Category Archives: Donald Trump

In the year 2021, its basically a full-time job keeping up with the many lawsuits, civil inquiries, and criminal probes against Donald Trump, which, if you can believe it, surpass the number of times a human woman has agreed to marry him. On the lawsuit front, as of March, the ex-president was facing more than two dozen, which normal people who havent spent their entire lives suing or being sued thousands of times consider a lot. When it comes to civil cases, the New York attorney general is currently looking into whether the Trump Organization manipulated the value of its assets for loans and tax breaks, and recently won a major victory in court. Then of course there are the criminal investigations, which are probably at the top of Trumps mind considering they could result in his going to prison. Obviously, theres the one being led by the Manhattan District Attorneys Office, which has already produced numerous charges against Trumps business and longtime CFO, with more indictments expected. On top of that, hes also under criminal investigation by the D.C. attorney general for inciting the attack on the Capitol, while in Fulton County, Georgia, the D.A.s office is looking at his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. And according to legal experts, the latter situation may end very badly for him!

In a new 109-page report, D.C. think tank the Brookings Institution analyzed publicly available evidence concerning Trumps and his allies efforts to pressure Georgia officials to change the lawful outcome of the election, concluding that the 45th president could be charged with multiple crimes. Obviously, one of the least helpful things Trump has going for him is his infamous phone call to Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger on January 3, during which Trump told the guy tofind 11,780 votesto overturn Joe Bidens win in the state. Theres no way I lost Georgia, Trump said numerous times throughout the call, though of course he did. Theres no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.

The report also notes that Trump both publicly pressured and personally contacted a number of Republican officials in the state, including Attorney General Chris Carr and Governor Brian Kemp, to get their help in declaring him the victor. (The men did not go along with the plot, which might explain why Trump pretended to endorse Stacey Abrams for Georgia governor over the weekend.) The report, penned by Norman Eisen, Joshua Matz, Donald Ayer, Gwen Keyes Fleming, Colby Galliher, Jason Harrow, and Raymond P. Tolentino, notes that the then president called Carr and Kemp in December to beg them to go along with his increasingly desperate plans to decertify his loss. The authors warn that criminal liability could extend to Trump allies as well, including Rudy Giuliani.

Among the charges Trump himself could be hit with, the authors believe, are criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations, in addition to violations of more than a dozen other Georgia state statutes. We conclude that Trumps post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes, the report states.

Referencing the fact that Trump would likely claim that everything he did was just part of his job as president, the report declares: Stated simply, soliciting and then threatening senior state officials to alter the outcome of a presidential election does not fall within any reasoned conception of the scope of presidential power.

A spokesman for Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that the investigation is active and ongoing but declined to reveal any details. Prosecutors have reportedly appeared before a grand jury seeking subpoenas for witnesses and documents; hiredthe states top experts on racketeering and conspiracy laws; interviewed at least four of Raffenspergers closest advisers; and started coordinating with the congresspeople probing the events surrounding January 6.

Trumps advisers have reacted to the Georgia probe exactly how one would expect if one paid attention for the last five years. This is simply the Democrats latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump, and everybody sees through it, Jason Miller said in a statement following the launch of the investigation in the spring.

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Nothing to see here, just the governor of South Dakota seemingly abusing her position of power to get her daughter a real estate license

Given that she refuses to do anything about COVID-19, Kristi Noem has lots of time on her hands for such pursuits. Per the Associated Press:

Just days after a South Dakota agency moved to deny her daughters application to become a certified real estate appraiser, Governor Kristi Noem summoned to her office the state employee who ran the agency, the womans direct supervisor, and the state labor secretary. Noems daughter attended too. Kassidy Peters, then 26, ultimately obtained the certification in November 2020, four months after the meeting at her mothers office. A week after that, the labor secretary called the agency head, Sherry Bren, to demand her retirement, according to an age discrimination complaint Bren filed against the department. Bren, 70, ultimately left her job this past March after the state paid her $200,000 to withdraw the complaint.

According to the AP, Peters applied to become a certified residential appraiser, which would result in a substantial increase in earnings, in September 2019; in late July 2020, the program that Bren directed moved to deny the license, which reportedly occurs when an applicants work samples dont meet minimum compliance with national standards.On July 26, Bren received a text telling her to be at the governors office the following morning to discuss appraiser certification procedures.

Besides Noem and Peters, Bren said the meeting included Labor Secretary Marcia Hultman; Brens supervisor; the governors general counsel; and, participating by phone, the governors chief of staff and a lawyer from the states Department of Labor and Regulation.

