Yet another of the Chumph Crime Cartel boss, with heavy ties to Putin’s Mob goes down, and will testify against his former co-conspirator, Paul Manafort. Rick Gates if the 5th Chumph cohort to take the lea.
How bad is it for the Chumph Cartel? You know you are in deep, deep isht when they indict your Lawyer too…Along with an “unnamed individual” –
Mueller is not only going to lock up Gates and Manafort…But their lawyers!
Getting closer to nailing the Chumph…Every single day.
Jail to the Chumph.
Should Republicans stop blocking the Chumph Impeachment, or the 2018 Election, whichever comes first – there appear to be at least 4 Cases, if not 5 upon which the Chumph will be prosecuted.
The easiest one of those to make as a primary cause and case for impeachment, is Obstruction of Justice. The other crimes are hidden behind requiring information which is still classified, information from grand jury testimony, and information not available to the public gathered by Robert Mueller’s prosecutors.
There appears to be evidence upon which to charge the Chumph with these crimes –
It is unknown at this point what evidence, or what charges (if any) Mueller will pursue. But the case for impeachment, based on obstruction of justice has been laid out just using publically available information. The guys who did this are heavyweights –
Barry H. Berke is co-chair of the litigation department at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP
(Kramer Levin) and a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He has represented
public officials, professionals and other clients in matters involving all aspects of white-collar
crime, including obstruction of justice. Noah Bookbinder is the Executive Director of Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Previously, Noah has served as Chief
Counsel for Criminal Justice for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and as a
corruption prosecutor in the United States Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section.
Ambassador (ret.) Norman L. Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was the chief
White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011 and before that, defended obstruction and other
criminal cases for almost two decades in a D.C. law firm specializing in white-collar matters. He
is the chair and co-founder of CREW.
From their introduction of a case developed for Brookings Institute –
There are significant questions as to whether President Trump obstructed justice. We do not yet know all the relevant facts, and any final determination must await further investigation, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But the public record contains substantial evidence that President Trump attempted to impede the investigations of Michael Flynn and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including by firing FBI Director James Comey. There is also a question as to whether President Trump conspired to obstruct justice with senior members of his administration although the public facts regarding conspiracy are less well developed.Attempts to stop an investigation represent a common form of obstruction. Demanding the loyalty of an individual involved in an investigation, requesting that individual’s help to end the investigation, and then ultimately firing that person to accomplish that goal are the type of acts that have frequently resulted in obstruction convictions, as we detail. In addition, to the extent conduct could be characterized as threatening, intimidating, or corruptly persuading witnesses, that too
may provide additional grounds for obstruction charges. While those defending the president may claim that expressing a “hope” that an investigation will end is too vague to constitute obstruction, we show that such language is sufficient to do so. In that regard, it is material that former FBI Director James Comey interpreted the president’s “hope” that he would drop the investigation into Flynn as an instruction to drop the case. That Comey ignored that instruction is beside the point under applicable law. We also note that potentially misleading conduct and possible cover-up attempts could serve as further evidence of obstruction. Here, such actions may include fabricating an initial justification for firing Comey, directing Donald Trump Jr.’s inaccurate statements about the purpose of his meeting with a Russian lawyer during the president’s campaign, tweeting that Comey “better hope there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations,” despite having
“no idea” whether such tapes existed, and repeatedly denouncing the validity of the investigations…
Very apropos depiction of the clown
The Stoolies are squealing. Huge line in front of Independent Counsel Mueller’s door.
Won’t be long now….
Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s shadiest former business partners, is reportedly preparing for prison time — and he says the president will be joining him behind bars.
Sources told The Spectator‘s Paul Wood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deep dive into Trump’s business practices may be yielding results.
Trump recently made remarks that could point to a money laundering scheme, Wood reported.
“I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows?” the president said.
Sater, who has a long history of legal troubles and is cooperating with law enforcement, was one of the major players responsible for selling Trump’s condos to the Russians.
And according to Wood’s sources, Sater may have already flipped and given prosecutors the evidence they need to make a case against Trump.
For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.
Sater hinted in an interview earlier this month that he may be cooperating with both Mueller’s investigation and congressional probes of Trump.
“In about the next 30 to 35 days, I will be the most colourful character you have ever talked about,” Sater told New York Magazine. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it ain’t anything as small as whether or not they’re gonna call me to the Senate committee.”
