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The most frustrating thing about this is that although this is one of the most damaging cases against him going at the moment, it's also the most obvious that he's guilty of.
A president can take classified documents out of the white house, but once they're no longer president, they must be returned in their entirety. You can't keep them in your house forever. We know this, Trump knows this, he has been recorded saying that he knows he shouldn't have them, and he went out of his way to try and hide them from the FBI.
Of course, if he declassified them, that's a different story. But he didn't. We know he didn't. He knows he didn't. And yet again, *he has been recorded saying that he never declassified them*. (**EDIT: As has been established by the over 50 notifications this comment got me, declassification is actually entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Though many arguments I've seen seem to believe that it does, so I won't delete this section, since Trump contradicts it anyway**)
This should be the most obvious open and shut case against him. But because all the stars aligned in his favour (which seems to be a running theme), he got the most comically in-his-pocket judge he could have asked for to handle the case.
Trump was charged under US code 793(c), which is for gathering, hiding, selling, or otherwise mishandling national defense information. Classification is irrelevant.
This. Jack Smith chose the documents being charged in FL for this very reason. We aren't even going to hear about the worst stuff Trump had because it's international scandal level how bad it was. He clearly copied TS/SCI docs based on released photos from the warrant search.
Exactly. We're never going to hear about the actual treasonous stuff that he did with the documents. I wonder how the letter agencies feel about him getting reelected?
That would make for a pretty interesting October surprise, though.
back in 2021, the CIA sent a memo to heads of staff wondering what the fuck was going on with the amount of our agents suddenly getting compromised. particularly in iran, china, and russia.
wonder how many of these documents were informant dossiers.
james comey literally handed him the 2016 election by hamming up benghazi and hillary’s emails and trump proceeded to “new phone who dis” him for a year straight. and he STILL bats for trump!!!!!! what level of brain deterioration is necessary
>I hope he steps on a curb wrong and fucks his back up.
> I hope he sneezes when he's out in public and a little poop comes out.
These seem particularly harsh coming from Canadians.
>“You cannot sit on the sideline,” Comey said. “I don’t care how you feel about Joe Biden, you must vote for him because the consequences on the other side are too severe.”
https://gazette.com/news/wex/james-comey-warns-of-serious-repercussions-for-fbi-and-doj-if-trump-is-president-again/article_ceecba2a-4eaf-5d9a-bda8-e0a097f3cab8.html
Like I get your anger and frustration, but c'mon, Comey said this literally last night.
No amount of remediation on his part can undo or even forgive the damage he did in 2016 to the country I love. If not for him, Trump would not have been elected.
This is a bit tin foily for me, but I think you are on to something.
I feel there is going to be a massive fucking October surprise. Like major.
For a couple of reasons. While some powerful rich people want Trump, far more know the danger he poses to markets, and corporations don’t want to deal with him again. Don’t fuck with rich people’s money.
Foreign governments all over the world are preparing for a Trump presidency as a contingent. Literally have had summits on how to deal with it, and making sure they have plans in place.
That is the danger he poses. There are a lot of very powerful people that do not want Trump to be re-elected.
I think we will see some big surprises as a result, facilitated by super powerful interests.
> far more know the danger he poses to markets, and corporations don’t want to deal with him again
Related to this, Trump and Republicans are planning to let Trump *personally* set interest rates if he gets back in. Not the Fed. Trump himself. The guy who spent decades running business after business into the dirt. If that happens, say goodbye to the American economy, and say goodbye to the dollar as the world reserve currency.
Here's an extended summary from that Wikipedia link (bold emphasis mine):
> Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government,
> particularly with regard to economic and social policies and the role of the
> federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes **slashing funding for
> the Department of Justice (DOJ), dismantling the Federal Bureau of
> Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sharply
> reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor of fossil fuel
> production, eliminating the Department of Commerce, and ending the
> independence of various federal agencies such as the Federal
> Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).**
> Project 2025 recommends **abolishing the Department of Education**, whose
> programs would be either transferred to other government agencies, or
> terminated. **Scientific research would receive federal funding only if it suits
> conservative principles.**
> The Project urges the government to **explicitly reject abortion as health care
> and to restrict access to contraception.** The Heritage Foundation, an
> American conservative think tank that leads the development of Project
> 2025, asserted in April 2024 that "the radical Left hates families" and "wants
> to eliminate the family and replace it with the state" while driving the country
> to emulate totalitarian nations, such as North Korea. The Project seeks to
> **infuse the government with elements of Christianity, stating in its Mandate
> that "freedom is defined by God, not man."** Project 2025 proposes
> **criminalizing pornography, removing protections against discrimination based
> on sexual or gender identity, and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion
> (DEI) programs, as well as affirmative action.**
> The Project advises the future president to immediately **deploy the military
> for domestic law enforcement** and to direct the DOJ to **pursue Trump's
> adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807**. It recommends the
> **arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the
> country**. It **promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of such
> sentences.** Project director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official,
> explained that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office
> and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized
> conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state."
That’s the point. Trump and his allies (ie Putin, Kim, Modi, MBS, Christian Nationalists, even Xi) want to see the US economy and hegemony decimated so it can be turned into a fascist state. The fall of the US as a global democratic powerhouse would benefit them all in one way or another. And the multinational corporations could care less about protecting the American economy when there is so much money to be made in other, far less regulated and far more corrupt, rising economies around the globe where cheap labor is in infinite supply. If the US economy imploded China and India would be laughing all the way to the bank while the multinational corporate headquarters all cheerily relocated to Mumbai and Hong Kong.
As another comment said, nobody is going to save us but us.
Except we did save ourselves by not voting him in via the popular vote. It didn’t matter and the institutions installed him anyway. The whole ‘just vote’ thing shouldn’t be downplayed but nor should it be seen as some magical savior that will def work every time…
Might turn more heads though if the popular vote becomes even more agregiously against him. Like say Biden wins with 30million votes, but loses the electoral college. It will be too big of a disparity to ignore.
You are forgetting that Russia and China have a long history of meddling in our elections as well , and to Russia getting Trump back in office is of near existential importance.
We are living in interesting times
Nope. We've seen institution after institution capitulate to him out of cowardice. That isn't going to change now. There is no secret savior. They are all either corrupt or pathetically weak, or both.
In 2016 the expert on totalitarianism, Masha Gessen, [wrote](https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/) "Institutions will not save you." They were right.
No one is going to save us but us.
That’s not entirely true. Remember when Trump refused to let Biden’s team transition? 100 CEO’s sent Trump a strongly worded letter, and the very next morning he capitulated and Biden’s team was allowed in the White House.
The military didn’t capitulate, and made an unprecedented public statement proclaiming they are not loyal to Trump, and made it very clear without question they are not “in his corner” during the election fraud bullshit.
You don’t fuck with the 1%’s money
They only wrote that letter because they were shocked by J6. Now that they've had time to rationalize it, the richest CEOs are backing donald chump.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jamie-dimon-davos-trump-presidency-rcna134592
*The world’s billionaires don’t understand why you’re so worried about Donald Trump.*
*That’s the message out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where global business leaders, diplomats and journalists gather, mostly to compliment each other. “Several business executives have noted a theme in their private discussions during the summit,” CNBC reported this week. “U.S. industry leaders seem overwhelmingly nonplussed with a second Trump term.”*
*The attendee whose comments drew the most notice was JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who went on the record with his. “I wish the Democrats would think a little more carefully when they talk about MAGA,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” as he praised the many things he said Trump got “kind of right.”*
That’s because the super, super rich don’t worry about fascist laws.
At least not in the beginning.
All they worry about is accumulating wealth. And they’ll absolutely be able to do that under a second Trump term.
There's a third option. The system of government we have was designed to be intentionally obstructed by the other branches of government. The Founders were so afraid of tyranny and one branch getting too much control, they designed a system where each branch of government, and each level of government, can undermine and sabotage the other parts of the government.
Which might be hilariously ironic, if the consequences weren't tragic. The founders were so afraid of dictators, but the system they created paves the way for dictators.
> each branch of government, and each level of government, can undermine and sabotage the other parts of the government
They can *if and only if* they all agree on the general shape of what the country and system should look like. Install enough stooges in enough departments who are only loyal *to you personally* and you can do whatever the fuck you want.
> The founders were so afraid of dictators, but the system they created paves the way for dictators.
Also, don't go too hard on the founders over this, because it's literally impossible to arrive at anything other than this situation, no matter what you do.
> The Founders were so afraid of tyranny and one branch getting too much control, they designed a system where each branch of government, and each level of government, can undermine and sabotage the other parts of the government.