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Report: Trump May Be Hit With Multiple Criminal Charges Over His Effort to Overturn the Election in Georgia - Vanity Fair

At first, I couldn't believe what the president said.

My question was quite simple and I anticipated a simple answer. I sought reassurance that whatever else, a peaceful transfer of power after an election one of the cornerstones of the American experience that has made us unique, a fundamental example of why other nations look up to us was not up for debate.

Since George Washington gave up the reins of power and retired to his farm, like an American Cincinnatus, the peaceful transfer of power from president to president has been an example the rest of the world respects and has emulated.

We have taken this for granted. Donald Trump treated this tradition as personal toilet paper.

Whatever else happened during the four years that Donald Trump was president, I expected him and the GOP to uphold this American tradition. Hence, one year ago, on Sept. 23, 2020, I asked Donald Trump whether, come "win, lose or draw," he would accept a peaceful transfer of power. Until he came along, I would never have thought to ask a president such a question. I might as well have asked if they intended to continue breathing.

But Trump was different. The time was different. That briefing, in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House, came during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The White House press corps had voluntarily reduced our numbers to just 14, in a room that routinely had hosted as many as 110 reporters during Trump's tenure in the White House. Trump, through his press secretary, had routinely skirted this mandate by inviting "guests" from favored news organizations to stand at the back of the room and ask questions. I routinely showed up to counter-program the Trump lackeys.

On the day in question last year, someone with an assigned seat didn't show up for the presidential briefing and rather than allowing a Trump acolyte to take the open seat which was the last seat in the last row I took it myself.

Mind you, I did not believe Trump would call on me. He and I had a past. I had sued him to keep my press pass. He'd called me "fake news" and "that Playboy guy," and had told me to sit down and shut up on several occasions. Once he threatened to walk out of a news conference in the Rose Garden if I didn't shut up. I didn't, and he didn't walk out. He took the question while complaining the whole time.

On Sept. 23, 2020, he surprised me again. Not only did he take my question, but he picked me first and I did not hesitate. The only issue on the minds of millions of Americans then was whether or not Trump would respect the results of the upcoming election. What Trump said to me and told the nation that day was the match that lit the fire leading to the "Big Lie," an insurrection, one dead rioter, dead and beaten Capitol Police officers, and a nation that is still divided, sore and angry. More importantly, Trump has never admitted that he lost the election and he threatens our democracy daily.

No one should be surprised.

Everyone should be outraged.

But some, including high-ranking members of the Republican Party, continue to defend Trump and millions of Americans still believe him no matter what they saw on television, no matter what they were told in news reports and no matter what the reality is.

Kellyanne Conway described this phenomenon as "alternative facts" and that is where millions of Americans, courtesy of a consummate con man, dwell today in the gray nether regions of a constructed fiction where Trump and his minions believe he won; where taking a de-worming drug designed by scientists for horses is preferable to taking a vaccine designed by scientists for humans and where Trump is universally respected and/or feared by the leaders of the rest of the world and where only he can save us.

Trump came closer than most of us know to staging a coup, even after he warned us about that last September. Recent news reports and a new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa highlight a six-point plan for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results.

Other news reports show that Trump and his team knew shortly after the election that there was no basis for challenging its results, and that Sen. Lindsey Graham apparently thought the arguments proposed to challenge the election results amounted to the logic of a "third grader." Still they lied to us.

Now we know what Trump meant when I asked him last year if he would "commit to a peaceful transferal of power after the election." This is what he said:

"We're going to have to see what happens. I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. . . get rid of the ballots . . . and there won't be a transfer, frankly, they'll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it . . ."

"No I don't," I replied.

Trump's traitorous, convoluted and muddy thinking, his flash over substance, his obfuscation of facts and his total disregard for the truth and decency was horrifying then and has largely overwhelmed American politics now.

There are those so convinced that Trump got screwed in the 2020 election that they'll defend the treasonous actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, while at the same time denying that Trump whipped them into a frenzy or that they were in a frenzy at all. With the same breath, there are those who will say the insurrection was a peaceful protest, an FBI, Black Lives Matteror antifa violent action, that it did not occur or was justified or shudder was even patriotic. The actions of that day were the actions of domestic terrorists. I was there. I witnessed it.

Look where we are now.

Division. Denial of facts. It was all there in the statement Trump made. He provided the roadmap to an insurrection on Sept. 23, 2020. People followed it. People died.

