"... dating back to at least the 2019 whistle-blower complaint relating to his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky."
[The] filing appeared intended to paint Mr. Trump as the victim of the spy agencies that once served him and of purported collusion between the Biden administration and prosecutors who have filed some of the four criminal cases he now faces.....
[Trump's lawyers expressed an intent] to undermine the prosecution’s contention that the documents Mr. Trump took with him were connected to issues of national defense. Mr. Smith’s team will have to prove such connections for jurors to find the former president guilty of violating the Espionage Act, the central statute he is accused of breaking....
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43 comments:
One can like or dislike Trump, like or dislike his policies, but the zeal with which the left is breaking norms to "protect" us from Trump will do more damage to our country in the long-run than anything Trump did or failed to do.
He's not wrong.
I feel certain of two things: they cannot allow discovery and they will try to convince me that the legal reasons invented to justify the denial are established precedent.
what ever happened, to that fat unkrainian slob? You Lt Col Winkleman or what ever?
I assume, he's off fighting in the wars?
How just would it be for the lawfare instituted against Trump to contain the very weapon for exposing the malefactors behind it?
It almost seems inevitable. Despite the agonies of twisting and denial that will go on from those malefactors and their champions in the media.
Going back to 2019?? How about they go back to when they framed Carter Page and that other guy and lied to the FISA court so they could bug the campaign?
Why not make the court cases platforms for taking on the deep state right away, after all.
Since every single case is politically driven isn’t it natural that the defense will “at times” sound “like” political talking points? Don’t these alleged journalists ever get tired of writing versions of that sentence? Their inner voice has to be saying “well DUH” sometimes.
"[The] filing appeared intended to paint Mr. Trump as the victim of the spy agencies that once served him and of purported collusion between the Biden administration and prosecutors who have filed some of the four criminal cases he now faces....."
Because that IS exactly what is happening, and if you can't see it, YOU are the problem in this country. (not YOU, per se....just in general)
What I found kind of amusing this morning was that the word "allegedly" appears in stories about Hunter Biden, when that word has completely disappeared in any coverage of Trump for seven years now. But not to worry, it's all in our best interests to be manipulated, because we suffer from a false consciousness and cannot be trusted to understand our own best interests, which the government and their agents in the press always have front and center in their hearts.
Trump Signals Plans to Go After Intelligence Community in Document Case/Court papers filed by his lawyers, formally a request for discovery evidence, sounded at times more like political talking points" (NYT)
Isn't the document request intended to show it was the "Intelligence Community" that had 'gone after' Trump, not the reverse? The NYT makes it sound like Trump is dragging the "Intelligence Community" into this, attacking them.
But isn't that what they've always done, with an assist from the media?
The ACLU's Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst (2017):
Do U.S. Politicians Need to Fear Our Intelligence Agencies?
President-elect Donald Trump’s criticism of the intelligence community over its reports of Russian hacking during the 2016 election has generated a lot of commentary over what is being described as a “feud” between Trump and the intelligence agencies...
An example of what I’m talking about emerged when Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer was asked by Rachel Maddow about Trump’s spurning of the agencies’ findings. Trump is “taking these shots, this antagonism, this taunting to the intelligence community,” Maddow pointed out. The response by Schumer—who has been in Congress since 1980, and in the Senate leadership for ten years, and presumably knows his way around Washington—should send a chill through the heart of every American:
"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this."
Some may argue that Trump is not serving his country well by not giving more respect to the intelligence community. But whether or not that is true, if it’s really the case that dissing the intelligence community might result in retaliation by that community against a politician, then the lines of power in our political system have become dangerously distorted.
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/do-us-politicians-need-fear-our-intelligence
"the spy agencies that once served him"?
Please. The spy agencies were against him from Day 1, along with the rest of the Swamp.
I think you can certainly view Trump's problems in part as stemming from animus from the Intelligence Community. (Cue Schumer's prediction from the Maddow show long ago).
I'm not sure the truth is that simple, but I welcome a Discovery Process that might shine light on the whole thing.
In recent weeks, I have been re-studying Russia-Gate, and I have changed my mind about several major issues.
I think that the affair began in 2015-2016, when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were competing to win the Democrat Party's nomination. Some Sanders supporters became disgruntled when they perceived that the Democrat National Committee (DNC) was secretly helping Clinton. Therefore, a small group of Sanders' supporters hacked and leaked embarrassing information from the Democrat National Committee's computer system. Despite their resistance, however, Sanders soon was eliminated from that political race.
