Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Poopymonster]

"Verified" is overblown. Twitter's blue checkmark means no more than Twitter vouching for them being who they say the are. It's pathetic how populists started seeing it as a mark of authenticity. You know, "this guy is kosher" or what.

- - - Updated - - -



Still relevant:

There was an old Doonsbury comic. Duke, Honey, and China that seems appropriate...

[Edge-]

"Verified" is overblown. Twitter's blue checkmark means no more than Twitter vouching for them being who they say the are.

Oh I know. I was just pointing out that a guy banned from Twitter for being a white nationalist racist fuckwad is getting verified on Trumps platform fairly quickly, despite all its ongoing massive technical problems. They got their priorities right.

[Breccia]

First Oath Keeper to plead guilty, will cooperate.

Joshua James, who led the Alabama chapter of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group, also pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding. He faces up to nine years in prison and up to a $300,000 fine, according to the deal read aloud during Wednesday's hearing.

During the hearing, James admitted that he and other members of the Oath Keepers had planned to storm the Capitol with the explicit goal of stopping the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote.

"Do you agree that in taking such actions, you were trying to influence the conduct of the United States government or retaliate against the United States government?" federal Judge Amit Mehta asked during the hearing.

"Yes sir," James responded.

Before cointinuing, bear in mind how conspiracy works. James admitted he was a terrorist and an insurrectionist, and also, that his friends were, too.

"Hey, it doesn't say that!"

It does.

According to his plea agreement, James met with Oath Keepers members, including founder Stewart Rhodes, in November 2020. During the meeting, James learned of "their plans to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power," according to court documents.

The alleged plan required members of the Oath Keepers, at Rhodes' direction, to use "any means necessary" to stop Joe Biden from becoming president, including using lethal force if anyone tried to forcibly remove Trump from the White House.

After the riot, James admitted that he, Rhodes and other members of the Oath Keepers took precautions to conceal their identities, including changing their appearance and using burner phones.

James also admitted that he had gone on "multiple trips" with Rhodes to buy thousands of dollars' worth of firearms, ammunition and tactical gear.

Remember that stash in the Virginia hotel? That was it.

James has given prosecutors everything they asked for, including of course text messages. This is going to get even worse for the remaining Oath Keepers than it already is. Remember, this guy pled down to nine years and three hundred grand. What's Rhodes going to face?

[Shadowferal]

Rhodes plead not guilty. So...he won't be happy.

[Breccia]

Understanding the criminal allegations the Jan. 6 committee is constructing against Trump

The two primary crimes it suspects Trump committed are:

• Obstruction of an official proceeding: that Trump “attempted to obstruct, influence or impede … an official proceeding of the United States, and … did so corruptly.”
• Conspiracy to defraud the United States: that he “interfere[d] with or obstruct[ed] one of [the government’s] lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.”

Both of those allegations center on the congressional counting of electoral votes that was underway at the Capitol on Jan. 6. That count was an “official proceeding” and “lawful government function” that Trump attempted to obstruct. There’s no real question that Trump made such an attempt, though it’s worth walking through how the court filing documents that effort — and other, less-dramatic attempts to interfere with the government’s procedures.

Perhaps more important is the qualifying aspect of each charge: Did Trump obstruct an official proceeding “corruptly?” Was his interference with the lawful functions “deceitful or dishonest?” For a prosecutor, this would be the heart of the case, showing that Trump knew that his efforts to steal a second term in office were rooted in falsehood.

So what we now know is, not only did Pence know from various experts what he was tasked to do was impossible, he had talked to the Senate Parliamentarian who said no. And the panel has on file proof Eastman knew not a single SCOTUS judge would sign off on it, as Pence's lawyer told them specifically and directly.

We also know that Trump, head of and therefore part of the Executive Branch, did not fulfill his Constitutionally-required duties of law enforcement and, in fact, tried to pervert them to his own ends. That's public knowledge, of course, but it's still in the court filings. He also tried to get the DOJ to claim everything was fraud, a move that cost him Barr. And we know he was on board with a plan to replace electors with faithless cultists. Hell, he said something about that in public yesterday.

We have direct, under oath statements by dozens of murderous insurrectionists saying they attacked the Capitol because Trump told them to. Also we have proof Trump knew Pence was still in there when he tweeted how much Pence was the enemy.