Sater is not the only one rumored confidante to have turned against Trump. An attack on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort by the National Enquirer — a friendly outlet for the president — suggests that he may have already turned over damaging evidence to authorities.
Damn! Even the Chumph’s Lawyer had had to hire a lawyer!
And that doesn’t mention VP Mike Pence hiring a law firm – personally.
If the Putin’s Bitch Russia collusion is “Fake news”…
Why are all these guys lawyering up?
Vice President Mike Pence and campaign adviser Michael Caputo have also hired outside legal counsel.
President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer has hired his own legal representation to help him during the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, NBC News’ Katy Tur first reported.
Exclusive: Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has hired his own counsel: Stephen Ryan, of McDermott, Will & Emery.- source w knowledge
Caputo has hired Dennis Vacco as counsel. House Intel is trying to schedule him for mid-July. Source says Caputo wants open hearing.
Not quite time for the Rethugs to throw the women and babies off the life rafts yet…
But the is a serious inventory going on in counting life jackets and available seats on the lifeboats.
This Chumph cookie is beginning to crumble .. fast.
Republicans are trying to figure out a way past swirling questions about ties between the Trump administration and the Russian government, with GOP strategists calling the investigation and surrounding controversies a public relations nightmare that has dragged on for too long.
Former FBI Director James Comey did not inflict any deadly blows against President Trump when he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Republicans believe, but they’re concerned there will be more damaging revelations in the weeks ahead.
One worrisome prospect Comey’s testimony raised for Republicans is that there may be additional damaging revelations about Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Comey testified that the FBI was “aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting” that would have made it impossible for Sessions to oversee any Russia-related investigation.
It’s not clear whether he was only referring to Sessions’s failure to disclose two meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak or something that may come to light later.
Another potential headache for Republican lawmakers is that Trump himself continues to keep the story alive.
Trump’s bitter fighting with the media over Russia and his dismissal of Comey has fueled a story that even the president’s legislative director, Marc Short, acknowledged this past week was detracting from the president’s agenda.
But one senior GOP aide said that lawmakers aren’t holding out much hope of changing Trump’s Twitter habit, despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) publicly expressed hopes that there be “less drama” from the White House.
The aide quipped that getting Trump to tweet less is like “tilting at windmills.”
Republican lawmakers are under increasing pressure as, four months into Trump’s first term, they cannot point to any major accomplishments besides conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Instead, Trump’s political problems have distracted from the agenda.
Republicans have publicly downplayed Comey’s testimony, but privately they’re nervous that they’re burning through the legislative calendar while remaining deadlocked over healthcare reform. Meanwhile, unfinished work on tax reform, infrastructure investment and the budget piles up behind it.
The biggest frustration for many Republican lawmakers is that Trump has helped keep the controversy in the headlines by picking fights with the media on Twitter instead of keeping the focus on his own agenda or simply staying quiet at key moments.
“At minimum, it is an unforced PR nightmare that’s gone on for far too long, and at maximum it could be something approaching a scandal,” said one Senate GOP strategist.
“The story doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Whether or not there’s something there, it’s been a huge drag on the last couple of months and I hope they figure out to stop it soon,” he added.
GOP lawmakers and aides say that continuing to pick a fight with Comey is not smart.
“Comey was very compelling. People talked about how credible he seemed,” said the strategist.
Nevertheless, Trump couldn’t resist slamming the former FBI director Friday morning.
“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication … and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump tweeted, referring to Comey’s admission that he shared a memo summarizing his interactions with the president with a Columbia Law School professor to give to the media.
The emerging consensus among GOP lawmakers, aides and strategists is that the best way for the party to get past the turbulence is for Republicans to pledge to get to the bottom of allegations of collusion with Russia and in the meantime to get to work on passing Trump’s agenda.
“It’s real simple: Go do something. If you don’t have the votes to repeal ObamaCare in the Senate, then get a budget passed, do tax reform. Get some stuff done,” said Chip Saltsman, a Republican strategist.
“The worst thing they can do is get absolutely nothing done and go out for August recess,” he added.
Yet another attempt at cover up of the Russia-Trump election collusion. This time by trying to order the heads of intelligence agencies to clam up.
President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.
Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.
Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.
