Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

The majority of Americans now feel that the threats to our democracy by the radical right is the #1 important issue in the upcoming midterm election as it should be. MAGA Republicans tried to end our democracy by stealing the 2020 election for Criminal Donald and are doing everything possible to turn America into a fascist country like Hungary. Republicans are in trouble with democracy as the #1 issue that's important to voters. 

New NBC News poll finds “threats to democracy” has overtaken the “cost of living” as the most important issue facing the country.

[Rick Plant]

'That's not what our report said': Mueller lawyer nails Bill Barr for lying in bombshell Trump memo



Last week, a Washington court of appeals ruled that former Attorney General Bill Barr lied about Donald Trump's involvement in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign cycle. Just days prior to Mueller's report being released, Barr said that he'd read the report and Trump did nothing wrong.

The Justice Department released the memo on Trump's obstruction of Mueller's prob revealing that it was more than clear he believed that Trump committed a crime in several cases when he tried to obstruct justice.

Speaking to MSNBC about the release of the memo on Wednesday, former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the memo, penned by Barr's two top deputies Steven Angel and Ed O'Callaghan, provides new evidence that Barr covered up for Trump.

"Essentially it lays out a lot of what was redacted and we know it was a heavily redacted form of this before and it lays out the basics," explained NBC News justice reporter Ryan Reilly. "It does seem to be making what amounts to a defense argument for Trump in a lot of these cases. There's one line in here regarding the line where this was [former FBI Director James] Comey telling the president that he hoped that he could let this go, and they actually write in here that there was not -- it was not directing a, quote, clearly directed particular action in the investigation and Comey did not react at the time as though he had received the direct order from the president."

He went on to call it "defensive" and make a case for what Barr had already decided: that Trump wasn't going to be guilty of anything.

But it was Weissmann who gave inside information into what he experienced while working for Mueller. The Mueller report made it clear that there were at least 10 instances of obstruction of justice by the former president. Barr, on the other hand, wrote there was no obstruction.

"This memo, as you said, is a doozy because it has been kept under wraps and the Department of Justice thought even giving it to the district court for [the judge] to read, there is a reason when she read it that her decision was that this needs to be made public. The court of appeals agreed with her. Now to the substance. Why did they try and keep this under wraps? There is a sentence in here that is astounding to me," Weissmann continued. "The two senior staff, say to Bill Barr that the reason he should make the decision is because if the memo comes out it might be read to imply that the president committed obstruction. Let me just repeat that: that the reason Bill Barr needs to say something is because if the memo because if the report comes out it could be read to say that the president committed obstruction."

He explained that it's noticeable that there's no discussion on the memo about Bill Barr telling Mueller that he wants the special counsel to conclude whether Trump committed any obstructions of justice in his investigation or not.

"We now know clearly from his memo did not send it back to Mueller — who reported to him — was because he knew exactly what the answer would be. Because it says in black and white that this memo could be read to conclude that the president committed obstruction," Weissmann concluded.

There is another point, he explained, that is simply "dead wrong." At one point in the memo it says that Trump didn't commit obstruction of justice because you can't obstruct justice when you're not guilty of the underlying crime.

"That is legally wrong," he explained. "Our report actually addresses that. We cite all cases including the Arthur Anderson case which I know very well and this memo simply does not successfully, at least in my view, address the legal precedents, and it is not the case that you cannot be guilty of obstruction if you didn't commit the underlying crime."

Finally, he said that the point the memo gets completely wrong is that Mueller's report found no evidence of an underlying crime or conspiracy with the Russians.

"That's not what our report said," Weissmann concluded. "It said that there's evidence. It's just that we didn't think there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. So, the sort of upshot, Nicolle is, I can understand why the department has fought long and hard not to have this see the day and it's quite a shocking document."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump was an absolute failure. He said one thing and did another.

One of his main bogus claims was that he would bring back jobs from overseas. That never happened. More jobs went overseas under his 4 disastrous years.