WaPo goes on:

One defense Trump can deploy against criminal charges is the idea that he sincerely believed that the election had been stolen from him and that he and his allies were trying to figure out how to derail a historic usurpation of the American presidency.

The committee’s filing spends a good deal of time offering evidence that Trump and his allies should certainly have not believed that the election was stolen.

Most of this evidence we already know: the lost court cases, the recounts that changed nothing, Barr telling him to his fat orange face. Apparently there's more, behind closed doors Trump was told the same by people Trump hired. December was filled with "you lost, get over it" in public and in private. For Trump to even attempt that defense, he'll have to sell his few remaining allies out, claiming they tricked him. Yeah, guess what I think about Trump's ego taking that option. And that's leaving aside how many times he'd repeat the same falsehood, well no the same lie, despite it being proven false, over and over and bigly over.

Trump cannot admit he thought he won the election, without also admitting he's insane.

In the filing itself, for example, the committee points to Trump’s refusal to accept the reality that no fraud occurred in Georgia as evidence supporting another possible crime: common law fraud. To meet a criminal standard under the statute in D.C., where the committee alleges this crime occurred, Trump would have had to make “(1) a false representation; (2) in reference to material fact; (3) made with knowledge of its falsity; (4) with the intent to deceive; and (5) action is taken in reliance upon the representation.”

As articulated in the filing, (1) and (2) are Trump’s false claim that ballots were illegally counted in Fulton County, a claim made based on misrepresented security footage. When we hit (3) we again see the utility of Trump’s demonstrated immunity to reality: Did he know that the claim that he centered in campaign ads and during his speech on Jan. 6 (meeting part (5)) was false (meeting part (4))? The filing again makes clear that he should have known, and any insistence that he didn’t depends heavily on an idea that Trump somehow lacks competence to adjudicate between true and false information. But it is a defense.

Which is worse: voting for someone who committed a murderous insurrection on purpose, or voting for someone who admits they were insane?

And then...this happens.

There was a less-noticed development on Wednesday that adds another complicating layer to the question of how Trump might have been more intertwined in the actions that unfolded Jan. 6 on Capitol Hill. In a plea agreement with the federal government, an Oath Keeper named Joshua James pleaded guilty not only to obstructing an official proceeding — the charge floated by the Jan. 6 committee as potentially applying to Trump — but also to “seditious conspiracy.”

When a group of Oath Keepers was charged with seditious conspiracy in January (that is, a conspiracy aimed at sedition, rebelling against the government), it marked a significant escalation in the government’s treatment of those who participated in violence on Jan. 6. James’s plea agreement is an agreement that he was part of precisely such a conspiracy.

"Dude, you posted about that guy hours ago."

I did, thank you for noticing. But I left out a detail because I didn't think it was important. I was wrong.

But James’s role on Jan. 6 is interesting for another reason, as journalist Marcy Wheeler notes. That morning, before he breached the Capitol, he was part of a security detail that shuttled longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone around Washington, apparently including to the Willard Hotel, where Trump’s allies were trying to persuade members of Congress to block the counting of electors. In his opinion on the civil suits, Mehta noted that Stone’s involvement with the Oath Keepers “might prove … to be important.” James suggests one way that could be the case.

And conspiracy charges. The requirement for civil conspiracy is “a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan” If Team Trump and the Oath Keepers had that, they're both liable. If we have proof that it went further, that's criminal conspiracy. Bear in mind, I personally posted that the guy who pled guilty is looking at up to nine years and $300,000 in fines. His allies, er, former allies could lose more. But they're just heavily-armed cosplayers. Trump was trying to take over the country. How much will that lawsuit be for?

Trump might be right that only the guilty take the Fifth, but he's going to have to here. It's yet another civil->criminal setup just like New York. He might have no realistic choice than to say nothing, lose the lawsuit on purpose, but at least not go to jail.

And just recently, a judge said Trump could be sued for exactly this. I know, I know, he's being sued by everyone and their dog at this point.

This needs to be decided, publicly, in a couple years. The Republican Party has a lot of issues, but if nothing changes, their nominee in 2024 will either be a murderous insurrectionist, or insane by his own admission.

Basically, there's a mountain of evidence that Trump's corrupt, illegal actions were based on a falsehood that anyone sane would have known was a falsehood. I won't say "slam-dunk case" but I will say, what we now have, has got to be enough to force a criminal investigation with subpoena's you can't handwave.

I see very few ways Trump gets out of this one.