Trump sought the assistance of Coats and Rogers after FBI Director James B. Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 20 that the FBI was investigating “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
Trump’s conversation with Rogers was documented contemporaneously in an internal memo written by a senior NSA official, according to the officials. It is unclear if a similar memo was prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to document Trump’s conversation with Coats. Officials said such memos could be made available to both the special counsel now overseeing the Russia investigation and congressional investigators, who might explore whether Trump sought to impede the FBI’s work.
White House officials say Comey’s testimony about the scope of the FBI investigation upset Trump, who has dismissed the FBI and congressional investigations as a “witch hunt.” The president has repeatedly said there was no collusion.
Current and former senior intelligence officials viewed Trump’s requests as an attempt by the president to tarnish the credibility of the agency leading the Russia investigation.
A senior intelligence official said Trump’s goal was to “muddy the waters” about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats were ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, a step announced last week.
Senior intelligence officials also saw the March requests as a threat to the independence of U.S. spy agencies, which are supposed to remain insulated from partisan issues.
“The problem wasn’t so much asking them to issue statements, it was asking them to issue false statements about an ongoing investigation,” a former senior intelligence official said of the request to Coats.
The NSA and Brian Hale, a spokesman for Coats, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
Former California Attorney General, now Senator Kamala Harris want Sessions’ head on a pike…Sessions is a criminal, having committed perjury at his Senate confirmation hearings.
Having Sessions as the head of the DOJ, is no different than appointing Al Capone as Sheriff. Second, Sessions is actively involved in covering up the Chumph’s criminal activity. And as such is a criminal co-conspirator.
Charge him, arrest him, try him, convict him…And hang him for treason with Putin’s Bitch and the rest of the Chumph scum/
Speaking to CNN”s Jake Tapper on Thursday afternoon, Senator Kamala Harris of California renewed Democratic calls for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign over the firing of FBI director James Comey.
“There is good reason to believe that he was not truthful when he testified before Congress,” Harris said, in reference to Sessions’s confirmation hearing, during which he said under oath that he had no communications with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign.
It was subsequently reported that Sessions met on two occasions with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. Sessions had recused himself in March from the inquiry into improper contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. Yet it was Sessions, along with deputy Rod Rosenstein, who recommended that Trump fire Comey—who was investigating the Trump-Russia ties. (Kislyak met with Trump on Wednesday, just hours after Comey was fired.)
The public nature of the Russia investigation infuriated Trump, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal:
The more James Comey showed up on television discussing the FBI’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the more the White House bristled, according to aides to President Donald Trump.
Harris, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump and is rumored to have presidential ambitions, told Tapper that Sessions’s complicity in the Comey firing “calls into question his objectivity, and his ability to keep his word.”
Her calls for Sessions to resign were seconded by her Democratic colleague Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Those who are either old enough to remember the KKK murders in places like Mississippi, and the resultant trials where all-white juries of the time couldn’t find them guilty will draw a correlation between the Walter Scott Murder trial ending in a hung jury despite video evidence that he was murdered by former Officer Michael Slager.
In quite possibly the last Civil Rights prosecution until the racist Chumph and his minions are removed from office, one small victory.
The former North Charleston police officer who was filmed shooting Walter Scott to death is expected to plead guilty this afternoon in connection with a federal civil rights prosecution, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.
Such a plea agreement for Michael Slager, 35, would come on the eve of his trial stemming from the April 2015 killing.
It remains unclear to what charges Slager would plead. In federal court, sentencing also is seldom handed down on the same day as a plea. Instead, probation agents would prepare a pre-sentencing report in the coming weeks, and a judge would decide a penalty later.
The sources confirmed that Slager was scheduled to enter the plea during a 2:30 p.m. hearing at U.S. District Court in downtown Charleston, but they declined to publicly discuss the development until then. The former lawman also could change his mind before the proceeding.
A Scott family spokesman, Ryan Julison, said the loved ones would speak out after the hearing.
Slager could face as little as no prison time and as much as life behind bars on the most serious count against him: deprivation of rights under the color of law. He also is charged with lying to state investigators and using a firearm in a violent crime.
In state court, where a hung jury prompted a mistrial last year, Slager is still charged with murder. It’s unknown whether that case also would be resolved.
Jury selection for the May 15 federal trial had been scheduled for next week.
Today’s pretrial hearing had been set for this morning, but it was rescheduled for the afternoon, according to a Monday filing that did not give a reason for the time change. The hearing was expected to be lengthy, with attorneys offering expert testimony and arguing in front of Judge David Norton about whether certain witnesses should be allowed to testify in the trial.
