Categories
Donald Trump Gun Nuts

Trump Turns His Friday NRA Speech Into Early Festivus And Airs His Petty Grievances: Video

Indicted and failed one-term former president Donald Trump showed up at the 2023 NRA convention in Indianapolis on Friday, but he used most of his speech to air his own grievances as numerous criminal investigations continue to close in on him.

The one-term ex-POTUS began by attacking New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“What they are doing is destroying our great country. I want to congratulate you for fighting it so bravely, all of the things that have been happening to you, the racist and — ran for office on, I will get Trump. Didn’t know anything about me, running for office. I said, who is that maniac? A lot of people in the race, you get a few people to vote, very few people it takes to get in. She proclaimed I look forward to going into the office of attorney general every single day, suing him, and going home, very happy. I — I said, I hope she gets in.”

Did he move on? No, he continued with his rant aimed at AG James.

“What is fueling my soul right now, she announced, is getting Trump. She knows nothing about me. It’s not an investigation. It’s a persecution.”

Then he turned to others investigating him.

“Just like her attacks on the NRA and the witchhunts against us by the Manhattan D.A., the Marxist D.A. In Atlanta and the guy I have a watching — the guy from Washington, special prosecutor, special counsel, I call it a prosecutor, it’s better. Biden has a 1850 boxes that are unaccounted for. He had many boxes in Chinatown. Classified information, many boxes. They got them out of there, but they got caught. That’s called obstruction. They sent them up to Boston. Then it was revealed he got millions of dollars from the Chinese.”

Woe is me! And there was even more.

“But he has boxes in Chinatown, boxes all over the place. They don’t care about that, they only care about Trump. They are trying to arrest their political opposition. It’s very much like the old Soviet Union. With the elections and interference. They are interfering with the election. It’s going to be hard for them to get away with the kind of corruption they did when they had Covid because Covid made a lot of things bad for a lot of. They cheated and it will be hard.”

Boxes in Chinatown? What in the hell does that even mean? Oh, and be sure and notice that he returned to the bullshit about how he was cheated out of a second term.

If this is any indication of the speeches we can expect from Donnie in the future, he should just go ahead and concede the 2024 race right now, because he’s even more batshit crazy than he was the first time he ran.

Categories
Abuse of Power Congress GOP

Democrats Are About To Turn Jim Jordan’s Next Hearing Into His Worst Nightmare: Report

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has scheduled a hearing on crime in the city of Manhattan for next Monday, April 17 as part of spotlighting what Jordan claims are the “victims” of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted failed former president Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records last month.

But the hearing may wind up turning into a massive public relations nightmare for Jordan, according to Greg Sargent of The Washington Post.

The emerging details are already shining a harsh light on what you might call the ‘governing by Fox News’ problem, in which Republicans use committee hearings to create right-wing media boomlets but ultimately run into the buzzsaw of outside scrutiny, Sargent reports.

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), who sits on the committee chaired by Jordan, says he’s looking forward to the “field hearing” planned by the chairman.

“We are eager to use this as an opportunity to highlight what is the real pressing issue in terms of public safety around the country. And that’s the prevalence of assault weapons.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Sargent adds. Others Democrats on the committee are also planning to give Jordan a humiliating fact-check to counter his bullshit.

Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), also plan to push back against lurid and widely debunked GOP claims about Bragg, New York City and crime. Among these claims: Bragg didn’t prosecute an alleged murder on the subway (he did); crime in Manhattan is at record highs (that’s nonsense); Bragg is a wholly owned puppet of George Soros (that’s pure fantasy talk); and the judge hearing Trump’s case is a Trump-hater (even Trump’s own lawyer won’t say this).

And there will also be plenty of facts presented by Democrats that tie House Republicans to Trump, serving as a taxpayer-funded “Trump legal team,” according to Congressman Goldman.

“It’s an opportunity for the public to learn exactly the degree of coordination and collusion between House Republican leadership and Donald Trump.”

It should be fun to watch as Jordan loses his temper and proves that he’s nothing more than a whore for Trump and the most extremist elements of the GOP. Grab your popcorn and settle in for a show.

Categories
Abuse of Power Justice Department Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas Is Now A Step Closer To Being Criminally Referred To The DOJ

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is a step closer to being criminally referred the U.S. Department of Justice for expensive trips and other perks he received from a top Republican donor, some of which were valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last week, ProPublica revealed the connections between Thomas and billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow.