1) Biden does nothing. Honestly, despite all the concern, I don't think that will happen. I think Biden will make a big public show of saying "I instruct my DoJ to follow the law and take no personal part in this" after which Garland cracks out the sawed-off and chainsaw. The timing could be done maliciously to interfere with Trump and therefore by the GOP's choice the GOP, but I don't see complete inaction as a result here.

2) Trump dies of old age, a heart attack from Melania's divorce papers, food poisoning or general fatassness.

3) Trump sells out Eastman. This is what I think we'll see, just maybe not next. Eastman wrote the memo, Eastman is considered by many to be an expert, Trump could attempt to go with that. "He knows his stuff, why wouldn't I believe him?" he could tell the jury, "It's not like there were hundreds, nay, thousands of other people equally or better respected armed with objective facts. Wait, there were? Um, Eastman had my phone." If Trump is dragged into the courtroom and wants any hope of not looking like a cornered mob boss or lunatic, he's going to somehow have to put this blame on someone else. Eastman is the only one he didn't have on his payroll for weeks, and also, for Eastman to save himself, he'll have to admit he's insane too...or that he told Trump that the election was legit, destroying them both.

4) Trump refuses to do anything at all, says nothing, fights every appearance, and goes for reasonable doubt. Hell of a gamble. There's a ton of people already on record saying "I told Trump the election was legal" and a ton of documentation saying Trump tried to stop the election anyhow. Without Trump defending himself, his lawyers will somehow have to craft an argument that what Trump did wasn't a crime, despite having no evidence on their side to present. It's not like they can claim "Trump did nothing at all" when that's evidence against him.

As listed, each charge is twofold: One, Trump did something wrong, two, Trump did it with dishonest purpose. Unable to disprove the second without admitting Trump is insane, they'll have to instead push the idea that Trump, attempting to get Pence, the Senate, rogue faithless electors, and an armed mob to disrupt the legal election he fairly lost...was somehow not illegal.

With the six remaining lawyers willing to work for him for free.

And yet, that's my prediction. He's going to try to fight this case on the merits, until it's clear not even one-twelvth of America will accept it. Then he turns on Eastman.

[Adam Jensen]

Apropos of the two idiots chanting "BUILD THE WALL" last night, let's take a look at how effective "THE WALL" actually is!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...wall-breached/



As a reminder -

You mean the same wall that was defeated by a circular saw you can buy at Home Depot?

[PhaelixWW]

You mean the same wall that was defeated by a circular saw you can buy at Home Depot?

Now I'm just waiting for Texas to pass a bill banning people of Hispanic heritage from entering a Home Depot.

[Poopymonster]

Now I'm just waiting for Texas to pass a bill banning people of Hispanic heritage from entering a Home Depot.

Gonna be a bunch of closings due to lack of employees then.

[PhaelixWW]

Gonna be a bunch of closings due to lack of employees then.

...for which the Texas GoP would blame Hispanics, no doubt. It will all have come full circle at that point.

[solinari6]

So what we now know is, not only did Pence know from various experts what he was tasked to do was impossible, he had talked to the Senate Parliamentarian who said no. And the panel has on file proof Eastman knew not a single SCOTUS judge would sign off on it, as Pence's lawyer told them specifically and directly.

Oh, oh oh!! It's a LOT worse than that. Check out this email from Eastman, where he ADMITS that what he is asking Pence to do is against the law, but since he says the law has already been violated (by the delay caused by the riots) it wasn't a big deal to break the law again:

[Breccia]

"relatively minor violation"

Wow, not just what you said which is worse, but he said delaying from Jan 6th to Jan 16th to not be a big deal when the Inauguration is the 20th.

By the way, I love the continued butthurtitude of Trump supporters that keep saying "75 million" so they can somehow pretend they're not outnumbered.

[Kaleredar]

Wow, not just what you said which is worse, but he said delaying from Jan 6th to Jan 16th to not be a big deal when the Inauguration is the 20th.

By the way, I love the continued butthurtitude of Trump supporters that keep saying "75 million" so they can somehow pretend they're not outnumbered.

Admitting you’d be committing a “relatively minor violation” seems pretty indicative of knowingly perpetrating the commission of a crime.

I think this guy is right fucked. But the true question is if they can tie trump into this “knowing a commission of a crime.” As in, a smoking gun showing that trump knew he was illegally working to overturn a legitimate election.