A year later, the United States looks even more lost than it was a year ago.

Donald Trump doesn't care. He wants to bring it all down and is trying to run a shadow presidency as he ridicules everything Joe Biden does.

Make no mistake. Biden has his faults. His handling of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Haitian problem on the border and the alliance with Australia and the U.K., which has created major friction with France, are all wounds that have been self-inflicted and damaging.

But Biden respects the Constitution, and anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see he is trying to work for all of us, not just himself. He has rallied to get Congress and the country to unify working hard to get a bipartisan infrastructure package passed and constantly urging Americans to come together as he pushes hard for voting rights and increased taxes on the rich.

Trump never did that and never could. A year after he fanned the flame of insurrection in a White House briefing, we can clearly see the consequences of those actions. The threat of a coup was real spurred by Trump's disregard for truth, an obsession with being branded a loser and a narcissistic view of the universe that boils down to this: For Donald Trump, we don't matter. Only his own desires matter.

As Kurt Bardella wrote recently in USA Today, "We cannot let our guard down. Today's GOP has patterned itself after extreme and radical factions. Despots who are intent on normalizing violence to achieve their political objectives."

These actions in the GOP are rooted in Donald Trump's words. After he became president, Trump found levers to pull that sated his twisted needs for self-glory and adulation. He is addicted to that. His putrid, warped sense of self cannot permit him to let go and he continues to try and pull us down into the toilet with him.

In the 1993 western "Tombstone," Doc Holliday (played by Val Kilmer) is asked what makes a man like Johnny Ringo, the film's villain. "A man like Ringo has got a great big hole right in the middle of him," he says. "He can never kill enough or steal enough or inflict enough pain to ever fill it."

Like Johnny Ringo, Donald Trump seeks revenge for being born.

A year after he told us, in response to my question about the election, how he would bend reality to suit his needs, he still tries. Since he has had some success in retaining his base (and more importantly for him, in raising money), there are other Republicans following his act.

United we stand. Divided we fall. Trump is the king of division. For the rest of us to stand he must fall. He must be prosecuted. He must be culled from the body politic.

Only then can we possibly hope to address "Trumpism."

Trump showed us his hand a year ago. Time is long overdue to show him the back of ours.

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Exactly a year ago, Donald Trump told us exactly who he was and how far he would go - Salon

Right-wing prophet and conspiracy theorist Robin Bullocks circular arguments in defense of former President Donald Trump and his lies have gotten crazier in recent weeks, but his latest is simply dizzying in its self-serving ludicrousness.

On Monday, Bullock appeared on the Elijah Streams YouTube Channel and proclaimed that God told him to advise Trump to ignore his aides and instead listen to charlatans such as himself when it comes to the 2020 election. What makes this is particularly entertaining is that Bullocks supposed revelations about Trump somehow returning to power have all been dead wrong.

You must move quickly, says the Lord. I heard those around you, and I heard this conversation, Steve. I heard those around you that advised you saying, do not listen to the prophets this time. Thus said the Lord. They have their own agenda. They are planning their own future and it does not include you,' God said, according to Bullock.

But I heard this. Listen to this prophet what Im talking about this because I have a mantel from heaven to say these things. This is an anointing to speak into the political realm. Im a prophet to the nations and a prophet to this nation and a prophet from Jerusalem to speak, Bullock continued.

And the Lord says this and I heard these things. I heard a conversation say, dont listen to the prophets this time. Wait. Do this, do that. I heard their conversation but the Lord says they have their own agenda in their minds and it dont include President Trump. It dont include him at all. They plan on running his time out, Bullock added of Trumps sycophants.

Watch below:

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Right-Wing Prophet Claims God Wants Donald Trump to Only Listen to Right-Wing Prophets - HillReporter.com

In May of this year, Donald Trump began tellingassociates that he plans to run for president in 2024 if he is healthy enough. In July, he told dinner pals that he is running. Just this month, he reiterated that he is likely to runagain.The twice-impeached ex-president is increasing his media appearances and planning campaign-style rallies in Georgia and Iowa.

Trump's humiliating defeat to Joe Biden which he refuses to acknowledge even occurred has fomented a yearning for redemption. Whether he actually runs again remains uncertain, but he wants his supporters to be ready, willingand primed.

As Trump keeps his millions of supporters in suspense, they must answer one difficult question: Do they really want to continue to support a man who despises them and hurts them?

