Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Exclusive: New evidence in special counsel probe may undercut Trump’s claim documents he took were automatically declassified

Washington CNN — The National Archives has informed former president Donald Trump that it is set to hand over to special counsel Jack Smith 16 records that show Trump and his top advisers had knowledge of the correct declassification process while he was president, according to multiple sources.

In a May 16 letter obtained by CNN, acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall writes to Trump, “The 16 records in question all reflect communications involving close presidential advisers, some of them directed to you personally, concerning whether, why, and how you should declassify certain classified records.”

The 16 presidential records, which were subpoenaed earlier this year, may provide critical evidence establishing the former president’s awareness of the declassification process, a key part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.

The records may also provide insight into Trump’s intent and whether he willfully disregarded what he knew to be clearly established protocols, according to a source familiar with recent testimony provided to the grand jury by former top Trump officials.

Trump and his allies have insisted that as president, Trump did not have to follow a specific process to declassify documents. At a CNN town hall last week Trump repeated the claim that simply by removing classified documents from the White House he had declassified them. “And, by the way, they become automatically declassified when I took them,” Trump said.

According to the letter, Trump tried to block the special counsel from accessing the 16 records by asserting a claim of “constitutionally based privilege.” But in her letter, Wall rejects that claim, stating that the special counsel’s office has represented that it “is prepared to demonstrate with specificity to a court, why it is likely that the 16 records contain evidence that would be important to the grand jury’s investigation.”

The special counsel also told the Archives that the evidence is “not practically available from another source.”

The letter goes on to state that the records will be handed over on May 24, 2023 “unless prohibited by an intervening court order.”

A source close to Trump’s legal team told CNN that the former president has received several letters like this from the Archives over the course of the investigation.

Trump’s team may challenge this in court, this person said, but claimed in the past the Archives has handed over documents before the Trump team has had a chance to challenge the release in court.

Trump’s legal team would not reveal what was in the 16 records, but the source said the former president’s attempt to block the special counsel from accessing them is “more of a strategic fight about constitutional and presidential protections rather than keeping evidence from the special counsel.”

The special counsel’s office and the Archives declined to comment.

Jim Trusty, an attorney for Trump in the classified documents case, told CNN that the former president relied on constitutional authority to take the documents to Mar-a-Lago.

“At the end of his presidency, he relied on the constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, which is to take documents and take them to Mar-a-Lago while still president as he was at the time, and to effectively declassify and personalize them,” Trusty told CNN’s Sara Sidner of the former president. “He talked about declassifying them, but he didn’t need to.”

Last year, after the FBI seized classified and top secret documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the former president and his allies claimed that Trump had a “standing order” to declassify documents he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence.

But 18 former top Trump administration officials said they never heard any such order issued during their time working for Trump, telling CNN that the claim was “ludicrous” “ridiculous,” and a “complete fiction.”

NARA’s letter to Trump comes amid a flurry of activity by Smith’s team, including grand jury appearances by former national security officials who testified that they told Trump there was a process for a president to declassify material, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The 16 records may help federal investigators overcome a significant obstacle to a potential prosecution of the former president. While presidents have ultimate declassification authority, the limits of that authority haven’t been tested in the courts.

That means the various claims by Trump and his allies that he declassified material without going through the standard process cannot be completely dismissed by the Justice Department.

In her letter, Wall says that NARA began searching for relevant records after receiving a subpoena from Smith’s team on Jan. 23, 2023. The Archives found 104 unclassified documents that matched what federal prosecutors had requested.

When notified that NARA intended to provide those documents to the grand jury, Trump’s legal team raised privilege concerns over 81 of those records. The Biden White House was also notified but told NARA the incumbent president would not assert privilege to block those records from being shared with the grand jury.

The special counsel was also given access to other records not challenged by the Trump team.

Ultimately, the special counsel identified the 16 records in question as relevant to the grand jury investigation.

