Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[postman1782]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...tions-00051507

And here we go. Some of the documents, to which I can't find a written source for yet, said they were classified ABOVE TOP SECRET. Which could possibly include the nuclear weapons documents if he had any. They aren't going to be specific, because of course they are above top secret.

They have said that there was 11 sets of classified material they found. Some above top secret like I said, others that were classified, some shown as top secret, some showing the reasoning for pardoning Roger Stone and for some reason, documents on the President of France, Macron.

[gondrin]

Well, there is a name for what Trump is doing as far as the warrant goes. "The O.J. Simpson Defense". Where someone is so guilty they are dead to rights they preempt the people trying to prosecute them by trying to make them out to be the bad guy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...89b7bebe61555b

Team Trump is testing the 'O.J. Simpson defense' because 'it erases everything': lawyer

After the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, August 8, Fox News and many other right-wing media outlets were quick to leap to former President Donald Trump’s defense — describing the search as government overreach and essentially telling their audience: If the FBI can go after Trump, you’re next. Attorney Philip Rotner, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on August 12, describes this type of messaging as “the O.J. Simpson defense.”

Although The Bulwark itself is a right-leaning media outlet, the website is overtly anti-Trump and features a who’s-who of well-known Never Trump conservatives, including Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, Mona Charen, Tim Miller and Amanda Carpenter. The Bulwark has become the go-to website for anti-Trump coverage from the right. And when Rotner describes Trump, his supporters and his allies as invoking the “O.J. Simpson defense,” he certainly doesn’t mean it in a positive way.

“In 1995,” Rotner explains, “football great O.J. Simpson was tried for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her boyfriend Ronald Goldman the year before. The case against him looked airtight.… Yet Simpson was acquitted. His defense team turned the tables to portray law enforcement as the culprit and Simpson as the victim. They argued, without a shred of direct evidence, that all of the incriminating forensic evidence was either planted by police officers who were out to get Simpson or mishandled by bumbling investigators.”

The attorney continues, “This week, it was Trump preemptively asserting the O.J. defense. By Tuesday morning, one of Trump’s lawyers, Christina Bobb, was crying foul, suggesting that the FBI had planted evidence.”

While Fox News pundits were trying to paint the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice as heavy-handed persecutors of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post were busy doing actual reporting and really digging into the FBI’s reasons for the search. The Post and others reported that the FBI was looking for White House documents that shouldn’t be stored on private property such as Mar-a-Lago; under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, official White House and presidential documents must be given to the federal government after a president leaves office — they are government property, not private property. And on August 12, the Post reported that according to sources, the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago were looking for, among other things, “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons.”

Rotner stresses that the problem with “preemptively invoking the O.J. defense” is that it “strongly suggests consciousness of guilt.”

“The allure of the O.J. defense to Team Trump, of course, is that it erases everything,” Rotner argues. “It doesn’t matter how incriminating the evidence is against him. Whatever the evidence, if Team Trump can convince people that it was planted, it’s toothless as far as the public is concerned. So, it is incumbent on the government to get this right. We can only hope that the FBI agents who conducted the search created a meticulous record of what they found at Mar-a-Lago and where they found it. Without a bulletproof chain of custody, Trump’s O.J. defense could work — just like it worked for O.J., no matter what they actually found.”

[Edge-]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...tions-00051507

And here we go. Some of the documents, to which I can't find a written source for yet, said they were classified ABOVE TOP SECRET. Which could possibly include the nuclear weapons documents if he had any. They aren't going to be specific, because of course they are above top secret.

They have said that there was 11 sets of classified material they found. Some above top secret like I said, others that were classified, some shown as top secret, some showing the reasoning for pardoning Roger Stone and for some reason, documents on the President of France, Macron.

And for more confirmation on the warrant - https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/fbi...-22/index.html

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has agreed the historic search warrant that authorized the seizure of federal records from his home at Mar-a-Lago should be released.

The Justice Department had told the court it believes that unsealing the confidential investigative documents is in the public interest.

The DOJ said it supports releasing four documents: The search warrant itself, two attachments that describe at least to some extent what is being searched and why, and a receipt handed to Trump’s legal team documenting what was seized from the property.

Trump did actually agree to release it, so the information getting out seems to have further credibility to it.

I swear we were joking about this shit at the start of this thread and...man, we're all capable of seeing into the future! Or that this was a sadly predictable outcome to a dishonest man with a long history of lying, cheating, and questionable behavior.

[postman1782]

https://twitter.com/DanRather/status...29350334107650

There goes Dan Rather, owning Trump again.

[Edge-]

Well, there is a name for what Trump is doing as far as the warrant goes. "The O.J. Simpson Defense". Where someone is so guilty they are dead to rights they preempt the people trying to prosecute them by trying to make them out to be the bad guy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...89b7bebe61555b

I mean...yes? The FBI has always been legally allowed to pursue criminal investigations of they've violated federal law. That's like...literally a huge part of their job.

[gondrin]

I mean...yes? The FBI has always been legally allowed to pursue criminal investigations of they've violated federal law. That's like...literally a huge part of their job.

These people think it is still J. Edgar Hoover's FBI where they actively were corrupt in some bad ways and definitely abused their power.

[Edge-]

These people think it is still J. Edgar Hoover's FBI where they actively were corrupt in some bad ways and definitely abused their power.