Donald Trump has always abhorred his supporters. He does not feelan ounce of empathy or affection for those who profess their devotion to him. He sees his supporters as weak, stupidand inferior. They are losers to him. He hates his supporters as much as he wants to destroy his detractors.

Actions speak louder than words. Just look at Trump's actions toward his supporters.

The best example is his detached, irresponsibleand inept handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died on his watch. He relied on conspiracy theories, magical thinking, blatant liesand distractions to fool the American public. Trump followers in red states have died in huge numbers because they erroneously and foolishly believed he was the benevolent master of their fate. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was, in fact, an accessory to murder. His supporters' lives meant nothing to him.

Another example is Trump's incitement of the insurrection of the Capitol on Jan.6. He was willing to overthrow democracy in order to remain in power. So he fabricated the Big Lie, knowing full well that his cult followers would carry out his anti-democratic mission. Was he on the front line with his supporters? Of course not because he is a coward. He watched it all unfold on television as he cheered them on fromthe protected and comfortable surroundings of the White House. Trump wanted the election undermined and demanded that followersaccomplish that goal. The result was failure, destruction, deaths, arrestsandwidespread condemnation. Trump has left his followers dangling in defeat. He has taken no responsibility for his incitement andhas demonstrated no concern or remorse for his loyalists who face damaging legal consequences. He has thrown them under the bus because he detests them.

Millions of aggrieved Americans have tethered themselves to Trump's fake persona of superiority and strength. They think he is the answer to their prayers. They think he cares about their lot in life. They think he will remedy their grievances. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump is a shameless opportunist. He manipulates people to achieve his personal goals, then discards them. He does not care if his supporters are racists, felons, crooksor murderers. He does not care if they are xenophobes or misogynists. He will accept the support of anyone who will blindly follow his lead and put him on a pedestal after all, exalted status is what he longs for. He desperately wants to be a dictator so that his grifting and corrupt impulses can run wild. And, remember, dictators only care about themselves and loathe people who expect anything from them.

Trump scorns those who are weak or foolish enough to need him. He does not want to be needed he wants others to serve and satiate his needs. He thrives on their praise, adulationand unconditional loyalty. The whole concept of public service is foreign to him because he perceives every interaction is a transactional game that must be won. And winning, for him, inevitably means defeat and humiliation of the other person. In Trump's psyche, even his supporters need to be humiliated and defeated.

It is puzzling that Trump supporters have not realized that he does not give a damn about their grievances or station in life. His Republican Party literally has no platform or set of guiding principles all that was abandoned during the 2020 campaign.Nor does theRepublican Partyhave a single substantive policy initiative on the table. Other than conservative judicial appointments, Trump did absolutely nothing for his supporters during his miserable presidential term. Except, of course, to let them be killed by a virus and incite them to a failed overthrow of democracy.

Until Trump is goneand the Republican Party reinvents itself, Trump supporters are all alone to fend for themselves. Their cult leader is an illusion. He is a pied piper leading them only to destruction. He has brought them only pain and suffering andsold them a bill of goods consisting of lies and conspiracy theories.

All because he despises his supporters. That's the best reason why they should dump him now, before he harms them even more.

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Trump's planning to run again in 2024: Will his supporters ever realize he hates them? - Salon

Donald Trump returned to his beloved rally stage over the weekend to perform his greatest hits in front of a Georgia crowd. It was a large and ecstatic crowd. What else is new? If there was any hope of Trump's fans getting tired of him, there is no sign of it yet.

From asking the crowd what it must be like to be married to Hillary Clinton and eliciting a raucous rendition of "Lock Her Up!" to complaining about the border as his followers chanted "Build That Wall," Trump delivered his tried and true staples. He declared that he loves law enforcement and the military and the 2nd Amendment and even bragged about making people say Merry Christmas once again. And when he asked, "Is there anything as fun as a Trump rally?" he truly brought the house down. In the end, they all danced awkwardly to the 70s hook-up song, YMCA before heading home spent and satisfied.

This stuff never gets old, apparently.

But for all the familiar old saws, Trump spent most of his time pushing the Big Lie, taking it to even higher levels of delusion, implying that President Obama stole his two elections and asserting that the Arizona "fraudit" went his way:

He also got huge applause trashing Republicans he believes betrayed him by failing to cheat, at one point suggesting that Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams would be a better governor than the current GOP governor Brian Kemp.His followers loved every minute of it, lustily booing Kemp and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In their minds, as in Trump's, the Democrats and RINOs are one in the same: They are the enemy.

