The "Great Unraveling" continues.

Trump special counsel shifts focus of possible indictment to S. Florida

Justice Department prosecutors are planning to bring a significant portion of any charges stemming from the possible mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the home of former president Donald Trump, at a nearby federal court in south Florida, according to people familiar with the matter.

The legal rationale for such a move is that the bulk of the conduct at issue in the investigation occurred in the southern district of Florida, in and around Trump’s Palm Beach residence and private club, even if much of the investigation — led by special counsel Jack Smith — has been handled by a grand jury in D.C., these people said.

That approach by prosecutors does not rule out the possibility of some charges, such as perjury or false statements, being filed in Washington in connection with grand jury appearances or law enforcement interviews that took place there, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati.../miami-grand-jury-trump-classified-documents/

Just get on with it.

 

Trump told he is target of Mar-a-Lago documents criminal probe by special counsel

Former President Donald Trump has been informed he is a target of the federal criminal probe into his retention of hundreds of classified government records after leaving the White House, NBC News reported Wednesday evening. Such notification typically occurs before prosecutors decide whether to lodge criminal charges against a target.

Trump’s attorneys were told at a meeting Monday at the Department of Justice with special counsel Jack Smith and other DOJ officials that he is a target of the classified documents investigation, according to two sources briefed on the meeting, NBC reported. It was not clear if they previously had been notified of that status for him. Targets are people who prosecutors believe committed a crime. Targets often end up being indicted.

DOJ regulations say that a prosecutor, “in appropriate cases, is encouraged to notify such person a reasonable time before seeking an indictment in order to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/trump-told-he-is-target-of-mar-a-lago-documents-criminal-probe.html

Step by step, inch by inch. Jack, get on with it.

 

Trump indicted in classified docs case. Nice work Jack.

 

Judge clears way for disciplinary proceedings against Trump ally Jeffrey Clark

A federal judge has cleared the way for District of Columbia Bar authorities to resume long-stalled disciplinary proceedings against Jeffrey Clark, a top ally in Donald Trump’s bid to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Clark, an assistant attorney general in Trump’s Justice Department — whom Trump considered naming acting attorney general amid his final, frenzied bid to remain in power — had tied up those proceedings for nearly eight months as he sought to transfer the battle to federal court.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/08/federal-judge-trump-ally-jeffrey-clark-00101183

Whatever punishment is doled out won't be severe enough.

 

Trump Atty: Witness Tampering, Other Charges Brought Against Trump

Trump Attorney Jim Trusty was just on CNN, where he laid out a few statutes under which federal prosecutors are charging Trump, very usefully, by number.

Trusty said that 18-USC-1512 — the witness tampering statute — is listed on a summons the Trump legal team received to appear in court.

That’s very important, and suggests a lot about the underlying conduct here with which Trump has been charged. It seems almost entirely new — I can’t think of any reports of Trump undertaking witness tampering in this case, though readers can feel free to correct me.

Trusty also confirmed that prosecutors have charged Trump with an Espionage Act violation — 18-USC-793, and with destroying, altering, or falsifying records in a federal investigation: 18-USC-1519. Trusty said that a conspiracy charge was also included.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/trump-says-hes-been-indicted-in-mar-a-lago-probe

My wife and I have a disagreement as to whether Trump goes to jail. She says no. Given the gravity of the charges I don't know how it's possible he does not.

 

After hearing the news about the indictment last night I was struck by how normal it felt. The first prez ever had just been charged with multiple criminal offenses but because it was Trump there was a matter of fact quality to it.

 

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf

That's extremely compelling evidence.

 

Trump lawyers quit classified documents case

Two lawyers who represented Donald Trump in the months before the former president was indicted on federal charges over his handling of classified documents quit working for him Friday morning.

The attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, did not explain in detail why they had resigned, other than to say in a joint statement that “this is a logical moment” to do so given his indictment Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

Trusty and Rowley also said they will no longer represent Trump in a pending federal criminal probe into his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

Trusty had made multiple appearances on television news shows Thursday evening and Friday morning to discuss the indictment of Trump in his capacity as his lawyer.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/09/trump-lawyers-quit-classified-documents-case.html

Like rats off the proverbial sinking ship.