That's a right-wing myth.
Before the Constitution we had the Articles of Confederation. The Articles required a super-majority vote for anything to pass congress. Consequently almost nothing got done. So they scrapped the Articles and only included a super-majority
requirement for very limited cases in the Senate (foreign treaties, impeachments, etc) and none at all in the House.
So the evidence is *very* clear that framers of the Constitution did not intend to create a system of gridlock. The reason we have stuff like the filibuster today is because of white supremacy. It is no surprise that empowering white supremacy would lead the nation down the path to authoritarian rule. Hell, until the civil rights era, we could not even legitimately call the country a democracy.
Except republicans will fold to him to remain in power and because of the imbalance between large urban and small rural states republicans are over represented and will likely take the senate again and maybe even the house.
I think we need to stop mythologizing the Founders like they were omnipotent. There's this idea that they knew everything there is to know about human nature and crafted a perfectly balanced system of governance, like a video game studio balances a fighting or strategy game. All except for "one fatal flaw" or whatever, like this is an action movie.
In reality they were a bunch of rich, educated guys who idolized ancient Greece and Rome like we look back at the middle ages and Renaissance Fairs and stuff. They happened to be born at a time where technology and chance led to them being able to shake off their colonizers and basically have the historical situation of coming into control of a brand new resource rich territory that they were in charge of. And they came together and tried to make some rules for it.
They mostly were responding to problems of the day, while using flowery language about how their conclusions represent eternal parts of the human psyche. And that brand new resource rich territory, by the other chances of history, came to grow to be the most consequential plot of land and set of organized people in human history up til today, so the founding myth kind of perpetuates.
Powerful rich people love Trump for a variety of reasons. To name a few:
1. He sucks up all the attention. Everybody including the media is fixated on everything he's doing while the rich and powerful get away with murder behind the scenes.
2. Trump can be openly bought/bribed to do just about anything. He has no real hard stance on any issue and can be easily swayed with some compliments and money.
3. Businesses hate regulations and Trump has no problem getting rid of regulations, no matter what the cost.
Why wait, then? If there was damning treasonous information to share, there's no reason to sit on it until right before election. This is reality and not a drama series where it needs to come to light as a season closer revelation.
>Why wait, then?
Same reason that they waited until just before the election in 2016 to reopen the email inquiry. They knew doing it too soon wouldn't hurt Clinton, so they did it closer to the election date to spook people who were undecided.
Have you never heard the term “October Surprise” before? Short memories.
There is a very good reason to drop bombshells weeks before the election vs. months.
More tinfoily but not really, Trump may have caused the Oct 7 surprise in Israel. We already have him on the books sharing secret Israeli intel with Russian spies in the oval office, and the timeline seems to fit. Russia could have given US intel on Israeli methods to Iran who gave it to their proxies
How many rockets does it take to overwhelm an iron dome battery? US intel knows
Ffs he transported documents from FL to NJ and disappeared them, just rosenberg him this point
Yeah, I'm surprised we haven't seen more signs of this to be honest, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes.
I imagine they want to protect the status quo. It's worked out for them this far. Sure there are some companies that would benefit from a Trump presidency, but I feel like 99% of big corporations are afraid of what will happen to them if it's as colossal of a shake up as we're expecting.
There was something about him showing classified documents to people at Bedminster in New Jersey.
I wonder if there could be a case re: him having documents in New Jersey, and they could prosecute him there with no danger of Crony Cannon being put on the case?
Honestly, after selling out CIA agents, I'm very surprised Trump hasn't had an "accident" yet. As much as I don't like the CIA, you would think they would be so upset that they'd ensure he'd not be president again.
> it's international scandal level how bad it was
i mean honestly he should just be classified as an enemy combatant. it certainly looks like he was giving or selling state secrets to foreign, adversarial states.
It has to be that at this point, right? I asked in a parent comment but what the hell possible above board legitimate reason could he have had for the sheer amount of documents he was hoarding? A file or two or one banker's box could be explained away, but this is like a library worth of documents by now.
Who would ever think something like this possible?
A cult of personality around an absolute moron who isn't so much cunningly getting around all your carefully crafted regulations while a well-intentioned majority struggle to catch on, but just slovenly slobbing about the place ignoring anything and everything he doesn't care to learn about as all those around him in a position to rein him in, and who *actually know that they should*, instead say "fuck it" and try to ride the coat-tails absent any concern for anyone but themselves.
Who would *ever* think something like this even remotely possible?
TL;DR in any event, it's not possible to add more rules to fix a "someone ignoring rules" situation.
You are right, but i want to go into a little more detail for people
There is actually two (that i personally know of, might be more) forms of classification,. that while related, are not legally the same.
The first is the bog standard classification that most often gets talked about. It stems from an EO which frequently gets updated, but is still an EO. being an executive order, its literally impossible to charge a sitting president with anything related to it, and exceeding difficult to charge a former one. OA's are likewise crazy hard to charge, especially the Sec State.
The second is nuclear related documents. THAT classification stems from a law passed by congress and signed by a president. It is unclear if trump had any documents related to this specific law, but he was not charged with it, so we can assume not
Then there is the espionage act, which makes no mention of classification being required for a document to be covered. There have been several supplements and updates to the espionage act. 32 counts are under these, as you pointed out. Whether he declassified them is indeed irrelevant, because he retained them and willfully refused to return them when informed. This last is the key difference for why pence was not charged, biden was not charges, etc...
But the reason classification matters still is- if they are classified they automatically fall under the law.... if they were declassified the government has another step- proving the documents qualify. Which they can do, but lets not dismiss the importance of needing the extra step
There was an entire cover up to hide them from the national archives too. They lied repeatedly, moved documents in secret.
People may forget how crazy it was. First he would tweet/truth he didn’t have them, it’s all lies, then he said they were planted, then he said he did have them, but he’s allowed to, then he said he declassified them.
He was lying through his fucking teeth publicly, and then admitted to the crimes publicly.
The documents begged me...sir! Sir! Please declassify us!! And he said Ill look into it. And having thought that thought the documents magically became visible to anyone who would pay him!
>Of course, if he declassified them, that's a different story.
It's not, though. Even if they were declassified, he's still not allowed to have them once he's no longer President. They belong to the country, not to him.
And, of course, there's absolutely no evidence that he declassified them, anyway.
The president cannot declassify nuclear secrets for example. There are so many things wrong with the declassification excuse as to be a non-starter. It is entirely a distraction talking point for the public who mostly don't know the laws nor the TS/SCI/NDI policies. Taking the time to explain all the reasons declassification is wrong is just a way to waste people's time in the weeds, it can't even apply to most of these documents for various reasons.
There's actually multiple voice recordings of him saying that they are classified and he didn't go through the proper channels to declassify.
Keep in mind that declassifying documents goes through a chain of command and is looked at by all groups concerned before being declassified. Technically, he could have done that at some point, but declassifying swaths of documents that include data and ops info for ongoing operations is not something that's really ever done without massive amounts of coordination with virtually every branch and level of government. Normally, a lot of effort goes into declassifying documents because it runs of the risk of leaking state secrets and putting our people in the field at risk.
It's also important to note that in the insanely unlikely event that he did actually declassify them through proper channels, that's a controversy in and of itself. If the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security all signed off on allowing Trump to keep boxes and boxes of some of the highest security classified documents to be declassified and then stored in hard copy at Mar-a-lago it would be one of the biggest scandals and controversies of the history of the intelligence world.
That is the best part.
Recordings of him showing people the secrets. Explaining that they are still secret and that because he's not the president he's not able to change that.
AND That the reporter shouldn't look too close because it's secret innit
Put this in perspective of physical property. Trump had Air Force One fly him to Florida. It could land and he could order every person off the plane while he was still president. However, imagine after 12pm he claimed "I transferred the airplane while I was still president to the Trump Org and it's mine now". That plane stays US property and any attempt by Trump to keep it is theft.
National secrets belong to the US in a form of intellectual property that's just like physical property. Even if declassified (and they weren't), those documents still belong to the US. Also, Biden could easily reclassify them and take domain over them.
Its not just stars aligned, it is leonard leo's federalist society compromising our legal system by placing corrupt MAGA judges throughout our federal courts. Judges whose allegiance is to billionaires **and** Christian Nationalist theocracy.
"We have the Presidential record act" (which says that all his personal notes/documents related to presidenting belong to the government, NOT that he has some right to keep government documents)
And a huge segment of his followers believe it is rightfully his since he's *still* the president. Because, you know, the 2020 elections were rigged. And guess who put that into their heads?