As the 2016 election proceeded, Russian Intelligence somehow obtained much of the hacked information and proceeded to leak it further, with broader political aims.
Still later, Robert Mueller's investigators discovered the main history of the Russian involvement. Although much of the Mueller Report remains classified, the published fragments indicate that some of the Russian participants provided much secret information.
The Mueller Report is largely true about the facts.
An important corollary in this situation is that Mueller did learn reliably that Trump's campaign staff did not participate at all in the hacking and leaking of the DNC computers.
Despite that knowledge, however, Mueller did not publicly exonerate Trump and his campaign staff. Instead, the public was told falsely that Trump could not be exonerated, because Trump had deviously obstructed Mueller's investigation.
In this regard, the Mueller Report was grossly unfair to Trump. Mueller should have declared that his investigation had found that Trump and his campaign staff were absolutely innocent of any hacking and leaking of the DNC computers.
I have professional experience in the tracing and interception, let's call it, of phone calls. I can tell you, and you can take my word for it or not, because I will not go into details, that the UK's MI-6 had as much to do with this as anybody. Now that we see how gung-ho the UK is on the war in Ukraine, when Trump's policy towards Russia was one of getting along with the guy with 6,000 nukes, and not provoking him unnecessarily, I think that the UK was at the forefront of a lot of this.
All you had to do to "legally" intercept Trump's phone calls was to shunt them to a server known to be monitored by MI-6, and let them do the dirty work. The law in the UK is that any call can be recorded and reviewed, if it is "in the best interests of the UK" to do it (This even, maybe especially, applies to industrial spying.) and then it's just a matter of reporting back to their buddies in the CIA.
Hillary's buddy, the former Clinton bundler who became the governor of Virginia, bought Global Crossing, which was a vast network of transoceanic fiber optic cables, and the Shangri-La of intelligence gathering operations. There is a reason that some of the actors on the anti-Trump side in the FBI used ham radios. With a code page and a ham radio, basically it's impossible to know what your messages say and to whom they are addressed, as long as you can anticipate the kinds of messages you will be sending in your code book.
Thanks, Mike Sylwester. Best wishes on regaining your health!
One thing to remember about Russia is that it is certainly in their interest to undermine the credibility of US elections. Putin said the other day that the persecution of Trump is good for Russia because it undermines the reputation of the United States in the rest of the world and makes our bloviating about "democracy" sound hollow, which it is. Well, it's hard to get too upset when Russia releases true information just because it makes the Democrats look bad, and I don't think it's my patriotic duty to believe lies just because the Democrats tell them.
The best way to counter Russia's propaganda (Remember that uncomfortable truth is the most effective propaganda, which the Rand Report on "disinformation" recently admitted) is to hold transparent elections and to address directly allegations of fraud, rigging, etc. Then Putin could go stuff it in his hat. But that would be going too far, wouldn't it, Democrats.
I hear Buffalo Springfield whenever I read something like this post:
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life, it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line
The man come and take you away.
I think one of the problems with this kind of defense is it requires us (the jury? the judge?) to believe that the government --especially the federal government-- is capable of an effort that requires sustained competence across multiple agencies and personnel. There are just too many examples of how inept and disorganized and bumbling the government is whenever it does anything or tries to do anything.
Especially the spy agencies, these are the same people who didn't see the Berlin Wall coming down or the Soviets getting ready to go into Afghanistan or that the 9/11 terrorist plot was being hatched. And aren't they all still over in Iraq looking for Saddam's WMD? But oh, no, when it comes to Trump they've got their sh*t together. Poor Donald...why is everybody always pickin' on him?
Like they say, though, just pecause you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
--- Mueller did learn reliably that Trump's campaign staff did not participate at all in the hacking and leaking of the DNC computers [Mike Sylwester]
The Wikileaks reward for information on the murder of Seth Rich made that pretty clear.
Who killed Seth Rich? The FBI missed their latest deadline to turn over the deceased man's computers, which they possess although they first tried to deny it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/fbi-defies-court-order-to-turn-over-seth-rich-documents/ar-AA1n1ZSf
Intelligence agencies and federal police forces always become politized and end up taking a side in a country's politics. That's why Lenin and Stalin made sure to murder their spy chiefs periodically, in order to keep control of those organizations.
