The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected the use of a special master in the Mar-a-Lago case as well as broad challenges from the lawyers of former President Donald Trump. Notably, the three-judge panel included three Republican appointees, including two Trump appointed judges. While Democratic members and pundits have attacked Trump appointees as activists and ideologues, these jurists have repeatedly ruled against the former president in major cases like this one.
The panel was headed by Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr., who was appointed by George W. Bush and reportedly considered by Trump for the Supreme Court. It also included Judge Andrew L. Brasher, and Elizabeth “Britt” Cagle Grant, both Trump appointees.
The per curiam decision was not unexpected after an oral argument where the judges expressed great reservations over the rare appointment of a special master to review these documents by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
Cannon was motivated by a number of factors, including the broad scope of the search. It allowed the seizure of any box containing any document with any classification of any kind — and all boxes stored with that box. It also allowed the seizure of any writing from Trump’s presidency.
Judge Cannon noted that the Justice Department’s own taint team missed privileged material and rejects the government’s assurance that it still caught the errors (emphasis added below):
“Counsel from the Privilege Review Team characterized them as examples of the filter process working. The Court is not so sure. These instances certainly are demonstrative of integrity on the part of the Investigative Team members who returned the potentially privileged material. But they also indicate that, on more than one occasion, the Privilege Review Team’s initial screening failed to identify potentially privileged material. The Government’s other explanation—that these instances were the result of adopting an overinclusive view of potentially privileged material out of an abundance of caution—does not satisfy the Court either. Even accepting the Government’s untested premise, the use of a broad standard for potentially privileged material does not explain how qualifying material ended up in the hands of the Investigative Team. Perhaps most concerning, the Filter Review Team’s Report does not indicate that any steps were taken after these instances of exposure to wall off the two tainted members of the Investigation Team [see ECF No. 40]. In sum, without drawing inferences, there is a basis on this record to question how materials passed through the screening process, further underscoring the importance of procedural safeguards and an additional layer of review.“
After her decision, the judge was subjected to vicious attacks for her order by pundits who dismissed her and other Trump appointees as virtual ideological robots. MSNBC host Joy Reid hosted a frenzy of condemnations of this “corrupt” judge. Reid said that Cannon is little more than an extension of Trump like other possessions stolen by the former president.MSNBC regular (and columnist for Above the Law and The Nation) Elie Mystal declared
“She’s biased and corrupt. Like, I don’t know what to tell everybody anymore. Like, I’ve been saying this since he took office. When you allow Republicans to control the courts you get nothing. Trump judges do not believe in the rule of law, they do not believe in precedent, they do not believe in facts, they do not believe in logic—they just believe in whatever’s going to help Donald Trump, and they’ve proven it again and again and again.”
Lawyers like former top Obama official Neal Katyal, said that Judge Cannon’s decision appeared designed to “protect their guy” or at the very least, “delay justice.” Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe declared that an order to appoint a special master to review the documents is analogous to the Dred Scott decision as an abuse of judicial power.
Notably, Donald Trump has criticized his own appointees recently for adverse decisions.
Despite these attacks on the integrity of Trump appointees as a group, the panel roundly rejected the claims of Trump and noted that
“Despite the certification from Plaintiff that “[a]ny and all” documents bearing classification markings had been produced, fifteen of the thirty-three seized boxes, containers, or groups of papers contained documents with classification markings, including three such documents found in desks in Plaintiff’s office. All told, the search uncovered over one hundred documents marked confidential, secret, or top secret.”
That does not sound like judges “protecting their guy,” as Katyal claimed.
The opinion itself has been inaccurately described by some. The panel did not reject the ability of courts to use equitable powers to appoint special masters. Previously, I noted that, while such an appointment is extremely rare and this appointment might be overturned by the Eleventh Circuit, it was not (as claimed by some) outside of the authority of courts to appoint special masters to help review seized material.
The panel found that the basis for such an appointment was refuted by the actions and arguments of the Plaintiff in this case, particularly in failing to establish a “callous disregard” of constitutional rights under Richey v. Smith: “Because the vast majority of subjects of a search warrant have not experienced a ‘callous disregard’ of their constitutional rights, this factor ensures that equitable jurisdiction remains extraordinary.”
Reports have zeroed in on the rejection of claims based on Trump’s status as a former president. That was actually one of a number of claims, not the sole or even the core claim in the case. The panel, however, correctly rejected that claim:
The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.
Here is the opinion: Trump v. United States
Jonathan: Nice try. You have tried to put lipstick on a pig that was Judge Cannon’s tortured decision that gave Trump the right to appoint a special master to examine all the 11,000 docs he took back to Mar-a-Lago. You originally tried to rationalize Cannon’s decision saying she was “subjected to vicious attacks” from left-wing pundits who characterized Cannon as a Trump supporter. As it turns out the critics of Cannon were right and you were wrong. The 11th Circuit has now demolished all of Cannon’s specious reasoning.