Unfortunately I don’t think “well, logically we can deduce…” will be enough for them to feel safe on moving on a former president, no matter how blindingly obvious said deduction might be. There needs to be absolute concrete evidence straight from trumps mouth

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/KnowNothingTV/st...74635016937475

Nazi Nick Fuentes saying that a comparison between Hitler and Putin isn't maybe such a bad thing...and then realizing that his defense of Hitler maybe wasn't a good thing to say out loud.

This is the event Gosar, Greene, and recently censured AZ Senator Wendy Rogers.

[Breccia]

The GOP has a new strategy for handling all the "we have evidence Trump is a criminal" going on: pretending they didn't see it.

"I'm aware of the reporting on it. I haven't seen the filing or anything around it, and so I just really don't have anything for you on that," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.

Asked about the filing, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who Trump helped recruit for his 2018 Senate bid, said he "didn't see that" before pivoting to President Biden.

"The current president does so many ... things every day I can hardly worry about the last one," he said, as he left the Capitol for the week.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said on Thursday that he had only heard about the court filing from another reporter.

"I just heard about it now," Braun said. "I think we'll have that kind of thing be highlighted here until the time Trump announces whether he's going to run or not. ...To be honest I don't pay much attention to that."

They're lying, of course, but this is the "I don't remember" courtroom defense. Normally that would just be douchebaggery along the lines of ignoring dozens of 24-hour challenges then coming back from a ban shrilling about a stutter. But these people are Senators. For them to claim they hadn't heard it would be like Trump claiming he never saw evidence the election was fair.

[Breccia]

More from Pence's lawyer.

“He came in and said, ‘I'm here asking you to reject the electors.’ That's how he opened at the meeting” on Jan. 5, Pence counsel Greg Jacob said of Eastman, according to his deposition before investigators for the House select committee.

Some of Jacob’s frustration over Eastman’s approach has been previously reported, including a copy of an unpublished op-ed he drafted saying “not a single member of the Supreme Court would support his position.”

But the documents go into greater detail about how Eastman — the drafter of memos for the campaign about how to fight certification of the election results — tried to court Pence as well as the resistance he faced.

Jacob recounts two meetings with Eastman, one on Jan. 4 and another on Jan. 5, where the Trump attorney outlined a number of scenarios, including having Pence declare Trump the winner or reject state electors as a way to kick the matter back to the states.

“He was quite clear in saying, ‘I've heard you loud and clear. You're not going to do that,’” Jacobs said of a plan to have Pence back Trump. “Would you now consider this?

“I was surprised that we instead had a stark ask to just reject electors.”

Besides that Trump thing, and a later one in which a phone call apparently went like this:

Trump: Pence, will you reject the electors?
Pence: No.
Trump: You're a pussy.

That Eastman guy apparently made a suicidal move: an email back-and-forth in which he asked someone to commit treason.

“I said, ‘If this case got to the Supreme Court, we'd lose 9-0, wouldn't we, if we actually took your position and it got up there?’ And he started out at 7 to 2. And I said, ‘Who are the two?’ And he said, ‘Well, I think maybe Clarence Thomas,’” Jacobs said, before Eastman eventually relented the case would be unlikely to get any votes.

Jacobs said the meeting ended with Eastman saying, “They're going to be really disappointed that I wasn't able to persuade you.”

That was Jan five.

Jacobs and Eastman would go on to have a heated email exchange, with Jacobs criticizing him for forwarding legal advice that “functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States.”

“Respectfully it was gravely, gravely irresponsible for you to entice the President with an academic theory that had no legal viability, and that you well know would lose before any judge who decided the case,” Jacob wrote.

Eastman and Trump knew (a) Pence would not help, and (b) SCOTUS would not back them. They did it anyhow. So that's clear evi--

"You forgot the best part."

I don't think I did?

"This part, right here:"

The Vice President's rule was never to divulge the contents of his conversations with the president

"Why would Pence have had a rule, to never speak of his conversations with Trump? Not just this one where Trump called him a pussy and Pence did nothing like the spineless coward he is, but all of them?"

Well, presumably top-secret--

"No. Everyone here knows full well it's because Trump is an idiot with a murderous cult behind him. You speak out against Trump, you get fired, if he can't fire you, he gets you canceled or sends a murderous insurrection to kill you."

I mean, that happened anyhow, right?

