US Politics Thread 2021-24

[em2nought]

How dare you peasants think you can chose who represents you as President of the United States, and frankly we don't even need your votes anymore either. We'll never let this happen again! The end.

[Reece]

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Reece

Louis!

[Rockstar]

[Rockstar]

For those of you who want to pay for the information use this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-...91082?mod=e2tw

For those that don’t use this one: https://archive.ph/xSYiz


Or just read below.

Nobody is above the law yes it’s true but what’s good for goose is good for the gander as well. Just not for those arrogant self righteous Democrats extremists. Who keep on pushing the limits to get there way and jail opponents like their mentor Putin does.



It’s almost like Democrats want to divide the nation and destroy it so they can swoop in to fix it in their own image. It was recommended that I should read the indictment. My recommendation is for Democrats to pull their heads out their arse and look what they doing to this country.

A Destructive Trump Indictment
Do prosecutors understand the forces they are unleashing?

By The Editorial Board
June 9, 2023 7:09 pm ET

Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks to the press at the Department of Justice in Washington on June 9.
PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, his indictment by President Biden’s Justice Department is a fraught moment for American democracy. For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President. This is far graver than the previous indictment by a rogue New York prosecutor, and it will roil the 2024 election and U.S. politics for years to come.
Special counsel Jack Smith announced the indictment in a brief statement on Friday. But no one should be fooled: This is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s responsibility. Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Smith to provide political cover, but Mr. Garland, who reports to Mr. Biden, has the authority to overrule a special counsel’s recommendation. Americans will inevitably see this as a Garland-Biden indictment, and they are right to think so.

***

The indictment levels 37 charges against Mr. Trump that are related to his handling of classified documents, including at his Mar-a-Lago club, since he left the White House. Thirty-one of the counts are for violating the ancient and seldom-enforced Espionage Act for the “willful retention of national defense information.”

But it’s striking, and legally notable, that the indictment never mentions the Presidential Records Act (PRA) that allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office. It allows for good-faith negotiation with the National Archives. Yet the indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents.

This doesn’t fit the spirit or letter of the PRA, which was written by Congress to recognize that such documents had previously been the property of former Presidents. If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless. This will be part of Mr. Trump’s defense.

The other counts are related to failing to turn over the documents or obstructing the attempts by the Justice Department and FBI to obtain them. One allegation is that during a meeting with a writer and three others, none of whom held security clearances, Mr. Trump “showed and described a ‘plan of attack’” from the Defense Department. “As president I could have declassified it,” he said on audio tape. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

The feds also say Mr. Trump tried to cover up his classified stash by “suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents,” as well as by telling an aide to move boxes to conceal them from his lawyer and the FBI.

As usual, Mr. Trump is his own worst enemy. “This would have gone nowhere,” former Attorney General Bill Barr told CBS recently, “had the President just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”

***

That being said, if prosecutors think that this will absolve them of the political implications of their decision to charge Mr. Trump, they fail to understand what they’ve unleashed.

In the court of public opinion, the first question will be about two standards of justice. Mr. Biden had old classified files stored in his Delaware garage next to his sports car. When that news came out, he didn’t sound too apologetic. “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Mr. Biden said. AG Garland appointed another special counsel, Robert Hur, to investigate, but Justice isn’t going to indict Mr. Biden.

As for willful, how about the basement email server that Hillary Clinton used as Secretary of State? FBI director James Comey said in 2016 that she and her colleagues “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” According to him, 113 emails included information that was classified when it was sent or received. Eight were Top Secret. About 2,000 others were later “upclassified” to Confidential. This was the statement Mr. Comey ended by declaring Mrs. Clinton free and clear, since “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

This is the inescapable political context of this week’s indictment. The special counsel could have finished his investigation with a report detailing the extent of Mr. Trump’s recklessness and explained what secrets it could have exposed. Instead the Justice Department has taken a perilous path.

The charges are a destructive intervention into the 2024 election, and the potential trial will hang over the race. They also make it more likely that the election will be a referendum on Mr. Trump, rather than on Mr. Biden’s economy and agenda or a GOP alternative. This may be exactly what Democrats intend with their charges.

Republicans deserve a more competent champion with better character than Mr. Trump. But the indictment might make GOP voters less inclined to provide a democratic verdict on his fitness for a second term. Although the political impact is uncertain, Republicans who are tired of Mr. Trump might rally to his side because they see the prosecution as another unfair Democratic plot to derail him.

***

And what about the precedent? If Republicans win next year’s election, and especially if Mr. Trump does, his supporters will demand that the Biden family be next. Even if Mr. Biden is re-elected, political memories are long.