So now Special Master Judge Dearie is out of a job–probably to his great relief. And now Special Counsel Jack Smith is free to use all the docs in his criminal investigation of Trump. Unless, of course, Trump appeals to the Supreme Court. Except for Clarence Thomas a Trump appeal will probably land at the Court with a big thud!
My Q is how you could defend Cannon’s decision that the 11th Circuit found: “To create a special exception here would defy our National foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank'”. I think you and Cannon need a reality check.
All this column does is exposes Turley’s partisan hackery. As a law professor he should be examining the legality or rationality of Cannon’s rulings. He didn’t precisely because he knows he can’t really justify it. So he pushes the narrative that she is being “attacked’ because she’s a trump appointed judge.
“ Judge Cannon noted that the Justice Department’s own taint team missed privileged material and rejects the government’s assurance that it still caught the errors (emphasis added below):”
That was just an excuse from the judge to inject herself into the case when she didn’t have any jurisdiction.
What Cannon didn’t acknowledge was the fact that the taint team DID it’s job as required. They segregated personal documents AND according to protocol sent them back to trump’s lawyers. What Turley and Cannon ddi not want to admit is that the DOJ and the FBI did everything by the book. It was Cannon and Trump who were trying hard too find excuses to justify their illegal and criminal actions. Trump lied so much in that case and Cannon bent over backwards to accommodate trump made it so obvious that she was not being impartial at all.
Real lawyers, unlike Turley knew early on that what Cannon did was not only wrong, but highly unethical.
She should never had taken the case in the first place. Trump’s lawyers picked her specifically because she “owed “ trump for appointing her the bench.
“ Cannon was motivated by a number of factors, including the broad scope of the search. It allowed the seizure of any box containing any document with any classification of any kind — and all boxes stored with that box. It also allowed the seizure of any writing from Trump’s presidency.”
Cannon was motivated to help trump because he appointed her to the bench. Trump was expecting AND got the help he wanted. Judge Cannon fabricated a reason to claim Trump was being harmed by the DOJ having documents that he was not legally supposed to have. The fact that none of the claims trump made to the court could be proven or showed the law was clearly in his favor.
Trump committed a crime AND he admitted to it by saying he took the documents. Trump stole government property that he intermixed with his won personal property. Turley never says the warrant was illegal or wrong. He only says that it was broad and as a law professor he knows warrants can legally be broad when prosecutors present compelling probable cause and when they executed the warrant the cause ended up being justified. Trump WILL be indicted. The only question will be is when.
“Cannon was motivated to help trump because he appointed her to the bench. Trump was expecting AND got the help he wanted. “
This statement is stupid. Cannon will remain on the bench whether she does what Trump wants or not. You are sliming a person’s character without evidence because you have no morality.
“Trump committed a crime AND he admitted to it by saying he took the documents.”
Another stupid statement made because you have never read any of the rules and regulations regarding such papers.
The rest of the statements are meaningless because of the way you present them. Your presentation demonstrates you lack of intellect. If you had intellect you would put your claims in a different fashion so a discussion could take place.
“ This statement is stupid. Cannon will remain on the bench whether she does what Trump wants or not. You are sliming a person’s character without evidence because you have no morality.”
It’s accurate. She obviously went out of her way to give Trump everything his lawyers wanted including appointing the special master that she overruled when he wanted trump to prove he declassified those documents.
There’s plenty of evidence. You simply choose to ignore it or can’t understand because of your reading comprehension problems.
“ Another stupid statement made because you have never read any of the rules and regulations regarding such papers.”
Oh Ive read all of them. Everyone but you has. Projecting what you didn’t to onto others is your go to excuse for YOUR failings.
“ If you had intellect you would put your claims in a different fashion so a discussion could take place.”
What fashion would that be S. Meyer? A fifth grade level so you can understand or…what exact fashion are you wanting to use?
“She obviously went out of her way”
How is that obvious? You make things up.
The DOJ and FBI have not been totally honest with regard to Trump. Protecting the rights of the individual is primary. You want to protect non-rights of criminals.
You talk about a fifth grade level of thought. When you reach that level we will all applaud.
“ She obviously went out of her way”
How is that obvious? You make things up.”
If you don’t know you definitely were not paying attention. Every legal scholar and attorney pointed this out. Even the courts did. They weren’t making things up either.
“ The DOJ and FBI have not been totally honest with regard to Trump. Protecting the rights of the individual is primary. You want to protect non-rights of criminals.”