I don't think Christopher Wray is secretly dressing up in women's clothing. NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT! Dress how you want to, look absolutely fabulous, fam. Just maybe don't secretly doing that while weaponizing a federal law enforcement agency as a political tool.

But real, this whole affair is like a really bad Tom Clancy knockoff so far. Tom Duncey or some shit. It's dumb.

[gondrin]

I don't think Christopher Wray is secretly dressing up in women's clothing. NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT! Dress how you want to, look absolutely fabulous, fam. Just maybe don't secretly doing that while weaponizing a federal law enforcement agency as a political tool.

But real, this whole affair is like a really bad Tom Clancy knockoff so far. Tom Duncey or some shit. It's dumb.

More like a Naked Gun movie. His whole presidency was a bad Naked Gun movie but somehow real.

[beanman12345]

Top secret, and above top secret are not just oopsie "I thought it was just a keepsake photo of my friends dog in the oval office." The effort going into taking them alone would make proving corrupt intent very easy I would imagine.

[Edge-]

Top secret, and above top secret are not just oopsie "I thought it was just a keepsake photo of my friends dog in the oval office." The effort going into taking them alone would make proving corrupt intent very easy I would imagine.

Especially given that they found these materials after subpoenaing them and meeting with the Trump team back in June. This means that the Trump team likely lied about which documents they retained, to federal investigators.

[postman1782]

Especially given that they found these materials after subpoenaing them and meeting with the Trump team back in June. This means that the Trump team likely lied about which documents they retained, to federal investigators.

Yep, Trump said they could just come and get them, but if they had to subpoena them, and they still didn't turn them over, then they knew what they had.

[beanman12345]

https://twitter.com/hugolowell/statu...61944552652801

Note the source (seems to be true though, seeing lots of chatter on it) but...



Note about 18 USC 793 specifically - https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?...edition=prelim

That's the espionage act

From what I understand, trump leaked the warrant ahead of time to Brietbart, and the above is actually confirmed now that the warrant was officially unsealed.

[Edge-]

Yep, Trump said they could just come and get them, but if they had to subpoena them, and they still didn't turn them over, then they knew what they had.

I'm just wondering who they were potentially giving classified info to. I'm still inclined to believe, if anyone/anything, it's nuclear technology information being given to Saudi Arabia. Because we still don't have any actually good reasons why the Saudi's gave Kushner $2B in "personal investment" but "$2B for a bunch of information we'd otherwise never get access to?!" sounds like a pretty damned good deal.

[gondrin]

I'm just wondering who they were potentially giving classified info to. I'm still inclined to believe, if anyone/anything, it's nuclear technology information being given to Saudi Arabia. Because we still don't have any actually good reasons why the Saudi's gave Kushner $2B in "personal investment" but "$2B for a bunch of information we'd otherwise never get access to?!" sounds like a pretty damned good deal.

Since this is a rumor, I will treat it as such. However, if it is true, then both Trump and Kushner should be tried like the Rosenbergs did if it is nuclear secrets. We executed them because they sold nuclear secrets to the Russians.

[Zaydin]

So Trump is being investigation for potentially breaking the Espionage Act? Given the reports the FBI was looking for nuclear documents, what are the odds Trump was either planning on selling them to the highest bidder or using them to settle a debt he owed a foreign government?

[Edge-]

https://storage.courtlistener.com/re...54.17.0_10.pdf

Link to the warrant. The three laws cited by Breitbart as the topic of the warrant are confirmed, 18 USC 793, 2071, and 1519. List of documents has some interesting tidbits -

Executive grant of clemency to Stone
Info about Macron (French president)
lots of classified docs
lots of classified/top secret/SCI documents

[postman1782]

I'm just wondering who they were potentially giving classified info to. I'm still inclined to believe, if anyone/anything, it's nuclear technology information being given to Saudi Arabia. Because we still don't have any actually good reasons why the Saudi's gave Kushner $2B in "personal investment" but "$2B for a bunch of information we'd otherwise never get access to?!" sounds like a pretty damned good deal.

Considering, ever since he was elected, he has been trying to give them nuclear reactor info, billions in weaponry, literally everything he can to give them anything they want. So it would not surprise me if it was the the Saudis, since they aren't under sanctions like Russia is.

[Edge-]

Since this is a rumor, I will treat it as such. However, if it is true, then both Trump and Kushner should be tried like the Rosenbergs did if it is nuclear secrets. We executed them because they sold nuclear secrets to the Russians.

Not to mention all the money that the Saudi's are paying Trump to host golf tournaments at his courses.

[postman1782]

So Trump is being investigation for potentially breaking the Espionage Act? Given the reports the FBI was looking for nuclear documents, what are the odds Trump was either planning on selling them to the highest bidder or using them to settle a debt he owed a foreign government?

I wouldn't be surprised if he already did. He has had them for almost 2 years since he lost the election, hell, he could have had them the day he was inaugurated for some of these items. We don't know when he took them.

[Edge-]

I wouldn't be surprised if he already did. He has had them for almost 2 years since he lost the election, hell, he could have had them the day he was inaugurated for some of these items. We don't know when he took them.

It's very likely he already did given that the Saudi's are shelling out tons of money to him and Kushner. I don't think they're gonna dump all that cash without getting something tangible in return, especially given Trump's reputation as a less than trustworthy partner in negotiations/business deals.