s also stood opposed to the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation efforts and is now awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of contempt of Congress in July.

That conviction and the new state charges he now faces illustrate the limits of even Trump’s abuse of his powers. While the president has near-absolute leeway to waive convictions, commute sentences or, as in Bannon’s case, pre-empt trials, that authority is only over federal charges. Against state-level charges, a presidential pardon is worthless.

Soon after Bannon’s reprieve was issued, the Manhattan district attorney’s office opened an investigation into the alleged “We Build the Wall” scam. That investigation came to bear Thursday as Bannon turned himself in. In a statement to NBC News on Tuesday, Bannon said, "This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system."

Moreover, Bannon’s pardon was particularly narrow. Even if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wasn’t the one to charge Bannon under state law for the alleged con job, there was still plenty of room for the Justice Department to do so, former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann wrote for Just Security last year. And as the contempt of Congress conviction highlighted, Bannon’s was not a blanket pardon for all crimes he may have committed in general.

Trump won’t like this reminder of the reach that states can bring to bear against him and his cronies. His company is also under civil investigation in New York state, a case that steadily marches forward even as Bragg pursues a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization. And his attempt to force Georgia officials to declare him the winner of the 2020 election is the subject of an ongoing Fulton County investigation, one that will only close in tighter on Trump as more of his allies are forced to testify.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/opinion-bannon-s-indictment-unwelcome-reminder-trump-n1298726