They have been honest with trump the whole time. It was trump who was not being honest with them and that is why he got in trouble. He was the one lying to the FBI he was the one who refused to hand over government property that did not belong to him.
The FBI and the archives gave him plenty of opportunities to resolve the issue away from the public. He wasted all those opportunities by lying and obstructing. He had TWO years. That is the FBI giving him plenty of time to comply with legal subpoenas and court orders.
You are completely clueless and ignorant of the facts. I would come down to your level to explain but that is still not enough to make you understand or even acknowledge the basics of the facts. You support criminals insisted of the law. Really sad.
” Every legal scholar and attorney pointed this out.”
No one has shown she acted because she was appointed by Trump. Show us.
“The FBI and the archives gave him plenty of opportunities to resolve the issue away from the public.”
The FBI should have gone to court. But you are a Nazi type where the government is right unless you can show them where they are wrong and benefit by admitting it.
There’s a great meme out from Dr. Robert Malone that states:
You either understand history or you trust the government; you can’t do both.
Prove him wrong.
That’s a false choice. You can understand history and trust government, especially when THEY are following the law.
That’s a false choice. You can understand history and trust government, especially when THEY are following the law.
That doesn’t explain why you believe it’s a false choice. That describes one reason to “potentially” trust government. An objective analysis of history on the other hand is where your descriptive potential meets real-world scrutiny. No doubt we could identify numerous examples where government “followed the law.” Conversely, we could identify numerous examples where they did not. More importantly, we could identify numerous examples of laws and executive orders being ruled unconstitutional.
That meme was the theme of the Declaration of Independence and the guiding principle in drafting the constitution. What I trust is the collective wisdom of the framers of our constitution. They did not trust government. In fact, they distrusted government so much that they attempted to design a system to thwart the inevitable abuses of power. Unfortunately, they couldn’t force the citizens to know their role. And true to history, the “long train of abuses and usurpations are piling up because there are enough morons that believe government should be trusted.
“ What I trust is the collective wisdom of the framers of our constitution. They did not trust government.”
They did not trust the British government ruled by a monarch. They chose to be their own government. The framers were the government at the time.
They did not trust the British government ruled by a monarch. They chose to be their own government. The framers were the government at the time.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
You have a primary school understanding of history. It’s though you got stuck in the “grammar” stage of education and thus completely whiffed on the “logic” stage. It’s why your “rhetoric” is often completely at odds with facts and reason. While I’ve dubbed you the blogs Lying Troll, in fairness, you might simply be developmentally impaired. Either way, you deserve the attention adults should give to a child on this blog.
Olly, you didn’t say “any” government. Only “government”. You changed what you originally said. Calling others trolls while being dishonest is poor form. Nice try through.
Olly, you didn’t say “any” government. Only “government”. You changed what you originally said.
Okay, I will go with developmentally impaired. You may have flunked the “grammar” stage as well. Saying government, without qualifying a specific government, means any government. You said British government, which specified one form, a monarchy. I’d say do better, but you’d likely question the meaning of better.
Primary school understanding. You give that fruitcake too much credit.
The framers were the government at the time.
God you’re stupid. Can you name even one function of govt the founders implemented?
s
The founders were men crafting an entirely new govt. They were nothing British subjects tired of tyrannical rule
That Trump remains subject to continuing and obviously politicized legal and pseudo legal review while financial dealings of Congress and security violations former cabinet members has gone legally unnoticed represents a self inflicted wound of increasing illegitimacy of permanent legal mandarins.
Isn’t part of the issue that the possible defendant whose material was seized or who participated in moving the material about has no freaking idea what was seized so can’t individually protest that such and such is privileged… or just plain irrelevant… and will not even have any idea if it was returned if in the end nothing comes of this. But presumably the possible defendant(s) will get that right if anything comes of the seizure and he and/or she or they become actual defendant(s)-*
________________
*There are multiple people involved here potentially correct??
He had his lawyers claimed that they carefully reviewed everything long before it was taken, when they insisted that they’d looked high and low for any remaining material with classified markings on his property, and that none remained. They were also given an inventory after the items were seized.
This case began with an immoral action (legal or illegal doesn’t matter) from the DOJ and FBI. As John Say points out, morality is necessary when individual freedoms are at stake. Once disposed of, laws can subjugate honest citizens.
No, the immoral action came from Trump. He decided to take documents that were not his to take. Every court including the Supreme Court has made that clear to trump and his lawyers.
Judge Cannon overstepped her authority and had no jurisdiction to rule on the case. Turley keeps ignoring that pertinent point because he KNOWS Cannon was wrong to even take the case.
The 11th circuit court essentially told Cannon to dismiss the case because she has no jurisdiction at all.