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It's hard to know if the rally crowd represents the average Trump follower but the polls indicate that he isstill massively popularwith Republicans so it stands to reason they are generally happy with the Trumpism on display at his gatherings. As so many have marveled when asked what they like about him,he says what they're thinking.

I couldn't help but ponder that when I read some recent analyses of the 2020 election once again looking at the question of "what does the white working class voter really want?" The Washington Post's Monkey Cage blogturned the spotlighton the upcoming Virginia governor's race and looked at the three big cultural markers that separatethe urban from the rural voters:faith, gun ownership and race.

I don't think I have to explain the differences among the Democrats and Republicans on those issues. Democratic strategist James Carville blames the urban voters for being elitist and chasing away voters with their big city ways. Analyst Ruy Teixeirabelievesthat Democrats are out of step culturally with the mainstream of America and, as a result, have put a ceiling on their appeal. Teixeira makes a number of suggestions as to how to become more culturally palatable to Real Americans and suggests:

The way to lift that ceiling is clear: move to the center to embrace the views enumerated above, all of which are compatible with a robust program of full employment, social safety net expansion and public investment. Indeed, the ironic aspect of this is that the public writ large, including the median voter, are more open to such a program than they have been in decades, yet the Democrats' cultural leftism interferes with their ability to focus on their popular economic program and avoid unpopular positions that have little to do with that program.

In other words, he believes that delivering a popular economic program will bring them back as long as the Democrats don't upset them with all this cultural leftism. But after crunching the numbers, the Monkey Cage analysts found that it's not urban arrogance or cultural leftism that's at the root of the problem and neither are different attitudes about gun ownership or faith. The problem israce.This is evident by the fact that rural white voters simply refuse to acknowledge that racism exists:

[I]f voters in urban and rural areas acknowledged White privilege at the same rate, the urban-rural voting divide would be relatively small, just eight points. That the divide is actually 32 points speaks to the powerful role that racism plays in fueling this gap. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Virginia Republican candidate Glenn Youngkinattacked the teaching of critical race theory, making it a cornerstone of his campaign.

Our findings suggest that messaging isn't the problem, as Carville asserted. Rather, rural Americans prefer Trump's racially charged politics and denial that racism exists. Fueled by a core disagreement over racism in the United States, the urban-rural divide is likely to continue in 2021 and beyond.

This analysis tracks with earlier findings in the wake of the 2016 election when the media decided that Trump's win was based upon the "economic anxiety" of the white working class and spent months chasing them through diners in the South and the rustbelt to prove it. Then, as now, the analysis just didn't add up. Non-college educated voters exist throughout the country but the ones who loved Trump were those white, mostly rural, and often more affluent Fox News viewers who were filled with grievance and resentment against people of color.

Larry Sabato of the University of Virginiabegs to differwith both of these analyses. He agrees that economic insecurity had little to do with non-college educated votes for Trump in 2020 but believes it's "fundamentally" about ideology. He writes:

I find that support for Donald Trump among white working class voters reflected conservative views across a wide range of policy issues including social welfare issues, cultural issues, racial justice issues, gun control, immigration, and climate change. In other words, the rejection of the Democratic Party by white working class voters is fundamentally ideological. This fact makes it very unlikely that Democrats will be able to win back large numbers of white working class voters by appealing to their economic self-interest.

I don't know which of these analyses are correct, although I'm deeply skeptical that taming the "cultural left" will have any effect on those who are allegedly so offended by it that they will instead vote for the likes of Donald Trump.I am convinced that racism lies at the heart of most of the grievance and hostility that animates the right, and I also think that easily evolves into a more holistic worldview that encompases grievance across the entire ideological spectrum leading to conspiratorial thinking and an abandonment of critical thinking. Still, I'm not sure that adds up to a coherent ideology. It's more of a tribal identity.

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Trumpism's appeal rests on the fact that Trump himself is very careful to stay within the bounds of all those issues Sabato lists. He uses his rallies to feel them out and adjust accordingly. In that way he is the ultimate follower, not a leader. What he does isexpresstheir loathing for racial and religious minorities and immigrants, gun control advocates, climate change, tolerance, equality and pluralism in the crude, bullying, hostile way that validates their existing beliefs. Basically, he completes them.

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Trump's revival: How his rallies reveal him to be the ultimate follower - Salon

Former President Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, considers the 2022 midterm election the "most important" of Americans' lifetimes because it could be the deciding factor in whether her uncle runs in 2024.

