Trump’s arraignment is an opportunity for showmanship on his part
Trump has always been a fabulous showman. And so far his trial is giving him the opportunity for a lot of publicity.
He stopped at a famous Cuban restaurant in Miami right after his arraignment, saying “Food for everyone!”
Cuban protesters are shouting “We love Trump!” pic.twitter.com/1slseR82ee
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) June 13, 2023
Trump has long been popular with Americans who hail from Cuba or who are descended from Cuban refugees, and his welcome was warm.
As the trial goes on, I think Trump’s popularity will probably increase among Republican primary voters. As I wrote yesterday, I believe that’s one of the goals of those who engineered the trial – to encourage the nomination of Trump but hurt him with moderate voters in the general. However, depending on what facts emerge during the trial and the coverage of the proceedings, there is a possibility that more of those moderate “swing” voters will see this as an unfair and politically motivated persecution. I’m not saying that will happen, but it certainly could.
Remember that Netanyahu’s enemies charged him with bogus criminal offenses, but he was elected anyway. And yet his trial is still going on. That article I just linked was published today, and this is its astonishing last paragraph:
Netanyahu’s trial began three years ago, and according to the current schedule is slated to last for another five years, although various reports have said that the extensive witness list could be trimmed, potentially shortening the trial by a couple of years.
Excuse me but, WTF?
And we think the wheels of justice grind slow here! That Israeli trial schedule is practically a geologic time frame. Netanyahu is 73, and he isn’t getting any younger. And by the way, tomorrow is Trump’s 77th birthday. But they’re both spring chickens compared to you-know-who.
Three years? Another five? That’s nothing. The Climatologist Michael Mann sued The National Review and Mark Steyn for libel.
Man lost several years ago, similarly suing Canuck Climatologist Tim Ball for slander in BC, when he refused to disclose his data during discovery.
But the Mann vs Steyn case is ten or eleven years old in DC District Court, and still ongoing.
The Netanyahu story and the Trump story have many parallels. Both were hated and snubbed by Obama who carries on his negro anti-semitism. I first encountered anti-Semitism from my black nursemaid who was otherwise a wonderful woman. In Los Angeles, it seems to have carried on to the Korean shop owners, confirming my opinion that it is a sort of jealousy of those who start small businesses.
The political left in Israel has the judiciary on their side, much as is the case in New York and DC. Netanyahu is conservative and has opposed the traditional socialism of the old Israelis. The present regime in this country seems more anarchist than socialist but the parallels are still valid.
Both were hated and snubbed by Obama who carries on his negro anti-semitism.
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Obama knew little of black American culture as a youth above and beyond what he might have gleaned from episodes of Soul Train syndicated to local stations in Honolulu and whatever he could learn from his granddaddy’s checker-playing hookah-smoking chum, Frank Marshall Davis. Compared to ordinary black men, Davis was an eccentric and anything BO learned of black culture would have been distorted. NB, black Americans were an abstraction to his mother. She never in her life lived anywhere where they were concentrated. Gov. Blagojevic, one-time shoe-shine boy once supposedly said, “I’m blacker than Obama”.
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Stanley Kurtz has delineated in detail Obama’s association with various leftoid outfits during the 1980s. These characters tend to be antagonistic to Israel, but they’re on the wrong side of just about every political dispute there is, and fairly predictable for all that. It’s in the same spirit people pretend to like contemporary art.
yes that is typical of israeli journalism, the jerusalem post is worse haaretz is abysmal, maariv beyond that,
Trump buying lunch for the Cuban diners? The DoJ will charge him with bribing the jury pool.
You think I am joking, don’t you?
The DoJ will make motions to move the trial out of Miami to D.C.
Trump is not my first, second or third choice for the GOP nomination, for reasons I’ve stated previously. But, my goodness, he truly is indefatigable! The term ‘Happy Warrior’ could never be more apt. He just never stops. Everything he is enduring would be enough to break 10 hearty men. Yet there he is, jovial and sociable.
Just had a very interesting exchange with my liberal “friends ” on FB. I do this in part to see really what those run of mill liberal/democrats are thinking.
