Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Dead Moose Fandango]

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1395394254969753601

Ted Cruz hates the US military and does not support our troops. That is all.

Hell. Kirstie Alley is pro-trump? Great. Another actress I liked down the drain!

[cors8]

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1395394254969753601

Ted Cruz hates the US military and does not support our troops. That is all.

It's hilarious coming from a guy who's been completely emasculated by Trump.

[Edge-]

It's hilarious coming from a guy who's been completely emasculated by Trump.

I too, phone bank for people who accuse my father of assassinating a former president and call my wife an ugly dog.

Cruz may be the biggest cuck in all of DC, and with the thriving sex worker scene there catering to all the pervy government officials that's saying something.

[Dead Moose Fandango]

Don’t look at her wiki…

Toooo late!

[Felya]

Hell. Kirstie Alley is pro-trump? Great. Another actress I liked down the drain!

I knew that... It made Sam be a dick to her, while rewatching Cheers, take on a different context.

[Azadina]

These sniffer dogs are learning to smell the coronavirus--This is still very much in the experimental stage, but good luck to those fuckwads who want to try to fake vaccination passports. We might be seeing virus-sniffers alongside bomb-sniffers in the airports. I welcome them (with apologies to those with allergies).

Being vaccinated doesn't mean you can't get the virus, so the virus = fake passport equation doesn't really work. I do think the assholes who forge up, or buy forgeries regarding vaccinations or test results should get straight up couple years in jail. No less.

[Fugus]

Being vaccinated doesn't mean you can't get the virus, so the virus = fake passport equation doesn't really work. I do think the assholes who forge up, or buy forgeries regarding vaccinations or test results should get straight up couple years in jail. No less.

Well, since we have so many spare vaccines at this point that people refuse to use...

Could just make it where if you want to use certain things you must get vaccinated again to receive a tracked record of it unless your current vaccine was in a fashion that could be tracked. Would prevent them forging records for benefits.

Edit: But yeah, if they get caught with a forgery or buying or selling them, immediate felony charges with mandatory jail time.

[Kaleredar]

Well, since we have so many spare vaccines at this point that people refuse to use...

Could just make it where if you want to use certain things you must get vaccinated again to receive a tracked record of it unless your current vaccine was in a fashion that could be tracked. Would prevent them forging records for benefits.

Edit: But yeah, if they get caught with a forgery or buying or selling them, immediate felony charges with mandatory jail time.

If they are official government documents I’d imagine that forging them is a big no-no.

[Breccia]

Hmm.

CNN notes that Washington Post reporters who covered the FBI's investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia were also informed earlier this month that the DOJ had obtained their phone records from 2017. In 2018, the department also disclosed that it had obtained 2017 phone and email records of reporters from BuzzFeed News, Politico and The New York Times, CNN reports.

It was revealed in court documents unsealed on Monday that the Trump administration had also subpoenaed Twitter for information on an account that parodied Trump ally Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)

"It appears to Twitter that the Subpoena may be related to Congressman Devin Nunes’s repeated efforts to unmask individuals behind parody accounts critical of him," the motion read. "His efforts to suppress critical speech are as well-publicized as they are unsuccessful."

We are continuing to learn of Trump's attack against the First Amendment. Trump wanted to be a dictator, and those who support Trump must denounce this move or they also want Trump to be a dictator.

[Zan15]

Well, my photoshopping skills are pretty shit, but I couldn't help myself...

i'd give it 7/10

- - - Updated - - -

Being vaccinated doesn't mean you can't get the virus, so the virus = fake passport equation doesn't really work. I do think the assholes who forge up, or buy forgeries regarding vaccinations or test results should get straight up couple years in jail. No less.

crazy part is the documentation is nothing special. you could print it yourself if you buy the right thickness paper.

But we know they are stupid enough to spend a few hundered dollars on "forged" documents...lol

[Kaleredar]

Cancel culture folks, it’s the worst. Such a bigly problem.

