Tag: Donald Trump

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Espionage Fox News

Fox Legal Analyst Mocks Trump: He’s Going To Be Indicted For A Crime He Said Deserved The Death Penalty

Former Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano is convinced that failed, one-term former president Donald Trump will indeed be indicted for violations of the Espionage Act, which is ironic since the disgraced ex-president once said such crimes were deserving of a death sentence.

Writing in the conservative Washington Times, Napolitano lays out the case against Trump:

Even a cursory review of the redacted version of the affidavit submitted in support of the government’s application for a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump reveals that he will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury for three crimes: Removing and concealing national defense information (NDI), giving NDI to those not legally entitled to possess it, and obstruction of justice by failing to return NDI to those who are legally entitled to retrieve it.

Napolitano also notes that Trump made one of the biggest mistakes a potential defendant can possibly make: Denying something before he had been accused of it:

Under the law, it doesn’t matter if the documents on which NDI is contained are classified or not, as it is simply and always criminal to have NDI in a non-federal facility, to have those without security clearances move it from one place to another, and to keep it from the feds when they are seeking it. Stated differently, the absence of classification — for whatever reason — is not a defense to the charges that are likely to be filed against Mr. Trump.

He committed a mortal sin in the criminal defense world by denying something for which he had not been accused.

But most ironic of all, Napolitano concludes, is that Trump once said anyone charged with crimes of espionage should be executed:

In a monumental irony, both Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks journalist who exposed American war crimes during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency employee who exposed criminal mass government surveillance upon the American public, stand charged with the very same crimes that are likely to be brought against Mr. Trump,” Napolitano wrote. “On both Mr. Assange and Mr. Snowden, Mr. Trump argued that they should be executed. Fortunately for all three, these statutes do not provide for capital punishment.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Espionage WTF?!

Trump Attorney Whines: I Can’t Believe DOJ Wants To Charge My Client With ‘Mundane’ Crimes Like Espionage

Alina Habba is an attorney for disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, and she’s absolutely flabbergasted that the Justice Department might want to charge her client with “mundane” crimes such as violations of the Espionage Act.

Speaking with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on Real America’s Voice, Habba whined:

“So what they did was to try and criminalize Donald Trump, as they always do. They found these three mundane statutes, espionage and the two others, obstruction.

“And they’re trying to claim that there was some sort of criminal activity. But their papers say it’s under the Presidential Records Act. So your admission is the power that we’ve all been saying he does have. You can take a picture of top secret documents, Charlie, and show the world a label.”

Habba added:

“But if they’re declassified, as he has the right to do that, he has the right to have them.”

Time for a fact check: Habba is trying to cloud the matter by suggesting everything was covered under the Presidential Records Act, and that means Trump should have turned all his records and documents over to the National Archives.

The documents were not declassified because there is no paper trail proving that. Trump cannot just wave his hand over a piece of paper and call it declassified. There’s a process that requires quite a lot of paperwork and numerous steps before something is officially declassified.

Additionally, as Mediaite notes, there are several laws Trump is suspected of having violated, and they’re a hell of a lot more serious than Habba is suggesting:

The warrant allowing the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago cited three potential statute violations by Trump:

18 USC 2071 — Concealment, removal or mutilation
18 USC 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
18 USC 1519 — Destruction, alteration or falsification of records in Federal investigations

18 USC 793 is the Espionage Act, which Habba referenced.

Categories
Donald Trump Social Media

Trump Has Furious Meltdown After Murdoch-Owned Newspaper Urges The GOP To Dump Donald

Disgraced former president Donald Trump had a social media meltdown Tuesday evening after a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., The New York Post, published an op-ed urging Republicans to finally cut Trump loose.

The editorial begins:

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s raid on Mar-a-Lago has ex-President Donald Trump back in the news. That’s a problem for Republicans, who need to move beyond him.

Noting that the 2022 midterm elections should have been a cakewalk for the GOP, the Post lamented:

But if the focus is on Trump instead, enraged Democrats will unite, pause their internecine warring while independents will abstain or vote against the GOP.

The only solution? For Trump to go away.

Those GOPers know Trump’s already an albatross: His “stolen election” derangement in late 2020 is why Dems control the Senate now, and his endorsements in this year’s primaries have helped saddle Republicans with enough weak Senate candidates this year that retaking the chamber seems increasingly out of reach. Plus, for all the tens of millions Trump has raised since leaving the White House, he hasn’t yet spent any of it even to help the candidates he’s endorsed.