Donald teased a return to the campaign trail after leaving office in January, promising supporters would be "happy" with his decision. The leading contender for the Republican nomination for president, he hasn't committed to mounting a bid for the White House, instead focusing his attention on helping Republicans win back control of Congress.

Mary told Newsweek editor-at-large Naveed Jamali on his podcast, The Daily Break, that Trump's decision to run will hinge on whether he thinks he "can't lose." If Democrats lose either the House or the Senate in 2022, she believes it could give her uncle the confidence to try to oust President Joe Biden from office.

"If Donald feels he can run and not lose because the system is rigged even further in his favor then he will," Mary said. "And if he wins depends largely upon how Republicans do in 2022 which is why Democrats need to be energized and vote in such large numbers that they can't be overcome."

Trump's throwing his weight behind several candidates looking to win or defend their seats in 2022 and is endorsing several people looking to oust Republicans who voted to impeach him. The former president has a track record for endorsing winning candidates and, since leaving office, has backed winning candidates in one congressional special election and one primary election.

History plays well in Republicans' advantage for winning in 2022, as it's common for a president's party to lose seats in the midterm election. Since 1946, the president's party has lost an average of 25 seats in the midterm elections, according to Forbes, and Republicans only need one in the Senate and six in the House to regain control.

If Republicans were to take control of the House, Mary told Jamali that she believes all investigations would stop. The Democrat-led House is investigating Trump on a number of fronts, including his role in the January 6 Capitol riot and the Department of Justice's seizure of data from devices that belonged to members of Congress, journalists and others. She added that the Senate would be "worse in some ways" if Republicans were at the helm, but didn't offer specifics.

"Right now 2022 is the most important election of our lifetime," Mary said. "If Democrats hang on in 2022, then 2024 becomes the most important election of our lifetime."

Trump maintains command of the GOP and a strong following, so it's likely he would be able to pose a strong challenge to Biden if he were to run in 2024. Having lashed out at some of his critics in the months since he left office, Mary was confident her uncle would be "gunning for" those who opposed him, joking that she would be sent to Guantanamo Bay.

If Trump were to win in 2024, he would also regain the immunity from lawsuits he had while in office the first time. Mary suspected those privileges were more enticing to Trump than the actual job of being president.

Newsweek reached out to former President Donald Trump for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

See the article here:

Mary Trump Details What She Thinks Will Sway Donald Trump to Run in 2024 - Newsweek

Ivanka Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing, and in response to the news of the expanded probes, she angrily tweeted: This is harassment pure and simple. This inquiry by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that theres nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless. The Trump Organization, on the other hand, was charged in July with conspiracy, a scheme to defraud, and multiple counts of tax fraud and falsifying records. The company, like its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded not guilty. Earlier this week an attorney for Weisselberg said there was strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Times said the papers coverage of Donald Trumps taxes helped inform the public through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest. This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it. On Twitter, Craig wrote, I knocked on Mary Trumps door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism. Mary Trumps lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.said in a statement: This is the latest in a long line of frivolous lawsuits by Donald Trump that target truthful speech and important journalism on issues of public concern. It is doomed to failure like the rest of his baseless efforts to chill freedom of speech and of the press.

For her part, Mary Trump told the Daily Beast, of her uncle: I think he is a fucking loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can. Its desperation. The walls are closing in, and he is throwing anything against the wall that will stick. As is always the case with Donald, hell try and change the subject.

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Meanwhile, in Florida

A Republican lawmaker looked at Texass abortion bill and decided it wasnt extreme enough. Per CNN:

A Republican Florida state lawmaker on Wednesday introduced a bill that is modeled aftera strict Texas lawprohibiting abortions after six weeks, drawing condemnation from supporters of abortion rights who fear such legislation might soon be introduced in other states. House Bill 167was filed by Florida state Rep. Webster Barnaby. The bill, like the Texas law, contains a procedural feature that allows private citizens to bring lawsuits against physicians who provide abortions after six weeks as well as any person who knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion. The Florida legislation, like the Texas law, also provides for remedies and damages.

Notably, the Florida bill allows lawsuits to be brought up to six years after an abortion was performed in violation of the law, whereas supporters of the Texas law say that measure creates a four-year window for bringing suits. Additionally, the way HB 167 is written makes it extremely difficult to challenge the prohibition until it goes into effect, and even then there are high hurdles.