Remember, according to conservatives, politicians seeking out private citizens who made disparaging remarks against them for possible legal punishment and/or blackmail? Perfectly fine.

But a private company deciding not to give a platform to neo-nazis or dangerous conspiracies? Why, that's a free speech violation of the highest caliber!

[Breccia]

Trump has shifted away from FOX News and seemingly solely to OANN. His latest interview was there, as were the last one or two. During this interview Trump continued to talk about how the AZ recount would find massive fraud and every Republican who didn't want to talk about the AZ recount was a weak spineless RINO, especially Mitch McConnell. I'm guessing FOX News is more or less done with that.

[Dontrike]

Trump has shifted away from FOX News and seemingly solely to OANN. His latest interview was there, as were the last one or two. During this interview Trump continued to talk about how the AZ recount would find massive fraud and every Republican who didn't want to talk about the AZ recount was a weak spineless RINO, especially Mitch McConnell. I'm guessing FOX News is more or less done with that.

Likely because every time he or one of the zealots still pushing that lie would only lend those suing Fox another bullet in the chamber..

[Breccia]

Trump should be very worried about the now criminal probe into his finances.

1) Weisselberg would easily flip on him. Having worked with multiple Trumps for multiple decades, of all the people not related by DNA swab to Trump himself, he's the one with the most access and most damning information. He's also fully aware at this point what loyalty to Trump is worth -- nothing.

Weisselberg has not been charged yet but is under known criminal investigation for tax fraud. Take a few paper clips from the office and the IRS doesn't care. Hand over private school tuition -- which is more than my entire salary plus benefits -- an apartment and several cars, and the IRS will care.

2) Jennifer Weisselberg, his former daughter-in-law, has already cooperated. I think we mentioned this before. But she has already handed over documents to the NY AG in charge. She's also publicly admitted she knows about the tuition thing. And, because some of you have pointed this out and will appreciate the validation, Jennifer Weisselberg knows the ice rink was an all-cash business and strongly believes a lot of that cash was unreported. Pretty sure the IRS cares about that, too.

Even if Weisselberg says nothing (which I rather doubt) if it can be shown that Trump handed Weisselberg money/goods/services in an intentional way to defraud the US govt, that's conspiracy. My boss could probably get away with "I didn't know Breccia was taking paper clips" but when he signs on for my health care, he does so knowing that it's a taxable benefit. Trump will have a hard time making "I didn't know giving hundreds of thousands of goods and/or services" play to a judge, but if there's a document chain and a willing witness, there's no chance.

Jennifer Weisselberg is the one who said "Allen knows every bad thing Trump ever did." I suppose it's possible she's saying this, on CNN and other non-FOX-News sources, just to troll Trump in public. But I don't think so. There's one episode of Psych where, mild spoiler warning I guess, the main character tells a guy about to commit a crime

You ask them which they’d rather have. Six more months with you. Or a million dollars. You know damn well what they’ll answer and they don’t have to think about it for a second.

Jennifer Weisselberg is telling Allen Weisselberg this. She's saying "Fuck the money, and fuck the Trumps. Get out while you can."

3) The NY AG has Trump's taxes. They've also expanded their roster for the investigation and upcoming trial. You don't bring alts to a progression raid.

4) Cohen is no longer the only lawyer telling Trump's family to get their own lawyers. He is, however, probably the only one not just laughing hysterically but also holding up a Wile E. Coyote "I Warned You" sign while doing it. This article was written about the corporate version of Miranda rights and corporate lawyer-corporate employee confidentiality. Spolier alert: the CEO always wins. And guess who aren't the CEO?

During my FBI career

I'm going to repeat that part, because I know @cubby will get a kick out of it.