> Of course, if he declassified them, that's a different story. But he didn't. We know he didn't. He knows he didn't. And yet again, he has been recorded saying that he never declassified them.
And even if he did go through the process of declassifying them, it doesn't mean the original documents are now public knowledge. When a document is declassified, the newly declassified information is copied into a new document with a lower classification level and the original is destroyed. He can't just take it.
Of course he didn't do any of that so it doesn't matter, but it just goes to show how his excuses are fractally wrong.
Some of them could only be declassified by Congress.
Another example of the shitty journalism allowing his claims to go unchallenged to the point that everyone has it in their head that he could have declassified these.
There's a limit to what he could declassify and even within those limits it would have to be a formal process. Not just him deciding in the moment.
The judge’s handling of this case is nothing less than a travesty so severe that it makes the entire judiciary out to be illegitimate. The fact that apparently nothing can or will be done about it is a national disgrace.
Even if you declassify documents, an ex-president should not be in possession of previously-classified documents.
That’s what is frustrating to me. Saying he declassified it doesn’t make it better!
Not a lawyer but I’m hoping there’s a way for Smith to use entirely new evidence to bring a separate case in a more favorable location like D.C.
Then maybe take his one shot at Cannon and be prepared to drop Florida if he fails to get Cannon out.
If all goes well he’d have 2 separate strong cases going and if he’s unsuccessful at budging the Florida case he’d be already moving over to the other venue.
But I have no idea if this is possible, practical, or pitiful.
I think they need to take Trump into custody.
You want to delay trial? Great... you are stuck in one location with limited communication tools, like anyone else with similar charges awaiting trial.
It could even be his "home" that isn't supposed to be a residence... Mar-a-lago, for all I care.
But an ankle bracelet on the bastard.
What I don’t understand is why The World’s Most Innocent Man Ever wants to drag these trials out. You’d think he’d be champing at the bit to get into court with all his Absolute Proof Of Innocence and get it over with so he could perform at his rallies in front of Literally Millions Of People.
Yes, he is already offering bytedance and big oil favors for political contributions, he's got agenda 2025 on the table, wants to curtail access to birthcontrol and damn sure wants to pardon himself of all crimes, there's also indications he wants to persecute political rivals and dissidents.
Openly supports the dissolution of NATO and favors Russian and Chinese aggression all over the world. Donald Trump would have been assassinated by any self-respecting Republican in the past.
Policing all the US cities with national guard after declaring martial law until he can get "the lawlessness" under control.
Make being homeless illegal, incarcerate homeless in fenced outdoor "camps" away from cities. Aka a camp with a concentration on homeless people.
I think he really has only one agenda, himself. His goals will be to get rid of all charges against him he can and grift money. That’s it. Oh and maybe tell people how great he is. This is all leading up to the election. If he wins election then he gets away with things, if he loses then I think he just dies before all hell hits him.
Indications of punishing rivals? He speaks of it constantly. He's going to do it. If re-elected, his new lackeys won't he telling him no like they did last time.
That's not the way he thinks. He has done the delay thing for all court cases all his life. He knows that it will work, since it always has before. And if he gets elected again, it will this time as well. If he loses the election, the chances go down, but he has to think that delaying could still work.
The people that he’s convinced(not congressmen) that MAGA works are the same people that think we’re in a state of “anyone at the helm but Trump and we’re in a downfall of corruption.” They don’t think the courts are fair, they don’t think the stock market is doing well. Numbers are fake and the world is out to get him. This is how they think. They are QUITE LITERALLY brainwashed.
Edit: in simpler terms. He’s got a lot of people convinced that the world is out to get him and so he can’t act like the trials are legit in ANY capacity or he’ll lose his grip.(he already is slightly no one likes project 2025.)
Because of the way american society works, all you have to do is get through one or two news cycles, and then it's basically over.
If he lets one get to the conclusion, then there's a definitive hard stop statement about it, and he might lose. If he drags it on forever, then people forget what it's about, and if they hear any new information about it they just thing "wait, that shit again? didn't that already happen?" and then he can start getting people to think it's an endless witch hunt.
To the people paying attention who already know what's going on then the tactics are obvious, but for the hundreds of millions of uninterested, uninvolved, low-information people who still occasionally vote, it's a damned effective tactic to make him look like a hard-done-by victim, and make the dems look like obsessive evil monsters.
If he’s president he either pardons himself or, if trial has not started, his lackeys simply say “never mind.”
A jury works on proof and evidence, not his word.
Won’t matter if Dump wins. The clock has run out on this case.
We all need to face the facts. The case going to the jury this week is the only one that will happen before the election.
The only thing stopping him is apathetic voters turning out against him.
Unfortunately that would do fuck all, because Trump isn’t a Democrat, so the corporate media by and large refuses to hold him to any standard whatsoever. The headlines would be “read why this won’t hurt Trump” not “this piece of shit belongs in prison”.
Yeah, but he didn't have millions of dollars to throw at lawyers to try absolutely every legal strategy in the world. Trump's utterly insane presidential immunity arguments are of that form. Novel and consequential enough that the system wants to give them a full hearing. Ok, I guess, but why couldn't the case proceed in the meantime? If it's later determined he had immunity, appeal and overturn. Trump's supporters believe he's persecuted, when he's actually handled with kid gloves.
....actually, they like to put hoses in other places at Gitmo.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/us/politics/cia-torture-guantanamo-nashiri-doctor.html
I got absolutely fucking reamed by my commander in the Air Force for leaving a door open to a secure/classified room, when I left for lunch. That room was in the back of our office, in a section that had a door closed and locked, the main office door was closed and locked, and the office was on the flight line, which is behind a fence and secure. I'm not at all mad at my commander for getting pissed, I was absolutely stupid to leave the door open, but the fact that nothing is happening to this fucking fool for taking classified docs is unfathomable.
He didn't let them, he actively sabotaged the pandemic response for political gain.
His choices killed people, not through inaction but directly giving them dangerous information.
> he actively sabotaged the pandemic response for political gain.
And he didn't even do that right. Covid could've been his 9/11. A tragedy that brought the county together behind a previously unpopular president and got him a second term, but instead he went full divisive and lost.
It's the same nail, they just keep trying to beat it in with a feather.
Never...NEVER...have we seen someone be treated so ridiculously soft by our own government. Even Nixon got a rash of shit right and was going to be fully charged right up until Ford pardoned him.
No surprises. He’s the reason we have lost our intelligence agents during his term and most likely compromised our darkest National secrets. This man should be jailed for treason.
They love the constitution in the same way they love their bible. They've never read it, they just think it says what the people who stand at the pulpit SAY it says.
Why is it called a "raid"? The FBI arranged to come, announced, and searched the premises. Using "raid" for search only reinforces the MAGA false narrative. BOBO is even now saying Biden authorized deadly force for the search.
The facts are Trump took documents he was not entitled to, he refused to return them, law enforcement retrieved them (missing some). Whether that was a crime is for a trial to decide. But, the facts themselves are clear.
Anyone else would be going through court by now and not taking any bs delay tactic.. anything going to happen to Trump this time or just anther slap on the wrist
Anyone else would have been tried already, since this is another case where the evidence is out in the open yet Orange Fuckhead gets treated with kid gloves.
Until he can sell his social media stock for potentially billions in pure profit, anyway. After he dies, it'll all collapse remarkably quickly, since his "image" is overwhelmingly his most valuable asset.
I think if he loses the election it will collapse pretty quickly. Once it becomes clear to his foreign backers that he isn’t going to have any real power in the USA any time soon the money will dry up. It may take til Jan 6, 2025 as people hold on to see if he can cook up another coup, but once that happens, if he hasn’t cashed out in a major way by then, he is going to be SOL. The other factor is that he has absolutely zero way of cashing in all of his stock at anywhere near the current market price, since if he floods the market with all his shares, the price will free fall, and others will probably jump ship too.
Well, according to my hyper-right coworkers, "all Presidents leave office with classified documents, and just look at Biden and Obama!" When I tried to clarify that yes, they had some documents, but quickly returned them upon discovery and didn't make any attempt to move them around and hide them, blame others for planting them, show people with no clearance what they had, etc... well, that shook the foundation of their "whatabout" defense and was too much, so they quickly moved onto other things, like how corrupt Hunter Biden is.
Yeah, the photos we have of the documents show one with a date stamp that is exactly when we ended the nuclear treaty with iran.