Continue reading here:

Donald Trump Sounds Pretty Panicked About Spending His Twilight Years Behind Bars - Vanity Fair

Last year, John Eastman, whom CNN describes as an attorney working with Donald Trumps legal team, wrote a preposterous memo outlining how thenVice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election by fiat or, failing that, throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Republicans could install Trump in office despite his loss to Joe Biden. The document, which was first reported by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their new book, is a step-by-step plan to overthrow the government of the United States through a preposterous interpretation of legal procedure.

Pence apparently took the idea seriouslyso seriously, in fact, that, according to Woodward and Costa, former Vice President Dan Quayle had to talk him out of it. Prior to November, the possibility of Trump attempting a coup was seen as the deranged fever dream of crazed liberals. But as it turns out, Trump and his advisers had devised explicit plans for reversing Trumps loss. Republican leaders deliberately stoked election conspiracy theories they knew to be false, in order to lay a political pretext for invalidating the results. Now, more than 10 months after the election, the country knows of at least five ways in which Trump attempted to retain power despite his defeat.

Trump held early leads in vote counts in several statesnot because he was ever actually ahead but because of discrepancies between when states count mail-in ballots and Election Day ballots. This so-called blue shift was written about long in advance of Election Day, and was partially the result of Trumps own attacks on voting by mail. Nevertheless, Trump made this a key part of his election conspiracy theories (as many predicted he would), insisting that Democrats were somehow inserting fraudulent ballots into the vote count in the presidential election (something they apparently forgot to do in close House and Senate races, in which Democrats did worse than polls had anticipated). To help substantiate these falsehoods , the Trump campaign attempted to pressure secretaries of state to either not certify the results or find fraudulent ballots. In some states, spurred by the presidents fictions, pro-Trump mobs showed up at vote-counting sites and attempted to disrupt the proceedings.

Trump personally attempted to coerce state legislators to overturn election results in a few states that voted for Biden, on the dubious legal theory that such legislatures could simply ignore the results of the popular vote in their own states. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia, Trump publicly urged Republican-controlled statehouses to intervene to declare him the winner and tweeted, Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself. As my colleague Barton Gellman reported last year, the Trump campaign discussed contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.

David A. Graham: Trumps coup attempt didnt start on January 6

The embattled attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, filed an absurd lawsuit demanding that the Supreme Court void the election results in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, four states Biden won. The large majority of the Republican delegation in Congress, as well as nearly 20 Republican state attorneys general, supported this attempt to get the conservative-controlled Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election results by fiat. The justices declined to crown Trumpbut the amount of support this bid received from Republican elected officials is itself alarming.

As part of this effort, we can include the baseless Kraken lawsuits, filled with conspiracy theories about vote changes. Trump attempted to coerce the Justice Department into providing him with a pretext to overturn the results, but his attorney general, Bill Barr, refused to do so. Had DOJ leadership acquiesced, it would have lent credibility to Trumps other corrupt schemes to reverse his loss. In a meeting with the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, according to contemporaneous notes taken by Rosens deputy, Trump said, Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me.

It is hard to pick the most ridiculous means of executing a coup, but insisting that the vice president has the power to unilaterally decide who won an election is up there. Trump publicly hounded Pence to reject the results prior to the traditionally ceremonial electoral-vote count in Congress, and Pence reportedly took that demand seriously enough to seek advice from Dan Quayle on the matter, asking if there were any grounds to pause the certification because of ongoing legal challenges, according to Costa and Woodward. That this got so far is profoundly disturbing, but even more disturbing is Eastmans memo, which shows that the Trump team had thought very deliberately about how this scheme would work.

According to the memo, Pence could refuse to certify the results in particular states, giving Trump more electoral votes than Biden, and Pence would declare Trump the victor. If Democrats objected (as surely they would), the vote would then go to the House. Because the Constitution gives one vote to each state in disputed presidential elections, and the Republicans were the majority in 26 of 50 state delegations, the Democratic House majority would be unable to prevent Republicans from throwing the election to Trump. The election-law expert Ned Foley writes that the scheme would likely not have prevailed, given the Democrats ability to prevent a joint session, but that seems almost beside the point, which is that a sitting president and vice president were considering how to keep themselves in power following an election they lost.

At the rally prior to the vote count in Congress, Trump urged the crowd to act, saying, If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. The explicit goal of the rally and subsequent riot was to pressure Congress, and Pence in particular, into overturning the election results. Trump told his followers, If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.

This scheme didnt work on its own, but it certainly could have helped one of the others: Imagine if Pence had gone along with Eastmans absurd plan, and a mob had been present at the Capitol to help enforce the decision and menace lawmakers who tried to oppose itthen what? As it stands, the mob ransacked the Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee. Had the mob succeeded at reaching any actual legislators, the consequences could have been catastrophic.

