Trump 58: Bringing Covfefe to a Battle of Wits With The FBI

[SassyPants]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Seems like a truly professional business arrangement… /s

Kimmy needs to stop with the duck lips posing. It’s not attractive. 

She is looking more like Ivana (RIP) every day. WTH happened to her?

[GreyhoundFan]

Apparently there’s an orange meltdown on TS:

 

[Xan]

He's now saying that he never said he wanted the Constitution terminated -- but the post about how he wanted it terminated is still up on Truth Social.

Today:

And Saturday:

Who are we to believe?  Donald or our lying eyes?

[livinginthelight]

1 hour ago, Xan said:

Who are we to believe?  Donald or our lying eyes?

 I notice this post has 80K+ likes. Are the bots back online or are people really that dumb?

[Xan]

It's Donny's social media platform so I generally assume that at least 3/4 of the upvotes are from bots.

[Dandruff]

Trump Org. found guilty on all counts in NY tax fraud trial:

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/jury-finds-trump-organization-guilty-on-all-counts-in-ny-tax-fraud-trial/3986201/

[Audrey2]

10 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

Trump Org. found guilty on all counts in NY tax fraud trial:

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/jury-finds-trump-organization-guilty-on-all-counts-in-ny-tax-fraud-trial/3986201/

In other news, grocery stores in the South part of Florida have had a run on ketchup and the shelves are bare.

[onekidanddone]

2 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

In other news, grocery stores in the South part of Florida have had a run on ketchup and the shelves are bare.

And the Covfefe riots are getting out of hand

[GreyhoundFan]

No surprise:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[thoughtful]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

"It brought me coffee once. I was so surprised to find out that this big business and I had the same name!"

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Seen speeding towards Mar-a-Loco:

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, what a surprise. /s

"Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida"

Quote

Lawyers for former president Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fla., used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.

Those items were immediately turned over to the FBI, according to those people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The search was one of at least three searches conducted by an outside team of his properties for classified materials in recent weeks, after they were pressed by a federal judge to attest they had fully complied with a May grand jury subpoena to turn over all materials bearing classified markings, according to people familiar with the matter.

Emails released by the General Services Administration, which assists former presidents during their transition to private life, show that the government agency helped rent the storage unit at a private facility in West Palm Beach on July 21, 2021. The unit was needed to store items that had been held at an office in Northern Virginia used by Trump staffers in the months just after he left office.

The emails show that GSA and Trump staffers worked together to arrange to ship several pallets of boxes and other items weighing more than 3,000 pounds from Northern Virginia to the Florida storage unit in September 2021.

A person familiar with the matter said the storage unit had a mix of boxes, gifts, suits and clothes, among other things. “It was suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things,” this person said. “To my knowledge, he has never even been to that storage unit. I don’t think anyone in Trump world could tell you what’s in that storage unit.”

There was no cataloguing of what was put in the storage unit, Trump advisers said — just as there was no cataloguing of what classified documents were taken to a room underneath Mar-a-Lago.

The Washington Post could not immediately determine specifically what was in the items marked classified. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ultimate significance of the classified material in the storage unit is not immediately clear, but its presence there indicates Mar-a-Lago was not the only place where Trump kept classified material. It also provides further evidence that Trump and his team did not fully comply with a May grand jury subpoena that sought all documents marked classified still in possession of the post-presidential office.

In addition to the storage unit, the team hired an outside firm to carry out the search of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and, more recently, Trump Tower in New York, according to people familiar with the matter. The outside team also searched at least one other property.

The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone’s property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency.

Trump’s lawyers have told the Justice Department that the outside team did not turn up any new classified information during their search of Bedminster and Trump Tower, according to people familiar with the process, and have said they utilized a firm that had expertise in searching for documents.

“President Trump and his counsel continue to be cooperative and transparent,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said, accusing the Justice Department of committing an “unprecedented” and “unwarranted attack” against Trump and his family.

Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell told Trump’s legal team to continue to search for documents after the Justice Department expressed concerns that the team had not fully complied with a subpoena earlier this year. Howell, according to people familiar with the matter, did not give specific orders on how a search should be done.

Howell’s instructions followed a breakdown in the government’s trust in Trump’s attorneys that led prosecutors in August to seek a court-authorized FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Since that time, prosecutors have continued to question whether Trump has returned all materials with classification markings, although what steps the government might take to retrieve such materials or procedures it might require Trump’s advisers and lawyers to implement remain unclear.