They were first cheering the indictment. Without in the least defending Trump I brought up the double standard. Holy shit.. “There’s no double standard! Hillary and Hunter pure as the driven snow! Republicans are not treated differently! ”
They really believe it. What hope do we have when 50%+ of the population operates under such delusions?
Tucker Carlson has thumbed his nose at the Fox lawyer’s ‘Cease & Desist’ letter, and has put Episode #3 up
https://twitter.com/i/status/1668747661028081664
It went up about 3 hours ago and has about 7 million views so far. It discusses the War on Donald Trump
Ackler — : )
https://twitter.com/PapiTrumpo/status/1668709417892675586
Trump’s speech tonight was very well done. He has a great grasp of the issues for a non-lawyer. I hope it was viewed by many.
I look at him and I think of Teddy Roosevelt’s “man in the arena” quote:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who lets refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a work day world.”
He’s facing down the DOJ – a behemoth with unlimited resources. They want to put him in prison, but he will fight to the end. I like his chances but can’t help but worry about what they are willing to do to take him down. I’m in his corner cheering him on.
Netanyahu is boring in a way that Trump is not. It is abundantly clear that Netanyahu’s enemies are trying to neutralize him because of his politics.
Not so with Trump. His antics and outrageous behavior may play well with his base, but they also make it easy for a lot of average voters to believe that he is the problem.
And frankly he is. The legal case against Netanyahu, such as it is, looks an awful lot like Rick Perry or the smears against Clarence Thomas. With Trump, it’s always about him. If he had just returned the documents when the government asked for them, there would be no case. If he hadn’t lied about it, there would be no case.
And the usual voices will pipe up and insist that if he had cooperated, the feds would have found something else to charge him on. Meanwhile, back in reality, the feds didn’t have come up with any novel theory as the Israeli left did for Netanyahu. Trump handed them an open and shut case.
neo is right. Dump Trump or get ready for four more years of Biden/Harris.
And to the Presidential Records Act theory – just think about it for a minute. The Clinton sock drawer case was about a recording of an interview that Clinton gave to a journalist. The documents at issue in the Trump case involve intelligence assessments of our capabilities and of our adversary’s capabilities, battle plans, and the like.
Do you really want to create the precedent that a president leaving office can take any document that he or she darn well pleases from the White House, declassify it with no written record of having done so and then have it become his or her personal property? Can’t you see the mischief that could result? I guarantee you that a court will, if not at the District Court level then certainly on appeal.
And again, this is on Trump. If we were talking about his personal notes or recordings of a cabinet meeting, or something like that, this would be a whole different case. But Trump goes always goes big, so we’re talking about sensitive intelligence assessments and military information.
Moderate voters are as hard to find as the moderate Muslims we hear about after any extremist succeeds in killing enough people to drive the news for a week. Remember their feelings, but don’t expect them to actually be able to influence the extremists in their midst.
The ruling class has managed to eliminate attorney-client privelige and turn Trump’s defense council into witnesses, only then to change the venue in order to discredit the electorate in a state their totally honest and forthright candidates are unlikely to win. All dutifully reported by America’s favorite president’s favorite news.
they treat his employees like that of a mob boss, and they treat real criminals, thieves and traitors, with the confy chair,
Have you heard the latest joke? Special counsel Jack Smith insisted there was nothing unusual about the case, saying, “We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everybody.” Now that is funny.
Bauxite.
You’re reaching.
Among other things I don’t imagine the authors of the PRA contacted you for nuance in their production. They said what they said. What is dangerous or not dangerous does not depend on the political affiliation of the former POTUS in question.
However, not all military information is pure gold. And losing a very important operations order worked out well for the Germans in 1940. Some things can be repaired.
But a “conversation” with a journalist is not automatically Cream of Wheat instead of red meat in terms of importance, even considering the political affiliation of the former POTUS in question.
An off the record or unguarded remark about what we think of Prime Minister So-and-So can be catastrophic. And none of it is “sensitive” or “military”.
What if Biden had said, whether he meant to or not, that he favored the right wing in Poland and Hungary. What would that mean to Putin? And it’s not “sensitive” or “military”.
All of that being said, it was legal when Trump took the stuff, and you don’t know what Hillary had–Comey does and thinks a lot of it was classified to one degree or another–and you don’t know what Biden has–neither does he, more than likely. Given the Biden storage plans, you don’t know who’s looked at it, either.