And sure @Sally327, the US intelligence community is incompetent at fulfilling their official duties, but that is because they are to busy interfering with domestic politics to actually attend to those duties. Also, I would point out that one former director of the CIA was an acknowledged communist in his youth.
BTW, speaking of Bernie supporters at the DNC, Donna Brazille was freaked out by the murder of Seth Rich, that she might be next. This is what happens when organized crime takes over our government, just like the Michael Corleone character said would happen in his speech to the Senate. Nancy Pelosi's father was a mobbed up Congressman, and a lawyer to Murder Incorporated, "constant companion" to mob figures who were part of that mob. Joe Biden won his first Senate race with help from the mob, who ordered a wildcat strike of paper delivery drivers on the Sunday two days before the election, when his opponent had a large insert cataloguing Biden's shady dealings.
There was a documentary called "William Colby" on Netflix, I think, that showed that there was a lot of truth in Godfather III. Colby basically admitted that the CIA ran Italy through the Vatican in the '60s. I hated that movie, but now I have to watch it again.
It should not be a difficult demonstration.
@Sally327
It also occurs to me that the US intelligence community wasn't all that competent concerning Trump. They just have the advantage of a MSM that is unwilling to report news contrary to the narrative but eager to spout whatever nonsense the government tells them and control over a large segment of the judiciary.
The NY Times is sailing very close to the wind in its harassment of Trump. I could see the Supreme Court reversing the decision that shields newspapers from lawsuits for libel.
The audacity of auditing ethnic Springs with benefits, exposing single/central/monopolistic solutions, confronting human rites, etc, has earned Trump, not one, not two, but numerous... diverse witch hunts. All's fair in lust and abortion, I suppose.
The audacity of auditing ethnic Springs with benefits, exposing single/central/monopolistic solutions, confronting human rites, etc, has earned Trump, not one, not two, but numerous... diverse witch hunts. All's fair in lust and abortion, I suppose.
My favorite part of the Trump years (which, hilariously, we’re still in), is the Left’s whole-hearted embrace of the CIA and FBI. Apparently, the last 60 years of Leftist cant has just been bullshit.
You can say it’s only regarding what relates to Trump, but their staggering hypocrisy informs how their every stance can be viewed. It’s a trope, but unquestionably, they’ve become the reactionary Establishment they railed against.
Why is Trump stopping with the phone call to Ukraine in 2019? Them there frigging flapping flopping intelligence community weasels were after him in at least the spring and summer of 2016.
The American folks aren't dumb. They've all figured it out some time ago. Now there are some progressive hypocrites who refuse to publicly acknowledge what they've seen. But even they are smart enough to know what it is they are looking at.
This will be Trump's problem if he gets elected.
Now he knows they're out to destroy him.
But how many people can he actually fire?
I want small government, but you can't fire everyone...
How is stealing our county’s secrets, sharing them with others, hiding them and covering it up "political prosecution”?
Yes the communists wanted to take over they sort of did with the democracy party in the last few years
I'm listening to a long podcast on the history of ancient Rome these days.
It's amazing how much our self-serving intelligence and security services resemble the Praetorian Guard, and how closely the rest of the insatiable military-industrial complex mirrors the Roman legions, and how much power behind the throne has been given over to their whims and cupidities, just as in ancient times, and how little influence the elected representatives of the masses actually have over them.
I thought such an example of the "tail wagging the dog" could never again recur under a modern government, but I was wrong. It is happening before our eyes, on a grander scale than ever before in history. Decisions already made in our lifetimes by these evil men, and their actions yet to come while America still survives, will affect the world for thousands of years.
Allowing either the legions or the Guard to choose the emperor ended very, very badly for Rome in late antiquity. I strongly suspect that we are fated to learn the same lesson in governance, the hard way. Thank God for our unorganized militia.
This makes sense. He can't contest that he stole the documents. He can't contest that he stored them in public places. He can't contest that he shared them with people who weren't cleared. He can't contest the Keystone Kops caper where we hid the papers from his own lawyer rather than return them (which would have avoided the entire scandal). So it's all "DeEeEEP sTAaaaaaate!" conspiracy theorizing to muddy the waters.