President Biden made a campaign promise that he would bring jobs back from overseas. And now jobs are coming back to the United States in record numbers. Another promise has been kept as Biden continues rebuild America from the Trump disaster.     

The Offshoring of U.S. Jobs Increased on Trump’s Watch
October 22, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-10-22/supply-chains-latest-the-hard-data-on-trump-s-offshoring-record

U.S. Companies on Pace to Bring Home Record Number of Overseas Jobs
American companies are on pace to reshore, or return to the U.S., nearly 350,000 jobs this year… That would be the highest number on record since the group began tracking the data in 2010
August 23, 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-companies-on-pace-to-bring-home-record-number-of-overseas-jobs-11660968061

[Rick Plant]

Trump Tells His Lawyers: Get ‘My’ Top Secret Documents Back

The ex-president is desperate to recover the classified trove taken from Mar-a-Lago — and is pushing his legal team on a long-shot maneuver to return them



IN THE WEEKS after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement.

Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds during the raid, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover “all” of the official documents that Trump has long referred to as “mine” — including the highly sensitive and top secret ones.   

Sources close to Trump agree with outside legal experts that such a sweeping legal maneuver would be a long-shot, at best.  “I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back,” says one Trump adviser. “That ship has probably sailed.”

Further, several longtime Trump advisers say they want absolutely nothing to do with the now-infamous boxes of documents, fearing that any knowledge of them could invite an unwanted knock on the door from the feds. “Who would want any of that back? … If it is what they say it is, keep them the hell away,” a second adviser says.

Still, the former president’s legal team appears to be working to retrieve at least some of the papers seized during the Aug. 8 federal search. In recent days, the Trump team — led by former federal prosecutor Evan Corcoran — has been quietly prepping additional legal arguments and strategies to try to pry back material that the feds removed from the ex-president’s Florida abode and club, the sources say. Those measures include drafting a so-called “Rule 41(g) motion,” which allows  “a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property” to “move for the property’s return,” according to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

This would be a follow-up measure to the lawsuit, filed Monday by Trump and his attorneys, calling for the appointment of a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago materials for potentially privileged materials. It is unclear when the ex-president’s lawyers plan to file a subsequent motion, which people close to Trump expect to be more narrowly tailored than what the former president apparently wants.

“The motion he already filed is so absolutely terrible, that it’s hard to contemplate him filing something even more aggressive and even more unlikely to succeed,” says Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.

“However,” White added, Trump is “basically trying to litigate the ultimate issue in the case, which is whether he had the right to possess and keep those things, even after he was asked to return them. It’s very unlikely that the court would accept that invitation to litigate that…He would have to prove that those things were illegally taken, and — based on what we know — that is going to be very difficult to prove…He’s going to have to make some very unusual legal arguments, which, if they’re anything like the motion that was just filed, is going to be a very uphill climb.”

In the suit filed on Monday seeking the appointment of a special master, Trump’s attorneys signaled that a 41(g) motion could be forthcoming. A special master should, they argued, should provide Trump’s attorneys with a more detailed inventory of the items taken from Mar-a-Lago so that “the President can properly evaluate and avail himself of the important protections of Rule 41.”

The Trump legal team also asked Judge Aileen Cannon to appoint a special master with a “fair-minded approach to providing defense counsel with information needed to support any Rule 41(g) filing.”

Judge Cannon has yet to rule on those requests but suggested she had some questions about it. In an order posted Tuesday afternoon, Cannon instructed Trump’s attorneys to respond to questions about whether she even had jurisdiction to offer the kind of relief they seek and whether granting their demands would affect Trump’s ongoing litigation in another case seeking to unseal the Justice Department’s evidence supporting the search warrant application.

The potential Rule 41(g) motion comes amidst a series of odd and, at times, seemingly self-defeating moves by Trump allies seeking to defend the former president’s conduct.