Slager, who is white, has maintained that he shot Scott, 50, a black man, in self-defense after Scott took his Taser.
But the federal indictment alleged that Slager used excessive force when he opened fire.
The officer pulled over Scott’s car because of a broken brake light on April 4, 2015, and Scott ran. Slager said Scott grabbed the stun gun during a fight.
But the video, filmed by eyewitness Feidin Santana, showed Scott turning around and running as Slager pulled his .45-caliber pistol and started shooting. Five of the eight bullets hit Scott from behind.
Santana called it “abuse,” and his footage captured worldwide attention amid scrutiny of police uses of force against black people.
A jury made up of Charleston County residents last year considered Santana’s and Slager’s views in state court, where the panel could not agree on whether Slager had committed murder, manslaughter or no crime at all.
The jurors for the civil rights proceeding are scheduled to be chosen next week in Columbia from a pool of residents from across South Carolina.
The defense team, led by attorney Andy Savage, had argued that a jury that’s less exposed to intense news coverage of the shooting would give Slager a fairer trial.
This has gotta hut those die-hard Chumph defenders!
More evidence of why Chaffetz is jumping the rotted, rusty, Chumph scow.
More evidence Flynn will be the first to sing!
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn likely broke the law by failing to disclose foreign income he earned from Russia and Turkey, the heads of the House Oversight Committee said Tuesday.
Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said they believe Flynn neither received permission nor fully disclosed income he earned for a speaking engagement in Russia and lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey when he applied to reinstate his security clearance, after viewing two classified memos and Flynn’s disclosure form in a private briefing Tuesday morning.
“Personally I see no evidence or no data to support the notion that General Flynn complied with the law,” Chaffetz told reporters following the briefing.
“He was supposed to get permission, he was supposed to report it, and he didn’t,” Cummings said.
Might I suggest hanging the Chump from the light-post on Constitution and 17th NW? That is, after what should be a fairly brief impeachment and trial of course.
Career counterterrorism officer says Putin pulled off a “brilliant” coup — but Trump is headed for impeachment
On an almost daily basis there are new revelations about the questionable and perhaps illegal connections between President Donald Trump’s administration (and before that his campaign) and the Russian espionage apparatus under the control of Vladimir Putin. It is no longer appears to be a question of whether the Russian government actively worked to undermine or affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, but who aided it in doing so.
Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign because he did not disclose his contacts with Russia. In addition, Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, met repeatedly with the Russian ambassador and known intelligence operative Sergey Kislyak. Trump campaign aides Roger Stone and Paul Manafort also had extensive contacts with the Russian government. Stone has even publicly admitted to communicating with WikiLeaks — a group known to act as a conduit for classified information — in an effort to smear Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton. And Trump and his inner circle have unknown but likely extensive financial connections to Russian banks, financiers, corporations and the Russian government.
How much damage has been caused to the American people by Trump’s Russian gambit? Most important, are Donald Trump and his advisers working in support of Russian interests and against those of the Unites States? Are they traitors? How did this all transpire?
In an effort to answer these questions, Salon recently spoke with Malcolm Nance, a career intelligence and counterterrorism officer for the United States government. In his more than three decades working in that capacity, Nance served with U.S. Special Operations forces, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. He has worked in the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A frequent guest contributor on MSNBC, Nance has authored several books, including “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election.”
My conversation with Nance has been edited for length and clarity. A longer version of this conversation can be heard on my podcast, available on Salon’s Featured Audio page.
In trying to make sense of the constant revelations about Trump’s connections to Russia, we are often hearing the truism that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But in this case, it seems that the public is just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
You are absolutely correct. I think that the activities that have occurred and the thing that we’re seeing indicate a scandal on an order of magnitude greater than anything that’s occurred in the 20th century. What’s occurring now is as close to Benedict Arnold as I think we’re ever going to get in American history. It had better be because the only alternative to what we’re seeing with this information is, if it’s not espionage, then it will be the largest financial scandal in American history.
One would think that someone would have taken Trump’s associates aside and told them, about the ambassador and others, “These guys are Russian spies using diplomatic status as cover?” Did they not understand that or did they just ignore it?