In the CNN town hall last week, Trump misrepresented the Presidential Records Act, falsely claiming that he was “allowed” to take documents when he left office.

In reality, the Presidential Records Act provides that as soon as a president leaves office, the National Archives becomes the legal custodian of the president’s records, which belong to the public.

“I had every right to under the Presidential Records Act,” Trump said when asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins why he took documents when he left the White House. “You have the Presidential Records Act. I was there and I took what I took and it gets declassified,” he added.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/17/politics/trump-letter-archives-special-counsel-declassification



DOJ should investigate if Trump was involved in voting machine breaches



Donald Trump is facing an avalanche of legal problems, including criminal charges in Manhattan and state and federal investigations over the schemes to disrupt the 2020 presidential election.

But there's another issue the Justice Department should be investigating, argued Ben Clements and Susan Greenhalgh for Slate on Wednesday: whether the former president was involved in the plots to tamper with voting machines around the country.

"After Jan. 6, reports emerged of Trump supporters’ efforts to gain access to voting systems and software in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado. Many assumed these incidents were unconnected — just overzealous Trump supporters freelancing in different states to support their fervent belief in the Big Lie," wrote Clements and Greenhalgh. "More recently, evidence uncovered by plaintiffs in a Georgia lawsuit indicates that these incidents were part of the broader scheme to falsely cast doubt on, and overturn, the 2020 election."

In one of the most famous examples, Mesa County, Colorado election clerk Tina Peters — an ally of MyPillow CEO and pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell — was charged for breaching election equipment in an attempt to prove the election was stolen.

"This evidence tying Trump’s campaign to multiple software breaches, uncovered in the civil lawsuit, was publicly reported in late summer and fall of 2022, when the Jan. 6 Committee had already taken many key depositions and was winding down its work," they wrote. "Unfortunately, this timing may have prevented the committee from thoroughly probing or reporting on the voting system breaches. But our review of the committee’s testimony establishes that the unlawful scheme to copy voting system software in multiple states went straight to the top — Trump himself. During a now-infamous December 18, 2020 Oval Office meeting with Trump attended by Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others — during which Powell advocated the federal government seizing voting machines — Giuliani offered an alternative plan, promising that he was 'going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure.'"

There is, concluded Clements and Greenhalgh, "no excuse" for not opening a federal investigation into how complicit Trump may have been in all of this.

"Aside from exposing unlawful efforts to overturn the last presidential election, a thorough federal investigation is needed to uncover any ongoing threats posed by these security breaches to future elections and inform federal efforts to protect elections in the future. Our democracy is in the balance," they concluded.

Read More Here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/trump-implicated-georgia-vote-machine-theft-doj-mia.html

[Rick Plant]

CNN Exclusive: The National Archives plans to share with special counsel 16 records showing Trump and his advisers were aware of the declassification process for documents

Watch Here: https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2023/05/17/tl-4p-trump-panel-jake-tapper-live.cnn


New evidence could undercut Trump’s claims of documents being declassified

The National Archives has informed former President Donald Trump that it is set to hand over to special counsel Jack Smith 16 records which show Trump and his top advisers had knowledge of the correct declassification process while he was president, according to multiple sources.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

John Cornyn is right. Criminal Donald won't win in 2024 because the majority of Americans can't stand him and want him in prison for his crimes. With 34 felonies in New York and upcoming indictments in Fulton County, Georgia and the DOJ, Donnie will be in prison before the 2024 election season begins.

Longtime Trump ally flatly says he can't win next year
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2024-2660291128/

Biden up 7 points over Donald Trump in 2024 popular vote, poll shows
https://nypost.com/2023/05/17/biden-up-7-points-against-trump-in-2024-election-poll/

[Rick Plant]

Trump stooge Jim Jordan's GOP clown show continues, as it has been revealed that Jim Jordan's "whistleblowers" were bought and paid for by Trump crony Kash Patel. Just more lies and corruption from these right wingers.