On his pathetic Twitter imitation, Truth Social, the twice-impeached loser ex-president fumed, claiming the Post was “once my favorite newspaper” He also suggested the Post editorial was an attempt to defend Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who recently warned some of the GOP’s Senate candidates were so extreme they may be unelectable come November, telling the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce:

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

That comment enraged Trump, whose handpicked Senate nominees are all in danger of losing badly.

Here’s the failed former president’s Truth Social posts after the editorial ran:

 

Categories
Donald Trump GOP

GOP Says ENOUGH! Will No Longer Pay Trump’s Legal Bills – But There’s A Catch

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has told failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump that they will no longer pay his mounting legal costs.

But as with most things Trump, there’s a catch, Politico reports.

To be lead counsel in the case of his hoarding classified documents, Trump hired Chris Kise, a former Florida solicitor general. But the Donald will have to pay the bill this time.

For Kise’s services, Trump will have to pay on his own. A person familiar with the matter confirmed that the Republican National Committee is not paying for Trump’s legal fees related to the FBI’s investigation and retrieval of documents at Mar-a-Lago. That’s a departure of sorts from the past. The RNC has, for example, paid for Trump’s legal bills involving New York Attorney General Tish James’ investigation into the former president’s private businesses. The committee would stop paying Trump’s legal fees should he formally declare his candidacy for president in the 2024 election — a step he has hinted at but has yet to take.

However, the RNC will continue to foot the bill for all of Trump’s other legal problems, proving that they’ve only grown a portion of spine and are willing to cave to him on nearly every other demand he makes. One wonders if they’ll be so enamored if and when he’s charged with violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice, both of which could send him to prison for decades.

A just released document from the FBI shows that Trump and his attorneys are currently arguing in federal court that he has “absolute authority” on all matters of national security, despite the fact that he is not longer president, with the AP reporting:

A May 25 letter from one of his lawyers, attached as an exhibit to the search affidavit, advances a broad view of presidential power, asserting that the commander-in-chief has absolute authority to declassify whatever he wants — and also that the “primary” law governing the handling of U.S. classified information simply doesn’t apply to the president himself.

But as Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway rightly points out, Trump is no longer in the White House and has no such protection:

“When someone is no longer president, they’re no longer president. That’s the reality of the matter. When you’ve left office, you’ve left office. You can’t proclaim yourself to not be subject to the laws that apply to everyone else.”

Trump, however, has never believed the laws of this country apply to him.

Categories
Donald Trump GOP Ron DeSantis

Insecure Trump Accuses Ron DeSantis Of Ripping Off His Hand Gestures And ‘Style’

As if he doesn’t have more than enough problems at the moment, disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump is now obsessing over what he perceives to be a threat to his primacy as head of the Republican Party: The hand gestures being used by Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis when he speaks on the stump.

According to a fascinating article in Rolling Stone, Trump has even suggested he might want to sue DeSantis for using his gestures and “style,” as if such things are protected by copyright.

Trump has a distinctive (and much-satirized) way of gesticulating while casually talking, delivering political speeches, or even “firing” contestants on his former game show. The sources note that when Trump has seen video clips of of DeSantis speaking at public events over the past year and a half, the former president has scornfully mocked the ascendant Florida Republican for appearing to imitate his body language, movements, and even, at times, speaking rhythm. One of the other sources recalls Trump joking at a dinner event earlier this year that he should sue DeSantis for copyright infringement.

Even some members of the ex-president’s inner circle have noticed the imitations and suggested that it goes far beyond just gestures, suggesting that DeSantis even steals policy ideas from the Donald:

The alleged rip-offs have raised eyebrows with other members of “America First” royalty. Donald Trump Jr. has told those close to him that he has noticed an uncanny pattern: Often he will tweet something from @DonaldJTrumpJr — a culture-war grievance or a burgeoning trend among the online right — and then very soon after, he will see those specific topics incorporated into the Florida governor’s talking points. This has happened enough times that Trump’s eldest son has come to believe, according to a person familiar with the matter, that DeSantis and his staff likely look to his Twitter account for inspiration and to raid it for their latest policy ideas or red-meat-hurling rhetoric.

Of course, all of this is emblematic of a much larger fissure taking place inside the GOP as 2024 approaches and both DeSantis and Trump may wind up facing each other for the presidential nomination, which remains unclear since Trump may well be under indictment by the time the primaries are held.

But if the two do wind up facing each other in 2024, the primary debates should be a blast to watch, especially if Trump accuses him of imitating his “style,” which of course is little than bravado and bullshit.