The former president’s office claimed recently that Trump had issued a so-called “standing order” to automatically declassify any materials taken from the West Wing in order to facilitate a flexible work schedule for the then-president. Thus far, no Trump administration veterans have come forward to attest to the existence of the legally questionable order. But it has prompted, as Rolling Stone reported last week, FBI agents to begin questioning former members of the Trump National Security Council about whether they have any recollection of such an order.

And in a May 10 letter, Justice Department officials revealed that Trump took 15 boxes of classified materials to his Mar-a-Lago residence with documents classified “up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program,” in addition to those documents seized by the FBI. Special Access Programs are among the most closely-held secrets in the federal government covering sensitive intelligence, operations, and technologies and are strictly limited to smaller numbers of individuals on a “need to know” basis.

The letter, posted by MAGA reporter John Solomon, appeared in an article by Solomon insinuating that President Biden had intervened in the efforts to retrieve the documents. But the correspondence — sent to Solomon, who Trump designated as his liaison with the National Archives — confirmed that Trump had taken Special Access Program materials — among the most sensitive secrets held by the government — to his private residence after leaving office.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tells-lawyers-get-my-top-secrets-documents-back-1234580501/

[Rick Plant]

National Archives demanded return of classified documents after Cipollone acknowledged Trump shouldn't have them: report



On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the National Archives first demanded the return of classified documents from former President Donald Trump in an email in early 2021 — prompted, in part, by an acknowledgement from former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that Trump didn't have a right to take them.

"'It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,' wrote Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, in an email to Trump lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post," Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany wrote. "Cipollone was the former White House counsel designated by Trump as one of his representatives to the Archives."

"The previously unreported email — sent about 100 days after the former president left office with the subject line 'Need for Assistance re Presidential Records' — shows just how early Archives officials realized that many documents were missing from the Trump White House," said the report. "It also illustrates the myriad efforts Archives officials made to have the documents returned over an 18-month period, culminating with an FBI raid earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida."

According to previous reports, the missing documents included highly classified information, with the FBI even searching for nuclear weapons secrets among the records recovered at Mar-a-Lago.

"Stern, the chief counsel at the Archives, does not say in the email how he determined that the boxes were in Trump’s possession," said the report. "He wrote that he also had consulted another Trump lawyer during the final days of Trump’s presidency — without any luck. 'I had also raised this concern with Scott in the final weeks,' Stern writes in the email, referring to Trump lawyer Scott Gast, who is also copied on the email," said the report. "In the email, Stern again asks for the documents from Trump’s residence to be returned."

Trump has filed a lawsuit to try to block the Justice Department from reviewing any of the documents the FBI seized, although legal experts broadly believe the move is nothing more than a stall tactic.

Read More Here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/trump-records-archives-2021/



Former FBI official Peter Strzok slaps down Trump's defenses in Mar-a-Lago case



Former FBI Counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok attacked Donald Trump's comments regarding the former president's hoarding of classified documents. Strzok appeared on MSNBC with Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday after news broke about the government's year-long quest to obtain access to the documents taken by Trump to his Florida resort.

According to The Washington Post, Trump spent months resisting the government's request to return classified documents — including ignoring a grand jury subpoena — before the FBI conducted the raid on his Palm Beach residence on Aug. 8. Authorities reportedly removed more than 700 pages of documents.

Trump claimed that his executive privilege still applied, despite him no longer being the President of the United States. He also claimed that he had a standing order to declassify documents. Trump also claimed that many documents were taken by mistake due to frenzied packing at the White House.

Wallace asked Strzok about the national security implications involved with classified documents being taken and moved around Mar-a-Lago.

"Well, Nicolle, there are huge national security implications to what the material — what happened to it and how it was handled," he replied. "I mean everything from the moment it was boxed up, the questions of who was boxing it up, what moving company was used and then certainly when it landed at Mar-a-Lago, all the different things about who might have had access to the room."