This is why Democrats are more of a threat to democracy. Even if he wins, Trump will face plenty of opposition from within in his own government and the mainstream media Let's remember how major outlets accepted as fact that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. If Democrats really feared a dictatorship, they would have spent these last few years limiting Presidential power.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
Since every single case is politically driven isn’t it natural that the defense will “at times” sound “like” political talking points? Don’t these alleged journalists ever get tired of writing versions of that sentence? Their inner voice has to be saying “well DUH” sometimes.
1/17/24, 8:12 AM
I think you give them too much credit. They write that stuff because they believe that stuff. In many cases more than the best Catholic believes in God. It is their religion/cult/club/family. If they lose this, they have/are nothing. They are activists with keyboards and facts don't register if they don't support these beliefs.
Does the evidence not show that both the IC and DoJ violated laws, rules, regulations, and norms in pursuit of Trump from 2016-2023? Repeatedly.
Is it not incumbent upon the DoJ and IC to show that they followed laws, rules, regulations, and normal procedures to perfection in surveilling, investigating, and prosecuting a presidential candidate?
Is it not normal for the media to look for inconsistencies and unusual behavior and call it out?
Epic propaganda and positioning here. Trump is a blowhard, don't get me wrong, but man....the reporting and perception-management as if he has to constantly demonstrate all the violations of law, rules, regulations, and norms actually happened. Over and over again. Each and every time, and uniquely for every time he's charged.
While we are engaged in partisan bickering has anyone paused to consider that our intelligence community has had its filthy mitts on two elections in row? First, with the pee memo hoax against Trump. That was massive flop. Then, by issuing a B.S. letter telling us that the Hunter laptop was "Russian disinformation" when it knew it was genuine? Why?!?
What has always bothered me about the Hunter laptop story is the narrative of how it landed in a weird-ass random computer repair shop run by a guy in a funny hat who claims he is legally blind and can't say whether it really was Hunter. Most Apple people I know are very loyal to the Apple store. They are snobs. This is the part of the story that just seems... off. Total Jussie Smollet vibes for me. Conveniently, the laptop also had conspicuous stickers all over the outside.... This story carries "all the hallmarks of the CIA/FBI election meddling."
The laptop is genuine, but I think it was planted at Silly Hat Computer shop by someone trying to blackmail the Bidens. Could it be our own intelligence community? That's my bet. Biden is a puppet starting wars all across the world at the behest of our intelligence community because, unlike the pee memo, the laptop is the real McCoy. I think our president is being blackmailed under the cover of broad daylight and we are too distracted by partisan bickering to notice.
No way a crack addict would spill stuff on his computer, drop it off at a local repair shop, and then forget about it! That’s crazy talk!
“This makes sense. He can't contest that he stole the documents. He can't contest that he stored them in public places. He can't contest that he shared them with people who weren't cleared. He can't contest the Keystone Kops caper where we hid the papers from his own lawyer rather than return them (which would have avoided the entire scandal). So it's all "DeEeEEP sTAaaaaaate!" conspiracy theorizing to muddy the waters.”
Huh? You sound like a TDS addled libtard, parroting talking points.
“He can't contest that he stole the documents.”
How could he steal those documents? He ordered GSA to move his personal papers to MAL, after the National Archie’s failed to provide a repository for those papers, which had been standard procedure with his predecessors . Keep this in mind - it’s the President, and the President alone, who determines what is a Presidential Record and personal papers (According to the Supreme Court in the Clinton sock drawer case).
“He can't contest that he stored them in public places.”
The hundreds of boxes of personal records were stored in a locked room in his personal residence at MAL, guarded and secured by the Secret Service. Fairly far from a public place, if you ask me. Anyone, besides Trump and his lawyers, trying to access those records would likely have been shot by them.
“He can't contest that he shared them with people who weren't cleared.”
Hmm. Seems to skip right over the question of whether Trump actually had any classified material. If he, as President, having plenary declassification authority, declassified them, then how did they end up classified again? Sure, they might still be marked as classified, but removing those classification markings is merely a ministerial act. It’s going to be interesting to see how the prosecutors slide around that problem.
The FJB DOJ is dancing around this issue, knowing this, and pretending that removing National Security or National Defense Information is somehow different than removing classified documents, because they know that Trump, while in office, had plenary declassification authority. They seem to be suggesting that there are documents so important that only the bureaucracy, which derives its authority solely from his office, can control, and not the President, the source of their power.
“He can't contest the Keystone Kops caper where we hid the papers from his own lawyer rather than return them (which would have avoided the entire scandal).”