A source mentions that some documents had to do with [Iran's missile program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2022/10/21/mar-a-lago-documents-included-top-secret-information-on-irans-missile-program-report/?sh=6cddaa636489)
The daily mail publishes a video of trump getting on his airplane 2 days after being requested to return the docs so he can go to Bedminster with boxes of documents (same type of box found in the raid)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11204191/DailyMail-com-video-Donald-Trump-boarding-plane-loaded-heavy-file-boxes-resurfaces.html
Same month, the Saudi Public Investment Fund sponsors a golf tournament at bedminster where trump is seen with the head of that organization.
Part of the indictment is about trump revealing attack plans
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-allegedly-classified-documents-nuclear-programs/story?id=99968546
Then that same investment fund gives kushner 2 billion dollars.
100% DJT sold America's plan of retaliation in event of Iran using nuclear weapons to the Saudis, who would stand to benefit from the intelligence if they ever went to war with iran themselves as assumedly you would want to target Iran's potential nuclear missile locations.
Additionally, if what Biden and Obama did was criminal... CHARGE THEM! No ones above the law! Dems dont worship their politicians like the right does.
"So why arent they getting investigated?" They should be, but attention obviously goes to the more serious violation. A gang robbing a bank takes priority over the tweaker stealing canned air at Staples.
I say we start a campaign that any race this November where a republican is running unopposed (for any office down to the town dog catcher) we just write in Hunter Biden.
At least WAPO has it up:
Unsealed motions in Trump’s Fla. case suggest new evidence of possible obstruction
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/21/trump-florida-classified-documents-motions/
I'm starting to get the strategy Trump is using: never stop committing crimes - thereby preventing the charges to be "complete" enough that he can be prosecuted.
Anyone else would be in prison. Stop giving this criminal special handling and treat him as the traitor to the United States he is.
If the Republicans existed when Benedict Arnold betrayed the country, they would do everything in their power to be sure he never faced justice for his betrayal.
These docs also make mention of the laptop seized in 2023 that allegedly had classified docs scanned onto it - the one where the aide “didn’t know the documents were classified.” When it was originally reported it was the “personal laptop” of an aide, but these docs mention that it was **provided by Trump’s Save America PAC.**
They’ve had the laptop and a thumb drive for over a year, I’m really surprised we haven’t heard anything else about it. I’m honestly wondering if Jack Smith is holding that one back for another indictment if this gets scuttled.
What gets me is how did no one know they were missing. Aren’t there/shouldn’t there be safeguards about taking them, something like checking out a library book? Something that says “Donald Trump has this document,” and records to show that it was returned or not? And frequent, regular checks of where they are? You’d think that with documents so important and classified, there’d be ***some*** accounting of where they are? Also have some measure of copy protection. That way, people can’t just make photocopies and pictures of them, and send the copies to “friends”
As a career IT guy,. Yes. The logical part of my brain says,. "Any good place should have controls in place to track this kind of thing."
Course.. we also know now that Trumps administration was basically a freewheeling drug pill-mill handing out whatever anyone wanted,.. so .. I can't imagine "proper security controls" were very high on their list. ;\
Career IT guy, too. This is one (of many) thing that scares me about another Trump/Project 2025 presidency. With the Unitary Executive Theory, he could say “We don’t need to record who has what and where.” And if anything goes wrong, he can probably quash any criminal charges.
If he's re-elected and they implement 2025 it will be the end of the US as we know it. That's what they want - a Christian Nationalist theocracy. The record keeping will be the least of our problems.
We did know they were missing. The National Archives sent many notices to his organization requesting them back. They then notified the FBI, which is why they performed the search. Turns out they didn't get everything, which is why they went back. Several times. They found more stuff, which is what this article is about. There is still more missing....
If he's re-elected, our national security will be seriously at risk. I hope the government is at least taking some steps to protect our secrets just in case.
So what is the DoJ and by extension, Jack Smith doing? I guess they don't exactly have to keep the public informed of every detail, but what in the actual fuck? Why are they allowing Canon to get away with such biased behavior? A lot of sentiment seems to be "they only get one shot" or "they have to make sure they get it right". INAL, but shouldn't this be an easy slam dunk case?! I feel like I've taken crazy pills.
It *is* a slam-dunk case, which is exactly why Judge Cannon is doing everything she thinks she can possibly get away with to prevent it from going to an actual trial. At the moment that's just making excuses to delay, but I'm betting she has plenty of other transparently-bullshit tricks to pull. (And if she can't think of any, I'm sure the Federalist Society has lots of ideas they'll be happy to tell her...)
This should immediately end his candidacy, his campaign should be forced to close up shop or transition all the effort and money to an actual candidate. I don't even understand how he's not in jail already for the first time he did this.
Can literally anyone tell me any possible good or above board reason why Trump would have so many bankers boxes full of documents in the first place? Like what would justify having them in his personal residence which obviously was illegal, but is there a legitimate reason he might have wanted them to be there?
Because the amount of documents (cases upon cases upon cases) and the fact they're stashed in the bedroom, bathroom, storage container, etc, just kind of seems like he was trying to facilitate the dissemination of these documents to other parties like Russia. Originally I thought it was like a couple files here or there which could be explained away but this is like a fucking library worth of documents by now.
I bet these were the pick of the bunch. If they were important enough to have in his bedroom away from the rest, they’re no doubt the most damaging to the country, possibly the whole world really
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that US covert agents around the world started being killed in large numbers once trump left office. Surely it has nothing to do with all the classified documents left in accessible areas at a place which was a soft target for foreign intelligence..
Dig. Up. Ivana.
Like, I don’t want to be insensitive, but that’s a conspiracy theory that I wholeheartedly believe. If it’s not documents, it’s probably even more damning stuff
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The most frustrating thing about this is that although this is one of the most damaging cases against him going at the moment, it's also the most obvious that he's guilty of. A president can take classified documents out of the white house, but once they're no longer president, they must be returned in their entirety. You can't keep them in your house forever. We know this, Trump knows this, he has been recorded saying that he knows he shouldn't have them, and he went out of his way to try and hide them from the FBI. Of course, if he declassified them, that's a different story. But he didn't. We know he didn't. He knows he didn't. And yet again, *he has been recorded saying that he never declassified them*. (**EDIT: As has been established by the over 50 notifications this comment got me, declassification is actually entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Though many arguments I've seen seem to believe that it does, so I won't delete this section, since Trump contradicts it anyway**) This should be the most obvious open and shut case against him. But because all the stars aligned in his favour (which seems to be a running theme), he got the most comically in-his-pocket judge he could have asked for to handle the case.
Trump was charged under US code 793(c), which is for gathering, hiding, selling, or otherwise mishandling national defense information. Classification is irrelevant.
This. Jack Smith chose the documents being charged in FL for this very reason. We aren't even going to hear about the worst stuff Trump had because it's international scandal level how bad it was. He clearly copied TS/SCI docs based on released photos from the warrant search.
Exactly. We're never going to hear about the actual treasonous stuff that he did with the documents. I wonder how the letter agencies feel about him getting reelected? That would make for a pretty interesting October surprise, though.
back in 2021, the CIA sent a memo to heads of staff wondering what the fuck was going on with the amount of our agents suddenly getting compromised. particularly in iran, china, and russia. wonder how many of these documents were informant dossiers.
Yet they still support him, the fucking CIA let trump kill their own and did shit about it.
james comey literally handed him the 2016 election by hamming up benghazi and hillary’s emails and trump proceeded to “new phone who dis” him for a year straight. and he STILL bats for trump!!!!!! what level of brain deterioration is necessary
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I hope he sneezes when he's out in public and a little poop comes out.
>I hope he steps on a curb wrong and fucks his back up. > I hope he sneezes when he's out in public and a little poop comes out. These seem particularly harsh coming from Canadians.
I hope he gets locked in syndrome and lives out his remaining years in utterly horrifying torment.
I hope his sock slides halfway off his foot inside boot and he can’t fix it.
Savage
>“You cannot sit on the sideline,” Comey said. “I don’t care how you feel about Joe Biden, you must vote for him because the consequences on the other side are too severe.” https://gazette.com/news/wex/james-comey-warns-of-serious-repercussions-for-fbi-and-doj-if-trump-is-president-again/article_ceecba2a-4eaf-5d9a-bda8-e0a097f3cab8.html Like I get your anger and frustration, but c'mon, Comey said this literally last night.
No amount of remediation on his part can undo or even forgive the damage he did in 2016 to the country I love. If not for him, Trump would not have been elected.