You would think that the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn — who had his own coterie of spies, by the way — would know that. But what would override that? Only one of two things would override that. This incredible belief that you give me a boatload of money and I get a boatload of money. Then you get these incredible, unbelievable returns promised to you, and you bring in more people. That’s what we’re seeing here, in this whole crew . . . and I refer to them in my book as “the Kremlin crew” . . . in that they saw relationships with Russia and the extractive energy industries as an ATM that would make them madly wealthy beyond anything if they controlled the levers of government.
The only other way to explain it is that they ideologically bought into [the idea] that Vladimir Putin is the greatest man on Earth and that the Russian antidemocratic system and autocracy is their way of life. I can’t believe that. I think they wanted to win at all costs, and at the end of “win at all costs,” whether that meant cooperating with Russia or working with them, there was the promise of outrageous quantities of money.
Why was the mainstream American media so far behind on the story with Trump and Russia? Incompetence? Fear? Laziness?
I think a combination of lazy and afraid. The Trump train was just so incredibly wild. For them, it was just a question of keeping up on a daily basis, writing these incredible stories. But putting that aside, the people who really, really understood the American media and really knew what to do and how to do it were Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence
In fact, Vladimir Putin was the director of Russian intelligence and then became the president of the country from that position. Vladimir Putin understood, from the Communist era when he was a KGB officer that the Russian propaganda system of targeting Western media — that in the digital world you could easily pull the Western media around by a nose ring. He hacked the American mindset through its own news media. I would personally say [it was] the most brilliant intelligence operation quite possibly in the history of mankind at this point, because he selected the president.
Could this be worse than the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg perhaps in terms of intelligence coups?
Granted, that gave Russia nuclear power and the hydrogen bomb. That was a pure old-school intelligence operation. But now, you could argue that Vladimir Putin has control of 4,000 atomic bombs and they did it using Americans — knowing how Americans thought, knowing how Donald Trump thought. As part of that, you also have the successful attempt to split the “Bernie bros” from the Democratic Party, and also the Jill Steins of the world out there saying, “There’s no difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.”
The Chumph was at it again last night on Twitter, claiming President Obama has his Campaign Headquarters in Chumph Hovel wiretapped during the election.
Couple of problems with that. First off, the President can’t just order wiretaps of American citizens. A wiretap has to be done though a FISA Court, based on existing evidence that a person has, or is in the process of committing a crime. The process is specifically outlined in two laws, CALEA and the Patriot Act. Ergo, the DOJ has to have evidence to present to the court that there is a crime being committed. The reason for the wiretap typically is to identify all the criminals in the criminal enterprise, including those who the DOJ does not have evidence yet to convict. This is how the FBI typically goes after the Mafia. They have enough evidence to charge and likely convict a mobster, but want to gather evidence to charge those further up the line. Getting not only the guy who committed the murder, but the guy(s) who ordered it.
A FISA Court denied the FBI’s request for a warrant to monitor four members of the Trump campaign team over the summer, according to The Guardian. That means the FBI suspected criminal activity, but didn’t quite have enough evidence to convince the Judge at that time. That the Chumph campaign staff was involved in a conspiracy, isn’t at question. When you have now 5 high level people caught communicating frequently with the Russian “KGB”, it’s difficult to ‘splain how all of this “just happened” with no direction or collusion.
The president typically does not order surveillance, and there is no evidence that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump’s phones. The FBI, which is part of the Department of Justice, must request a warrant for a wiretap, and the DOJ prides itself on operating independently from the White House. The president ordering surveillance on an American would be a huge violation of that independence.
We don’t know at this point if any subsequent requests to the FISA Court were granted based on incontrovertible evidence.
The NSA and CIA aren’t subject to FISA, because they only can deal with offshore connections. Ergo, they can only look at and act on communications which reach outside our borders. If you are a Foreign Diplomat, or non-citizen communicating with the spy agencies of a foreign government – you are not a citizen, and have no FISA protections. So, if Flynn called the Chumph, the FBI would have had to get a Court Order to tap that (the NSA and CIA could not, under law listen in), If Flynn called the Russian Ambassador or someone in the “KGB”, the NSA was fully within legal rights to tap and record those conversations. The NSA can operate under the “warrentless wiretapping” provision of the Patriot Act – but there are limitations to that as defined by the Supreme Court. There is another agency which can conduct international surveillance which you’ve never heard of – but for this exercise, keep it simple.
So…It wan’t Obama who wiretapped the Chumph. If he did so outside the government through private resources, it would be inadmissible both in Court, as well as in regards to the Intelligence Agencies.