It was once unthinkable in America that the government’s awesome power of prosecution would be turned on a political opponent. That seal has now been broken. It didn’t need to be. However cavalier he was with classified files, Mr. Trump did not accept a bribe or betray secrets to Russia. The FBI recovered the missing documents when it raided Mar-a-Lago, so presumably there are no more secret attack plans for Mr. Trump to show off.

The greatest irony of the age of Trump is that for all his violating of democratic norms, his frenzied opponents have done and are doing their own considerable damage to democracy.

[Otto Harkaman]

Pence calls for Garland to publicly justify Trump indictment
Pence said during a speech at a North Carolina GOP convention in Greensboro on Saturday that Trump is facing an “unprecedented indictment” from a Justice Department (DOJ) that is “run by” the current president, Joe Biden. He said the day of Trump’s indictment was a “sad day” for the country.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...mp-indictment/

Summary by ChatGPT

• Former US President Donald Trump has been indicted on 37 counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, including retaining and showing classified information to people without security clearance and obstructing justice.
• The charges carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Trump is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday in South Florida.
• Senior Republicans have rallied behind Trump, denouncing the charges as politically motivated and wielding power inappropriately. Some Republican presidential candidates have called for accountability for the "brazen weaponization of power.

[MaDef]

Can you say, "Banana Republic"?

[Buddahaid]

Can you say traitor? The idiot would not be in this position if he did what Pence and Biden did when records were discovered by telling the DOJ to come on over and search. Not Trump, though, he had to stall, and lie, and try to make a deal, etc.

Here's the text of the 2018 Presidential Records Act.
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?...edition=prelim

I don't see anywhere in this document where it says Trump gets to determine what constitutes personal records.

It does say "(2) The term "Presidential records" means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President's immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term—

(A) includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President's staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; but

(B) does not include any documentary materials that are (i) official records of an agency (as defined in section 552(e) 1 of title 5, United States Code); (ii) personal records; (iii) stocks of publications and stationery; or (iv) extra copies of documents produced only for convenience of reference, when such copies are clearly so identified."

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Can you say traitor? The idiot would not be in this position if he did what Pence and Biden did when records were discovered by telling the DOJ to come on over and search. Not Trump, though, he had to stall, and lie, and try to make a deal, etc.

Here's the text of the 2018 Presidential Records Act.
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?...edition=prelim

I don't see anywhere in this document where it says Trump gets to determine what constitutes personal records.

It does say "(2) The term "Presidential records" means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President's immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term—

(A) includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President's staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; but

(B) does not include any documentary materials that are (i) official records of an agency (as defined in section 552(e) 1 of title 5, United States Code); (ii) personal records; (iii) stocks of publications and stationery; or (iv) extra copies of documents produced only for convenience of reference, when such copies are clearly so identified."

Accused of being being a Traitor now huh? Looks like someone didn’t follow his own advice and read the formal accusations in the indictment.

Here’s how I’m thinking it might play out. Media is already presenting the judge as a Trump supporter. So when she throws the case out. Blue Anon kook fringe Democrats can now claim another conspiracy theory.

I could be wrong and Democrats are the first party in the history of this great nation to succeed in jailing their political opponent. Which will now become the wave of the future in American politics.

“The slow motion assassination of this man by the radical leftist swamp denizens has been brutal to watch. More infuriating is the destruction it’s done to this Republic and to its citizens, who deserve better”. If that’s the case then it can said without a doubt, you my friend are the traitor.

If he is prevented from running he’ll most likely be pardoned by the next president.

Or if he’s cleared and gets enough votes, which is how it should be determined. He could be the next president too.

[mapuc]

After having read an article in a Danish Newspaper I have to ask:

Do you consider Trumps political carrier to be over ?

Can a an inmate run for President in an election ?

Markus

[Rockstar]

Now they’re going after the presiding judge, stirring up the next left wing kook fringe Blue Anon Democrat conspiracy theory.

Here’s why the recusal law REQUIRES Judge Cannon to turn the Trump trial over to a judge whose “impartiality” cannot “reasonably be questioned” the way hers clearly will be — regardless of how she conducts the trial. Nothing good can come of this!

[Buddahaid]

Yes, traitor in my opinion. He should relish getting the harshest sentence since he called for just that about people damaging US property. Reap what you sow.

Aileen Cannon should know enough to recuse herself. We’ll see.

[Rockstar]

[Skybird]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65875898

William Barr, the former US attorney general who served under Donald Trump, has said the ex-president is "toast" if allegations he mishandled classified documents are proven to be true.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

"... our clowns in chief will not know what hit them."
They WILL go with gold one day, i say this since years. Its the logical step in a confrontation designed to kick the US off their throne.
I definitely fear this, because it means massive economical disruptions, and it means the Western states most likely will declare another gold prohibition to enforce their next idea of a new FIAT counterfeit "money".