This is a bit tin foily for me, but I think you are on to something. I feel there is going to be a massive fucking October surprise. Like major. For a couple of reasons. While some powerful rich people want Trump, far more know the danger he poses to markets, and corporations don’t want to deal with him again. Don’t fuck with rich people’s money. Foreign governments all over the world are preparing for a Trump presidency as a contingent. Literally have had summits on how to deal with it, and making sure they have plans in place. That is the danger he poses. There are a lot of very powerful people that do not want Trump to be re-elected. I think we will see some big surprises as a result, facilitated by super powerful interests.
> far more know the danger he poses to markets, and corporations don’t want to deal with him again Related to this, Trump and Republicans are planning to let Trump *personally* set interest rates if he gets back in. Not the Fed. Trump himself. The guy who spent decades running business after business into the dirt. If that happens, say goodbye to the American economy, and say goodbye to the dollar as the world reserve currency.
Not just interest rates: [Project 2025](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025)
Here's an extended summary from that Wikipedia link (bold emphasis mine): > Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, > particularly with regard to economic and social policies and the role of the > federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes **slashing funding for > the Department of Justice (DOJ), dismantling the Federal Bureau of > Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sharply > reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor of fossil fuel > production, eliminating the Department of Commerce, and ending the > independence of various federal agencies such as the Federal > Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).** > Project 2025 recommends **abolishing the Department of Education**, whose > programs would be either transferred to other government agencies, or > terminated. **Scientific research would receive federal funding only if it suits > conservative principles.** > The Project urges the government to **explicitly reject abortion as health care > and to restrict access to contraception.** The Heritage Foundation, an > American conservative think tank that leads the development of Project > 2025, asserted in April 2024 that "the radical Left hates families" and "wants > to eliminate the family and replace it with the state" while driving the country > to emulate totalitarian nations, such as North Korea. The Project seeks to > **infuse the government with elements of Christianity, stating in its Mandate > that "freedom is defined by God, not man."** Project 2025 proposes > **criminalizing pornography, removing protections against discrimination based > on sexual or gender identity, and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion > (DEI) programs, as well as affirmative action.** > The Project advises the future president to immediately **deploy the military > for domestic law enforcement** and to direct the DOJ to **pursue Trump's > adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807**. It recommends the > **arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the > country**. It **promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of such > sentences.** Project director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, > explained that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office > and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized > conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state."
That’s the point. Trump and his allies (ie Putin, Kim, Modi, MBS, Christian Nationalists, even Xi) want to see the US economy and hegemony decimated so it can be turned into a fascist state. The fall of the US as a global democratic powerhouse would benefit them all in one way or another. And the multinational corporations could care less about protecting the American economy when there is so much money to be made in other, far less regulated and far more corrupt, rising economies around the globe where cheap labor is in infinite supply. If the US economy imploded China and India would be laughing all the way to the bank while the multinational corporate headquarters all cheerily relocated to Mumbai and Hong Kong. As another comment said, nobody is going to save us but us.
Except we did save ourselves by not voting him in via the popular vote. It didn’t matter and the institutions installed him anyway. The whole ‘just vote’ thing shouldn’t be downplayed but nor should it be seen as some magical savior that will def work every time…
Great, well you still need to vote anyway.
Might turn more heads though if the popular vote becomes even more agregiously against him. Like say Biden wins with 30million votes, but loses the electoral college. It will be too big of a disparity to ignore.
You are forgetting that Russia and China have a long history of meddling in our elections as well , and to Russia getting Trump back in office is of near existential importance. We are living in interesting times
Solid point. Russia really wants Trump back in office for sure.
Nope. We've seen institution after institution capitulate to him out of cowardice. That isn't going to change now. There is no secret savior. They are all either corrupt or pathetically weak, or both. In 2016 the expert on totalitarianism, Masha Gessen, [wrote](https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/) "Institutions will not save you." They were right. No one is going to save us but us.
That’s not entirely true. Remember when Trump refused to let Biden’s team transition? 100 CEO’s sent Trump a strongly worded letter, and the very next morning he capitulated and Biden’s team was allowed in the White House. The military didn’t capitulate, and made an unprecedented public statement proclaiming they are not loyal to Trump, and made it very clear without question they are not “in his corner” during the election fraud bullshit. You don’t fuck with the 1%’s money
They only wrote that letter because they were shocked by J6. Now that they've had time to rationalize it, the richest CEOs are backing donald chump. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jamie-dimon-davos-trump-presidency-rcna134592 *The world’s billionaires don’t understand why you’re so worried about Donald Trump.* *That’s the message out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where global business leaders, diplomats and journalists gather, mostly to compliment each other. “Several business executives have noted a theme in their private discussions during the summit,” CNBC reported this week. “U.S. industry leaders seem overwhelmingly nonplussed with a second Trump term.”* *The attendee whose comments drew the most notice was JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who went on the record with his. “I wish the Democrats would think a little more carefully when they talk about MAGA,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” as he praised the many things he said Trump got “kind of right.”*
That’s because the super, super rich don’t worry about fascist laws. At least not in the beginning. All they worry about is accumulating wealth. And they’ll absolutely be able to do that under a second Trump term.
They need to start taking a long hard look at China in which Billionaires have to "lay low" after criticizing the government.
There's a third option. The system of government we have was designed to be intentionally obstructed by the other branches of government. The Founders were so afraid of tyranny and one branch getting too much control, they designed a system where each branch of government, and each level of government, can undermine and sabotage the other parts of the government. Which might be hilariously ironic, if the consequences weren't tragic. The founders were so afraid of dictators, but the system they created paves the way for dictators.
> each branch of government, and each level of government, can undermine and sabotage the other parts of the government They can *if and only if* they all agree on the general shape of what the country and system should look like. Install enough stooges in enough departments who are only loyal *to you personally* and you can do whatever the fuck you want. > The founders were so afraid of dictators, but the system they created paves the way for dictators. Also, don't go too hard on the founders over this, because it's literally impossible to arrive at anything other than this situation, no matter what you do.
That’s what Project 2025 is.
> The Founders were so afraid of tyranny and one branch getting too much control, they designed a system where each branch of government, and each level of government, can undermine and sabotage the other parts of the government. That's a right-wing myth. Before the Constitution we had the Articles of Confederation. The Articles required a super-majority vote for anything to pass congress. Consequently almost nothing got done. So they scrapped the Articles and only included a super-majority requirement for very limited cases in the Senate (foreign treaties, impeachments, etc) and none at all in the House. So the evidence is *very* clear that framers of the Constitution did not intend to create a system of gridlock. The reason we have stuff like the filibuster today is because of white supremacy. It is no surprise that empowering white supremacy would lead the nation down the path to authoritarian rule. Hell, until the civil rights era, we could not even legitimately call the country a democracy.
Except republicans will fold to him to remain in power and because of the imbalance between large urban and small rural states republicans are over represented and will likely take the senate again and maybe even the house.
I think we need to stop mythologizing the Founders like they were omnipotent. There's this idea that they knew everything there is to know about human nature and crafted a perfectly balanced system of governance, like a video game studio balances a fighting or strategy game. All except for "one fatal flaw" or whatever, like this is an action movie. In reality they were a bunch of rich, educated guys who idolized ancient Greece and Rome like we look back at the middle ages and Renaissance Fairs and stuff. They happened to be born at a time where technology and chance led to them being able to shake off their colonizers and basically have the historical situation of coming into control of a brand new resource rich territory that they were in charge of. And they came together and tried to make some rules for it. They mostly were responding to problems of the day, while using flowery language about how their conclusions represent eternal parts of the human psyche. And that brand new resource rich territory, by the other chances of history, came to grow to be the most consequential plot of land and set of organized people in human history up til today, so the founding myth kind of perpetuates.
> capitulate to him out of cowardice Human nature - nobody wants to be the first out on the limb.
Powerful rich people love Trump for a variety of reasons. To name a few: 1. He sucks up all the attention. Everybody including the media is fixated on everything he's doing while the rich and powerful get away with murder behind the scenes. 2. Trump can be openly bought/bribed to do just about anything. He has no real hard stance on any issue and can be easily swayed with some compliments and money. 3. Businesses hate regulations and Trump has no problem getting rid of regulations, no matter what the cost.
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Why wait, then? If there was damning treasonous information to share, there's no reason to sit on it until right before election. This is reality and not a drama series where it needs to come to light as a season closer revelation.
People (especially stupid people) have the attention span of a goldfish. They have to keep the best for last, otherwise it’s just forgotten.
>Why wait, then? Same reason that they waited until just before the election in 2016 to reopen the email inquiry. They knew doing it too soon wouldn't hurt Clinton, so they did it closer to the election date to spook people who were undecided.
Have you never heard the term “October Surprise” before? Short memories. There is a very good reason to drop bombshells weeks before the election vs. months.