 

President Trump will have his first of many days in court on Tuesday in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

He’s assembling a legal team which, some suppose, may end up including attorneys with subject matter expertise in the Espionage Act, national security law, and criminal prosecutions involving classified materials.

Meanwhile, the man himself and those around him are upping the pressure. Trump used his favorite line on accountability for his wrongdoing in a speech over the weekend, telling his followers that he was “in the way” because federal prosecutors trying to retrieve documents about the U.S. nuclear program from the Mar-a-Lago bathroom were, in fact, “after you.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/maga-threats-mass-around-mar-a-lago-miami-hearing

It is a stroke of genius for Trump to position himself as the embodiment of the aggrieved. The rubes lie down like lambs before him.

 

Trump valet Walt Nauta charged in special counsel probe

An aide to former President Donald Trump, Walt Nauta, has been charged by the special counsel as part of their probe into Trump’s alleged taking of classified information, sources tell ABC News.

Nauta, a former valet in the Trump White House who left his role to join the former president as a personal aide in early 2021, was indicted by the same grand jury in Florida that indicted Trump on Thursday, the sources say.

It is not immediately clear what the exact charges are and an attorney for Nauta declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-valet-walt-nauta-charged-special-counsel-probe/story?id=99962252

The former Conman-in-Chief should offer to pay for Walt's defense out of the funds he'll be fleecing from the rubes.

 

He devised a fringe legal theory to try to keep Trump in power. Now he’s on the verge of being disbarred.

John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election on Jan. 6, is about to go on trial — but not in a criminal court.

Rather, the attorney is fighting to save his California bar license from authorities who say he repeatedly breached professional ethics — and possibly the law — in his bid to keep a defeated Trump in power. And those proceedings, while not as prominent as the Jan. 6 select committee or as potentially punitive as a criminal prosecution, are slated to elicit some of the most revealing and comprehensive testimony from figures who aided Trump’s effort to derail the transfer of power.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/11/john-eastman-disbarment-trial-trump-00101407

The dominoes are falling.

 

We Have So Much To Thank Tom Fitton For

Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton is widely credited with waltzing Donald Trump straight into criminal charges by advising him that he was legally entitled to keep the documents he had squirreled away at Mar-a-Lago.

Fitton, who heads up the conservative legal activist group but is not himself a lawyer, offered Trump misguided advice about the law, the precedent, and the issues involved in the Mar-a-Lago case.

The irony for those old enough to remember the Clinton years is that Fitton was mistakenly drawing on a case Judicial Watch was involved in back in the day when it was among the leading right-wing nemeses of Bill Clinton. Remember Larry Klayman?

The kicker to all this is that despite Fitton’s horrendous advice and Trump’s subsequent indictment, Trump still holds him close. Fitton had dinner with Trump and Nauta and their lawyers Monday night at a steakhouse at Trump’s Miami club.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/tom-fitton-judicial-watch-mar-a-lago

Trump paying the price for seeking counsel from nitwits.

 

The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden

When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-indictment-justice-department.html

These facts are constantly overlooked, or ignored, by The Following.

 

More proof that Fake News + Fake Justice = Echo Chamber

“Speculation, movements having abandoned rational thought, echo chambers, projection, hypocrisy by little to no self-awareness, bewildering minds brainwashed and manipulative hearts manipulated - one is sure to find these à la people ****-sure in their biased and fanatical, immovable despising of persons. We would all do well to humbly re-think from time to time: 'Whom do I really hate? For what purpose?” Criss Jami

 

'Rudy Giuliani Used A Female Alias In Emails About Plan To Overturn The Election'

snips:

'Rudy Giuliani used an email address with the name “Helen” in some of his communications about his efforts to oppose former President Trump’s 2020 election loss. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and personal attorney to Trump, has discussed his use of the email address “rhelen0528@gmail.com” in court appearances as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, two Georgia election workers. According to court documents made public on Thursday, the address is one of seven that is at the center of a fight over documents in the case.'