The ONLY way the Chumph’s campaign hovel could have been wiretapped is that the FBI had discovered criminal activity, and applied through a FISA Court for permission to wiretap by providing significant evidence of that criminal activity.
And that means there was provable, and chargeable criminal activity going on in the Chumph campaign.
So…The Chumph saying Obama tapped his phones…Is an admission of guilt.
A California Congressman took to Twitter on Saturday morning to warn President Donald Trump that — if he is correct that his Trump Tower phones were tapped — he is “in deep sh*t.”
Early Saturday morning, Trump set the political world ablaze by accusing former President Barack Obama of having his phones tapped prior to the 2016 election.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump tweeted before adding, “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”
It has been speculated that Trump’s wild accusations followed the president being alerted to aBreitbart article accusing Obama of orchestrating a “silent coup” against the administration. The article asserts that the Justice Department made two Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) requests in 2016 requesting Trump communications and data on a computer server in Trump Tower be monitored for connections to Russian banks or contacts.
Although Trump provided no information that he may have been monitored, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) stated that the president may want to lawyer up.
“Mr. President: If there was a wiretap at Trump Tower, that means a fed judge found probable cause of crime which means you are in deep shit,” Lieu wrote. After providing a link to a Washington Post article on Trump’s tweets and the fallout, Lieu took it a step further.
“Either
@realDonaldTrump is paranoid like Nixon, or judge found probable cause of crime for#wiretap. Either way our President is in trouble,” he wrote.
I have a great idea – let his Trumpazoid ass out in Gen Pop for a while…Before they hang him.
Dylann Roof will be executed for shooting dead nine worshipers during a Bible study in a historically black church, making him the first person sentenced to death for federal hate crimes.
A 12-person jury returned the sentence Tuesday at the Charleston Federal Courthouse after deliberating for three hours. The punishment follows Roof’s conviction in December on 33 charges related to the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church on June 17, 2015.
Roof listened to the sentence without much expression, occasionally putting on a closed-lip smile that looked like a nervous reaction.
Roof’s murder of the parishioners shocked a public already nauseated by mass shootings in seemingly every place imaginable by introducing a new setting for bloodshed: church. His victims ranged in age from 26 to 87 and included a pastor and state senator, family matriarchs and patriarchs, a retired teacher, a track coach and speech therapist, a librarian, two mothers of teenage children, and a young college graduate.Two women and two children survived the shooting by hiding under a desk and table as 77 bullets flew through the basement walls and victims’ bodies that evening at the conclusion of Bible study, the gunfire erupting from Roof’s Glock .45 just as the group closed their eyes and stood to pray. Another woman was spared by Roof. He told her she could live in order to tell others of the killings.
“Did I shoot you yet?” Polly Sheppard recalled Roof asking her as he pointed a gun at her body. “I’m not going to,” Roof said. “I need you to tell the story.”
Assorted observers, aghast at the consequences of Roof’s ruthless shooting rampage, sought to counteract his actions through public displays of unity and love. At Roof’s bond hearing two days after the shooting, numerous relatives of the shooting victims drew on their religious faith and told the then-21-year-old defendant they forgave him. Meanwhile, Charleston residents gathered at public vigils to honor the dead and promote a message of unity, at one point marching across Charleston’s iconic Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge by the thousands.
President Obama traveled to Charleston for the funeral of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, who was also a South Carolina state senator. Obama eulogized Pinckney and, to much acclaim, then broke into song, leading a soulful rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Weeks later South Carolina leaders removed the Confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse in the capital, Columbia, and relocated the banner to a museum. Regarded by many as a symbol of hate and intolerance, the flag was featured in many pictures Roof took of himself with guns before committing his crime in Charleston.
But as all these groups of people sought to promote healing in a nation continually fractured by gun violence and racial conflicts, Roof sat in a jail cell in Charleston and wrote a nearly 40-page statement that offered no apologies and denigrated almost every race of people on this earth, including white people whom he deemed “cowards” for not standing up to Roof’s perceived assaults by the “lower races.” This statement, along with drawings filled with racist symbols, complemented another racist manifesto Roof posted online on the afternoon before his crime.
