The Trump Investigation(s) Thread

[hepcat]

Oh goodie, something else that won’t result in anything.

[Kraken]

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.

So what's the implied Saudi connection? Was trump feeding them classified info, or hiding documents that show him playing footsie with the Saudis? Or is that a red herring?

[El Guapo]

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.

So what's the implied Saudi connection? Was trump feeding them classified info, or hiding documents that show him playing footsie with the Saudis? Or is that a red herring?

I assume corruption.

[Isgrimnur]

At least 8 fake electors have been granted immunity in the Georgia Trump investigation

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had previously notified all 16 GOP fake electors in Georgia that they were targets in her investigation. Last month, Willis offered immunity deals to several of the Republicans who served as pro-Trump electors and they accepted, according to the filing.

The newly secured cooperators could offer insights into a key prong of Willis’s sprawling investigation into election interference: the attempts to put forward alternate slates of electors to block the certification of the 2020 presidential vote and the role Trump’s allies played in organizing the effort.

Other Republicans who served as pro-Trump electors could still face legal exposure in her investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Friday filing was attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow’s response to an earlier motion from Willis seeking to have Debrow disqualified from the case. Debrow represents a group of the GOP fake electors in Georgia and opposed the motion to have her tossed from the case.

[Holman]

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.

So what's the implied Saudi connection? Was trump feeding them classified info, or hiding documents that show him playing footsie with the Saudis? Or is that a red herring?

I assume corruption.

I just can't believe that the regime that gave Trump's son-in-law and favored daughter two BILLION dollars expected anything in return.

[Alefroth]

Remember this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... mp-report/

Special counsel John Durham has issued a long-awaited report that sharply criticizes the FBI for investigating the 2016 Trump campaign based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” — a conclusion that may fuel rather than end partisan debate about politicization within the Justice Department and FBI.

Who would have imagined that is Durham's conclusion?

[malchior]

All Durham managed to do is ruin his reputation...and help push us toward a breakdown of civil order. What a guy.

Of course the broken media plays up how Durham criticized the FBI in their headlines. Even when they later point out it was pretty thin. Awful and reckless as always.

[Skinypupy]

Of course the broken media plays up how Durham criticized the FBI in their headlines. Even when they later point out it was pretty thin. Awful and reckless as always.

As expected, both sides are screeching about this being a "complete win'.

[Pyperkub]

Rudi's Ding dong may have screwed TFG...

Not sure if image from twitter will show

[waitingtoconnect]

If that scene in Borat 2 wasn't enough to get rid of this unlanceable boil on the American political system nothing ever will be.

[Octavious]

3 years and the best they found is they think the investigation may be biased? Coming from a guy who obviously was on a mission to find something? So much winning.

[Unagi]

If that scene in Borat 2 wasn't enough...

Wait, we were putting our hopes on a scene in Borat 2 ?!

(you aren't wrong, but - sigh)

[Alefroth]

This sounds a lot worse than what happened in Borat.

[em2nought]

Comments are just like I figured.

[waitingtoconnect]

Giuliani’s latest woes cannot be described as wholly surprising. He always possessed a penchant for drama and a tropism for the transgressive. He loved the opera and his life emerged as operatic. As a prosecutor, he dressed up “undercover”. Then as mayor, he performed onstage in drag with Trump:



The warning signs were there. We just chose to ignore them.

Amid his first campaign for mayor, in 1989, a story broke of a concentration camp survivor, Simon Berger, being held in federal custody, facing a blackboard that read “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the slogan written across the gates of Auschwitz. Berger would be acquitted.

Fast forward to May 2000. Giuliani publicly announced that he was leaving Donna Hanover, his second wife. No one was more shocked than Hanover. Rudy had shredded the boundary between public and private.

A year later, Rudy attempted to stretch out his term as mayor beyond its legal limits. Then again, his mother was a fan of Mussolini and his father spent time for armed robbery at Sing Sing, a prison located in upstate New York.