"Yes, but Pence had the rule long before that, didn't he? He knew he was working with an unAmerican lunatic, a dictator-wannabee and insane person who would ask for impossible or illegal things. He could admit Trump was dangerous and/or crazy and cost the GOP the White House, or he could admit he tried to stop him and get kicked out in 2020 by Trump announcing another VP."

Yeah, funny, both of those happened. But yeah, I bet Biden did not have such a policy with Obama, or Bush with Reagan. The fact that Pence had such a policy is truly damning for both of them.

[Breccia]

Hey @Breccia what would you say if there was footage of Roger Stone on Jan 6?

I would say “See you in prison".

[some guy]

Recording there illegal shenanigans. We're obviously dealing real stable criminal masterminds.

[Poopymonster]

Recording there illegal shenanigans. We're obviously dealing real stable criminal masterminds.

They thought they'd get blanket pardons. "Evidence" means shit when the russian dicktaster says "You are forgiven. Go forth, and sin some more my child."

[Breccia]

This just in: Trump still hasn't posted on his own social media platform.

Well, not really.

Truth Social, which bills itself as a conservative-friendly alternative to Twitter, rocketed to the number-one spot on Apple’s free apps chart when it was made available for download in February — days after Trump made his only post on the site, telling fans that “your favorite president will see you soon.”

But many would-be “Truthsayers” who downloaded the app at launch have found themselves stuck in a lengthy waitlist that appears to not have budged.

A Post reporter has been stuck at number 387,392 on the app’s waitlist for more than a week and screenshots on Twitter show other would-be users with waitlist numbers higher than 1 million.

In the meantime, Truth Social has fallen to the 90th spot on Apple’s free chart as of Friday — just below traffic helper Waze and above the Starbucks rewards app.

I relatively recently posted they were #57, which I thought was appropriate because Trump's steaks also failed without sauce.

However, the app did send out a message to some users this week saying that it is “steadily welcoming new users from our temporary waitlist.”

“This phased rollout allows us to identify and remedy errors in real time as we onboard news users,” Truth Social added. “Rest assured, the entire TRUTH team is working around the clock to allow everyone to join us as quickly as possible.”

Yeah, that bolded proves that response is false.

Trump's social media platform has still not been SPAC'd yet, but the merger is due. The stock price is still quite high, which of course is really concerning. Everything about this project so far is an objective failure. In fact, the stock price is near the record set in October when the merger was announced, and after multiple launch failures and million-long wait lists, plus nobody buying the app anymore.

So why is the stock price so high?

This is money laundering. Trump was never going to make this work, everyone here knew it. He couldn't keep a blog going for more than a couple weeks. And we don't know who the shadow backers are, at least, the ones who aren't China. It's a good thing the SEC is on the case, because paying a billion dollars for a knowingly broken product is what meth dealers under laundromats do.

[Elegiac]

So why is the stock price so high?

This is money laundering. Trump was never going to make this work, everyone here knew it. He couldn't keep a blog going for more than a couple weeks. And we don't know who the shadow backers are, at least, the ones who aren't China. It's a good thing the SEC is on the case, because paying a billion dollars for a knowingly broken product is what meth dealers under laundromats do.

Funny you should mention that: Matt Levine called this for what it was last year.

I am not going to pretend to make a business case for [a Trump social media network]—there is a long history of hilarious failure in the “social media for Trump” category—but maybe you can. It is not a sure thing, in any case. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t. When Twitter Inc. went public, it had never been profitable, and it was, you know, a real social network that people used. Maybe Twitter But Trump would immediately be profitable, but boy, I have some doubts. On the other hand, if Donald Trump launched a company that was like, “I am going to start a social media platform for Trump fans,” could he get people to buy the stock? I think that two fundamental lessons of the last few years are:

1) You can get people to buy any stock; and
2) Donald Trump can get people to buy anything.

So if Donald Trump announced, “Hey, I’m gonna do a social media company, buy some stock,” people would buy some stock. And then he’d get a lot of money. And then if the social media platform did not end up being profitable—as I cannot imagine it would be!—then he would, uh, still have that money? And if the social media platform did not end up being launched—if Trump and his crack team of technologists just couldn’t actually build a well-functioning online social network—then he would, uh, still have that money? And if there was no crack team of technologists at all, if nobody even tried to build the social media platform—then you see where I am going with this, right?

Money laundering AND fleecing your true believers, to boot.