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Author Topic: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2  (Read 290528 times)

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4440 on: December 02, 2021, 11:25:47 AM »
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Sounds like Criminal Donald could be using this social media company as a scam just to raise billions of dollars.



Donald Trump's new social media company has missed a deadline for launching an invitation-only beta version of the platform.

Nevertheless, Truth Social is reportedly seeking to raise an additional $1 billion by selling stock to hedge funds at a price several times higher than its original valuation of $10 per share.

"It is not unusual for tech companies to miss their own deadlines for product releases," CNBC reported Wednesday. "But the November launch date that Trump Media & Technology Group set for 'Truth Social' was the first clear test of whether the company could deliver on its promises to investors who bought stock in (Digital World Acquisition Corp.)."

Trump's company, Trump Media & Technology Group, is merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp. to create the Truth Social platform.

In an announcement in October, Trump Media & Technology Group said: "TRUTH Social is now available for PreOrder in the Apple App store. TRUTH Social plans to begin its Beta Launch for invited guests in November 2021. A nationwide rollout is expected in the first quarter of 2022. Those who are interested in joining TRUTH Social may now visit www.truthsocial.com to sign up for the invite list.”

But CNBC reports that "as of Wednesday, the Truth Social website was still just a landing site and a sign up form to be on the 'waiting list.' It does not appear to have changed since it was first launched in October, and has a privacy policy dated Sept. 20."

Meanwhile, the company's stock price had plunged from a high of $175 after the merger was announced, to $44 per share on Wednesday. However, Reuters reported that the company is seeking to raise an additional $1 billion based on the higher stock price.

"Trump Media & Technology Group, which has yet to roll out the social media app it says it is developing, already stands to receive $293 million if its deal to list in New York through a merger with blank-check firm Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC.O) is completed," Reuters reported. "The deal valued Trump Media at $875 million, including debt. Trump Media is now seeking to raise up to an additional $1 billion at a valuation of close to $3 billion, to reflect Digital World's share rally after Trump supporters and day traders snapped up the stock, the sources said."

Reuters called it "the clearest indication yet that Trump and the Digital World dealmakers are seeking to capitalize on the market euphoria around their venture, which has so far been fueled by its ambitious goals rather than a business that is up and running."

Trump reportedly has been personally involved in the effort to raise another $1 billion.

"He has been calling some investors to ask them to make a commitment ... of more than $100 million," Reuters reported. "Investors attending the road show were shown a demo from the planned social media app, called TRUTH Social, which looked like a Twitter feed, the sources said."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-truth-social-2655906550/

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4440 on: December 02, 2021, 11:25:47 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4441 on: December 02, 2021, 11:36:39 AM »
QAnon Followers Rush to Defend Donald Trump After Pilot Testifies He Was on Jeffrey Epstein's Jet
https://www.newsweek.com/qanon-followers-defend-donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-plane-ghislaine-maxwell-trial-1654823

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4442 on: December 02, 2021, 11:50:13 PM »
Trump and the GOP has given their violent radical right wing base the green light to cause more extreme violence in the United States. The GOP protected Criminal Donald and refused to impeach him for inciting an insurrection, they downplayed 1/6, supported the violent insurrectionist traitors, refused to hold Rep. Paul Gosar accountable for posting violent a meme against AOC, and used murderer Kyle Rittenhouse as their poster boy. Their actions and hate especially Ted Cruz calling for Texas to secede is pushing these violent groups to commit more acts of violence.

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




A prominent Colorado Republican activist on Tuesday urged fellow conservatives to reject political violence and extremism, even as he claimed that the country is under threat from communist tyranny and on a path towards “civil war.”

John Tiegen, a Marine veteran from Colorado Springs and founder of the United American Defense Force, made the comments on a “Giving Tuesday” livestream hosted by FEC United, the fringe activist group with which the UADF is affiliated.

Speaking to an audience of fellow conservatives, Tiegen acknowledged the support for extremist violence that exists among some on the right, and warned of the dangers of such views.