The FBI dropped a bombshell on Jim Jordan, revealing that the two ex-FBI agents who became House Republicans’ “whistleblowers” are actually now being paid by Trump’s close associates and are Trumpers who think that the January 6 insurrectionists are “innocent.”

But it gets worse....

They’ve also been spreading Trump’s dangerous Big Lie — and of them even purposefully sabotaged an investigation into a January 6 insurrectionist who was later determined to be guilty of “physically assaulting” Capitol Police officers after incriminating evidence was later discovered by another investigator who actually did his job.

Kash Patel




Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan’s  “whistleblowers” are paid by Republicans.

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1659239159175987200

GOP witnesses undermined Jan. 6 cases with conspiracy theories, FBI says
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gop-witnesses-undermined-jan-6-cases-conspiracy-theories-fbi-says-rcna85095

[Rick Plant]

Trump Might Not Be Able to Use His Idiocy as a Defense Anymore
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-might-not-be-able-to-use-his-idiocy-as-a-defense-anymore

[Rick Plant]

Even Donald Trump's own former attorney is now publicly acknowledging that the Feds are closing in fast and that Trump is going to federal prison. The media can't keep pretending for much longer that Trump will somehow magically be a part of 2024.

Fani Willis is asking the courts to clear *three weeks* of their schedule in order to process all her Trump probe criminal indictments. That’s a whole heck of a lot of indictments. Trump is now firmly getting into the “find out” stage of his downfall.

Today’s biggest story: after Trump asked for 21 days to file a response in the Fulton County criminal case, the judge laughed him off and reminded Trump that the courts control the timeframe. Trump can’t just magically delay his trials past the election. That’s not a thing.

[Rick Plant]

Fani Willis could pull together racketeering case based on fake Trump electors

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could bring racketeering charges over the scheme to seat fake electors for former President Donald Trump in Georgia, NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard explained on MSNBC Friday.

Hillyard explained how this could work, during a discussion of how Willis recently announced an August timetable for indictments and made changes to prosecutors' work schedules.

"So this is even more signaling about when it would happen during the summer," said anchor Katy Tur. "She's also asking for security, or she has asked for security around that courthouse. It does seem to indicate that we know where this is going."

"Right," said Hillyard. "I mean, I don't think she would be giving it quite this much attention if she didn't feel like she had a case to present. It was this letter that not only went to the chief judge in Fulton County, but also 20 other county officials, including the sheriff's office here, really setting up the stakes, the apparatus in Atlanta for security is not like that of New York City. Let's be very clear here, and Donald Trump has not only said that she should be ousted from her position but taken personal direct attacks and all of those attacks are coming while she continues this process, already in a court filing this month, it's been indicated that eight of those fake electors have agreed to immunity deals with her. This is still very active. It's not like she's just sitting and waiting to seek an indictment later this summer. This is actively taking place, these negotiations."

"Remind us who else might be in the cross hairs of this," said Tur. "Donald Trump, maybe the electors who do not have immunity, and Rudy Giuliani?"

"Rudy Giuliani, you'll recall, there in December, I was standing outside of the Georgia State Capitol, as inside he was taking part in an official government proceeding. And part of the charges that are currently being considered are the attempts to influence government officials, and what he was doing was spreading conspiracy theories in a government setting here, and we're intentionally looking at racketeering charges."

"You have eight individuals already agreeing to immunity. Eight fake electors, the racketeering charges do not have to prove that there was a grand scheme, right, a conspiracy among all of these individuals to commit a crime, but what they have to prove for these racketeering charges would be that there were multiple individuals who had the same crime intended, and if Fani Willis believes that she is able to prove there was a direct effort to overturn the 2020 election, and multiple individuals involved here, that's why it's important to get some of the individuals, fake electors to agree to cooperate with her. And the next few months will be big ahead of the next three weeks in August."

https://www.rawstory.com/fani-willis-trump-investigation-2660299655/