But, wrt Trump, a Bill of Attainder is just dan and finedy.
“If he had just returned the documents when the government asked for them, there would be no case. If he hadn’t lied about it, there would be no case.”
I don’t know if you are ignorant or disingenuous.
Garfinkel had been given orders to get Trump.
Those documents are Trumps and he and his lawyers were negotiating with the government when out of the blue Herr Müllers gestapo did a ROGER STONE STYLE RAID on Mara lago and blocked access of Trumps lawyers while the gestapo went through his things. Not that Müller’s gestapo would ever plant evidence. Then Schmidts thugs get a DC prosecution friendly judge to force Trumps lawyers to break privilege.
Just because such practices have been sop for 1000 years in Müller und Schmidt’s Reich doesn’t make it right.
“neo is right. Dump Trump or get ready for four more years of Biden/Harris.”
Dump Trump and you deserve 4 more years of Biden/Harris.
If you REALLY think the left will stop at Trump, you are as delusional as the Biden voters.
I’m not reaching. For pity’s sake, here’s the statute:
“The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.” 44 USC 2202.
Here are the definitions of Presidential Records and personal records:
“(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.
(3)The term “personal records” means all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof,[2] of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not 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 includes—
(A)diaries, journals, or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business;
(B)materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; and
(C)materials relating exclusively to the President’s own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.”
Here’s the link to the statue of you want to read the whole thing: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/chapter-22
to ignore every abuse against the tea party (jack smith again) against mcdonnell, stevens delay, black, ilbby in this calculus, is rather myopic, not to say asinine,
I stand by my John Eastman 2.0 comment from yesterday. If the documents are “Presidential Records,” then the PRA explicitly states that they are not owned by Trump. The government had the rights of “ownership, possession, and control.”
And that indictment describes materials that cannot be shoehorned into the definition of “personal records.”
who packed the boxes, who would know what boxes to pack, that would be the gsa, they did a pretty piss poor job of it,
it seems clear that jack smith lies for a living, he wouldn’t know a genuinely guilty person if it fell on him, hes a blackguard with a law degree, like braggg like the one in atlanta, who need be named who is letting her city fall into the swamp,
miguel cervantes – You can’t respond to abuses by going out and committing a crime! The Tea Party didn’t commit crimes. Tom Delay didn’t commit a crime. Scooter Libby didn’t commit a crime (at least I don’t think he did). Stevens didn’t commit a crime. McDonnell didn’t commit a crime (and the Supreme Court agreed).
You can’t respond to the mistreatment of McDonnell, Stevens, DeLay, Black, Libby, and so on by going out and actually committing a crime, as Trump appears to have done. You don’t help McDonnell, Stevens, DeLay, Black, and Libby or fight back against the abuses they suffered by defending a man who appears to have actually committed a crime!
Also, the “Trump didn’t know what was in the boxes” defense falls flat here. Even if Trump didn’t know what was in the boxes when they arrived, he certainly did (or should have) when he refused to give them back, and when he lied to the DOJ about giving them back, and when he tricked his lawyers into lying to the DOJ about giving the records back.
Face it man. Your guy stepped in it. Big time.
Bauxite. The point is not solely the Records act. It is what was done and said about other crimes of Biden’s collections which are from a time before he was even veep.
Hillary’s were classified, thus illegal.
Clearly, it is not a big deal. Unless the subject is a republican.
There is increasing evidence that this was a set-up. It seems that the National Archives and Records Administration declined to help with the transfer of Trump’s records. Then they pounced on him for doing it himself. When the issue came up, Trump and his team did cooperate, but that cooperation was essentially rebuffed. The Biden administration wasn’t working to resolve a valid issue, they were working to create a case against Trump. (As usual.) It’s spelled out nicely in this April letter from one of Trump’s lawyers (who recently left Trump’s team). The letter also provides some good details about the double standard being applied here.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000187-bf35-d5cb-a7a7-bf774af20000
Bauxite, you might find the Archivist’s guidance on Presidential Records of interest.
“The PRA established a new statutory structure under which Presidents must manage their records.