Trump was impeached for his incitement of the January 6 mob, but Senate Republicans dutifully prevented him from being convicted and barred from holding office ever again.

Virginia Heffernan: Trumps campaign to overturn the election was inane

Those who attempted to subvert democracy have faced few political or legal consequences. As is typical, some rioters are facing prosecution while the elites who tried to overthrow the election through more bureaucratic or procedural means remain in good standing with their peers. The failure to impose accountability for an attempt to overthrow the constitutional order will encourage further such efforts.

Meanwhile, those rare Republicans who did stand up against this attempt to destroy American democracy are the only ones dealing with real political consequences from their party, facing primary challenges, being forced into retirement, or being stripped of their leadership positions. Republican officials who were unwilling to use their office to overturn the election results are seeing challenges from Trump devotees who will, should the opportunity arise again.

If Trump had succeeded, many of those downplaying the former presidents actions would today be rationalizing an American coup. No, you see, George Washington and James Madison intended for Donald Trump to be president for life. Read the Constitution.

At the core of these attempts is a dangerous ideologythe presumption that because Trump supporters represent Real Americans, the will of democratic majorities can be disregarded. This does not mean that the Republican Party is capable of winning majorities, but that winning them is irrelevant to whether or not the partys Trumpist faithful believe they are entitled to wield power. Win or lose, their claim to be the sole authentic inheritors of the American tradition means they are the only ones who can legitimately govern and are therefore justified in seizing power by any means. This is the modern incarnation of an old ideology, one that has justified excluding certain groups of Americans from the suffrage on the basis that their participation is an affront to the political process.

American traditions of unfreedom always represent themselves as democracys protectors, rather than its undertakers, and this one is no different. If Biden were allowed to take office, Eastman insisted in a longer version of his memo, we will have ceased to be a self-governing people. The catastrophe is not only that Trump tried to overthrow an election. It is that so many Americans were cheering him on.

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Five Ways Donald Trump Tried to Push a Coup - The Atlantic

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A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more than 200 demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would turn out or more.

But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.

For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats have been tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults nearly 1 in 5 agree with the statement that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Of those, 21 million also agree that use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.

Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization. At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those 21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.

In June 2021, our group commissioned a survey done by the independent, non-partisan researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago, seeking to discover how widespread insurrectionist sentiments are among U.S. adults.

The research methods meet the highest standards in the polling industry a random sample of a representative sample. Its the same process NORC uses to conduct polling for The Associated Press, the federal government and other major institutions.

First, NORC pulls together a panel of 40,000 people, called AmeriSpeak, who are representative of the entire U.S. population on dozens of characteristics, such as age, race, income, location of residence and religion. From that representative sample, NORC drew a random sample in our case, 1,070 people.

This polling found that 9% of American adults say they agree with the statement that Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency. And 25% of adults either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

Overall, 8% of the survey participants share both of those views.

The margin of error of this survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. So when calculating the number of the 258 million adult Americans who hold these views, we looked at the range of between 4% and 12% which gave us between 10 million and 31 million. The best single figure is the middle of that range, 21 million.

People who said force is justified to restore Trump were consistent in their insurrectionist sentiments: Of them, 90% also see Biden as illegitimate, and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve Americas traditional way of life.

Combined with their military experience, gun ownership and connections to extremist groups and militias, this signals the existence of significant mainstream support in America for a violent insurrection.

This group of 21 million who agree both that force is justified to restore Trump and that Biden is an illegitimate president has two additional views that are also on the fringes of mainstream society:

Some people with insurrectionist sentiments hold one of these political views but not the other, suggesting there are multiple ways of thinking that lead a person toward the insurrectionist movement.

This latest research reinforces our previous findings, that the Jan. 6 insurrection represents a far more mainstream movement than earlier instances of right-wing extremism across the country. Those events, mostly limited to white supremacist and militia groups, saw more than 100 individuals arrested from 2015 to 2020. But just 14% of those arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 are members of those groups. More than half are business owners or middle-aged white-collar professionals, and only 7% are unemployed.

There is no way to say for sure when or even whether these insurrectionists will take action. On Jan. 6, it took clear direction from Donald Trump and other political leaders to turn these dangerous sentiments into a violent reality. But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people might like to think.

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21 million Americans say Biden is 'illegitimate' and Trump should be restored by violence, survey finds - The Conversation US