During my FBI career including my time leading one of the largest white-collar crime branches in the field, and later, as a corporate security executive, I saw corporate employees mistakenly think that their companies' attorneys represented them, too, in cases of corporate malfeasance. Big mistake. A company attorney represents the company, not the individual employees or executives. It's quite likely that Trump Organization attorneys have already asked — and Trump family members have already answered — questions about what each of them did or did not do that might be the focus of New York's investigation.

If any of the Trump family members have already even casually answered questions posed by their organization's counsel or hired investigators, they may have mistakenly thought that what they were providing was privileged. And those statements would be privileged — but not if the organization decided, in its own interest or at the direction of the former president, that maybe Eric or Don Jr. or Ivanka needed to take the fall to save the organization or keep its notorious CEO out of prison.

Yep. It's possible to handwave Cohen as a "disgruntled ex-employee" when, question: are you technically an ex-employee if you weren't paid? But when unaffiliated law enforcement (and other experts I haven't cited yet) are saying "Donald Trump is getting ready to sell out his own family, and they need to protect themselves from this" you know it's bad.

5) Speaking of, when Fortune asked a former AG they were told that announcements, such as when New York said "this investigation is now criminal", are pretty rare. It could be that NYState knew the info was leaked and just wanted to get out in front of the will they/won't they/just fuck already chaos in the headlines.

Or.

It could be NYState is giving Trump's employees which, question: are you technically an employee if you don't get paid and also go to jail? Giving them every chance to come clean and volunteer info and documents, before the perp walks start live on CNN. Weisselberg might have done a lot of the heavy lifting, but I somehow doubt he was the only one who did anything shady with Trump Org money ever ever. All it takes is one "Janet I need you to run downtown for a mocha macchiato and a BMW, here's a handful of cash that smells like hot chocolate" and Janet gets some surprisingly available government housing with a view of the river.

5) We are learning more and more about Giuliani.

"Wait, that's an unrelated topic."

Fuckin' sue me. Anyhow, not only did they get a surprising number of electronic devices for an old guy -- eighteen -- they also took his ex-wife's computer.

"Which one?"

Oh, sorry, the most recent one. Remember the thing that cost Clinton the election? Yeah, they just did that to Giuliani. And they're arguing, successfully so far in court, that they had every right to do so.

The former New York mayor, through his attorneys, has argued that because of the extensive business-related communications authorities are likely to find on his phones and computers, it is impossible for the Justice Department to sort through his data without infringing on the rights of his clients.

In late April, FBI agents acting on a warrant obtained by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan seized 18 electronic devices from Giuliani’s New York home and office, including some belonging to employees of Giuliani Partners. A phone belonging to D.C.-area attorney Victoria Toensing also was recovered.

"...who?"

Yeah, I didn't recognize the name either. Apparently she and diGenova, who from context I assume work for Shinra, are allies of Guilian and the FBI likely assumed he communicated his criminal intent. If you want to read up more on them, you can do so here.

Since the seizure, lawyers for Giuliani, who once ran the office that could seek an indictment against him, have asked a federal judge to limit the access prosecutors will have to his electronic communications. The same judge will also consider whether to appoint a “special master,” or outside attorney, who will review the records before they are turned over to investigators to guard against potential privilege violations.

Prosecutors argued in the letter motion that “the mere fact that Giuliani and Toensing are lawyers does not mean that they are above the law or immune to criminal investigation.”

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebekah Donaleski, Aline Flodr and Nicolas Roos also wrote that Giuliani and Toensing have made requests to pull back evidence and examine search warrant affidavits prematurely — things they have no right to do while a grand jury investigation is “ongoing.”

“Under their approach, the subjects of a criminal investigation would have the authority to make unilateral determinations not only of what is privileged, but also of what is responsive to a warrant,” the prosecutors wrote.

Yeah, that's clearly ridiculous. It's actually hyperbolic, considering the scope of this criminal investigation involves Giuliani's (questionable) role in the WH. The Barr is already set pretty high.