The Presidential Records Act:
– Defines and states public ownership of the records;
– Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President;
– Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once the Archivist of the United States has provided his written views on the proposed disposal;
= Requires that the President and the President’s staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records;
– Establishes a process for public access to and restriction of Presidential records. Specifically, the PRA allows for public access to Presidential records, including through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years. The PRA also establishes procedures for Congress, courts, and subsequent Administrations to obtain “special” access to records that remain closed to the public. (A chart describing these access provisions and restrictions is attached.) The procedures for privilege review by the incumbent and former Presidents are established by the PRA, Executive order 13489 and NARA’s regulations;
– Requires that Vice Presidential records are to be treated in the same way as Presidential records.”
https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-records-guidance.pdf
Note the Archivist’s subordinate role in the custody and management of Presidential records. How cooperative the outgoing President and the Archivist were with one another remains to be established but the incumbent administration has created an espionage case out of a grossly distorted interpretation of the outgoing President’s custody and management of his Presidential records he will no doubt insist on for himself when the time comes.
Bauxite is on a roll. But no mention of the fact that the Indictment does not mention the previous “facts” about “classified documents.” Now it’s all about the Espionage Act of Woodrow Wilson.
Netanyahu is boring
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To anyone remotely familiar with Netanyahu, this judgment is unreal.
He didnt pack the documents the archives dont have a tracking system for said documents so how did they know where anything was
One must take smiths long record of prosecutorial misconduct into account.
Excuse me–Please tell me again how we are supposed to “win the next election”?
Has everyone forgotten about the “new machines”. Of course, we refused to acknowledge the corrupt machines in IL, WA, NV, and AZ for the past 20 years, why should we get alarmed now that they have been “fixed”?
Excuse me–Please tell me again how we are supposed to “win the next election”?
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Well, you can start by not beginning with the assumption that the criminal class in omnipotent.
When Ron DeSantis gets buried in mail-in-votes next year, Bauxite will be in these very threads blaming Trump.
miguel cervantes – OK, so he was set up by the federal agency who packed the boxes? Yesterday he had to keep the documents to protect himself from the deep state.
Or did he have to keep some of the documents to protect himself from the deep state, but the rest were planted by the deep state.
It’s hard to keep track.
crasey – Read past the first page. On page 5 – “NARA takes legal custody of records at the end of the President’s term.” The documents can be stored in a presidential library, eventually, but the presidential library has to be “maintained by NARA.”
The exception is “personal records.” That’s the Bill Clinton sock drawer case. The court in the Clinton case held that the interview tapes were “personal records” not “presidential records.” Therefore, Clinton’s sock drawer tapes were held to be his personal property that was not subject to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Clinton case really doesn’t help Trump.
Bauxite, POTUS can declass any document he wants. He doesn’t have any process he has to follow. Simply taking it home could be considered the “process” of declassifying.
And this has to be the case, if he’s CiC in a republic.
Now, if you prefer the deep state to be in charge, you can wish otherwise.
Bauxite.
Let’s do some context here:
If one sees “INDICTMENT” on a piece of DoJ letterhead, the way to bet, without any further details, is that it’s bogus.
DoJ has been attacking its own credibility with a flamethrower for at least a couple of decades.
Put four innocents in prison to cover for Whitey Bulger.
Missed the Tsarnaev clan despite being given the info by Russian intel.
Bought the famous Fifty One on Hunter’s laptop.
Sat on same.
Murdered eighty innocents at Waco over nothing (I watched the hearings so don’t even start) and nobody was even fired.
Tried to entrap Randy Weaver and killed his wife and son.
Paying really big bucks to the Olympic gymnasts whose pleas for help the fibbers ignored.
Ditto Parland parents.
Investigated the Orlando night club shooter and told the people who reported him that they were a bunch of islamophobes.
Got three hundred Mexicans killed with guns they ran to the cartels.
Withheld exculpatory evdence regarding Ted Stevens until after the relevant election.
Tried to frame Richard Jewell.
Worked with other departments to coerce and hamper conservative PACs.
Parents who object to their kids being assaulted at school, or required to read porn are domestic terrorists.
As are traditional Catholics.
In the post-9-11 anthrax investigation, drove one suspect to suicide and so screwed around with the other guy he got almost six mill from the government as compensation.