“That was my main Gmail account since I had Gmail,” Giuliani said in a deposition on March 1, 2023. “And somehow others were created for specific purposes, but that would cover 95 percent of any email I had and probably every important one.”

Giuliani’s mother, who passed away in 2002, was named Helen In an email to TPM, Giuliani’s attorney, Joe Sibley, pointed to this fact when asked why Giuliani was not using an email address with his own name.

“I don’t usually respond to inquiries on these cases and I can’t comment on much, but I can tell you that the email address you’re referring to is based on his mother’s name ‘Helen’ and that email address was the main email used by him to communicate with pretty much everyone before the DOJ seized his devices, so there is nothing unusual about him using that email to communicate with anyone at that time,” Sibley wrote.

The address also appeared in the lawsuit against former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that was filed by the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack.'

cont:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...in-emails-about-plan-to-overturn-the-election

 

Trump's pardon of Kerik was his last pardon and done right before he left office on Jan.20th.
Betcha Giuliani was on the line begging and pleading.



This looks like something that would interest Jack, yes? lol

'Bernie Kerik Pitched Mark Meadows on ‘$5 to $8’ Million Plan To Reverse Trump 2020 Loss'


June 15, 2023 5:24 p.m.

'Bernie Kerik had a plan to keep former President Trump in office after losing the 2020 election — and he knew how much it would cost. Roughly.

Per an email surfaced in a defamation lawsuit brought against Rudy Giuliani, Kerik wrote to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in a Dec. 28, 2020 missive that he would need “between $5 to $8M” to put a plan into action that would pressure state legislators into throwing their electors behind Trump.

It was one feature of a broader effort to co-opt state legislatures into a scheme that would have seen them try to send slates of fake electors to Washington on January 6. A “strategic communications plan” attached to Kerik’s email indicated he would need millions of dollars to work alongside Giuliani to “pressure” state lawmakers into cooperating.'

cont
https://archive.is/k103K

 

No matter how many times in is brought to light it is always a bit shocking to realize the level of depravity and corruption those who Trump is associated with bring to the table.

 

Trump Indictment Shows Critical Evidence Came From One of His Own Lawyers

The two indictments filed so far against former President Donald J. Trump — one brought by the Manhattan district attorney, the other by a Justice Department special counsel — charge him with very different crimes but have something in common: Both were based, at least in part, on the words of his own lawyers.

In the 49-page federal indictment accusing him of retaining classified documents after leaving the White House and scheming to block government efforts to retrieve them, some of the most potentially damning evidence came from notes made by one of those lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran.

Mr. Corcoran’s notes, first recorded into an iPhone and then transcribed on paper, essentially gave prosecutors a road map to building their case. Mr. Trump, according to the indictment, pressured Mr. Corcoran to thwart investigators from reclaiming reams of classified material and even suggested to him that it might be better to lie to investigators and withhold the documents altogether.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/...5314&user_id=fecdfdffdaaa11107b72f0f4f6e429cc

I'm guess the defense will try to have the evidence from Corcoran thrown out by asserting the crime-fraud exception does not apply.

 

WSJ debunks Presidential Records Act talking points pushed by Trump’s other Murdoch media allies

Since disgraced former President Donald Trump was indicted for federal criminal charges related to his possession of classified documents, his supporters at outlets owned by right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch have claimed that the Presidential Records Act exonerates him from the charges. But a recent news article published by Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal debunked these claims about the law, which designates all official papers from a presidency as property of the American people rather than the former president.
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-ne...king-points-pushed-trumps-other-murdoch-media

Perhaps Rupert and Co have had enough of defending the Orange Menace.

 

Trump classified documents trial date set for Aug. 14

A Florida federal judge on Tuesday scheduled the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump for his alleged illegal retention of classified government documents to begin Aug. 14.

