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Author Topic: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2  (Read 290551 times)

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5760 on: August 20, 2022, 09:03:39 PM »
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'He should be worried': Legal insiders predict Trump indictments are coming



In an interview with Business Insider, an attorney close to Donald Trump's legal team and their maneuverings claimed the former president is headed toward a spate of criminal indictments and is not taking his legal peril seriously enough.

With Trump facing an expanding investigation being conducted by the Department of Justice, continued hearings by the House select committee looking into the Jan 6 insurrection at the Capitol and an election tampering investigation in Georgia related to the 2020 presidential election, the attorney said Trump seems to think they are things that he "can talk his way out of."

According to the report, "....people who have been close to his inner circle told Insider that they think he could be in serious legal trouble.One lawyer familiar with the Trump team's thought process said in an interview that the ex-president 'likes to run the show' and is a 'big believer in the public relations assault,' but that he could soon face criminal charges."

The attorney added, "He should be worried about all these investigations. I think he's a target of all of them and I think he'll get indicted."

In an interview with Business Insider on Friday, occasional Trump defender Alan Dershowitz said Trump's criminal legal exposure may also increase as the result of civil suits he faces in New York.

Dershowitz "told Insider on Friday that Trump should be most concerned about the New York attorney general's civil investigation into his business practices. 'Right now it's only civil, but you never know,' he said. 'Civil can always morph into criminal the way it did with [Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg.'"

Read More Here: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-could-soon-get-indicted-mar-a-lago-2022-8

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5760 on: August 20, 2022, 09:03:39 PM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5761 on: August 21, 2022, 07:09:56 AM »
Legal expert explains why Fox will probably settle the infamous Dominion lawsuit

Former federal prosecutor and law professor Joyce Vance thinks that the Fox network will likely look to settle their lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over the false portrayals of them on numerous shows after the 2020 election.

Speaking to host Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC Saturday, Vance explained that defamation lawsuits are incredibly powerful and that it's unusual to see one that is as one-sided as Dominion's.

"One suspects that there would be a lot of pressure on the Fox defendant to settle the case short of trial," Vance explained. "Although a settlement could be painful, going to trial almost guarantees a broader exposure of these sorts of Kraken-lawyer-fever-dreams that are being spread here."

As for the First Amendment, she explained cases like this are the perfect example of drawing lines around whether people can be held liable for knowingly lying to the American public.

"One of the most really eclectic and very fitting elements of this sort of law is plaintiffs are entitled to get some form of truth-telling from defendants in the same form where lies were told," Vance continued. "As you indicated, there are beginning efforts in that area, it only gets worse as the case goes to trial."

Mohyeldin, who said he doesn't consider Fox a "news organization," has a "moral obligation" to tell the truth. However, he asked, "it's not a crime to lie, is it?"

"This is a very interesting slice of that sort of behavior," she explained. "It is not talking about criminality. It simply says in the language of the law that you committed a civil tort against me, Dominion. That you have defamed my business, that you have told lies and, in many ways, impacted my ability to earn a living, or you've impacted my profits and bottom line. So, I am entitled to compensation from you. So, the lawsuit proceeds very much in that vein along that civil liability track that punishes people, who intentionally or with gross negligence lie above people and the sorts of civil settings."

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Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5762 on: August 21, 2022, 10:49:20 AM »
Trump believed the military 'swore an oath to him' and could be ordered to do any illegal act he wanted: Navy vet



On Friday, writing for The Bulwark, Navy veteran and Brennan Center for Justice fellow Theodore Johnson argued that former President Donald Trump believed that just because he was the commander-in-chief, the military "swore an oath to him personally," and could be ordered to do whatever he wanted, regardless of whether it was legal or constitutional.