Coordinated the Garland, TX art show terrorist attack.
Gave Hillary a pass.
This is bad enough. But then we have seven years of lying, bribery, coercion, bogus prosecution (Flynn for one), lying, more lying, perjury, to get Trump. And now this.
Without Trump’s name coming up, the way to bet is any indictment on anything is better than 50% bogus.
Add the last seven years wrt Trump and this is absolutely unbelievable, even if validated by twenty-seven archangels or however many there are.
Having said that, even by itself, it’s bogus.
I honestly don’t care if Trump is technically guilty of anything in this indictment. He may well be for all I know. But to me the current regime is so deeply and demonstrably corrupt and so brazenly uneven in their application of the law that it effectively renders all of this as an irrelevant sideshow. This regime charging Trump is like a gang violent criminals passing judgement on someone who may have shoplifted a candy bar. And to be clear, I’m no great Trump fan.
I did, Bauxite. Thank you for reviewing it. Some would say the PRA is an unconstitutional restraint on a President’s Article II powers but let’s forget that for the moment since the intent is to ensure historically significant records are preserved for the public.
As you say the PRA establishes legal ownership of Presidential records by the Archives at the end of the outgoing administration. That’s the argument in favor of give it all back, but the Act also states that the outgoing President decides which records are presidential and which are personal. That’s the argument in favor of going through the records first before transferring custody. Recognizing that’s a lot of stuff that has to get sorted into yours, mine or the trash pile that process normally takes place in a facility convenient for the President and/or his designated representative and in keeping with the Archives needs for identification and storage.
In this case the parties have deviated from past practice by not securing local office and storage space for that sorting process to occur and instead left the records at the WH to be moved to Mar a Lago by GSA. I don’t think we know why that happened but the Archivist’s role is still to assist, preserve and prepare Presidential records for future public access. The President’s role is to manage and decide which are personal and which are presidential with the advice and input of the Archivist. That collaborative process obviously broke down. Whether one party or the other was being unreasonable remains to be seen but turning this into an espionage case is an awfully extreme position for DOJ to take.
BTW. When the time comes rest assured the current President will feel the same way about turning all his records over without sorting them first. I’ll leave the lawyering to the professionals but the PRA seems clear. I would agree certain agency records were not stored as they would have been at the WH but that could have been easily corrected by the President or the Archivist without trying to send your political opponent to jail for 100’s of years.
The hatred has to run deep, very deep, to approve of this indictment. Hatred makes people stupid and eventually drives them insane. We surely have lots of evidence of hatred, stupidity, and insanity in the political sphere.
I commented on another post that I’d love to see an honest and intelligent defense of the indictment that deals with all the critically important factors. So far no one has referenced one. Bauxite doesn’t seem to have any interest in making one, either.
The factors matter. If any attempted defense of the indictment won’t address the elephant in the room (and the dinosaur and the blue whale), don’t expect any reasonable person to take it seriously.
The letter linked by Sarah Rolph is very interesting. The narrative of willful pugnaciousness by the DOJ certainly matches up with what has been going on for the last eight years. Framing Trump for non-existent crimes has been their MO. And the beat goes on.
“That’s the argument in favor of give it all back, but the Act also states that the outgoing President decides which records are presidential and which are personal.”
I didn’t see that anywhere in the statute. Where did you see it? There’s a definition of personal and a definition of presidential. It’s pretty clear that assessments of military capabilities are not personal, and don’t become personal because the outgoing president says so.
https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/laws/1978-act.html
3rd bullet point.
Frank Devito at the American Conservative addresses the question at the heart of this which is the extent of executive power:
Admittedly, this question of how far the power of a president over these documents, especially once he leaves office, is not an easy question. But it is likely the question on which this whole federal indictment hinges. If our Constitution and our laws vest all executive power in the president, and if all documents created by his subordinate officers are properly his, then it is inappropriate to apply 18 U.S.C. 793(e) to documents created for a president during the time he was president. If the president is properly bound by this statute once he leaves office, if he only possesses these documents as executive with no authority to bring them home in his personal capacity when his term ends, then Bill Barr is probably right that “if even half of [the indictment] is true then he’s toast.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-trump-indictment-what-can-a-unitary-executive-do/