“We need to get rid of the extremist ideology, we really do,” Tiegen said. “For UADF, a lot of people want to go to civil war, they want to have conflict. You don’t want it.”

But Tiegen, who urged conservatives to set aside their “minor differences” and unite to oppose government overreach in schools and the economy, also predicted that violence will erupt if conservatives aren’t victorious.

“I see a war coming, if we don’t stand together,” Tiegen said. “And trust me, you don’t want to see it. A lot of veterans — I’ve seen it — there are some veterans that pray for it here in the U.S., which is stupid.”

The UADF, founded by Tiegen in the wake of nationwide 2020 protests over police violence, bills itself as a “humanitarian aid organization” with a “parallel mission” of armed defense. Tiegen regularly posted images of group members training and posing with firearms before his social media accounts were eventually suspended late last year.

Tiegen and the UADF organized the October 2020 “Patriot Muster” rally in downtown Denver, which turned deadly when a man was fatally shot by a security guard employed by a local news station.

FEC United was founded by far-right conspiracy theorist Joe Oltmann, a former digital marketing executive from Douglas County who has been instrumental in pushing debunked claims relating to Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems and the integrity of the 2020 election. Oltmann is a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by a former Dominion employee.

Kristi Burton Brown, currently the chair of the Colorado Republican Party, served as FEC United’s president as recently as November 2020, according to testimony from Oltmann. Burton Brown was elected state GOP chair in March 2021.

The group has spread a wide variety of false and misleading information relating to the election, the COVID-19 pandemic, “critical race theory” in schools and more.

On Tuesday’s livestream, Tiegen and other right-wing activists celebrated the victories won last month by Republican candidates in local school board elections in Colorado and beyond, and delivered stark warnings about the threat posed by communism, which FEC United’s Stephanie Wheeler said was backed in the U.S. by “foreign entities” with “deep pockets.”

Tiegen urged conservatives who oppose measures like pandemic-related public health restrictions to “be a force to be reckoned with.”

“We are being forced into communism, forced into a tyrannical dictatorship,” he said. “It’s just going to get worse. … There has to be a line, there has to be a limit. I’ve already reached it. I’m not going no more.”

“This is a last stand that we’re kind of doing,” Tiegen added. “We have to — we took a lot back here in Colorado on the education side, so that’s a good start. But … you have to stand together if you truly want to fight back.”

https://www.rawstory.com/i-see-a-war-coming-says-militia-leader-with-colorado-gop-ties/

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4442 on: December 02, 2021, 11:50:13 PM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4443 on: December 02, 2021, 11:57:36 PM »
Mark Meadows deeply involved in behind-the-scenes efforts to overturn Trump election loss: sources

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows worked behind the scenes to connect national security officials with Donald Trump allies who were working to overturn the November 2020 election, according to a new report.

Multiple sources, including former Trump officials and others with direct knowledge of the efforts, told CNN that Meadows tried to get top government officials to investigate baseless conspiracy theories promoted by Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and passed along YouTube videos and other conspiratorial materials that he didn't quite believe himself.

"These, and other actions Meadows took on behalf of Trump, sources say, were not necessarily driven by his strong belief in the validity of these claims," CNN reported, "but instead by his desire to please a president who was hyper-focused on injecting baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud into official government channels."

Meadows, who has indicated he would cooperate with the House select committee investigation of the Jan. 6 riot, tried to enlist Justice Department officials in the effort to undo Trump's election loss, and he also contacted officials at several national security agencies to share baseless claims that China hacked the presidential election using thermostats to change results in voting machines, according to two sources.

"According to one of those sources, Meadows reached out to officials at the FBI, Pentagon, National Security Council and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to tell them about election fraud claims, including the China thermostat allegation, which Flynn and Powell had been pushing," CNN reported. "Meadows also pressured acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to have Justice Department officials investigate baseless claims that votes were changed by people in Italy using satellites. He acted as a go-between for Giuliani's team which was pushing the same debunked theory."