During Tuesday’s sentencing proceedings, Roof, dressed in a green sweater and speaking softly as he represented himself in court, addressed the jury considering his fate, saying that while “I didn’t have to do anything… I felt like I had to do it and I still feel like I had to do it.” He mostly avoided talking about his crime and victims, offering no remorse, but conceding, “I think that, ummm, it’s safe to say no one in their right mind wants to go in a church and kill people.”Roof then disputed the government’s depiction of him as a man filled with hatred, especially for black people.
“Wouldn’t it be fair to say the prosecution hates me since they’re trying to give me the death penalty?” Roof asked.
“My point is,” he continued, “anyone who hates anything in their mind has a good reason for it.”
Hang ’em High! Make an example out of his ass so the the other Trump ishtheads get the message/
A jury has found Dylann Roof guilty of all 33 federal charges he faced after last year’s massacre at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
In the next phase of the trial, scheduled to begin in January, jurors will weigh whether Roof, 22, should be sentenced to death or spend the rest of his life in prison.Deliberations began Thursday afternoon in Roof’s murder trial after attorneys made closing arguments.Shortly after deliberations started, the jury asked to again watch the video in which Roof confessed to two FBI agents. Specifically, the jury wanted to see the portion where Roof was unsure of how many people he had killed.Roof, 22, a self-declared white supremacist, has admitted to last year’s killings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“He needs to be held accountable for every bullet,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams told the jury, emphasizing what he said was the depth of Roof’s hatred.“The parishioners could not have seen the hatred in his heart,” Williams said. “He sat and waited until they were at their most vulnerable.”Family members of the victims sobbed as Williams spoke.Defense attorney David Bruck said Williams was correct about the events.“Why, why did Dylann Roof do this?” Bruck said. “What was the explanation?”Bruck asked the jury to “look beyond the surface” and to ask, “Is there something more to this story?”The closing arguments come after a week of dramatic arguments and chilling testimony about the June 2015 massacre.Prosecutors presented Roof as a “cold and calculating” killer. Jurors saw a witness whose son was killed sobbing on the stand. They heard an FBI agent read a series of Roof’s racist writings. And they watched a video of Roof laughing after admitting he killed the victims.
This writer takes a more harsh view than I do, in that I believe the racist crap has become so part and parcel of the conservative sphere, people (white people) just tune it out.
Second, the Clinton’s are so maniacally despised by those on the right – it was a lot more about keeping Hillary out, than letting Trump in.
What I believe needs to happen is
A) Start putting the fear of God into those acting out by campaigning for the strictest penalties possible under the law
B) Continue the protests
C) Encourage Local and State Government to resist
D) Set up a plan of escalation. We live in an electronic-Internet based society, there are a lot of ways to make your point without throwing bricks.
Well…Looks like the guy who hacked Hillary’s email server when she was Secretary of State…
Is in for a long enforced vacation, with no phone, no pool, and no pets.
He was indicted on charges including wire fraud, unauthorized access of protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking and obstruction of justice.
A Romanian computer hacker who revealed the existence of a private email server used by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state is expected to plead guilty to hacking-related offenses, a U.S. law enforcement official said on Tuesday.
Accused hacker Marcel Lazar, who used the alias “Guccifer,” is scheduled to enter a guilty plea at a hearing early on Wednesday before Judge James Cacheris in U.S. District Court, Alexandria, Virginia, said the official.
He was indicted on charges including wire fraud, unauthorized access of protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking and obstruction of justice.
The official and another person familiar with the Guccifer investigation, who asked not to be named ahead of the proceedings, said Lazar’s plea would not validate claims he has made in recent media interviews about successfully hacking the email server Clinton installed at her home in Chappaqua, New York. She used it to handle both official and personal message traffic when she was Secretary of State.
The two sources said the U.S. investigation of Lazar turned up no evidence to support thehacker‘s claims that he had broken into Clinton’s private server. Its contents and operations are the focus of an FBI investigation.
Lazar’s public defender, Shannon Quill, did not respond to a request for comment.
In an interview with NBC News before his extradition from Romania, Lazar claimed that Clinton’s private server “was like an open orchid on the internet.”
Clinton, law enforcement and national security officials have said there is no evidence that Guccifer or any other unauthorized or outside party breached Clinton’s private server.
None of the State Department-related message traffic that moved through the private server when Clinton served as secretary of state was marked and treated as classified.
However, among the targets of Guccifer’s hacking was an AOL email account used by Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton White House aide and unofficial adviser.
Marcel AKA Gucifer, Doing the Perp Walk
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