Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply |
Peace through superior firepower |
Trump's indictment is not the slam dunk case liberal media believes it is The media’s pronouncements that Donald Trump is almost certainly guilty of crimes are based on an ignorance of the law and a blinding political bias. As is often the case with capacious fiats mouthed by the featherhead class, the opposite is true. The former president has several viable defenses. Some will be offered in pre-trial motions challenging the 37 charges in a Florida grand jury indictment related to his handling of alleged classified documents. These motions are appealable if denied. Such interlocutory petitions and arguments are laborious and time-consuming. They render special counsel Jack Smith’s stated ambition of a "speedy trial" fanciful, at best. Trump’s principal defense rests with the Presidential Records Act (PRA). It is not "farcical" as former Attorney General William Barr claims. It was a law passed by Congress in 1978 that granted an exclusive right of former presidents to maintain custody and control of presidential papers accrued during their terms in office. Arguably, it includes classified documents. It is a fundamental precept of law that specific statutes prevail over general statutes. The PRA is a specially crafted law that applies to a narrow group of people. That is, presidents. By contrast, the Espionage Act enacted in 1917 is a general statute that applies broadly to all citizens. Hence, the defense will argue that PRA takes precedence over the Espionage Act, which accounts for most of the charges against Trump. It is another elementary tenet of law that if statutes are in conflict, the more recently implemented statute predominates over the earlier one. Here, the Records Act was passed 61 years after the Espionage Act. This makes it more recent, relevant, and operative. Trump’s lawyers will argue that the PRA is the governing and controlling law, not the Espionage Act. So, what does that law mean? For more than a decade, it was the considered opinion of the Department of Justice that the PRA conferred a unique right on former presidents to keep whatever presidential records they want, and the government has no authority to seize them. The National Archives agreed. A president has the sole discretion to segregate and dispose of records. Indeed, so convinced was the DOJ of this interpretation that its lawyers defended it in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. in 2012. They argued that ex-president Bill Clinton was allowed to maintain custody of whatever he wanted during his two terms, including audio tapes with suspected classified information that he stored in his home. The judge, without reservation, agreed. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that control over presidential records rests squarely in the hands of a former president. She wrote, in relevant part, "The National Archives does not have the authority to designate materials as ‘presidential records.’ It lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them." The judge also adopted the very argument made in court by the Justice Department: "(Seizing the records) is an ‘extraordinary request’ that is ‘unfounded, contrary to the Presidential Records Act’s express terms, and contrary to the traditional principles of administrative law’." Forty-five years ago, congress passed the Records Act to memorialize what previous presidents had always been permitted to do as a matter of tradition and practice. This is important since it is incumbent on courts to interpret statutes consistent with legislative intent. As The Wall Street Journal noted in a recent editorial, "If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless." Quite right. Importantly, the PRA is a civil statute with no criminal penalty attached. Judge Jackson’s opinion reinforced the legal constraints on both the National Archives and the Justice Department. Their ability to retrieve documents is limited to a civil action, not criminal seizure. Hence, the proper remedy was for Garland to bring a civil lawsuit to enforce his subpoena and allow an impartial judge to resolve the matter. Trump’s defense team will argue that Garland manipulated the law by commandeering the Espionage Act to criminalize conduct that is not criminal at all under the prevailing statute, the Presidential Records Act. Garland defied his department’s own legal interpretation of the law and the previous court decision to target Trump in advance of a national election. His flagrant abuse bears the unmistakable stench of partisan politics, which has infected the attorney general’s tenure from the outset. The FBI did not raid Bill Clinton’s home to reclaim classified material. Nor did the agency raid the same home when his wife, Hillary, stored more than a hundred classified documents on her personal server as Secretary of State. Notably, she did not have the protection of the Presidential Records Act. But it seems that abusive raids and inflated indictments only happen to Republicans. The new litmus test for prosecution is party affiliation not fidelity to the law. Trump’s defense team will aver that unequal application of the law and selective prosecution are a violation of their client’s due process rights. These rights are based on principles of fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. This will likely be the subject of another pre-trial motion to dismiss the case. After all, "Equal Justice Under Law" should be more than mere words chiseled on the pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court. A similar motion based on constitutional violations may argue that Garland snookered a Florida magistrate into signing an overly broad general search warrant that is strictly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. If the evidence seized was accomplished by unlawful means, it constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure. The evidence would be inadmissible under the well-established exclusionary rule. You can be assured that Trump’s defense team will seek to exclude or suppress the testimony of his lawyer, Evan Corcoran, who was forced to testify before the Washington grand jury prior to the indictment. District Court Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the attorney-client privilege could be pierced under the so-called "crime-fraud exception." Trump’s current attorneys will contend that the ruling was deeply flawed and erroneous. Regardless, it is