One of the trips Thomas took was to Indonesia.

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

But there were many other jaunts around the globe for Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni, who worked to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election so that Donald Trump could remain in office despite having lost in a landslide to President Joe Biden.

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has written a committee of federal judges who oversee matters related to members of the judiciary and is requesting a formal criminal referral of Thomas to the Justice Department, noting:

Campaign Legal Center respectfully requests that the Judicial Conference exercise its authority pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 13106(b) and refer Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Attorney General because there is “reasonable cause to believe” that he “willfully failed to file information required to be reported” under the Ethics in GovernmentAct (“EIGA”).

Specifically, Justice Thomas’ public statement on April 7, 2023, and recent news reporting, confirm that for over twenty years he did not file required gift disclosures of private plane and yacht travel from one individual. There is reasonable cause to believe that the omissions were willful because Justice Thomas (1) previously reported private plane travel from the same individual in compliance with the law, but stopped the disclosures after negative media attention; and (2) has a history of omitting significant information from his financial disclosure reports.

Thomas has served on the Supreme Court since 1991.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Espionage

Jack Smith Will Have No Choice But To Charge Trump With Espionage: Legal Expert

Based on recent reporting that failed former president Donald Trump may have shown classified documents people who visited him at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Special Counsel Jack Smith will be charging the ex-president with espionage as well as obstruction of justice, a state attorney said Wednesday.

On April 2, The Washington Post reported that Trump may have shared classified information with others.

As investigators piece together what happened in May and June of last year, they have been asking witnesses if Trump showed classified documents, including maps, to political donors, people familiar with those conversations said.

That, according to Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, would constitute a direct violation of the Espionage Statute found in federal law.

During an appearance on “Deadline: White House” Wednesday, Aronberg noted:

“I think the reason that they asked about the map is another statute, 18 USC 719 (e), ‘The Espionage Statute,’ says that someone who is unauthorized to have possession of a map and then shows it to someone who can’t see it violates that statute,” Aronberg explained. “So, they’re not just going after him for obstruction, but also espionage, which is punishable by up to ten years in prison. That’s why there’s a lot of trouble ahead. That’s why Bill Barr is saying, hey, this is the tough one. It’s not New York that will do in the former president in. I think it’s the Mar-a-Lago documents because there’s a direct tie between the former president and the alleged criminality there.”

Keep in mind that’s ten years for each count of violating the Espionage Statute. And Trump could be charged for every single time he took the documents out and showed them to others who didn’t have a valid security clearance. Two people would be 20 years. If he showed them to 10 people, he’d be facing a century in federal prison.

Things are about to get much worse for Donald Trump. The only question that remains is when Smith will hand down the indictments against the former president and exactly what crimes the former president will be charged with.

 

Categories
Congress GOP History

Lauren Boebert Tries To Quote The Declaration Of Independence And It Doesn’t Go Well

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is the dumbest member of Congress. After all, she had to take the GED high school equivalency exam multiple times before she finally managed to pass it.

On Tuesday, Boebert once again proved her stupidity during a discussion with right-wing agitator Charlie Kirk on his podcast.

The topic was guns and the Second Amendment, which led Kirk to comment, “So Lauren, we’re seeing the gun grabbers going into full gear. Let’s just play a couple pieces of tape here. Um, let’s go to, I haven’t even heard this one yet, Joe Scarborough.”

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough:

“They talk about a freedom that they’ve made up in their own twisted heads because they’ve been, they’ve been whipped into a paranoid frenzy by the NRA for 25 years. You know, now they’re claiming the Second Amendment protects things it just doesn’t protect.”

That led Kirk to ask the Colorado Republican, “Lauren, did we just invent this out of thin air because of a quote, ‘paranoid frenzy?’ Your response.”

Boebert replied:

“Right. This made-up freedom. Uh, I don’t think that defending, uh, one’s life is a made-up freedom. Um, it, it’s right there, um, in the preamble, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, um, or personal property, whichever rendition or whatever version you want to, uh, go by. Um, but also this is an assault on cops are, are you kidding me?”

The right to personal property? That’s nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, which it seems Boebert was attempting (and failing) to quote.

Here are the “inalienable rights” cited in the preamble to the Declaration:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Twitter users gave Boebert an “F” for her version of the preamble.