Trump has been suspiciously silent on Giuliani. In the last 24-48 hours he's said plenty about the AZ recount and the Trump Org criminal investigation. I can't find much about Giuilani in the last week. Is someone being thrown in the deep end without his floaties?

Oh and just so we're clear: except for the Yahoo! link about Giuliani's allies all stories I linked are from the last 24 hours. There is a lot going on -- far more than Fatass Mc140Chars can keep up with. Normally I'd say he hires people to handle this but um...they're all being investigated too, and might turn on him. Trump has spent years, decades even, building a empire in which only what he says matters, loyalty is a one-way street, and nobody gets paid if they get caught. Now he's surrounded by people deciding if they can afford to wait until Trump sells them out.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

[Katchii]

Trump has shifted away from FOX News and seemingly solely to OANN. His latest interview was there, as were the last one or two. During this interview Trump continued to talk about how the AZ recount would find massive fraud and every Republican who didn't want to talk about the AZ recount was a weak spineless RINO, especially Mitch McConnell. I'm guessing FOX News is more or less done with that.

Weren't many of the fraud cases that HAD been found in the investigations that were done, people who voted for Trump?

What a muppet.

[beanman12345]

And FOX is culpable for Trump, so even though he dumped them, they can't really dump him. It's why Tucker last night was crying about how there can't be an investigation into the jan 6th(even though he always claims he's ALWAYS for accountability) because FOX propagated the big lie. They are stuck while they continue to lose their audience because Trump dumped them. Couldn't happen to a nicer company.

[Breccia]

Weren't many of the fraud cases that HAD been found in the investigations that were done, people who voted for Trump?

We might be mixing metaphors. Are you talking about tax fraud, corporate fraud, or voter fraud? I mean, the answer is probably still "yes" but let's be specific.

[Katchii]

We might be mixing metaphors. Are you talking about tax fraud, corporate fraud, or voter fraud? I mean, the answer is probably still "yes" but let's be specific.

Voter fraud, lol.

[Breccia]

Voter fraud, lol.

Ah, see, I had this article about Trump billing his own SS protection because he's living in the only hotel that will accept him, and forcing them to get rooms. Yes, taxpayers are billed for SS all the time. No, it doesn't typically go into the pockets of the person they're supposed to be protecting.

[Benggaul]

Thursday's report:

30,214 new cases, about 9k fewer than last Thursday.

Top 9:

Fuck Florida.
New York: 1,806 new cases; 9 deaths
Pennsylvania: 1,740 new cases; 38 deaths
Texas: 1,716 new cases; 44 deaths
California: 1,676 new cases; 53 deaths
Michigan: 1,570 new cases; 82 deaths
Illinois: 1,542 new cases; 49 deaths
Ohio: 1,208 new cases; no deaths reported
North Carolina: 1,187 new cases; 12 deaths

California's reappearance in the top 5 is pretty much just a result of other states dropping back down to better (for them) cases per 100 mill pop levels. Cases in California continue to drop week to week, so there doesn't appear to be a no resurgence there currently. As I predicted earlier in the week the number of states with 1k or more cases has increased as the week has gone on, but reported cases tend to peak towards the end of the week so this isn't anything out of the ordinary. Florida is, again, the only state with more than 2k reported cases. Damn near 3k. Fuck Florida.

659 deaths is nearly 150 fewer than last Thursday and brings the total to 602,616. Michigan and Florida are one and two on top of the list which isn't surprising, but overall the deaths nationally are down to a 573 7-day average. This is still a loss of over 3.5k people per week, but back in January we were nearly averaging that every day, so it's a great improvement.

Related news:

COVID-19 variants respond to existing vaccines, WHO says--Good news so far in the race against the mutations.

New York and Maryland follow Ohio in creating Covid vaccine lottery--More carrots, which might be more effective than sticks in this instance. Although I'm not entirely happy about the government having to spend money to coax holdouts to get the vaccine instead of, you know, spending it on people who give a shit about others.

Stay safe, folks.