not binding on the trial court in Florida. Moreover, the special counsel and Judge Howell refused to allow the defense to even examine the sealed evidence on which the matter was being argued. That deprived them of presenting a fair counter-argument, which was the prosecution’s intent all along. The adverse decision was preordained. At issue are instances in which Trump supposedly asked his counsel about ways to avoid producing evidence that Garland was seeking. But it has never been a crime for a client to ask his attorney questions —even questions about how to evade government intrusions and demands. As George Washington University law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley has pointed out, "Clients do it all the time…indeed, it’s encouraged." We don’t prosecute people for their thoughts or discussions. Was it unreasonable or somehow criminal for Trump to ask his lawyer if he could adopt the same obstructive tactics that Hillary Clinton and her lawyer employed to escape charges? Not at all. It’s the kind of query that attorneys field quite frequently and then disabuse. Trump’s team will protest that criminalizing confidential conversations protected by law is an egregious overreach by special counsel Jack Smith. Howell’s conclusions and her ruling itself are an alarming breach of a cherished principle that communications between a lawyer and client are sacrosanct. It appears from the indictment that prosecutors used (or misused) Corcoran’s testimony to help build their case. If that judicial ruling was in error, then any charges that derived from Trump’s own attorney should be stricken from the case as unlawfully brought. Several of the charges against Trump accuse him of obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve the documents in dispute. In the criminal codes, obstruction requires proof that a person act "corruptly" or "act with an improper purpose." Those rather vague terms were later defined by the Supreme Court as behaving with a "wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil" intent. This is an extremely high standard for prosecutors to sustain. Trump’s legal team will assert that if their client sincerely believed he was entitled to the documents under the meaning of the Presidential Records Act, as well as the court’s interpretation of it in the earlier Clinton case, then he did not harbor the requisite "corrupt" intent. It is not "immoral, depraved, or evil" to want to keep what you think is yours if you are genuinely convinced of it. Even before the raid, Trump insisted that he was acting lawfully. Can there exist a credible motive to obstruct an investigation into a lawful act? People are not motivated to impede non-crimes. If Trump prevails in his argument that his actions were lawful under the PRA, then it seems incongruous to charge him with obstruction without an underlying crime. A serious dilemma facing the special counsel is how to hold a public trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment when much of the evidence is contingent on classified material. Jurors have a right to examine the documents to determine whether they qualify as national defense information under the meaning of the Espionage Act. That is their duty as the triers of fact. To understand the facts and apply them to the law, jurors must literally see the evidence. However, 12 average citizens selected from the community do not possess the requisite security clearance to view the records that are critical to the prosecution’s burden of proof. The same applies to lawyers. Prosecutors cannot simply tell everyone, "Trust us when we say that the seized documents qualify as prohibited material under the statute." They cannot put an FBI agent or security analyst on the witness stand who vows that the 31 documents violate the Espionage Act. That is a question of fact that resides solely in the provenance of the jury. This approach would also deprive the defense of a fair and robust cross-examination. Failure to permit the jury to read the documents themselves might well constitute reversible error. This leaves the government with the option of declassifying the records. So, imagine a trial where the former president of the United States is accused of having classified documents that have since been declassified. It sounds absurd because it is. There is a law called the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) that outlines various procedures for handling sensitive documents in court without jeopardizing national security. But CIPA is a process, not an unblemished resolution. It is replete with risks that can lead to a case being overturned on appeal. Unaware of Trump’s various defenses, the chronically biased media has gobbled up every word of the indictment and treated it as gospel. Already, they have convicted him in the court of public opinion. No need for a pesky trial. These are the same faux journalists who pasteurized the phony Trump-Russia collusion "dossier" as scripture. None of them are smart enough to heed the warning of Albert Einstein that "The only mistake in life is the lesson not learned." Veteran lawyers know better. Through experience, they realize that indictments are one-sided narratives with embroidered storytelling. In prominent cases, they are often designed for public consumption and meant to agitate or inflame. There isn’t a prosecutor alive who doesn’t think his case is better than it really is. That delusion is frequently reflected in an overwrought indictment. Prosecutors also have a nasty habit of ignoring exculpatory material that is beneficial to the accused. They twist the law and contort the evidence in the most damning light possible. And sometimes they fail at proof. Especially when their seemingly invincible evidence is challenged by skillful lawyers armed with credible witnesses that, in the end, undermine the charges. Of course, that is what a trial is for. But first, Special Counsel Jack Smith must survive a flurry of dismissal motions to which the mindless media remains oblivious. | |||
|
Lawyers, Guns and Money |
Bill Barr is such a disappointment. It's not going to be easy to clean house at DOJ/FBI but if given the 2nd chance Trump should fire every last attorney in that office and start over. He should be vetting a list of conservatives even now. If it wasn't for Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr things would have been far different for Trump. There was never any justification for the Mueller probe, which only happened because Jeff Sessions was weak. At least now he knows about Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Co. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
|
Lawyers, Guns and Money |
Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer by Alan M. Dershowitz Former President Donald Trump has now been arraigned and pleaded not guilty. He was represented by two lawyers, neither of whom he apparently wants to lead his defense at trial. He has been interviewing Florida lawyers, and several top ones have declined. I know, because I have spoken to them. There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals. There is a nefarious group that calls itself The 65 Project that has as its goal to intimidate lawyers into not representing Trump or anyone associated with him. They have threatened to file bar charges against any such lawyers. When these threats first emerged, I wrote an op-ed offering to defend pro bono any lawyers that The 65 Project goes after. So The 65 Project immediately went after me, and contrived a charge based on a case in which I was a constitutional consultant, but designed to send a message to potential Trump lawyers: if you defend Trump or anyone associated with him, we will target you and find something to charge you with. The lawyers to whom I spoke are fully aware of this threat -- and they are taking it seriously. There may be other reasons as well for why lawyers are reluctant to defend Trump. He is not the easiest client, and he has turned against some of his previous lawyers, as some of his previous lawyers have turned against him. This will be a difficult case to defend and an unpopular one with many in the legal profession and in general population. Good lawyers, however, generally welcome challenges, especially in high-profile cases. This case is different: the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch. I recall during the 1950s how civil liberties lawyers, many of whom despised communism, were cancelled, and attacked if they dared to represent people accused of being communists. Even civil liberties organizations stayed away from such cases, for fear that it would affect their fundraising and general standing in the community. It may even be worse today, as I can attest from my own personal experiences, having defended Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment in 2020. I was cancelled by my local library, community center and synagogue. Old friends refused to speak to me and threatened others who did. My wife, who disagreed with my decision to defend Trump, was also ostracized. There were physical threats to my safety. Our system of justice is based on the John Adams standard: he too was attacked for defending the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre, but his representation of these accused killers now serves as a symbol of the 6th Amendment right to counsel. That symbol has now been endangered by The 65 Project and others who are participating in its McCarthyite chilling of lawyers who have been asked to represent Trump and those associated with him. Trump's lawyers have now alleged that one of the prosecutors has suggested to Stanley Woodard, the lawyer for Waltine Nauta, Trump's co-defendant, that his application for judgeship may be negatively affected if he persists in defending Nauta vigorously rather than encouraging him to cooperate against Trump. If that is true – I have not seen the evidence to support it – then it represents a direct attack on the 6th Amendment. Whatever one may think of Trump or the charges against him, all Americans must stand united against efforts to intimidate lawyers and chill them from defending unpopular clients pursuant to the 6th Amendment. Bar associations must look into the threats and actions of The 65 Project and of prosecutors who try, by subtle or other means, to influence the representation of clients by threats to their careers or other means. Hard cases may make bad law, but partisan cases endanger constitutional rights. We must do everything to assure that all defendants, including Donald Trump, get the zealous representation to which the Constitution entitled all Americans. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.../donald-trump-lawyer "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
|
Oriental Redneck |
How about you, Professor Dershowitz? You represented the President before, in his 1st Impeachment trial. Q | |||
|
No More Mr. Nice Guy |
I don't care if President Trump violated laws per the allegations for one specific reason. It is that his attackers actively shielded their side when they committed the same or worse actions. I cannot care more about DJT doing something than the left cared about Hillary, Biden, Obama, Bill Clinton, etc doing the same or worse. This is obviously only a politically motivated attack, after years of previous politically motivated attacks. A secondary reason would be that the long term negative effects on our country of prosecuting political opponents would be dire. Technical fouls or minor transgressions should probably be forgiven legally though made known publicly. President Ford was very wise to pardon Richard Nixon. | |||
|
quarter MOA visionary |
Maybe he will at some point. Seems to me currently he is good press for DJT until then. | |||
|
wishing we were congress |
Tucker Carlson slammed Fox News for apologizing and ousting the producer responsible for running a headline that seemingly called President Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator” the day former President Donald Trump was arraigned in federal court. “inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked.” Carlson noted the producer who put the chyron on the screen, a tenured employee who “was considered one of the most capable people in the building,” resigned less than 24 hours after the controversy. https://www.breitbart.com/the-...-headline-joe-biden/ | |||
|
Lawyers, Guns and Money |
^^^ Ep. 4 Wannabe Dictator https://twitter.com/TuckerCarl.../1669472439472988161 "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
|
Peace through superior firepower |
Damn, that banner was real? [Gunnery Sgt. Hartman]Well- no shit![/Gunnery Sgt. Hartman] Nailed it: Totalitarian motherfuckers! ____________________________________________________ "I am your retribution." - Donald Trump, speech at CPAC, March 4, 2023 | |||
|
Baroque Bloke |
I love this! Yeah, Tapper panicked, in part because these were Cubans cheering President Trump. Hispanics are a big sector of the voting public.
Serious about crackers | |||
|
Leatherneck |
I think this CNN story is extremely telling of how much they hate him. They hate him so much that they are trying to use his early acceptance and inclusion of transgender people against him. This is an obvious attempt to try and turn some of his supporters against him while at the same time completely destroying their narrative that he hates the LGBTQ community. Of course like the leftists they are they intentionally miss the point. Mutilating children and allowing biological male athletes to compete against women isn’t even close to the same as allowing adult transgender women to compete in a beauty pageant. https://apple.news/AixPeYIh-QkGYZzYJOMyKHw
“Everybody wants a Sig in the sheets but a Glock on the streets.” -bionic218 04-02-2014 | |||
|
Baroque Bloke |
That’s utterly disgusting. And, I hope, illegal. Serious about crackers | |||
|
Baroque Bloke |
Maybe Dershowitz can’t practice law in Florida? Serious about crackers | |||
|
Lawyers, Guns and Money |
The Rebellion is Alive and Thriving We live with a new type of tyranny, where we find ourselves dissidents. It is not like any previous tyranny. It is not revolutionary in nature. Instead, it operates very scientifically and technocratically by convincing those it tyrannizes to demand their own enslavement, under the guise of comfort. Prior dissidents were at least dissidents of a tangible, kinetic revolution. We are dissidents of what the willfully tyrannized perceive as their secure position within the rightful order of things. This needs to be factored in to how we think about “converting” and “awakening” others amid the ongoing insurgency. (Via Daily Mail) – A Fox News producer who resigned over a chyron that described Joe Biden as a ‘wannabe dictator’, has broken his silence. Alexander McCaskill posted a photo of himself on Instagram holding a cardboard box outside the corporation’s New York offices. He told his followers ‘Today was my last day at Fox’ and described his time there as a ‘wild 10 years’. McCaskill is thought to have been responsible for the chyron which claimed President Biden was intent on locking up his 2024 rival, Donald Trump on Tuesday. Fox had it on screen for less than 30 seconds, and then apologized. Dailymail.com has approached Fox News and McCaskill for comment. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed the producer had resigned during his new show, now being broadcast on Twitter, on Thursday. He did not name the producer but The Daily Beast reported that it was McCaskill, who worked with Carlson on Tucker Carlson Tonight for many years. McCaskill seemed to confirm news of his resignation on his private Instagram account in a lengthy post. ‘Today was my last day at FOX. It was a wild 10 years and it was the best place I’ve ever worked because of the great people I met,’ he wrote. ‘But the time has come. I asked them to let me go, and they finally did. To all my friends there: I will miss you forever.’ (read more) Well done Mr. McCaskill, well done! The rebellion is alive and well! https://theconservativetreehou...hriving/#more-247853 "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
|
Get Off My Lawn |
Commie slip-of-the-tongue, saying something Democrats really want. "I’m not going to read Time Magazine, I’m not going to read Newsweek, I’m not going to read any of these magazines; I mean, because they have too much to lose by printing the truth"- Bob Dylan, 1965 | |||
|
Thank you Very little |
Link Harvard Poll: Donald Trump Leads Biden by 6, Towers over Primary Field After Indictment Former President Donald Trump beats President Joe Biden by six points in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup and dominates the Republican primary field in the latest national Harvard/Harris poll. The poll, which was conducted following Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday on a 37-count federal indictment, shows that 45 percent of registered voters would back him over Biden, who draws 39 percent of support. Another 15 percent are undecided: https://twitter.com/IAPolls202...5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_ | |||
|
Shall Not Be Infringed |
^^^Trump +'45' over DeSantis...I like it! ____________________________________________________________ If Some is Good, and More is Better.....then Too Much, is Just Enough !! Trump 2024....Make America Great Again! "May Almighty God bless the United States of America" - parabellum 7/26/20 Live Free or Die! | |||
|
Member |
Well f*** her up the anal sphincter with every arm of a Saguaro Cactus. "If you’re a leader, you lead the way. Not just on the easy ones; you take the tough ones too…” – MAJ Richard D. Winters (1918-2011), E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil... Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel." - Isaiah 5:20,24 | |||
|
7.62mm Crusader |
Yes indeed. | |||
|
The Velvet Voicebox |
Joey D 6/19/23 "All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Sir Winston Churchill "The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose." --James Earl Jones | |||
|
Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 ... 825 826 827 828 829 830 831 ... 1307 |
Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |