Trump

[Johnny Byrne's Boots]

At least Trump wouldn't rise again and he certainly wouldn't ascend into Heaven.

[Hummer_I_mean_Hammer]

At least Trump wouldn't rise again and he certainly wouldn't ascend into Heaven.

***** FAKE NEWS ALERT *********

[WCpete]

numnutz minimus

[Shabu]

numnutz minimus

That password is still too complex for him.

[Loftyhammer]

Interesting interview with a pretty hard core Conservative Republican

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... dApp_Other

[Shabu]

Interesting interview with a pretty hard core Conservative Republican

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... dApp_Other

Thanks for posting that. Pretty much sums up a lot of my fears for the next few years. There's a chunk of America who are only interested in serving trump & they will stop at nothing to get him in power.

This Novembers elections will be the first stage then the general election in 2024 is going to be f*cking mental. January 6th will look like a garden party. They haven't gone away or changed their minds. They're just underground until their lord & saviour calls on them to "save America" again.

What this bloke said about the dangers is very real. He's been ousted because he won't follow the dictatorship.

He spoke his mind too about the very real danger facing democracy in America today – to his astonishment, at the hands of his own party.

“The constitution is hanging by a thread,” he told me. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”

[Shabu]

So this point of view is that the pro trump candidates winning the republican primaries will hurt them in the November elections as they won't win the 'swing' votes needed.

But if those swing voters stay away then the Republicans will probably win as democratic voters don't turn out in as high numbers in the mid term elections.

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm ... 2f88f4b878

[bitter-iron-ny]

Or was lied to.

Did you know that there was still classified material where it didn't belong? He or she will now be asked that question directly.

That would be "she"

NYT: former OAN anchor Christina Bobb is the Trump lawyer who signed the document attesting that all classified documents had been returned - when they manifestly had not been

Although honorable mention for one of the "he" alternatives

"Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over"

Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran also reportedly went through the boxes. Guessing he does not have a top secret security clearance.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... ything-an/

The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority.

"The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States’" according to Article II of the Constitution, the court’s majority wrote. "His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security ... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant."

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to "classify and declassify at will."

In fact, Robert F. Turner, associate director of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, said that "if Congress were to enact a statute seeking to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify national security information, or to prohibit him from sharing certain kinds of information with Russia, it would raise serious separation of powers constitutional issues."

[bitter-iron-ny]

Just because Kash Patel said that everything was declassified doesn't mean that's what actually happened.

There's a pretty clear record that Trump tried to declassify some things in the past. One effort was as he was leaving office, but was undone once he left. From the decidedly-not-liberal Washington Examiner: Final Trump declassification request to DOJ blocked after he left White House
He didn't declassify "everything" if he was only trying to declassify some things, or was he doing two contradictory things at one?

Going back to when he was still President (he's not now so has no right to be in possession of classified material) he tied something similar as a campaign stunt in October 2020, publishing a tweet that read:

"I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any [and] all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!"

When reporters took Trump at his word and asked a Federal Judge for full access to the Mueller investigation materials "without redaction", Trump's Chief of Staff went on the record to clarify that when Trump said everything was declassified he didn't really mean it:

When President Donald Trump tweeted that he had authorized the full declassification of all the documents having to do with the Russia investigation, he didn't mean it literally and didn't intend to make public information from the Mueller investigation, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said in a court filing Tuesday.

fwiw, there are things that no President can declassify, and even with declassified documents "since none of the three criminal laws cited as the predicate for the search warrant require documents to be classified for a violation to occur.": Trump’s Dubious ‘Standing Order’ to Declassify Documents

More on Kash Patel's shenanigans on this matter here

[bitter-iron-ny]

Not that the substance of the matter is of any concern to Trump or his apparatchiks (the filing today was just more fundraising foibles) but this fella here can tell you all about how the Espionage Act works as he is one of the few ever prosecuted for violating it. A former NSA honcho turned whistleblower, his thread is an interesting read:

Too many newly minted experts, armchair analysts, TV lawyers & journalists NOT getting strict liability use of Espionage Act in affidavit submission for judicially authorized probable cause search & seizure warrant by FBI at Trump’s MAG-A-LIEgo ‘storage’ facility of last resort.
I know because I lived the reality on receiving end of a profoundly debilitating 10 count Espionage Act-based 18 USC 793e felony indictment, even though all docs were unclassified & also authorized & cleared by security for approved removal from NSA....

Thomas Drake

[Samba]

numnutz minimus

Eric 'Genius Brain' Trump...

[Shabu]

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... ything-an/

The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority.

"The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States’" according to Article II of the Constitution, the court’s majority wrote. "His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security ... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant."

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to "classify and declassify at will."

In fact, Robert F. Turner, associate director of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, said that "if Congress were to enact a statute seeking to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify national security information, or to prohibit him from sharing certain kinds of information with Russia, it would raise serious separation of powers constitutional issues."

The levels of self deception among trump supporters is incredible.

He'll lie.

His lies will be proved to be lies, often by people on his own side.

His supporters still believe the initial unfounded lies.

Because enough of them believe his lies he points to them as proof that his lies are truths.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

I didn't pull that off a Trump website I pulled that off a politifact thing.

it cites a Supreme Court ruling.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/484/518/

I'm not a US Citizen so can't/haven't voted.

now whether or not it is against the law will be presumably determined.

I just don't want to have a jury of my peers from here have to give a verdict of anything that I might be tried for.

[WCpete]

It's not self deception among those that are involved in media or in the actual politics. They know that misinformation is the most lethal weapon available to them. Our system is teetering because all people have to do is lie to reinforce people's prejudices. And that's being done on all sides, not just on the MAGA side. I just operate under the assumption that most of what I see and hear is bull****.

[Shabu]

It's not self deception among those that are involved in media or in the actual politics. They know that misinformation is the most lethal weapon available to them. Our system is teetering because all people have to do is lie to reinforce people's prejudices. And that's being done on all sides, not just on the MAGA side. I just operate under the assumption that most of what I see and hear is bull****.

I mainly avoid American media so get all my trump news from you, Pete

[WCpete]

I mainly avoid American media so get all my trump news from you, Pete

Good choice. I'm only full of horse ****.

[Daniel1895]

The gap between running for presidency for a second time or ending up in jail for life should be a little wider than it is right now...

[bitter-iron-ny]

It's not self deception among those that are involved in media or in the actual politics. They know that misinformation is the most lethal weapon available to them. Our system is teetering because all people have to do is lie to reinforce people's prejudices. And that's being done on all sides, not just on the MAGA side. I just operate under the assumption that most of what I see and hear is bull****.

There is misinformation to some degree on "both sides". There is no equivalency when it comes to scope and scale. What is happening on the far right should not be casually dismissed based on the existence of a much tamer version of it on the other side.

There is also inaccurate and poor reporting by mainstream outlets, whose agenda isn't driven by an extreme philosophy but nevertheless do not help the cause of having a well-informed public.

[WCpete]

We hold this truthiness to be self evident…..