This was thrown into sharp relief, Johnson wrote, by two major recent news stories: the release of Gen. Mark Milley's draft resignation letter that he never sent to the former president accusing him of politicizing the military, and Trump's hoarding of highly classified information, potentially including nuclear weapons secrets, that led the FBI to execute a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

"These historic occurrences speak to just how deeply Trump believed the military not to be an instrument of national power but an apparatus for personal use," wrote Johnson. "Milley composed his resignation draft after being asked to participate in Trump’s ego-stroke theater — first by conducting a military show of force against Americans upset about George Floyd’s killing days earlier and then being unwittingly drafted into Trump’s infamous march across Lafayette Square after it was forcibly cleared of protesters. Regarding the classified material squirreled away in Mar-a-Lago, the underlying explanation from Trump and his supporters appears to amount to little more than that it was his to do with as he pleased without any regard to the potential damage to our national security interests."

"These occurrences bring to the fore a troubling issue usually lurking in the background of civil-military relations: When a president believes his interests supersede the nation’s — or, worse, that his interests become the nation’s — the democratic principle of 'civilian control of the military' exposes the armed services to co-option as a partisan tool for domestic politics," wrote Johnson.

This comes after a number of other reports about Trump's desire to abuse military power, including a book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender that alleged Trump wanted the military to come in during the George Floyd protests at the White House and "crack skulls" to put it down.

"Civil-military relations mostly held during the Trump presidency, a testament to the resilience of the institution and to our democracy. But dangers remain," concluded Johnson. "If our country’s toxic polarization, hyperpartisanship, and intentional stoking of social tensions for political ends are not sufficiently addressed, we may find ourselves dangerously close to the precipice once more—and if Trump or someone following the Trump model comes to power again, we may well tumble over the edge."

You can read more here:

https://www.thebulwark.com/trump-acted-as-though-the-military-swore-an-oath-to-him-personally/

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5762 on: August 21, 2022, 10:49:20 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5763 on: August 21, 2022, 10:57:54 AM »
GOP governor’s attacks on GOP nominee are ‘devastating’: Republican lawmaker



On paper, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Cox has one main opponent this fall — Democrat Wes Moore, the best-selling author and former nonprofit CEO.

Increasingly, however, the Frederick County lawmaker is being forced to beat back attacks from a second high-profile foe — the state’s popular governor, Republican Larry Hogan.

Hogan has repeatedly called the Trump-endorsed Cox a “QAnon whack job” and a “nut job.” He has said he will not be voting for him or supporting him in any way. And he declared that he wouldn’t let the lawmaker set foot in the governor’s office.

This week, Hogan went further, questioning the GOP standard-bearer’s sanity.

“He’s not, in my opinion, mentally stable,” Hogan told an Eastern Shore radio station, WGMD, this week. “Half of Republicans don’t support the guy because he’s a nut.”

The governor’s comments come at a crucial time for Cox.

As he pivots from the primary election to the general, he is trying to make the best possible first impression on Democrats and independents who may not have tracked the GOP primary. He also needs to court the voters who supported his main primary rival, former state commerce secretary Kelly Schulz.

Cox is also trying to professionalize the ad hoc team that helped him capture the nomination. In recent days he opened a new campaign headquarters and hired a campaign manager and press secretary.

Sen. Johnny Ray Salling (R-Baltimore County), a Cox supporter, conceded that Hogan’s constant attacks are likely to make the GOP nominee’s uphill fight even more difficult.

“To me, it’s devastating, especially for your party,” said Salling. “You have somebody that you would think would be your supporter and it’s not.”

Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford (R), an outspoken Cox critic and Schulz supporter like Hogan, also predicted that the governor’s comments will hurt the GOP candidate. “You have a governor with 70% approval rating and if he’s saying that he doesn’t care for this other candidate, it’s going to have some impact,” he said.

(Rutherford distanced himself from Hogan’s description of Cox as being “not mentally stable,” calling it “not terminology I would use.”

“The people who support Del. Cox, they support him for the positions that he takes,” Rutherford added.)

In an email, Cox declined to characterize Hogan’s crack about his mental state. He said the choice for voters this fall center around the candidates on the ballot, not the current governor.