But legal experts do not expect the trial to begin so early, given the time needed to resolve legal issues before a jury starts hearing testimony and being presented with evidence.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/20/trump-classified-documents-trial-date-set-for-aug-14.html

Prepare yourselves for an onslaught of delaying tactics from the Orange Obstructionist.

 

Trump Keeps Making Very Public Admissions About His Own Actions In Mar-a-Lago Case

Former President Donald Trump continued to dig his own grave during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, when he all but confessed to knowingly and deliberately obstructing and withholding records he was ordered to turn in to the Justice Department.

“They said, ‘could you give us the documents back?’ … And then they said — went to DOJ to subpoena you to get them back,” Baier outlined to Trump during the interview that aired on Monday.

“Why not just hand them over then?” Baier asked.

“Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you’ve sort of seen,” Trump responded.

Baier then followed up, saying that according to the indictment, Trump directed his aide to move the documents to other locations “after telling your lawyers to say you’ve fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t.”

“But before I send boxes over, I have to take my things out,” Trump told Baier. “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things. Golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes. There were many things.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...ions-about-his-own-actions-in-mar-a-lago-case

It's just priceless Don's inability to keep his effing mouth shut keeps getting him in trouble.

 

If the indictments from Manhattan and from the special counsel Smith on the classified documents hasn’t moved the needle regarding the GOP primaries and in trial heats against Biden, perhaps things like this is expected from Trump, has become common place. Maybe people have become use to things like this and just shrug it off as just more Trump stuff that has been going on since his first impeachment.


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e..._republican_presidential_nomination-7548.html


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html


Either that or it’s still way too far out from the 2024 elections for most folks to start paying attention to politics or Trump in general. After all, Trump is no longer president, has no power. Why not let the partisans, the pro and anti Trumpers battle it out among themselves? If you’re an independent, whatever Trump does or whatever charges brought against him doesn’t affect one’s life or how one lives that life. One’s life is much more affected by who is in power today, not who was in power yesterday. Maybe Trump is just old news. Maybe most folks have just become tired of hearing about Trump. They’d just like and want him to go away, disappear. Who knows? All I know is after all of the above and more, Trump is still has over 50% of those who vote in the GOP primaries and still leads Biden in the hypothetical matchup.


Just a thought or two.

 

I think there's an element of truth there. He has normalized his criminality.

 

Trump Real Estate Deal in Oman Underscores Ethics Concerns
Details of the former president’s agreement to work with a Saudi firm to develop a hotel and golf complex overlooking the Gulf of Oman highlight the ways his business and political roles intersect.

On a remote site at the edge of the Gulf of Oman, thousands of migrant laborers from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are at work in 103-degree heat, toiling in shifts from dawn until nightfall to build a new city, a multibillion-dollar project backed by Oman’s oil-rich government that has an unusual partner: former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s name is plastered on signs at the entrance of the project and in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel in Muscat, the nearby capital of Oman, where a team of sales agents is invoking Mr. Trump’s name to help sell luxury villas at prices of up to $13 million, mostly targeting superrich buyers from around the world, including from Russia, Iran and India.

Mr. Trump has been selling his name to global real estate developers for more than a decade. But the Oman deal has taken his financial stake in one of the world’s most strategically important and volatile regions to a new level, underscoring how his business and his politics intersect as he runs for president again amid intensifying legal and ethical troubles.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/politics/trump-real-estate-deal-oman.html

Once a grifter always a grifter.

 

Sad to say isn’t it. I remember a time when an affair outside of marriage would doom a presidential candidate. Gary Hart for example. The Republicans thought telling the voter Bill Clinton smoked pot in college would disqualify him, they were wrong. But that is movement we see today. Trump’s rude, obnoxious, uncouth persona and his childish behavior in calling other names along with his schoolyard bullying tactics, 10 years ago, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. I mean in the early 2000’s. 10 years from 2016.


Politics has lost a lot of fun along with civility. If it were that elections fascinate me, I’d have closed shop a long time ago. I can’t stand today’s political environment of polarization, the great divide and the super, mega, ultra-high partisanship.