Rudy also sought to make Bernie Kerik, his police commissioner, head of US homeland security. That went badly. Kerik eventually wound up in prison and George W Bush was left to do clean-up. Kerik was granted a presidential pardon for his federal convictions by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020 . On November 7, 2020, following the 2020 United States presidential election, Kerik stood behind Giuliani, then Trump's personal lawyer, during the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Shortly after Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, Kerik claimed to have evidence of widespread voter fraud, falsely claiming that Trump had actually won the election.

During the 2016-17 presidential transition, rumours swirled of Giuliani coveting an appointment as secretary of state. That moment never arrived.

There were “whispers from the staff ‘about his health and stability’,” Michael Wolff wrote in Fire and Fury, his 2018 blockbuster.

To be sure, they were the same whispers echoed at a pre-inaugural lunch held at a Manhattan steakhouse by veterans of Giuliani’s time at city hall, and those with significant ties to the Trump administration.




And lets not forget pieces like this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opin ... raine.html

[Holman]

Almost a decade before 9/11, failed candidate Giuliani was involved in what was basically a police riot in NYC against police oversight. When he was later elected mayor in 1994, every sane person in the city knew it was retrograde movement. Giuliani's policing policy was basically the release of violence against even the most minor offenders.

Had 9/11 happened at any other time, Giuliani would have gone down in history as a petty tyrant. Unfortunately, the narrative required heroes, so we all pretended that he was one.

Now we all see who he really is.

[Zarathud]

Rudy’s ex-wife warned the public that he had become mentally ill and unreliable. No one listened because it drove eyeballs.

[Pyperkub]

Rudy’s ex-wife warned the public that he had become mentally ill and unreliable. No one listened because it drove eyeballs.

Uh, most of us would not have hired him to be a sign spinner.

But Trump?

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[malchior]

Almost a decade before 9/11, failed candidate Giuliani was involved in what was basically a police riot in NYC against police oversight. When he was later elected mayor in 1994, every sane person in the city knew it was retrograde movement. Giuliani's policing policy was basically the release of violence against even the most minor offenders.

Had 9/11 happened at any other time, Giuliani would have gone down in history as a petty tyrant. Unfortunately, the narrative required heroes, so we all pretended that he was one.

Now we all see who he really is.

Nailed it. He always had authoritarian instincts. Rudy is squarely behind what the NYPD has become. People didn't care that black and brown people were being stopped and frisked because he "cleaned up Times Square". And other related folk tales that papered over the police violence he enabled.

[El Guapo]

FYI, minor spoiler alert for the third season of the show The Good Fight.

Spoiler:

My wife and I have been watching The Good Fight, which started in the early days of the Trump administration, and centers on a civil rights oriented law firm (spin-off of The Good Wife). What was bitterly funny about watching an episode last night is that part of it focused on one of the main characters trying to convince fictional affair partners of Trump's to go public. One of them says to the main character "Why bother? Stormy Daniels came forward and no one cared - people have moved on." The main character lawyer says, "The difference is that Trump paid for your abortion. That will destroy his standing with the religious right."

Oh, sweet summer child. We were so innocent back then.

[Isgrimnur]

CNN

A New York judge has set a trial date of March 25, 2024, for the criminal case against former President Donald Trump, potentially setting up a media spectacle in the middle of the Republican presidential primary season.

The trial date was set during a brief hearing Tuesday in which Judge Juan Merchan read Trump an order on what he can and cannot say publicly about the case and evidence his legal team will get from prosecutors to prepare for trial.

Trump appeared remotely via video feed so the judge could communicate with him in open court.

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign. The criminal charges stem from District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into hush money payments, made during the 2016 campaign, to adult film star Stormy Daniels who alleged an affair with Trump, which he denies.

[Grifman]

Where does Trump get these dime store lawyers from?

[malchior]

It isn't about good lawyering - he is riling up insurrectionists for when the time comes (if it does).

[Smoove_B]

I refuse to believe an actual lawyer wrote "Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family President Trump is being treated unfairly."

Refuse.

[Zaxxon]

I refuse to believe

$100k for used chapstick.

[malchior]

I refuse to believe

$100k for used chapstick.

Autocratic cults are generally weird and our flavor is that. On top though it is also so, so dumb.