He was making a joke. The reality is that the DOJ demanded return of unidentified documents, mixed sparsely through hundreds of boxes of documents, last seen by anyone when they had been boxed, years earlier, sometime during his Presidency. They were boxed when aides cleared off his desk, getting him ready for the next appointment or phone call, and the documents marked as classified were mixed in with the other documents on his desk at the time. The documents marked as classified probably worked out to one per one or two banker’s boxes. Many hours of work, with Trump and at most an attorney or two to go through the hundreds of boxes. His attorneys requested extensions of time, as well as rolling document production, both denied by the DOJ official in charge (Jay Bratt - see my next comment). That same DOJ official then used Trump’s failure to produce the documents quickly enough as his justification for his search warrant for Trump’s MAL residence, despite being the one who caused the failure I the first place by refusing the requests for more time, etc. And, then the same DOJ official siged the indictment.
Sure sounds like a Deep State Conspiray to me.
Now comes the fun part. I mentioned Jay Bratt earlier. He is Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Deputy Special Counsel. He was the one who demanded the documents from Trump, refused their requests or additional time, etc, then signed the search warrant and indictment. Jack Smith is acting extralegally as Special Counsel, because Special Counsels must be Senate confirmed US Attorneys. Smith isn’t one, and, instead was brought in from private practice. That’s where Jay Bratt comes in. His day job is as the branch chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, National Security Division (NSD), U.S. Depart. of Justice. That means that he reports up through his chain of command to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, which is Senate confirmed. Why is this relevant here? Because, since the PATRIOT Act, the NSD has been the DOJ portion of the Intelligence Community (IC). And the legal power to prosecute Trump in the FL documents case comes from the National Security AAG, and not fro a US Attorney.
Trump was right - the IC is persecuting him in that case - just not the CIA, but rather the NSD.
It gets more interesting. The sister organization to Bratt’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Branch (CECB) is the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division (CD). As some remember, Peter Strzok was a CD branch chief. The attorney fired for fudging a couple FISA warrant applications also worked for the CD, as did the agents who interviewed LTG Flynn, and caught him in te perjury trap that fired hi to resign. During the summer of 2020, it was CD employees who ran both the Midyear Exam (Crooked Hillary email server) and Crossfire Hurricane (Trump Russian Collusion) investigations. CD and CECB were the organizations that drafted the four fraudulent FISA warrants on Carter Page, whic presumably was to electronically surveil Trump and his inner circle through the two hop rule. The sureilance continued for 6 months after Trump became President. Yes - the FBI’s CD, with the help of the CECB, was apparently electronically surveilling the President. When things got too hot, te tw organizations set up the Mueller Special Counsel investigation, ad shipped them all of their information. This effectively shielded from DOJ and Congressional oversight.
A Special Counsel was appointed to investigate this and along with the DOJ IG investigation, much of the perfidy, misfeasance, and malfeasance of these two organizations was documented. On his last full day in office, Trump formally ordered a binder containing this information, about the Perfidy misfeasance, and malfeasance, declassified. And prior to the MAL raid, those formally declassified documents were almost certainly the only documents marked classified that they knew that Trump had. Yes, that means that the CECB branch chief was, and continues to be in charge of the FL documents case, and it is likely that the initial purpose of the raid included getting those documents, Trump’s Insurance Policy, that implicated Bratt’s branch, back from Trump.
"No way a crack addict would spill stuff on his computer, drop it off at a local repair shop, and then forget about it! That’s crazy talk!"
No way our intelligence community would *knowingly* lie to the American public about the veracity of the contents of the laptop knowing that it will help the father of the laptop owner become president. That's truly insane and conspiratorial. Why bother questioning the motives?
Funny---dipshits will believe in a massive conspiracy to steal an election without a shred of evidence, but can't consider the possibility that our intelligence community is doing what our intelligence community does.
Thank you Bruce. Too bad this excellent analysis was posted after this thread went stale. It bears repeating (and plagiarizing, er, borrowing).
Has the FBI learned nothing since Hoover stayed on until his death, clutching his secret files, or since Bill Moyers smeared MLK, or since Mark Meadows took down Nixon for not getting the promotion to Director, or since Hillary used them to spy on the Trum pcampaing using her Russian dossier and their FISA warrants? Oh, wait, I missed the important thing that all those examples demonstrate: The FBI has always been a corrupt government organization.
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