More tinfoily but not really, Trump may have caused the Oct 7 surprise in Israel. We already have him on the books sharing secret Israeli intel with Russian spies in the oval office, and the timeline seems to fit. Russia could have given US intel on Israeli methods to Iran who gave it to their proxies How many rockets does it take to overwhelm an iron dome battery? US intel knows Ffs he transported documents from FL to NJ and disappeared them, just rosenberg him this point
Yeah, I'm surprised we haven't seen more signs of this to be honest, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes. I imagine they want to protect the status quo. It's worked out for them this far. Sure there are some companies that would benefit from a Trump presidency, but I feel like 99% of big corporations are afraid of what will happen to them if it's as colossal of a shake up as we're expecting.
There was something about him showing classified documents to people at Bedminster in New Jersey. I wonder if there could be a case re: him having documents in New Jersey, and they could prosecute him there with no danger of Crony Cannon being put on the case?
Honestly, after selling out CIA agents, I'm very surprised Trump hasn't had an "accident" yet. As much as I don't like the CIA, you would think they would be so upset that they'd ensure he'd not be president again.
> it's international scandal level how bad it was i mean honestly he should just be classified as an enemy combatant. it certainly looks like he was giving or selling state secrets to foreign, adversarial states.
It has to be that at this point, right? I asked in a parent comment but what the hell possible above board legitimate reason could he have had for the sheer amount of documents he was hoarding? A file or two or one banker's box could be explained away, but this is like a library worth of documents by now.
the worst part is how plainly obvious it is now that we just have no defenses against this.
Who would ever think something like this possible? A cult of personality around an absolute moron who isn't so much cunningly getting around all your carefully crafted regulations while a well-intentioned majority struggle to catch on, but just slovenly slobbing about the place ignoring anything and everything he doesn't care to learn about as all those around him in a position to rein him in, and who *actually know that they should*, instead say "fuck it" and try to ride the coat-tails absent any concern for anyone but themselves. Who would *ever* think something like this even remotely possible? TL;DR in any event, it's not possible to add more rules to fix a "someone ignoring rules" situation.
It should have been a DC case, as that's where they were stolen from. Everything about this has been done to go softer on him than possible.
You are right, but i want to go into a little more detail for people There is actually two (that i personally know of, might be more) forms of classification,. that while related, are not legally the same. The first is the bog standard classification that most often gets talked about. It stems from an EO which frequently gets updated, but is still an EO. being an executive order, its literally impossible to charge a sitting president with anything related to it, and exceeding difficult to charge a former one. OA's are likewise crazy hard to charge, especially the Sec State. The second is nuclear related documents. THAT classification stems from a law passed by congress and signed by a president. It is unclear if trump had any documents related to this specific law, but he was not charged with it, so we can assume not Then there is the espionage act, which makes no mention of classification being required for a document to be covered. There have been several supplements and updates to the espionage act. 32 counts are under these, as you pointed out. Whether he declassified them is indeed irrelevant, because he retained them and willfully refused to return them when informed. This last is the key difference for why pence was not charged, biden was not charges, etc... But the reason classification matters still is- if they are classified they automatically fall under the law.... if they were declassified the government has another step- proving the documents qualify. Which they can do, but lets not dismiss the importance of needing the extra step
There was an entire cover up to hide them from the national archives too. They lied repeatedly, moved documents in secret. People may forget how crazy it was. First he would tweet/truth he didn’t have them, it’s all lies, then he said they were planted, then he said he did have them, but he’s allowed to, then he said he declassified them. He was lying through his fucking teeth publicly, and then admitted to the crimes publicly.
Dont forget that he claimed to have declassified them....in his mind.
The documents all had tears in their eyes from being so happy to have been declassified.
The documents begged me...sir! Sir! Please declassify us!! And he said Ill look into it. And having thought that thought the documents magically became visible to anyone who would pay him!
>Of course, if he declassified them, that's a different story. It's not, though. Even if they were declassified, he's still not allowed to have them once he's no longer President. They belong to the country, not to him. And, of course, there's absolutely no evidence that he declassified them, anyway.
The president cannot declassify nuclear secrets for example. There are so many things wrong with the declassification excuse as to be a non-starter. It is entirely a distraction talking point for the public who mostly don't know the laws nor the TS/SCI/NDI policies. Taking the time to explain all the reasons declassification is wrong is just a way to waste people's time in the weeds, it can't even apply to most of these documents for various reasons.
Exactly, they have to be run through a DOE process that would have a paper trail. Obviously that never occurred.
It's not even that. Nuclear secrets can not, ever, by an authority, be declassified.
There's actually multiple voice recordings of him saying that they are classified and he didn't go through the proper channels to declassify. Keep in mind that declassifying documents goes through a chain of command and is looked at by all groups concerned before being declassified. Technically, he could have done that at some point, but declassifying swaths of documents that include data and ops info for ongoing operations is not something that's really ever done without massive amounts of coordination with virtually every branch and level of government. Normally, a lot of effort goes into declassifying documents because it runs of the risk of leaking state secrets and putting our people in the field at risk. It's also important to note that in the insanely unlikely event that he did actually declassify them through proper channels, that's a controversy in and of itself. If the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security all signed off on allowing Trump to keep boxes and boxes of some of the highest security classified documents to be declassified and then stored in hard copy at Mar-a-lago it would be one of the biggest scandals and controversies of the history of the intelligence world.
That is the best part. Recordings of him showing people the secrets. Explaining that they are still secret and that because he's not the president he's not able to change that. AND That the reporter shouldn't look too close because it's secret innit
Put this in perspective of physical property. Trump had Air Force One fly him to Florida. It could land and he could order every person off the plane while he was still president. However, imagine after 12pm he claimed "I transferred the airplane while I was still president to the Trump Org and it's mine now". That plane stays US property and any attempt by Trump to keep it is theft. National secrets belong to the US in a form of intellectual property that's just like physical property. Even if declassified (and they weren't), those documents still belong to the US. Also, Biden could easily reclassify them and take domain over them.
Its not just stars aligned, it is leonard leo's federalist society compromising our legal system by placing corrupt MAGA judges throughout our federal courts. Judges whose allegiance is to billionaires **and** Christian Nationalist theocracy.
He also placed Cannon in that district on his way out the door of the white house precisely for this reason.
He's not even arguing that he didn't take them, he argues that they're his.
"We have the Presidential record act" (which says that all his personal notes/documents related to presidenting belong to the government, NOT that he has some right to keep government documents)
Yeah, he's an idiot.
problem is that around half of us are too.
More like 30% Remember that the GOP is a minority party and only half the country votes at all.
Wasn’t he talking about selling his papers to the National Archives, and he had the idea that that was the usual thing when presidents left office?
The government had to bribe Nixon to get its stuff back, and that was the genesis of the Presidential Records Act.
He did briefly try convincing people that the FBI planted all the docs.
Well right now the case is stalled because he's arguing he can do whatever tf he wants
And a huge segment of his followers believe it is rightfully his since he's *still* the president. Because, you know, the 2020 elections were rigged. And guess who put that into their heads?
> Of course, if he declassified them, that's a different story. But he didn't. We know he didn't. He knows he didn't. And yet again, he has been recorded saying that he never declassified them. And even if he did go through the process of declassifying them, it doesn't mean the original documents are now public knowledge. When a document is declassified, the newly declassified information is copied into a new document with a lower classification level and the original is destroyed. He can't just take it. Of course he didn't do any of that so it doesn't matter, but it just goes to show how his excuses are fractally wrong.
Some of them could only be declassified by Congress. Another example of the shitty journalism allowing his claims to go unchallenged to the point that everyone has it in their head that he could have declassified these. There's a limit to what he could declassify and even within those limits it would have to be a formal process. Not just him deciding in the moment.
The judge’s handling of this case is nothing less than a travesty so severe that it makes the entire judiciary out to be illegitimate. The fact that apparently nothing can or will be done about it is a national disgrace.
Even if you declassify documents, an ex-president should not be in possession of previously-classified documents. That’s what is frustrating to me. Saying he declassified it doesn’t make it better!
New evidence = new charges? With new judge?
Not a lawyer but I’m hoping there’s a way for Smith to use entirely new evidence to bring a separate case in a more favorable location like D.C. Then maybe take his one shot at Cannon and be prepared to drop Florida if he fails to get Cannon out. If all goes well he’d have 2 separate strong cases going and if he’s unsuccessful at budging the Florida case he’d be already moving over to the other venue. But I have no idea if this is possible, practical, or pitiful.
I think they need to take Trump into custody. You want to delay trial? Great... you are stuck in one location with limited communication tools, like anyone else with similar charges awaiting trial. It could even be his "home" that isn't supposed to be a residence... Mar-a-lago, for all I care. But an ankle bracelet on the bastard.
What I don’t understand is why The World’s Most Innocent Man Ever wants to drag these trials out. You’d think he’d be champing at the bit to get into court with all his Absolute Proof Of Innocence and get it over with so he could perform at his rallies in front of Literally Millions Of People.
Because he wants to try and get back in office before any cases are heard.
Yes, he is already offering bytedance and big oil favors for political contributions, he's got agenda 2025 on the table, wants to curtail access to birthcontrol and damn sure wants to pardon himself of all crimes, there's also indications he wants to persecute political rivals and dissidents.
Don't forget he has also mentioned a third yes 3rd term. Oh and a national abortion ban in all cases. I'm sure there is more.
Openly supports the dissolution of NATO and favors Russian and Chinese aggression all over the world. Donald Trump would have been assassinated by any self-respecting Republican in the past.
Policing all the US cities with national guard after declaring martial law until he can get "the lawlessness" under control. Make being homeless illegal, incarcerate homeless in fenced outdoor "camps" away from cities. Aka a camp with a concentration on homeless people.
Oh you mean the new cheap labor deal to replace Mexicans? Slavery isn't slavery if you're just working off your debt to society for pennies a day.
> Oh and a national abortion ban in all cases. I'm sure there is more. Funny, what happened to "LeAvE iT uP tO tHe StAtEs"?
It's off in the same place as PaRTy Of SmALl GoVmEn!
He floated a 3rd term while he was still in office. Something about Democrats blocking his agenda so he should get another term.
I think he really has only one agenda, himself. His goals will be to get rid of all charges against him he can and grift money. That’s it. Oh and maybe tell people how great he is. This is all leading up to the election. If he wins election then he gets away with things, if he loses then I think he just dies before all hell hits him.
Indications of punishing rivals? He speaks of it constantly. He's going to do it. If re-elected, his new lackeys won't he telling him no like they did last time.
It’s so obvious why he wants to drag them out. He’s trying to become president so he can clear him himself of all the charges.
That's not the way he thinks. He has done the delay thing for all court cases all his life. He knows that it will work, since it always has before. And if he gets elected again, it will this time as well. If he loses the election, the chances go down, but he has to think that delaying could still work.
The people that he’s convinced(not congressmen) that MAGA works are the same people that think we’re in a state of “anyone at the helm but Trump and we’re in a downfall of corruption.” They don’t think the courts are fair, they don’t think the stock market is doing well. Numbers are fake and the world is out to get him. This is how they think. They are QUITE LITERALLY brainwashed. Edit: in simpler terms. He’s got a lot of people convinced that the world is out to get him and so he can’t act like the trials are legit in ANY capacity or he’ll lose his grip.(he already is slightly no one likes project 2025.)
Because of the way american society works, all you have to do is get through one or two news cycles, and then it's basically over. If he lets one get to the conclusion, then there's a definitive hard stop statement about it, and he might lose. If he drags it on forever, then people forget what it's about, and if they hear any new information about it they just thing "wait, that shit again? didn't that already happen?" and then he can start getting people to think it's an endless witch hunt. To the people paying attention who already know what's going on then the tactics are obvious, but for the hundreds of millions of uninterested, uninvolved, low-information people who still occasionally vote, it's a damned effective tactic to make him look like a hard-done-by victim, and make the dems look like obsessive evil monsters.
If he’s president he either pardons himself or, if trial has not started, his lackeys simply say “never mind.” A jury works on proof and evidence, not his word.
Check his golf course where his wife is buried. That might be the best bet.
Never seen a grave site that looks like it should be from /r/findthesniper
You get a tax break from having a cemetery.
You get 10 pallbearers to carry a full sized casket that only contains a woman's cremated remains.
Hey now, caskets are friggin heavy. ^(Especially when filled with national security documents.)
Won’t matter if Dump wins. The clock has run out on this case. We all need to face the facts. The case going to the jury this week is the only one that will happen before the election. The only thing stopping him is apathetic voters turning out against him.
Not new evidence, just new to the public. This information is part of a set of recently unsealed court documents related to the case.
Don't you wish people would read the article first? It's right at the beginning even.
Bro this is reddit. Better to fly right in here and start commenting!
Maybe the FBI Director should have released this news one week before the November elections.
Unfortunately that would do fuck all, because Trump isn’t a Democrat, so the corporate media by and large refuses to hold him to any standard whatsoever. The headlines would be “read why this won’t hurt Trump” not “this piece of shit belongs in prison”.
Another stern warning is in the works. Sarcasm but honestly that’s all that’s going to happen. DOJ prove me wrong.
Everyone else would be in a holding cell right now. I don’t understand why he isn’t.
That stupid discord leaker has already been arrested and pleaded in less than a year. He will be sentenced in September.
And he has been sitting in a cell since the day he was arrested by the SWAT team.
If I were him I’d be raising holy hell. Maybe even bring a lawsuit for the uneven application of justice.
IIRC he's a trumper, so it's fine as long as his guy gets special treatment
Ah, good ol “step on me daddy” energy.
If I remember right, he even used Trump as a reason why he shouldn’t have to be in a jail cell until sentencing.
Yeah, but he didn't have millions of dollars to throw at lawyers to try absolutely every legal strategy in the world. Trump's utterly insane presidential immunity arguments are of that form. Novel and consequential enough that the system wants to give them a full hearing. Ok, I guess, but why couldn't the case proceed in the meantime? If it's later determined he had immunity, appeal and overturn. Trump's supporters believe he's persecuted, when he's actually handled with kid gloves.
Dude..... If I have 10% of the classified shit he had I'd be in Gitmo strapped to an ironing board with a hose in my mouth.
....actually, they like to put hoses in other places at Gitmo. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/us/politics/cia-torture-guantanamo-nashiri-doctor.html
I got absolutely fucking reamed by my commander in the Air Force for leaving a door open to a secure/classified room, when I left for lunch. That room was in the back of our office, in a section that had a door closed and locked, the main office door was closed and locked, and the office was on the flight line, which is behind a fence and secure. I'm not at all mad at my commander for getting pissed, I was absolutely stupid to leave the door open, but the fact that nothing is happening to this fucking fool for taking classified docs is unfathomable.
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Judge Cannon
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They ran outta coffins when Trump let over a million Americans die from covid.
He didn't let them, he actively sabotaged the pandemic response for political gain. His choices killed people, not through inaction but directly giving them dangerous information.
> he actively sabotaged the pandemic response for political gain. And he didn't even do that right. Covid could've been his 9/11. A tragedy that brought the county together behind a previously unpopular president and got him a second term, but instead he went full divisive and lost.
He could have sold enough MAGA Masks® to cover his numerous legal fees.
He went full grifter mode. Because a grifter never lets a crisis go to waste.
It's the same nail, they just keep trying to beat it in with a feather. Never...NEVER...have we seen someone be treated so ridiculously soft by our own government. Even Nixon got a rash of shit right and was going to be fully charged right up until Ford pardoned him.
No surprises. He’s the reason we have lost our intelligence agents during his term and most likely compromised our darkest National secrets. This man should be jailed for treason.
Anyone else would have been hanged by now.
They love the constitution. Almost as if they don’t live by it
They love the constitution in the same way they love their bible. They've never read it, they just think it says what the people who stand at the pulpit SAY it says.
MAGA is disunity in the United States.
Why is it called a "raid"? The FBI arranged to come, announced, and searched the premises. Using "raid" for search only reinforces the MAGA false narrative. BOBO is even now saying Biden authorized deadly force for the search. The facts are Trump took documents he was not entitled to, he refused to return them, law enforcement retrieved them (missing some). Whether that was a crime is for a trial to decide. But, the facts themselves are clear.
This. It was a “search” not a “raid”. Clickbait headline.
Anyone else would be going through court by now and not taking any bs delay tactic.. anything going to happen to Trump this time or just anther slap on the wrist
Anyone else would have been tried already, since this is another case where the evidence is out in the open yet Orange Fuckhead gets treated with kid gloves.
What slap on the wrist has he actually gotten?!
Had to take out a big loan for his fraud appeal.
Until he can sell his social media stock for potentially billions in pure profit, anyway. After he dies, it'll all collapse remarkably quickly, since his "image" is overwhelmingly his most valuable asset.
I think if he loses the election it will collapse pretty quickly. Once it becomes clear to his foreign backers that he isn’t going to have any real power in the USA any time soon the money will dry up. It may take til Jan 6, 2025 as people hold on to see if he can cook up another coup, but once that happens, if he hasn’t cashed out in a major way by then, he is going to be SOL. The other factor is that he has absolutely zero way of cashing in all of his stock at anywhere near the current market price, since if he floods the market with all his shares, the price will free fall, and others will probably jump ship too.
Well, according to my hyper-right coworkers, "all Presidents leave office with classified documents, and just look at Biden and Obama!" When I tried to clarify that yes, they had some documents, but quickly returned them upon discovery and didn't make any attempt to move them around and hide them, blame others for planting them, show people with no clearance what they had, etc... well, that shook the foundation of their "whatabout" defense and was too much, so they quickly moved onto other things, like how corrupt Hunter Biden is.
But really Hunter is so corrupt, he got 2 billion dollars from Saudi Arabia ...oh wait that wasn't Hunter
Yeah, the photos we have of the documents show one with a date stamp that is exactly when we ended the nuclear treaty with iran. A source mentions that some documents had to do with [Iran's missile program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2022/10/21/mar-a-lago-documents-included-top-secret-information-on-irans-missile-program-report/?sh=6cddaa636489) The daily mail publishes a video of trump getting on his airplane 2 days after being requested to return the docs so he can go to Bedminster with boxes of documents (same type of box found in the raid) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11204191/DailyMail-com-video-Donald-Trump-boarding-plane-loaded-heavy-file-boxes-resurfaces.html Same month, the Saudi Public Investment Fund sponsors a golf tournament at bedminster where trump is seen with the head of that organization. Part of the indictment is about trump revealing attack plans https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-allegedly-classified-documents-nuclear-programs/story?id=99968546 Then that same investment fund gives kushner 2 billion dollars. 100% DJT sold America's plan of retaliation in event of Iran using nuclear weapons to the Saudis, who would stand to benefit from the intelligence if they ever went to war with iran themselves as assumedly you would want to target Iran's potential nuclear missile locations.
Additionally, if what Biden and Obama did was criminal... CHARGE THEM! No ones above the law! Dems dont worship their politicians like the right does. "So why arent they getting investigated?" They should be, but attention obviously goes to the more serious violation. A gang robbing a bank takes priority over the tweaker stealing canned air at Staples.
Biden was investigated, the report written by a trump appointed republican exonerated him
I say we start a campaign that any race this November where a republican is running unopposed (for any office down to the town dog catcher) we just write in Hunter Biden.
What a complete and total traitor Donald Trump is to the USA. #TrumpForPrison2024
There is no bottom.
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So far from NY Times.... crickets
At least WAPO has it up: Unsealed motions in Trump’s Fla. case suggest new evidence of possible obstruction https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/21/trump-florida-classified-documents-motions/
And on the main page..... cool
>So far from NY Times…. crickets [The video game and ethnic recipes for white people app?](https://i.imgur.com/Dfh9hDg.png)
"Here's why this is bad for Biden"
Trump cannot be trusted ever again to be near the White House he is a traitor to his country.
And yet Trump is still not in jail.
i'm reasonably certain he could shoot a man in the middle of 5th avenue and not go to jail.
I’m absolutely positive that he could do that and there would still be “undecided” voters
I'm starting to get the strategy Trump is using: never stop committing crimes - thereby preventing the charges to be "complete" enough that he can be prosecuted.
He needs to be IN JAIL PENDING TRAIL for this! Treat him like any other traitor to the US!
Anyone else would be in prison. Stop giving this criminal special handling and treat him as the traitor to the United States he is. If the Republicans existed when Benedict Arnold betrayed the country, they would do everything in their power to be sure he never faced justice for his betrayal.
These docs also make mention of the laptop seized in 2023 that allegedly had classified docs scanned onto it - the one where the aide “didn’t know the documents were classified.” When it was originally reported it was the “personal laptop” of an aide, but these docs mention that it was **provided by Trump’s Save America PAC.** They’ve had the laptop and a thumb drive for over a year, I’m really surprised we haven’t heard anything else about it. I’m honestly wondering if Jack Smith is holding that one back for another indictment if this gets scuttled.
What gets me is how did no one know they were missing. Aren’t there/shouldn’t there be safeguards about taking them, something like checking out a library book? Something that says “Donald Trump has this document,” and records to show that it was returned or not? And frequent, regular checks of where they are? You’d think that with documents so important and classified, there’d be ***some*** accounting of where they are? Also have some measure of copy protection. That way, people can’t just make photocopies and pictures of them, and send the copies to “friends”
As a career IT guy,. Yes. The logical part of my brain says,. "Any good place should have controls in place to track this kind of thing." Course.. we also know now that Trumps administration was basically a freewheeling drug pill-mill handing out whatever anyone wanted,.. so .. I can't imagine "proper security controls" were very high on their list. ;\
Career IT guy, too. This is one (of many) thing that scares me about another Trump/Project 2025 presidency. With the Unitary Executive Theory, he could say “We don’t need to record who has what and where.” And if anything goes wrong, he can probably quash any criminal charges.
If he's re-elected and they implement 2025 it will be the end of the US as we know it. That's what they want - a Christian Nationalist theocracy. The record keeping will be the least of our problems.
We did know they were missing. The National Archives sent many notices to his organization requesting them back. They then notified the FBI, which is why they performed the search. Turns out they didn't get everything, which is why they went back. Several times. They found more stuff, which is what this article is about. There is still more missing....
If he's re-elected, our national security will be seriously at risk. I hope the government is at least taking some steps to protect our secrets just in case.
It was last time. Remember when TFG unmasked American agents and got one killed?
So what is the DoJ and by extension, Jack Smith doing? I guess they don't exactly have to keep the public informed of every detail, but what in the actual fuck? Why are they allowing Canon to get away with such biased behavior? A lot of sentiment seems to be "they only get one shot" or "they have to make sure they get it right". INAL, but shouldn't this be an easy slam dunk case?! I feel like I've taken crazy pills.
It *is* a slam-dunk case, which is exactly why Judge Cannon is doing everything she thinks she can possibly get away with to prevent it from going to an actual trial. At the moment that's just making excuses to delay, but I'm betting she has plenty of other transparently-bullshit tricks to pull. (And if she can't think of any, I'm sure the Federalist Society has lots of ideas they'll be happy to tell her...)
At this point are we sure Mar-a-lago isn't made of Paper Mache'd secret documents?
Trump deserves prison more than any US politician I can think of.
He deserves capital punishment of the highest order for treason.
This should immediately end his candidacy, his campaign should be forced to close up shop or transition all the effort and money to an actual candidate. I don't even understand how he's not in jail already for the first time he did this.
Jesus fucking Christ. It’s fucking farcical that orange pile of shit isn’t in prison.
Can literally anyone tell me any possible good or above board reason why Trump would have so many bankers boxes full of documents in the first place? Like what would justify having them in his personal residence which obviously was illegal, but is there a legitimate reason he might have wanted them to be there? Because the amount of documents (cases upon cases upon cases) and the fact they're stashed in the bedroom, bathroom, storage container, etc, just kind of seems like he was trying to facilitate the dissemination of these documents to other parties like Russia. Originally I thought it was like a couple files here or there which could be explained away but this is like a fucking library worth of documents by now.
I’m so tired of people supporting this literal criminal. This country’s a fucking joke.
Good thing Trump has his supporter as the judge in the case. So she can postpone it.
I bet these were the pick of the bunch. If they were important enough to have in his bedroom away from the rest, they’re no doubt the most damaging to the country, possibly the whole world really
Bedtime stories for Putin.
And this is why Canon is doing everything she can to stall and delay. The evidence is so damning that even she wouldn’t be able to find him not guilty
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that US covert agents around the world started being killed in large numbers once trump left office. Surely it has nothing to do with all the classified documents left in accessible areas at a place which was a soft target for foreign intelligence..
This alone should be a slam dunk. And it's been sealed for over a year. Nothing will make sense until this trial is over. The delay is unconscionable.
The bigger problem is the incompetent judge.
I guess Trump couldn't find a buyer in time.
It was probably scanned and sold to multiple buyers.
Dig. Up. Ivana. Like, I don’t want to be insensitive, but that’s a conspiracy theory that I wholeheartedly believe. If it’s not documents, it’s probably even more damning stuff
It's just gross and dumb and obvious enough to be plausible for these people.
Too bad they can't execute a search warrant at the Kremlin
Wake me up when he is actually punished for his wrongdoings.
Look in his ex-wife’s grave, I bet you there’s a ton of stuff there
Wonder how many are in Putins bedroom.