Trump’s team has sought to avoid another federal high-profile search of his properties, the people familiar with the matter said.

According to the people, at least one of Trump’s lawyers has previously advocated for a less aggressive approach to the Justice Department investigation of Trump and his advisers for three potential crimes: mishandling of national security secrets, obstruction and destruction of government records.

That attorney, former Florida solicitor general Christopher Kise, had proposed such a search months earlier. Many of the other lawyers on Trump’s team have rebuffed Kise’s advice, and he has taken a reduced role in the classified documents case while taking a larger role in the New York investigations into the former president, the people said.

Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, communicated to Trump’s lawyers after the FBI search that the department was concerned Trump still may not have returned all the classified documents in his possession. The Washington Post has previously reported that officials at the National Archives also believe that there may still be more records missing. Previous attempts by Trump’s attorneys to identify and return documents proved unsatisfactory to investigators.

At times in the past, Trump has misled his own lawyers as to what was in the boxes that were taken from Mar-a-Lago, The Post has reported.

For example, he told some on his team that he only possessed newspaper clippings and personal items in 2021. One of his former lawyers, Alex Cannon, declined Trump’s entreaty to tell the National Archives he had returned all items because Cannon was not sure if it was true, and his team in February did not release a statement dictated by Trump that claimed he had returned all materials, The Post has reported.

Trump lawyers Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran met with investigators in June, handing over a taped-up folder of 38 documents collected from the former president’s residence in response to a May subpoena, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter. Prosecutors called the response “incomplete” in court documents and said that they collected evidence of “obstructive conduct” regarding the failure to fully comply with the subpoena.

Bobb signed a certification swearing that she had been told that “a diligent search” was conducted of boxes of records shipped from the White House to Florida when Trump left office, and that the file handed over to investigators contained “all documents that are responsive to the subpoena.” Corcoran told the visiting investigators he had been advised that all available boxes placed in a storage room — and nowhere else — had been searched in response to the subpoena, The Post reported.

Soon after, investigators obtained video surveillance of the club and conducted more interviews with Trump staffers, leading them to seek a search warrant from a judge on the basis of new evidence that sensitive material still remained at Mar-a-Lago, The Post has reported. When agents executed the search warrant in August, they found additional documents with classified markings in the storage room and in Trump’s office, along with thousands of other government papers and items, according to court records.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The 33 worst days of Trump’s political career, ranked"

Quote

Tuesday was a bad day for Donald Trump.

The former president invested heavily in the election of his old friend Herschel Walker to the Senate from Georgia. That Walker failed to win outright in November was one of many ways in which the limits of Trump’s political power were shown by the 2022 midterms, but at least Trump might see redemption if Walker prevailed in the runoff.

He didn’t. And not only did Walker not win, but his loss came only hours after Trump’s private business was found to have committed tax fraud — a rare loss for the Trump Organization in its long-standing battles against enforcement authorities.

Again: It was a bad day. But it seems useful to consider how bad it was, relative to the various other bad days Trump has seen since he decided to run for president back in 2015. There have been a lot of bad days. So, how bad was this one?

This is a subjective thing to assess, certainly, with unclear boundaries. What do we mean by “bad,” for example? Bad for whom? How?

Our subjective answer was to focus on days that helped define how Trump has come to be understood as a politician, days that reinforced or established negative characteristics that will continue to linger around the 2024 candidate. Days that helped cement Republican skepticism or that bolstered voter concerns about his leadership.

It’s possible, given that Trump’s political career now stretches back more than seven years, that we’ve forgotten some egregious examples. But we did pick out 33 particular days — including Tuesday — that seemed like they might be ones that stand out as exceptionally bad for the former president.

They are presented below, from least to most bad for Trump.

33. Dec. 18, 2018: Trump Foundation forced to close. Questions about Trump’s use of his personal nonprofit had lingered for months, thanks largely to reporting from The Washington Post. It came to a head in the second year of his presidency, when he agreed to shutter the entity following revelations that it was used to aid his 2016 election.

32. July 31, 2017: Anthony Scaramucci fired. The firing of Scaramucci as White House communications director after only 11 days did not alter the trajectory of the administration. But it was representative of the tumult that plagued Trump’s tenure — and of his approach to staffing decisions.

31. May 10, 2017: Reveals classified info to Russian officials. During an unusual meeting in the Oval Office with senior Russian officials — a questionable decision in its own right — Trump revealed secret information obtained from Israel. The meeting came the day after he fired FBI Director James B. Comey, an act that he told the Russians would ease the pressure he faced.

30. Oct. 30, 2017: Paul Manafort indicted; court blocks military transgender ban. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his top deputy were indicted as part of the Russia investigation. Ultimately, it would be revealed that Manafort had passed campaign polling data to a colleague linked to Russian intelligence. On the same day, a court blocked Trump’s effort to ban trans service members.

29. Jan. 30, 2017: Travel ban fight; acting attorney general fired. Soon after taking office, Trump enacted a ban on immigration from several heavily Muslim countries, triggering protests. The acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, refused to defend the policy and was fired.

28. Jan. 25, 2019: Capitulates on government shutdown. In late 2018, under pressure from right-wing commentators, Trump declined to sign a government funding bill in an attempt to force Congress to approve funding for a border wall. Congress declined. Without funding, the government shut down — until Trump finally capitulated.

27. Dec. 12, 2017: Roy Moore loses. Moore was not Trump’s first pick to run for Senate in Alabama, but his endorsed candidate lost the Republican nomination. So Trump switched to Moore — just in time for Moore to be saddled with one of the most damaging scandals in U.S. political history. Moore lost, setting up a pattern of iffy Trump-backed candidates failing to cross the finish line.

26. Dec. 18, 2020: Oval Office fight over election denial. More than a month after Trump lost his reelection bid, he hosted a group of allies in the White House for an hours-long meeting about trying to reverse the results. Trump entertained appointing attorney Sidney Powell — already discredited — as special counsel to investigate nonexistent fraud. Soon after the meeting, Trump tweeted about a rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

25. Nov. 6, 2018: Midterm election debacle. The first midterm elections of a new presidency often go against the president. But Trump built his political brand on “winning.” When Republicans lost the House in 2018, his party got another sign that he was not able to deliver victories beyond party primaries.

24. Dec. 6, 2022: Herschel Walker loses; Trump Organization convicted. That the 2022 midterms didn’t go against the new president’s party can be attributed at least in part to Trump. His elevation of candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia helped Democratic Senate candidates win close races. That Walker’s loss came on the same day that the Trump Organization was convicted on fraud charges only amplified the difficulty of the day for Trump.

23. Jan. 12, 2018: Disparagement of African countries. During a meeting at the White House, Trump used a vulgar term to deride people from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries, helping solidify the impression that his views of geopolitics intertwined with his views on race.

22. July 8, 2017: Trump Tower meeting reported. The New York Times’s report about a meeting at Trump Tower involving a Kremlin-linked attorney and Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and campaign chairman demonstrated one of the first concrete connections between Russian actors and the campaign. More were soon to emerge, but the Trump Tower meeting made obvious that the Russia probe wasn’t solely a “witch hunt.”

21. Oct. 2, 2018: Jamal Khashoggi is murdered. The murder of a Washington Post contributing columnist at the hands of killers working for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince forced Trump to pick between siding with a U.S. resident journalist and siding with a foreign leader who had consistently played to his ego. Trump chose the crown prince.

20. Nov. 8, 2022: Another midterm collapse. The GOP’s failures in 2022 were easy to lay at Trump’s feet, if not always fairly. It was the third election cycle in a row that Republican candidates had stumbled or underperformed — and the third in a row for which Trump’s opponents could blame him.

19. Oct. 2, 2020: Announces covid-19 diagnosis. Shortly before the 2020 election, the seemingly inevitable happened: Trump got covid-19. He had rapidly pivoted from support for containing the coronavirus to — with an eye on his reelection — a laissez-faire approach that he himself embodied. The illness forced him off the campaign trail and raised questions about his policy choices. It also made him far sicker than he admitted.

18. Jan. 13, 2021: Impeached for Capitol riot. Trump’s second impeachment, for putting the events that led to the Capitol riot into motion, was less politically damaging, given that he was already a lame duck. But numerous members of his party in the House and Senate voted to hold him to account, dealing him a rebuke to an extent that no president had previously faced.

17. Aug. 21, 2018: Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen face justice. On one day in the summer of 2018, two former Trump allies — his longtime attorney and his 2016 campaign manager — were in court. Cohen was pleading guilty to federal charges and implicating Trump in the process. Manafort was being found guilty on charges related to financial crimes.

16. April 23, 2020: Using disinfectant to treat covid. There are plenty of questions that could be raised about Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but few compare to his musing at a news conference that maybe disinfectant could be injected into people as a way to fight the virus. It exemplified his science-averse, off-the-cuff response to the virus.

15. Nov. 23, 2022: Nick Fuentes dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s ability to avoid rebuke from members of his own party faltered after he sat down for dinner with Ye, the rapper born Kanye West who had become notorious for antisemitic comments, and Nick Fuentes, an antisemite and white supremacist. Trump’s best defense was that he didn’t screen his dinner guests, which was not reassuring.

14. Jan. 20, 2021: Joe Biden inaugurated. The inauguration of President Biden — and Trump’s quiet departure from Washington hours earlier, avoiding the traditional process of transferring power — cemented Trump’s inability to accept the will of the electorate.

13. Jan. 21, 2020: First coronavirus case in the U.S. The arrival of the coronavirus has been identified by Trump himself as the moment that his reelection became uncertain.

12. May 29, 2020: Forced to shelter in White House bunker. As protests continued in Washington following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota, Trump was forced to seek refuge in a bunker at the White House. It was a demonstration of weakness that ran against Trump’s heavily cultivated image of toughness and probably contributed to his decision to walk across the square outside the White House for a photo op.

11. Aug. 8, 2022: Mar-a-Lago searched. The FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago event space was the culmination of a months-long back-and-forth in which Trump apparently tried to retain possession of government documents. It was an unusual step, certainly, but one that reinforced the weight of the political baggage that Trump carries.

10. Nov. 3, 2020: The effort to overturn the election begins. Trump hoped that 2020 might go the way 2016 did, with his overperforming polls and securing a close victory. But he was prepared if not. For months, he stoked unfounded concern about mail ballots, allowing him the option to proclaim victory before votes were counted. Hours after polls closed on Election Day, he tried to do exactly that, setting in motion the effort to reverse his election loss.

9. Dec. 18, 2019: Impeached over Ukraine. Trump’s first impeachment in late 2019 followed a well-documented effort to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden before the United States would provide military and other assistance. It cemented Trump’s place in the history books, revealed how far he would go to retain power — and reflected new light after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made obvious just how necessary such military aid was.

8. July 28, 2017: John McCain kills Obamacare overhaul. Echoing conservative media, Trump pledged to overhaul the Affordable Care Act if elected. In his first year in office, he and congressional Republicans moved to do so. But that effort collapsed in dramatic fashion when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) emerged to vote down the party’s last-ditch proposal. Trump’s grudge against McCain continued even past the senator’s death.

7. June 20, 2018: Trump ends child separation. In an effort to curtail immigration, Trump’s Justice Department instituted a policy separating children from their parents, with one goal being to provide a visceral, cruel disincentive for coming to the United States. The policy came to help define Trump’s administration, and his eventual reversal of the policy did little to change that perception.

6. Aug. 12, 2017: Charlottesville. When a right-wing rally in Charlottesville led to the murder of a counterprotester, Trump was slow to criticize racist extremists whose presence had triggered violence. Ultimately, he blamed and praised both sides — the extremists and the counterprotesters.

5. Feb. 1, 2016: Loses Iowa caucuses. The very first political contest in which Trump took part, he underperformed. In the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) emerged victorious, beating the polls. Trump’s response? He claimed that Cruz cheated and that the results were somehow fraudulent. It was a good preview of the next five years.

4. Oct. 7, 2016: “Access Hollywood” tape released. The Washington Post’s publication of a tape in which Trump admitted groping women forced the then-candidate to release a video of apology — something he didn’t normally do. But the day included other important developments: WikiLeaks began dumping documents stolen from an adviser to Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, which both shaped the rest of the election and became part of the investigation into Russian interference that would hang over Trump’s presidency.

3. Jan. 6, 2021: Capitol riot; social media ban. The riot at the Capitol will forever define Trump’s response to his election loss. But it also triggered his ban from social media, prompting him to create his own platform and inflicting damage that Trump felt very personally.

2. May 17, 2017: Robert S. Mueller III appointed special counsel. The Mueller appointment, like the McCain vote on Obamacare, nestled deeply in Trump’s brain. He railed against Mueller and the Russia probe unrelentingly. He still rails against the Russia probe, in fact. It was a signal moment when Trump realized that the federal government was not his to control. It was also when he learned he might face some accountability that, as the head of a privately owned business, he was usually able to avoid.

1. Nov. 7, 2020: Election called for Biden. Perhaps no other day in Trump’s life has had such a profound effect on him and on how others perceive him.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, imagine if a Dem did this: "Trump’s committee paying for lawyers of key Mar-a-Lago witnesses"

Quote

Former president Donald Trump’s political action committee is paying legal bills for some key witnesses involved in the Justice Department investigation into whether Trump mishandled classified documents, obstructed the investigation or destroyed government records, according to people familiar with the matter.

The witnesses include Kash Patel, who has testified in front of the grand jury and is key to Trump’s defense, along with Walt Nauta, a potentially critical prosecution witness, according to these people, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal probe. Nauta, a Trump valet, has told FBI agents he was instructed by the former president to move boxes at Mar-a-Lago, even as government investigators were trying to recover classified documents at that private club and residence, according to people familiar with the matter.

Both Patel and Nauta are represented by Brand Woodward Law, which according to public records has been paid more than $120,000 by Trump’s Save America PAC. Stan Brand, the top lawyer at the firm, said there is nothing improper about the PAC paying legal bills for witnesses in the investigation. Another lawyer not involved in the case, however, said it could encourage witnesses to not cooperate.

“There’s no bar against third parties paying for legal fees as long as it’s disclosed to the client. The ethical obligation of the lawyer is to the client,” Brand said. “This is a tempest in a teapot and another cheap shot at these people because of who they work for.”

But Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor, said the payment arrangement raises concerns about whether the reimbursement of legal fees may influence what the witnesses say or do. And he noted that if Justice Department officials have ethical concerns, they could ask a judge to, at a minimum, question the clients about whether they are certain their interests are being protected.

“It looks like the Trump political action committee is either paying for the silence of these witnesses, for them to take the Fifth or for favorable testimony,” Walden said. “These circumstances should look very suspicious to the Justice Department, and there’s a judicial mechanism for them to get court oversight if there’s a conflict.”

Other witnesses represented by Brand Woodward whose legal bills are being paid by Trump’s PAC include Trump’s longtime adviser Dan Scavino and at least one other personal aide who has testified in front of the grand jury, the people familiar with the matter said.

“We don’t comment on any vendor payments, and everything the group spends on is publicly reported and in accordance with the law,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman.

Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at New York University’s law school, said such arrangements are common in the corporate world and should only be concerning in some circumstances.

“The problems arise when the person paying the fee chooses the lawyer and has an interest in how the lawyer represents the client,” Gillers said.

He cited the case of former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, “who became a whole lot more cooperative” with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol after she switched lawyers.

Gillers noted that the Justice Department can ask a judge to remove a lawyer from a case if it has reason to think the lawyer is not acting in the client’s interests.

Trump has been willing to have his PAC pay the bills of aides who are loyal to him or continue to work for him, the people familiar with the matter said. The Republican National Committee has paid legal bills for Trump advisers in the past, including during probes of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and has shouldered more than $1.5 million in legal bills for Trump since he left office.

The PAC is the subject of a federal investigation for its fundraising tactics around false claims that the election was stolen. Separately, federal investigators have issued subpoenas seeking details about the formation and operation of the PAC, as part of the Justice Department probe of efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Those subpoenas, according to people familiar with them, sought a wide range of information about how the PAC raised and spent money.

Trump has wanted to keep a large sum of money in the PAC because there are no restrictions on how those funds may be used, one of the people familiar with the situation said; but he has frustrated fellow Republicans by being wary at times of spending the funds.

The PAC has spent $9.7 million on legal bills since 2021, according to a Washington Post review of its filings, about 14 percent of its spending during that period. That includes legal bills for separate investigations into Trump’s business in New York and his post-2020 election conduct in Georgia, according to people familiar with the matter.

In New York, for example, one firm led by Philadelphia lawyer Michael van der Veen is guaranteed $25,000 per month from the president’s PAC for work on New York legal cases, according to an agreement reviewed by The Post. The PAC paid van der Veen’s firm at least $369,000 in 2022, according to filings, and the firm has billed the PAC at least $230,000 since the last filings, according to documents reviewed by The Post.

Trump is equipped to keep making many more such payments. His PAC, which mostly raises money from small-dollar donors, had nearly $70 million on hand as of its most recent filing, submitted in late October.

It’s not unusual for the same lawyer or law firm to represent multiple witnesses in an investigation, as the Brand Woodward firm is doing in the Mar-a-Lago probe. One of its clients, Scavino, has been represented by the firm since before Trump left office.

Brand said there is little difference between the current situation and his past work representing George Stephanopoulos, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. In that case, the government — not a PAC — paid for some of his representation when Stephanopoulos was subpoenaed by a congressional committee.

If the government were to try to stop the reimbursement for legal work from Trump’s political arm, Brand said, that would be an unfair attempt to “squeeze witnesses into cooperating by cutting off their ability to defend themselves.”

The Justice Department is investigating Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office, including 103 documents that remained at the property after Trump and his legal team responded to a grand jury subpoena seeking the return of all such material.

Some of the documents recovered by the FBI in a court-approved search contained highly classified information, including about a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities, intelligence activity in China and Iran’s missile system, The Post has reported.

The Justice Department is also investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to reverse President Biden’s 2020 election victory. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel to oversee both investigations, citing Trump’s decision to run for president again in 2024 and Biden’s intent to seek reelection.

Prosecutors involved in each investigation have presented multiple witnesses to grand juries at the federal courthouse in Washington. On Friday, two former Trump White House lawyers, Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin, testified to a grand jury on election-related matters, according to people familiar with the matter; three other Trump aides, including Scavino, testified Thursday to a grand jury about the Mar-a-Lago documents. The testimony of the three aides was first reported by the New York Times.

When Patel was first brought before a grand jury in October, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as grounds to not answer questions, according to people familiar with the matter. But after conferring with a federal judge, he was given a limited-use immunity and brought back before the panel to answer questions in November.

Prosecutors are still seeking to secure cooperation from Trump’s valet, Nauta, who continues to work for the former president even as he has become a potentially critical witness in the case.

When Nauta was first questioned by the FBI, he denied any knowledge or awareness of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the case said. When questioned a second time, however, his story changed significantly, these people said; he told investigators he moved boxes at Trump’s direction, after the grand jury subpoena was delivered demanding the return of any documents with classified markings.

Nauta is in a precarious legal position because it’s unclear whether prosecutors may try to pursue a false-statement charge against him or otherwise pressure him to cooperate against Trump.

 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump’s team has sought to avoid another federal high-profile search of his properties, the people familiar with the matter said

Probably partly because that was a very public lightbulb moment for quite a few of his fans and more because he has other stuff he really doesn't want legal.teams assessing there too.

[Dandruff]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Gee, what a surprise. /s

"Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida"

 

Questions remain:  Where's the rest of it and how may this have compromised the security of the US and its allies?

[church_of_dog]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Gee, what a surprise. /s

"Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida"

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Nope. 

 

[47of74]

Yeah that screening people more carefully was just a line of bullshit

Quote

Former President Donald Trump posed for photos at his waterfront club on Tuesday with a prominent QAnon conspiracy theorist, in the latest in a string of incidents that highlight the GOP candidate’s proximity to fringe figures on the far right.

Liz Crokin, an avid supporter of the far-right conspiracy theory, shared photographs of her and Trump to social media following a Tuesday fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago to combat child trafficking.

“Tonight I had the privilege and honor to speak at America’s Future fundraiser to combat child trafficking. … Some of the topics I discussed were Pizzagate, Balenciaga, and what President Trump’s administration did to combat human trafficking,” Crokin wrote on her Truth Social profile.

The Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely purports that the Clinton family and other prominent Democrats ran a sex trafficking ring through a Washington, DC, pizza joint. It has been widely discredited by law enforcement officials.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

40 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Gee wiz golly mister you just have a good argument for mail in voting 

[47of74]

They found some other stuff at the storage unit

Quote

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers identified additional documents with classification markings in a search that spanned three Trump properties, including the Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey and Trump Tower in New York, according to a report from The Washington Post.

The lawyers, who hired an external team to conduct a search of Trump’s properties following the August raid at his Mar-a-Lago estate, found at least two documents with classification markings in a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Florida. The documents allegedly made their way into the storage unit as part of a 3,000-pound transport of miscellaneous items shipped from Virginia to Florida. It was full of “suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things,” a source told the Post, who asserted Trump had likely never even been to the unit.

Attention news media: We do not need to know if any of the other "things" include sex toys, nor do we need to know if the swords and wrestling bets were some sort of weird former guy sex thing....

[Xan]

Why does Trump need a storage unit?  He has lots of properties and he could store stuff more easily at Mar-a-Lago than off site.  Surely there is storage space at Bedminster and at Trump Tower.  And if he has this storage unit, does he have more?

Edited December 8, 2022 by Xan

[GreyhoundFan]