He continued by speculating who may have had access to the classified documents. "There's some indication that a variety of people were coming and going into the room, but who else might of had access to that outside the of time that CCTV footage was available? Did other guests have access? Did an electrician have access? Did a cleaning staff person have access?"

Strzok, who was fired after his anti-Trump text messages were revealed, also cited the lack of a visitor log at Mar-a-Lago as a national security issue. "All of these questions and particularly in light of the fact that there's some reporting that there doesn't seem to be a visitor log at Mar-a-Lago lays out a very real question about who — particularly if you're a Russian intelligence agent or a Chinese intelligence officer trying to recruit somebody in and around at Mar-a-Lago, certainly a place like a former president's residence is of extraordinary intelligence collection interest."

He went on to question if Trump still had classified documents in his possession and speculated that Trump may have wanted to keep the documents because he wanted to show them off because he thought they were "neat" and said he had the mentality of a 7-year-old kid. Strzok also said Trump may have wanted to keep the documents for future business dealings.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Ron DeSantis wants to be a fake fighter pilot but looks more like Mike Dukakis. DeSantis is a total buffoon.

[Rick Plant]

Two ringleaders convicted on Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy charges



Grand Rapids — A federal jury Tuesday convicted two men accused of orchestrating a plan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as prosecutors salvaged the largest domestic terrorism case in a generation that has shed light on political extremism in Michigan.

The convictions came on Whitmer's birthday, four months after jurors deadlocked on charges against Potterville resident Adam Fox and Delaware truck driver Barry Croft and acquitted two others who were accused of being part of a broader group of people angered by pandemic restrictions and hoping to spark a second Civil War. Fox and Croft face up to life in federal prison.

The verdicts give the U.S. Justice Department a landmark victory prosecuting extremism and domestic terrorism amid an increase in threats nationwide.

“Getting these convictions and, most important for the FBI, disrupting the plot has to go down as a win,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Croft had a look of resignation as the guilty verdicts were read, while Fox didn’t have a reaction.

Two others, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, pleaded guilty to federal kidnapping conspiracy charges and testified as the government's star witnesses.


Barry Croft Jr., left, and Adam Fox

"The verdict confirms that the plot was very serious, very dangerous,” and posed a threat to the governor, Grand Rapids Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Birg told reporters afterward.

James Tarasca, special agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office, said the results showed that anti-government views don't justify violence.

"Today’s verdict sends a clear message that they were wrong in their assessment" Tarasca said in a press release. "Violence is never the answer. The FBI will continue to investigate anyone who seeks to engage in violence in furtherance of any ideological cause and hold them accountable.”

Jurors spent about eight hours deliberating during two days following a case clouded by controversy, including defense concerns about FBI agent misconduct and whether government agents entrapped the accused plotters. It also drew the attention of a nation facing the rise of violent extremism surrounding the 2020 presidential election and COVID-19 pandemic. Former President Donald Trump recently called the alleged plot "a fake deal."

“The noise aside, the arguments about entrapment, there was still sufficient evidence that these individuals were willingly, openly and, to various degrees, happily going along with a plan to kidnap a sitting governor,” Lewis said.

Whitmer was disappointed with the results of the first trial but welcomed Tuesday's convictions.

"I want to thank the prosecutors and law enforcement officers for their hard work and my family, friends, and staff for their support," the Democratic governor said in a Tuesday statement. "Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed. 

“But we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics. Plots against public officials and threats to the FBI are a disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism that festers in our nation, threatening the very foundation of our republic." 

The result followed months of criticism from defense lawyers about FBI agent misconduct and claims that a team of investigators and informants orchestrated the conspiracy and entrapped Fox, Croft and others who were portrayed as a ragtag band of social outcasts who harbored antigovernment views and anger over COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Whitmer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge told reporters he was thankful for the verdicts.

“The verdict confirms that the plot was very serious, very dangerous,” Birge said. “No public official or anyone should have to deal with this. ... Everyone deserves to live safely and without fear.”