[Carpet_pissr]

I refuse to believe

$100k for used chapstick.

LOL. That MUST be the answer for the coming wave of insanity that we're about to experience. It says so much in so few words. While the "used" DOES impart some additional insanity, I think we can reasonably shorten it to "$100K chapstick" for ultimate memability.

I suspect we've seen nothing yet, and the OG Trump years will seem quaint in comparison. Hold onto your mental buttcheeks boys and girls, it's about to get nuts up in here.

[El Guapo]

I refuse to believe

$100k for used chapstick.

LOL. That MUST be the answer for the coming wave of insanity that we're about to experience. It says so much in so few words. While the "used" DOES impart some additional insanity, I think we can reasonably shorten it to "$100K chapstick" for ultimate memability.

I suspect we've seen nothing yet, and the OG Trump years will seem quaint in comparison. Hold onto your mental buttcheeks boys and girls, it's about to get nuts up in here.

The more ridiculous it is the more useful it is as a public display of fealty to the leader. Plus this stuff becomes a vehicle for grift / corruption.

[Zarathud]

Any party that pays $100,000 for used chapstick shouldn’t be talking about fiscal responsibility or spending.

[malchior]

I refuse to believe

$100k for used chapstick.

LOL. That MUST be the answer for the coming wave of insanity that we're about to experience. It says so much in so few words. While the "used" DOES impart some additional insanity, I think we can reasonably shorten it to "$100K chapstick" for ultimate memability.

I suspect we've seen nothing yet, and the OG Trump years will seem quaint in comparison. Hold onto your mental buttcheeks boys and girls, it's about to get nuts up in here.

The more ridiculous it is the more useful it is as a public display of fealty to the leader. Plus this stuff becomes a vehicle for grift / corruption.

That's exactly why they get weird. It gets warped in service of the cult leader's weird tendancies. I'm at this point waiting for MTG to publicly give up on crossfit and announce it is because she is afraid it will use up her life force.

[Blackhawk]

I refuse to believe an actual lawyer wrote "Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family President Trump is being treated unfairly."

Refuse.

It reads like it was dictated by some genius (a very stable one, no doubt), and the attorneys did their best to clean it up without changing the key points of what they were told to say.

[Grifman]

Read this thread re: sentencing of Stewart Rhodes:



There’s not an ounce of remorse in his comments to the court. The judge is going to throw the book at him.

[Isgrimnur]

Read this thread re: sentencing of Stewart Rhodes:

There’s not an ounce of remorse in his comments to the court. The judge is going to throw the book at him.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1661 ... 31744.html

[Octavious]

Well he really better hope Trump wins. I don't see any other Republican pardoning them. Womp womp.
18 years lol.

[malchior]

Rhodes acted as I would have expected as a reactionary revolutionary leader. He denounced the state, defended his "foot soldiers", and appealed to Trump. He was going to get a long sentence no matter so why not make a play to the person who might be able to spring him.

[Octavious]

I really want to time travel past the 2024 election to see if it's worth giving a crap anymore. What hope would we have left if Trump gets back into office and frees a bunch of people that tried to overthrow the country? So freaking ridiculous that this is even a concern.

[coopasonic]

I really want to time travel past the 2024 election to see if it's worth giving a crap anymore. What hope would we have left if Trump gets back into office and frees a bunch of people that tried to overthrow the country? So freaking ridiculous that this is even a concern.

It will be worth giving a crap even then. Will it help? Probably not. As long as so many are willing to go against their own interests and there is little accountability, well, ok maybe not worth giving a crap.

[Grifman]

Just saw that he got 18 years.

[Octavious]

I really want to time travel past the 2024 election to see if it's worth giving a crap anymore. What hope would we have left if Trump gets back into office and frees a bunch of people that tried to overthrow the country? So freaking ridiculous that this is even a concern.

It will be worth giving a crap even then. Will it help? Probably not. As long as so many are willing to go against their own interests and there is little accountability, well, ok maybe not worth giving a crap.

I mean if that really happens we have family in Germany and Bosnia. Both places that had zero involvement in world wars or genocides. And yet would be preferable to this nonsense place.

[Grifman]