Republicans who run statewide for most offices in Maryland — U.S. Senate, comptroller, attorney general — often fail by wide margins, thanks largely to the lopsided voter registration advantage that Democrats enjoy. GOP candidates for governor have won three of the last five governors races by appealing to a broad spectrum of the electorate.

Hogan’s comments about Cox imperil his ability to build that coalition. They could also hurt fundraising.

Goucher College political science professor Mileah Kromer said Hogan is “popular where it matters for winning general elections, popular among moderate-to-conservative Democrats and consistently popular among independents.”

Kromer said Hogan’s continual (and arguably unprecedented) takedowns of Cox only reinforce her core question about his candidacy — whether Cox has a mathematical path to victory. “You have a message from a very popular Republican governor basically saying ‘This guy’s not me,’” she said. “’There is a reason (voters) voted for me, but this guy’s not me.’”

In addition to making sharp-elbowed comments about Cox on the radio, Hogan went a step further on Friday, posing for pictures with Moore and wife Dawn during a chance encounter at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference. The governor’s staff posted a photo of the trio online.

In an interview, Hogan denied trying to actively undermine Cox’s bid for high office. He said his comment about Cox’s mental stability came only after he received a litany of Cox-related questions.

“It doesn’t matter to me what happens to Dan Cox,” he said. “I was on the radio, talking about all the things that we’re doing, and everything we’ve accomplished for the [Eastern] Shore. And the guy asked me five, six questions about him. And I was just tired of answering the stupid questions.”

Hogan’s comments were picked up by several national media outlets, including The Hill, making it certain that former President Trump, with whom the governor has long sparred, with become aware of them.

Democrats welcomed Hogan’s comments about Cox.

“The governor is incredibly popular, not just in Baltimore County but across the state,” said Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski (D). “I hope that his comments have a deep impact.”

“I think it says a lot when a sitting governor criticizes someone of their own party so resoundingly,” he added.

Former Secretary of State John Willis (D), a political science professor at the University of Baltimore, agreed. An early Moore supporter and Dawn Moore’s former boss when the two worked in the Secretary of State’s office, Willis said: “As the nominee of a party, you wouldn’t want the governor of the state making those comments about you in a general public setting.”

AFP

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5764 on: August 21, 2022, 04:49:42 PM »
'Flailing financially': How Trump's legal woes may finally be taking their toll

Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday morning, former Donald Trump biographer Tim O'Brien suggested that the former president's legal woes are having a huge impact on his financial situation and that a trial slated for October could deal him a major blow.

Speaking with host Ali Velshi, O'Brien stated that former Trump Org CFO Allen Howard Weisselberg holds the former president's future in his hands.

"Weisselberg if he is found to have lied during that testimony, could face as much as 15 years in prison instead of a five-month sentence he will get otherwise," O'Brien reported. "So he is going to be mightily incented to answer every question that the prosecutors asked him about a wide range of financial issues in the Trump Organization."

"No one did anything substantial inside the Trump organization without having Donald Trump signing off on it," the Bloomberg editor added. "So there is no way this doesn't in some fashion land at Donald Trump's doorstep and I think the issue is what are the consequences going to be for Trump? I don't think the DA's investigation is as robust as it once was and that's a criminal probe that would've involved prison time. But the New York AG's investigation, which is a civil probe, could wind up with the Trump Organization being put out of business."

"It is already in a very vulnerable position," he continued. "Donald Trump is in the worst business you can imagine during the Covid era: urban real estate, and essentially tourism and hotel businesses and he's got a lot of debt against those businesses and he is personally going to need a substantial amount. He's also flailing possibly financially."

"I think a lot of this is going to come to a head in the fall," he concluded.

Watch:


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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5764 on: August 21, 2022, 04:49:42 PM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5765 on: August 21, 2022, 10:10:30 PM »
Michael Cohen says there are more than enough low-level charges to go after Trump already — just like Al Capone

Former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen spoke with CNN's Jim Acosta Saturday in a wide-ranging interview about the recent guilty plea involving Trump Org. CEO Allen Weisselberg and the documents found at Trump's golf club.

Weisselberg, who has been with Trump for more than 40 years, pleaded guilty this week and agreed to spend 100 days in jail and testify against the Trump Organization, but not against the company's boss. While Weisselberg is going to the infamous Rikers Island prison, he'll only spend five months there. Cohen thinks he deserves much more.

Weisselberg will appear before the case in Oct. 2022. Cohen said that the most important question for the district attorneys team to ask is who directed him to do what he did.

"Every year, the personal financial statements increased, increased. Every year you had to file certain documents. Allen, you didn't make these decisions. You didn't have the authority, even as the CFO, to do anything without Donald Trump's approval, plain and simple."

As for Mar-a-Lago, Cohen wanted to remind people that it isn't Trump's personal home. It's a social club that Trump is using as his "home" instead of paying to buy his own property in Palm Beach.

"You may remember not too long ago, there was a Chinese dissident running around with a thumb drive and a bunch of other illegal things that they ended up taking her off the premise," Cohen recalled. "It's an unsecured location."

That fact is one of the many reasons that national security analysts have been concerned about Trump stealing classified documents and taking them back to Mar-a-Lago with him.

"I think he was going to use it as leverage," Cohen said, about why Trump stole the documents. "There's no other reason. Again, I could understand the love letters [from Kim Jong Un.] I could understand one day he wants — someone is there whom he thinks is impressive and he wants to impress that person, so he'll pull out a letter from the Queen or pull out a letter from [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan or from [Vladimir] Putin or Kim Jong-un like the love letters he kept talking about for months on months. Ok, he'll show those, oh, look what this person said about me. I'm really smart, really handsome, really rich. That's what he'd use those for."

The larger question, Cohen said is why Trump had classified documents.

"Think about what Donald does," he went on. "Donald turns around and says, No. 1, I don't have any more. We gave you the documents and we signed an affidavit, there are no more. Then, all of a sudden, of course, FBI raids. Now the documents are in possession of the government. So, instead, now he declassified everything. He's followed no protocol in terms of declassifying anything. And then, of course, he's allowed to have it, and then you have Rudy Giuliani and his other sycophantic fools, these acolytes that sit there and whatever it is that Donald Trump says, these people just repeat."

Recently, Trump claimed that he would release all of the security camera videos of the FBI search, but Cohen called his bluff on that too.

"If that footage, Jim, was beneficial to him, it would have already been released," he explained. "What he's doing right now, he's a greasy grifter. What he's doing is fundraising off of it. My understanding is he's already raised several millions of dollars. That's what this is all about. This isn't about anything other than fundraising and people have to remember, if they read the fine print, 90 percent of all money that goes into Donald Trump's super PAC or his account, he has full discretion over. You're basically handing him 90 cents of every dollar you send in for him to do whatever he wants. It's not political. It's all about himself."

Host Jim Acosta lamented that it seems like Trump has 9,000 lives and simply can't be taken down, but Cohen argued that there are plenty of things that Trump could be charged with.

"I think ultimately, what's happened now is time has gone on in and these investigations have advanced, and the information, the truth has come out, and the truth is never good for Donald Trump," he explained. "And in this specific case, yeah, he's had 9,000 lives. But at the end of the day, you have all of these people who have been brought in who provided testimony. You have documentary evidence like the evidence I provided to the House Oversight Committee, that implicates Donald Trump in a multitude of illegal or I should say improper actions, that he should be brought to court on. One of the biggest problems we have is they're afraid. I don't understand why. Now that's past."

He cited the Georgia case where Trump and his allies are facing off against country attorney Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia who is investigating Trump's demand for officials to "find 11,780 votes."

"The case going forward with New York Attorney General Tish James. You have the D.A. in Washington. There's a multitude of litigation that's come against this man. I also don't understand why we're so fixated on getting him for everything. You don't have to do that. Let's get him on the simple stuff — the stuff we already know which is tax evasion, misrepresentation to banks, lying on personal financial statements, like what they did to Al Capone. You don't have to get him on X, Y, Z. You don't have to get him on that to get him where he belongs."

Watch:


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5766 on: August 22, 2022, 01:00:52 AM »
Republican messaging is terrible. Persuadable voters in the middle do not want the FBI and DOJ abolished. They do not want to hear Trump defended. We’re in the general election now, yet the Republicans are still pandering to a Trump primary base that doesn’t turn out anyway.


Gosar, GOP allies call for abolishing the FBI

Just before 9 p.m. Monday, hours after it was announced that FBI agents had searched former President Donald Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago for documents illegally brought from the White House, close Trump ally Paul Gosar had something to say.

In five lines of text, Gosar, R-Ariz., invalidated a federal investigation, professed his continued alliance with Trump and called for the destruction of the FBI.

It's a stark turn from conventional party rhetoric. Trump liked to bill himself as a “law and order” president; his supporters say they “back the blue.” Gosar's official Twitter account contains more than 50 deferential references to local and federal law enforcement.

But he's long agitated against the FBI, in 2020 falsely tweeting that former President Barack Obama used the agency to spy on then-candidate Trump, poking out unsubstantiated links between FBI officials and Democratic officeholders.

Now, he's advocating for abolition.

“Um…what? This tweet is disturbing,” said Twitter user Kyle Cowan, an author and law school student.

“Okay. Be disturbed,” Gosar replied. “We're going to dismantle and eliminate the FBI.”

The FBI's Monday search had no partisan links. The Department of Justice was acting on behalf of claims made by the National Archives that Trump brought 15 boxes of documents containing classified information with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House in January 2021.

To execute the search warrants, Justice Department officials needed approval from a federal judge, along with overwhelming evidence indicating a crime had likely been committed.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, who signed off on the search, was himself appointed by Trump in 2017 after the former President fired James Comey.

Gosar's tweet was an inflammatory tactic that was parroted by Gosar's ideological allies in the House, America First Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. They are calling for radical measures to disarm and defund critical federal administrative agencies.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/08/09/gosar-gop-allies-call-abolishing-fbi-after-mar-lago-search/10278137002/
« Last Edit: August 22, 2022, 10:11:46 AM by Rick Plant »

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5766 on: August 22, 2022, 01:00:52 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #5767 on: August 22, 2022, 09:12:20 AM »
Ron Johnson says he only participated in election overthrow plot for 'a couple seconds'



Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has refused to speak to the Jan. 6 Committee because his participation in a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election only lasted "a couple seconds."

During a recent interview, WISN's Matt Smith asked Johnson if he would agree to speak to the Jan. 6 Committee.

"No, I had nothing to do with Jan. 6," Johnson said.

"If they asked you to testify, would you?" Smith wondered.

"What would they ask me to testify about?" Johnson said.

"The Republican electors," Smith noted, referring to a fake slate of electors that Johnson was asked to deliver to then-Vice President Mike Pence in an effort to steal the election from Joe Biden.

"Again, another grotesque distortion," Johnson complained. "I had nothing to do with the alternate slate. I had no idea anybody was going to ask me to deliver those. My involvement in that -- that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds."

The senator said that he "fielded three texts and sent two and talked to my chief of staff that somebody wants to deliver something."

"I knew nothing about it," he added. "In the end, those electors were not delivered because we found out from the vice president's staff they didn't want them delivered. End of story. I know that's been blown out of proportion."

"You think so," Smith remarked.

Johnson insisted that it was wrong to look at the plot to overturn the election as a "massive conspiracy."

"I had virtually no involvement!" he asserted. "Literally, my involvement lasted seconds. OK?"

Johnson initially denied having any knowledge of the alternate electors.

Watch the video in the link below from WISN.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1561387930622611456