Prosecutors rested their case Thursday after seven days of testimony. An undercover FBI agent told jurors about a stop at a bridge near Whitmer's northern Michigan cottage during a night ride by anti-government extremists to continue planning a kidnapping.

Fox and Croft were portrayed by prosecutors as ringleaders of the plot.

They were convicted of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Croft also was convicted of possessing an unregistered destructive device, a 10-year felony.

The defendants were arrested in early October 2020 and accused of hatching the plot due to distrust of the government and anger over restrictions imposed during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their arrests were part of a broader plot that involved more than a dozen men. Ten people are facing charges in state court.

During the trial, jurors saw secret recordings made by FBI informants of bombs being built during training exercises, defendants firing weapons, and going on a surveillance run of the governor's cottage in northern Michigan.

Defense lawyers said FBI agents and informants controlled the entire series of events and faulted prosecutors for manipulating evidence during the trial, including cherrypicking out-of-context snippets of surveillance audio and video.

The jury decision came almost two years after FBI agents said they thwarted the Whitmer plot and as law enforcement arrested more than a dozen men in multiple states who were accused of conspiring to kidnap the governor of Michigan.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2022/08/23/michigan-whitmer-kidnapping-conspiracy-plot-barry-croft-adam-fox/7865780001/



Whitmer kidnap plotter deserves prison break for helping government, feds say



DETROIT — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday they want to shave three years off the prison sentence of a man convicted of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer because he helped secure the convictions of co-conspirators.

The request to reduce the sentence of Hartland Township resident Ty Garbin comes one day after jurors convicted kidnap plot ringleaders Adam Fox and Barry Croft, who face potential sentences of life in prison when sentenced in December.

Garbin, 26, testified against them twice and cooperated with grand jury investigations and is expected to testify during ongoing criminal cases against eight others facing charges in state courts.

He was sentenced to 75 months in prison one year ago after pleading guilty to kidnapping conspiracy and has been shuffled among county jails since then while cooperating with federal prosecutors.

"Garbin provided significant assistance leading to the convictions of Fox and Croft," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler wrote in a court filing. "He remained forthright in admitting his part in the conspiracy, and did not minimize his culpability."

Garbin is one of four people convicted in the kidnapping plot. Waterford Township resident Kaleb Franks admitted in February that he plotted to kidnap Whitmer.

Franks also testified against Fox and Croft and is awaiting a prison sentence.

When he was sentenced last year, Garbin apologized to his family and to Whitmer for causing them distress since he was arrested by the FBI in October 2020.

"I can't even begin to imagine the amount of stress and fear her family members felt due to my actions," he said. "And for that I am truly sorry."

Before his arrest, attorneys said Garbin had a clean criminal history and endured an abusive upbringing.

On Wednesday, prosecutors argued he remains vulnerable.

"Garbin continues to serve his sentence under a substantial risk of retaliation, particularly from inmates sympathetic to Fox and Croft's terrorist ideology," Kessler wrote. "Garbin's assistance has been remarkable for its timeliness, its duration, and the personal risk he assumed to fulfill his obligations under his plea agreement."

Also Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker set sentencing dates for Fox and Croft.

Fox's date is Dec. 12, while Croft will return to court on Dec. 28.

Authorities said the kidnapping plot was the culmination of months of disgust about government, especially Whitmer's stay-home orders and other restrictions during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This shows that people will be held accountable," Whitmer said during a public appearance Wednesday. "We settle our differences at the ballot box and then we move forward. And I think yesterday's conclusion of the trial was a just result."

But the retrial exposed some potentially troubling signs for the government if the convictions get appealed as expected, legal experts told The Detroit News.

Jonker set time limits on cross-examination of government witnesses despite complaints from defense lawyers. And he oversaw what some defense lawyers called a rushed jury-selection process that lasted less than one business day. Legal experts anticipate the time limit imposed on cross-examination will be part of an anticipated appeal.

© The Detroit News