Meadows tried to set up a meeting between Flynn and intelligence officials to discuss the China thermostat theory, according to one source, although he pushed back on efforts by Powell to get herself named special counsel to investigate alleged voter fraud during one Dec. 18 meeting at the White House.

He also sided with White House officials and lawyers against Powell and Flynn's idea of declaring a state of emergency so the federal government could seize voting equipment in certain states.

Other Trump allies undertook similar efforts to enlist top government officials, but Meadows stands out among those due to his leading role in the White House.

"Meadows was perpetually enabling this insane stuff and was too scared to stand up to Trump," said one source who attended multiple meetings with Meadows at the White House and other agencies. "He was scared to say 'no' to anyone."

https://www.rawstory.com/mark-meadows-jan-6-2655911650/


Georgia election workers sue pro-Trump website over false claims that led to racist threats

Two election workers in Georgia have sued a right-wing conspiracy website that falsely accused them of manipulating ballots to ensure Donald Trump's loss in the state.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss sued the Gateway Pundit website, which is run by twin brothers Jim and Joseph Hoft, after they were targeted with death threats, unwanted pizza delivery orders and racist harassment after the website pushed debunked claims that the two women “pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting those ballots without election monitors in the room," reported the New York Times.

“I want the defendants to know that my daughter and I are real people who deserve justice, and I never want them to do this to anyone else,” Freeman said in a statement.

Trump and his allies promoted claims, based on a misleadingly spliced segment of surveillance video that Moss, who still works for the Fulton County elections board, and her mother, a temporary employee during the 2020 election, had helped pull 18,000 fraudulent ballots from a suitcase and illegally fed them into the voting machines.

The false claims led to a flood of threats, which drove the elections workers into hiding.

An investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found the women did nothing wrong and were legally counting ballots.

https://www.rawstory.com/jim-hoft-gateway-pundit/


Trump 'Kraken' lawyers ordered to pay $175K in sanctions for 'profound abuse of judicial process'

A federal judge in Michigan on Thursday ordered former president Donald Trump's "Kraken" lawyers — including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood — to pay more than $175,000 in sanctions for filing a conspiracy theory-laden lawsuit seeking to overturn the state's 2020 election results.

"This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process," U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker wrote when she initially approved the sanctions in August.

Parker ordered Trump's attorneys to pay legal costs incurred by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and the city of Detroit in defending against their lawsuit, which alleged that an international cabal worked to steal the election away from the former president. Parker gave the defendants 14 days to submit their time and expense records, but Trump's attorneys later challenged the city's requested amount of $182,192.

In her decision Thursday, Parker lowered the city's amount by roughly $29,000, to $153,285.62. Trump's lawyers did not challenge the amount of $21,964.75 submitted by Whitmer and Benson, meaning they'll have to pay a total of $175,250.37 in sanctions.

In her decision, Parker noted that many of Trump's lawyers "seek donations from the public to fund lawsuits like this one," adding that they "have the ability to pay this sanction."

In addition to Powell and Wood, the other Trump lawyers involved in the lawsuit were Howard Kleinhendler, Gregory Rohl, Stefanie Lynn Junttila, Emily Newman, Julia Z. Haller, Brandon Johnson, and Scott Hagerstrom.

The attorneys are "jointly and severally" liable for the sanctions, meaning that while each is on the hook for the full amount, the total to be paid is $175,250.37, regardless of who forks over the money.

Read Parker's full decision here.

https://www.rawstory.com/sidney-powell-sanctions/

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4444 on: December 03, 2021, 12:21:26 AM »
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/

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4444 on: December 03, 2021, 12:21:26 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4445 on: December 03, 2021, 12:35:32 AM »
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

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4446 on: December 03, 2021, 12:48:55 AM »
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/

JFK Assassination Forum

Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4446 on: December 03, 2021, 12:48:55 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #4447 on: December 03, 2021, 05:13:04 AM »
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: