Special Counsel Jack Smith

He just gave his first public media interview, live on MS NOW with Nicolle Wallace, for nearly an hour. It was forthright and totally on point.

 

 

Patriot.

To Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche

The Singularity is already here in the U.S.

The Justice Department said it is creating a nearly $1.8 billion fund that could compensate Trump supporters who say they were wrongly investigated or prosecuted by previous administrations. The announcement came as part of a settlement with President Trump to drop a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns in 2019. Justice correspondent Ali Rogin reports.

I'm gonna have to file a claim.

 

MAY 19th UPDATE

 

Acting AG Todd Blanche today issued a 1-pg addendum to the Trump IRS lawsuit "Settlement." It henceforth indemnifies Donald Trump, his family, his businesses, and Trusts ("Plaintiffs") from any future investigations or IRS audits. Section C below.

 

The Singularity of Donald Trump.

 

apropos, Andrew Weissmann's new book just came out.

 

Amazon link.

Excellent thus far.
 

Oaf of Office update.

Donald Trump tells "His" DOJ that ANY investigations or critical media coverage of him are presumptively illegal and must be aggressively prosecuted.

   

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dear President Joe Biden:

An open letter.

November 6, 2024
DEAR PRESIDENT BIDEN 


cc: Vice President Harris

You remain our incumbent President until 12:01 pm January 20th, 2025—75 more days as I write and post this on November 6th.

Donald Trump’s collaborators (e.g., former AG William Barr most notably today) have wasted no time DEMANDING that the serious current federal criminal cases against him—involving his asserted January 6th, 2021 insurrection complicity and illegal possession of Classified documents—be summarily dropped forthwith by our Department of Justice.

Your Oath to the Constitution remains binding. Your obligation to see that our rule of law remains intact and functional until you are succeeded in Office remains binding.

Donald Trump has repeatedly evaded honorable dealings and lawful accountability since the Days of Bone Spurs. It may very well now be the case that he can use his hand-picked judiciary operatives to continue to Melt Clock so that he might escape consequences yet again.

The American people deserve to know ALL of the details comprising the foregoing (redacted where appropriate). The realities of clock and calendar may indeed mean he will again evade his days in courts. Nonetheless, you must NOT let the full record of these proceedings be spiked and buried—by all necessary and lawful means within the scope of your Official Duties (as recently indemnified by the Supreme Court).

Thank you, sir, for your service.

Sincerely,

Robert Gladd
Baltimore, Maryland

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An Apple a day, and the DOJ

I eagerly await Kara Swisher's take on this.

 

Unapologetic Mac Snob here. First started using Apple products in 1991. Continued thereafter to use both Apple and MS Windoze platforms. Now I'm all Mac all the time. Really have no opinion as yet regarding this action against Apple. Looks like its really just focused on Mobile (e.g., App Store restraints of trade). Kara?

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In his own words

former President Donald Trump on his imagined total, telepathic de-classification authority.

 

DONALD TRUMP ON DE-CLASSIFICATION, SEPT 21, 2022
TV INTERVIEW WITH SEAN HANNITY

HANNITY: “Ok, was there a process, what was your process to de-class…”

TRUMP [interrupting] “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it, and, you know, there’s different people say different things, but as I understand it, there doesn’t have to be—if you’re the president of the United States, you can de-classify just by saying ‘I’m, it’s de-classified,’ even by thinking about it, because, you’re sending it to Mar-a-lago, or wherever you’re sending it, and, there doesn’t have to be a process—there can be a process, but, there doesn’t have to be. You’re the president, you make that decision, so, when you send it, it’s de-classified. We—I de-classified EVERYTHING. Now, I de-classified things, and we were having a lot of problems with NARA—you know, NARA, uhhh, is a radical left group of people running that thing, and, when you send documents over there, I would say there’s a very good chance those documents will never be seen again. There’s also a lot of speculation, because of the severity of what they did, of the FBI coming in, raiding Mar-a-lago, were they looking for the Hillary Clinton emails, that were deleted but they are around someplace. Were they looking for spying on Trump’s—no, no, they may be saying, they may have thought that it was in there.”

