Category: The Trump Adminstration

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Capitol Insurrection Crime Donald Trump January 6 The Trump Adminstration

Security Expert: DOJ May Have Already Charged Trump’s Associates For Their Role In January 6

Considering what we already know about what transpired on January 6 and the revelations we’ve had from the House Select Committee on the Capitol insurrection, some have suggested that the Justice Department should have begun arresting top Trump administration officials and associates for their role in riots.

Recently, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe noted that he believes Attorney General Merrick Garland is moving far too slowly:

But what if people have already been arrested and charged without any announcement? Could that have taken place in secret?

Security expert and journalist Marcy Wheeler notes on Twitter that arrests may have been made and the DOJ is now using those people to work their way up the food chain for even bigger fish.

Wheeler, who publishes on her own highly-acclaimed web site, Emptywheel.net, laid out a fascinating premise:

Think about it: Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s so-called “attorney,” Rudy Giuliani, could already have been arrested, booked, and charged with all sorts of crimes related to Jan. 6. Now DOJ prosecutors are getting them to cooperate in exchange for sentencing consideration.

That’s the way the FBI and Justice Department has worked when going after the mafia: They get lower level soldiers in the organization to tell what they know about the capos and bosses. It’s a bottom-up way of dealing with criminal acts that’s been used for decades by law enforcement.

Now that the House Select Committee is about to hold public hearings, it’s not a stretch to suggest we may start seeing who has been charged and some of the court filings that could still be under seal.

Stay tuned.

 

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Capitol Insurrection The Trump Adminstration

Bannon Has Impotent On-Air Meltdown A Day After Being Booked On Criminal Charges

Former Trump administration official Steve Bannon is BIG mad, so he’s making all sorts of absurd accusations and suggesting that he’ll have his revenge though it remains unclear how he intends to do much of anything if he’s put on trial, found guilty, and send to federal prison for up to two years for contempt of Congress.

A day after he had to surrender to the FBI, be fingerprinted, photographed, and treated like what he is — a common criminal — Bannon was back on his “War Room: Pandemic” podcast spinning new conspiracy theories and making the case against him even stronger with ever word he spews.

After showing video clips from the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film “Apocalypse Now,” Bannon began ranting:

“MAGA is punching back. OK? We’re not going to sit here and just take it anymore. After months and months and months and months of just their rhetoric and trying to weaponize the law and weaponize DOJ, we’re not going to take it. We’re going on offense.”

Weaponize the DOJ? That’s what failed, one-term, twice-impeached ex-President Donald Trump did. Bannon is engaging in classic psychological projection and isn’t even smart enough to realize it.

Bannon also claimed that President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping was a “surrender” to the Chinese Communist Party:

“Their whole family is compromised by [China’s] money. There will be a massive investigation as soon as we take back the House.

“They know they’re going to be in the minority! We’re going to rub their noses publicly in the malfeasance that their lives are. OK?”

Notice how Bannon failed to mention that Trump is compromised by Russian and Saudi money? He doesn’t want to upset the countries that own and control his lord and savior. And his prediction that Republicans will win control of the House is also premature. The 2022 midterm elections are a year away, and there’s no telling how many Republicans will have been indicted by then for their role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Later in his podcast/clown show, Bannon raised his voice as he declared:

“This is the war that they’ve brought to us!

“We’re going to fight it every day and we don’t care what [Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)], we don’t care what the Marxist — from his Marxist traitor father — little Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and the Farrakhan mouthpiece [Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS).”

Hey, Steve, but it’s kinda hard to “fight” when you’re trying to stay out of lockup.

Here’s the video of Bannon’s hissy fit:

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Capitol Insurrection The Trump Adminstration

Hillary Clinton Only Needed 5 Words To Expertly Troll Steve Bannon

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to get some sweet revenge on those allied with failed, one-term ex-President Donald Trump with a 5 word tweet she sent out Monday shortly after Steve Bannon surrendered to federal authorities being charged with criminal contempt of Congress.

HuffPost notes that Clinton was ready when the opportunity presented itself:

Clinton, who has endured years of Donald Trump’s “lock her up” smears, responded to a tweet asking, “You know who is not going to jail and has never been indicted for anything?” The person who posted that question also wished Clinton a “great weekend.”

“Thanks, it was quite restful,” wrote Clinton on Monday after Bannon surrendered to the FBI.

Twitter was in total agreement with Clinton and the shade she threw:

https://twitter.com/Gmaontherun/status/1460383075548995592?s=20

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Fox News GOP The Trump Adminstration WTF?!

Kellyanne Conway Tells Sean Hannity There Was ‘No Supply Chain Crisis’ When Trump Was President

Former Trump administration senior adviser Kellyanne Conway resurfaced Monday evening on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to do the only thing she’s any good at: Lying.

During a discussion of President Joe Biden and the continuing delays in getting goods to market as a result of an overwhelmed supply chain in the United States and around the world, Conway insisted that there were no shortages when her boss was president:

“I worked in that White House for four years. We never even heard of a such of a thing. There was no supply chain crisis. There was no inflation.”

As HuffPost notes, the supply chain crisis during the pandemic while Trump was still president was so bad that there were times it was almost impossible to find toilet paper or other essentials:

Supply chain issues were one of the most dominant stories of 2020, when Trump was president and Conway was working in the White House as the start of the coronavirus pandemic triggered panic buying. That, in turn, caused nationwide shortages of everything from toilet paper to pasta, leading to empty shelves in supermarkets.

“During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. suffered one of the worst supply chain crises in modern history,” Tinglong Dai, a professor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, told Newswise, noting that many of the shortages lasted for months.

When supermarkets did have supplies, many enforced strict rationing of essentials such as flour and meat. The lack of food, combined with the loss of jobs due to the pandemic, led to miles-long lines at food banks.

Even the most basic items needed to help control the spread of COVID were hard to find, including masks, gloves, sanitizer, and soap.

And let’s not forget that under Trump the U.S. unemployment rate reached almost 15%.

That was all it took for Twitter to explode with reminders for Conway of just how bad things were while Trump was in the White House:

https://twitter.com/BrandiLynn4Ever/status/1457914452708401160?s=20

https://twitter.com/sonofsarcasm/status/1457898590471430144?s=20
https://twitter.com/RWoodson20/status/1457907609600610304?s=20

The Queen of Alternative Facts needs to sit down and shut her piehole.

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Donald Trump Joe Biden The Biden Administration The Trump Adminstration

Jen Psaki Slaps Down Reporter Who Tries To Suggest Biden Is The Same As Trump

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki got a question from Michael Shear of the New York Times which sounded more like a query from Fox News or Newsmax. And she quickly dispatched Shear for what he asked.

Specifically, Shear used one of those classic “people are saying” questions that are the favorite of right-wing media and their savior, failed, one-term former President Donald Trump:

“In a number of issues, in the last, say, several weeks in which advocates – allies – of the president are describing him as ‘Trump-like,’ much less in terms of his personality and sort of tone and tenor obviously but, but in terms of policy, even today, [a] representative of the Cuban government describing the frustration with the, with the president, can continue to maintain Trump-era policies, vis-à-vis Cuba. Does the, what’s the President’s reaction? And does he accept that in some areas of policy, he is, you know, in agreement with the former president?”

Psaki began by trying to get clarity and specifics on who had made such comments about the president:

“So, just for the sake of argument here, not argument but discussion, beyond the representative of the Cuban government – But who are we talking about here, who’s saying that the President’s like Trump?”

Shear told the press secretary:

“Oh, I mean they’re, they’re, they’re I mean they’re I could find you quotes, we, there have been quotes at our paper, quotes and lots of, lots of folks have, depending on the issue, whether they are immigration advocates or, you know folks in the Afghanistan, who sort of watch Afghanistan there, there have been numerous on the record descriptions of the President, embracing – and it’s actually in some ways just a factual statement.”

Psaki:

“On what policy, on what policy, sir? What specific policies?”

Shear:

“Well, I mean, for example, Afghanistan would have been the maintaining of the former president’s decision to withdraw troops, on immigration, it’s in maintaining Title 42 and keeping Title 42 in place.”

Clearly amused by the question, Psaki began destroying everything Shear had just said:

“So, look. I take each one of these – on Afghanistan, the former president struck a deal without the Afghan government that we heard the military convey yesterday led to the demoralization of the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government, where he also released 5,000 Taliban fighters into Afghanistan.”

Title 42, it should be noted, deals with public health, ABC News reports:

Title 42 is a clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law that “allows the government to prevent the introduction of individuals during certain public health emergencies,” said Olga Byrne, the immigration director at the International Rescue Committee.

Seeing as how we’re in the midst of a pandemic, what Psaki said next just makes good sense, and she also managed to get a dig in at Trump:

“Title 42 is a public health, is a public health requirement, a public, because we’re in the middle of a pandemic, which, by the way, we would have made progress on had the former president actually addressed the pandemic and not suggest that people inject bleach, so I think we’re in a bit of a different place.”

It’s been said before but it bears repeating: Jen Psaki is a national treasure. It’s so refreshing to see a press secretary who actually responds to the questions.