Just when you think things couldn't get any more absurd. After I saw that Hannity clip, I went in and transcribed it verbatim for myself, not wanting to just rely on media reports. Unreal. Is it too early to start drinking? His lawyers are probably already bellied-up after that ill-advised verbal vomit.

If you’d like to listen to a full 19:41 of this painful Hannity stuff, click here.

BTW, Dr. Marcy Wheeler is all over the multiple Trump fiascos.

____

 

Ugh.

 

UPDATE, ON "DECLASSIFICATION" & NATIONAL DEFENSE INFORMATION

 

 

OK, then. That strikes me as dispositive.

AS REPORTED BY RAWSTORY

During an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) took some shots at Donald Trump and suggested he may not be smart enough to know what should be kept secret and what shouldn't.

 Speaking with host Jake Tapper, the Democrat who sits on the Jan 6 House select committee investigating the insurrection, was asked about Trump's belief that he can declassify top secret documents just by thinking about doing it.

"That’s not how it works. Those comments don’t demonstrate much intelligence of any kind. If you could simply declassify by thinking about it, then frankly, if that’s his view, he’s even more dangerous than we may have thought,” he told the host.

Continuing in that vein, the California Democrat added, "People work hard to get that information. People put their lives at risk to get that information. That information protects American lives. And for him to treat it so cavalierly shows both what a continuing danger the man is, but also how very little regard he has for anything but himself."

"He could simply spout off on anything he read in a presidential daily brief or anything that he was briefed on by the CIA director to a visiting Russian delegation or any other delegation and simply say, ‘Well, I thought about it and therefore, when the words came out of my mouth, they were declassified,"' he suggested to the CNN host.

__________

 

President Trump Responds Angrily

 

UPDATE

 

DOJ will now release the redacted information pertaining to the Mar-a-Lago search affadavit.

 

 

 

AFFADAVIT RELEASE 

 

38 pages, probably 90% redacted. Key highlight screen grab snips below.

Plenty of probable cause to authorize the search warrant. Prosecution? We shall see.

 

THE ELEMENTS OF THE OFFENSE FOR AN 18 USC 793E PROSECUTION

CODA

 

More popcorn, please... 

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#MAGApox Meltdown

 

Mainstream, alt, and "social" media are all in total hyperbolic freakout mode.

 

Pass the popcorn...
 

Likely to be an "interesting" week. One wherein a few actual facts may manage to slip through.

ERRATA

 

apropos of the escalating rhetoric this week:

...Clearly, at this early stage, the responsible reaction to what the FBI did is to withhold judgment, to wait and see, to base one’s assessment on the facts and the evidence as they become known. But such an approach is alien to the modern-day GOP. The entire incentive structure is to use language that is intemperate, belligerent, conspiratorial, even crazed. This week has once again proved that there’s no rhetorical line Trump Republicans won’t cross, no outlandish charge they won’t make. It’s now all about one-upmanship, with each person trying to make a more freakish claim than the next.

This debasement of language comes at a considerable cost. George Orwell believed that political language mattered because politics mattered, and that the corruption of one leads to the corruption of the other. And in some cases, the misuse of words can lead to political violence. We saw that on January 6, 2021. My fear is we’re edging ever closer to that. Some people on the right—enraged and inflamed, caught in an echo chamber of undiluted anger and massive lies—clearly hope for it. They are perpetually frenzied and hyper-agitated, convinced they are in an existential struggle against a wicked foe… [Peter Wehner]

Recall my up-the-ante analogy?

 

"If it bleeds, it leads."

 

FRIDAY UPDATE

 

A week of wild media speculation (the word "espionage" is in the air), GOP denials, and few facts. This afternoon, though, we may get details on the Mar-a-lago search warrant and results thereof. Maybe.

_______

Interesting discussion. Good way to spend an hour.

 

 

Very good.Wish there was a text transcript.

@50:46: “Point me to a time or place in history where one side has had a monopoly on the truth and been right 100% of the time. I can’t think of one.” —Josh Zseps

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