” the immoral action came from Trump.”
You do not know what the word immoral means. What Trump did was a question of legality. Courts determine that question. I don’t think he did anything illegal, and no one has proven he has. Of course, we need to recognize that you have no morality, so how would you know what the word means or how to apply it?
“Every court including the Supreme Court has made that clear to trump and his lawyers.”
Tell us where the courts say what Trump did was immoral. I won’t bother with the rest of the ridiculousness of your statement.
“Judge Cannon overstepped her authority.”
That is your opinion. You can look that word up as well. The immorality occurred when the DOJ and FBI intentionally misused their authority. (See the John Adams quote)
I won’t comment on the rest because the grammatical placement of words has no relationship to your lack of understanding of what those words mean.
“ You do not know what the word immoral means. What Trump did was a question of legality.”
Of course i do know what immorality means. Trumps actions were immoral in the sense that he was lying, being deceitful, dishonest and using a judge he chose so he could avoid a Judge that was actually going or be impartial. He was also breaking the law.
“ Tell us where the courts say what Trump did was immoral. I won’t bother with the rest of the ridiculousness of your statement.”
I shouldn’t have to tell you. YOU are very capable of finding out what the courts said. It’s as easy as googling it and reading the rulings. You won’t bother with the rest of the statements because you know they are right and you don’t want to admit it.
“ Judge Cannon overstepped her authority.”
That is your opinion. You can look that word up as well. The immorality occurred when the DOJ and FBI intentionally misused their authority. (See the John Adams quote)”
No that is the court’s opinion. That is what they just said in their ruling. What was immoral about the DOJ and the FBI following the law? Trump LIED in an affidavit assuring the FBI and the archives that there were no more documents to turn over. Obviously when they found out that was not true LYING on the affidavit which is a legal declaration triggered legally the FBI’s search warrant. They were right to search because obviously Trump lied about there being no more documents THAT is the crime. Trump was obstructing an investigation and lying to the FBI which is also a crime. They did everything by the book. It was Trump’’s own stupidity and arrogance that led the FBI to raid his house. It was his own fault.
“ I won’t comment on the rest because the grammatical placement of words has no relationship to your lack of understanding of what those words mean.‘
Nope, You won’t comment on the rest because YOU can’t read for comprehension and you are too lazy to try. Your poor reading skills are the bigger problem.
“Of course i do know what immorality means.”
All you have done is proven you don’t know what immorality is. If a Jew ran away from a concentration camp so he wouldn’t be murdered, you would call him immoral because the Jew knew he broke the law. Can you get any dumber?
” What was immoral about the DOJ and the FBI following the law?”
They didn’t follow the meaning of the law, but then again you would say, what is wrong with a German following the law and placing a Jew in the gas chamber?
You don’t have a moral bone in your body. You are like lower animal life.
“ What was immoral about the DOJ and the FBI following the law?”
They didn’t follow the meaning of the law, but then again you would say, what is wrong with a German following the law and placing a Jew in the gas chamber?”
HUH!! Wow you really are stupid. They followed the law to the letter. Even Turley can’t make the claim that the FBI did’t follow the law. They did everything by the book which is why judge Cannon attempting to help trump was so egregious. That means bad.
“ All you have done is proven you don’t know what immorality is. If a Jew ran away from a concentration camp so he wouldn’t be murdered, you would call him immoral because the Jew knew he broke the law. Can you get any dumber?”
BWHAHAHAHA!!!!! You’re hilarious S. Meyer. Nothing you said has anything to do with what you think you are trying to say. Yes, you are stupid that way.
I guarantee that you cannot articulate exactly how the FBI didn’t follow the meaning of the law. What was the meaning of the law S. Meyer?
“…didn’t follow the meaning of the law. “
They should have gone to court. They should not have lied to the FISA court. They should not have created phony documents.
Keep demonstrating how stupid you are.
“ didn’t follow the meaning of the law. “
They should have gone to court. They should not have lied to the FISA court. They should not have created phony documents.”
They did go to court. How do you think they got the warrant? A judge has to sign a warrant. They have to. It’s the law.
What phony documents? What did they lie about? That Trump had classified documents stashed illegally in his property? Turns out that was true.
“They did go to court. How do you think they got the warrant?“
Let us all laugh at your reply because it shows you are oblivious to reality and the law. John Say and others have explained the standard judicial process dozens of times, but it went in one ear and out the other without ever coming in contact with your brain.
The FBI wanted certain records. The question was whether they were entitled to them. The answer comes through a hearing in front of a judge who decides which, if any, papers are released.
It is not until the judicial process is complete that Trump or anyone else needs to release the papers. That means no further avenues are open to the defendant.
If the court finds for the FBI which papers, if any, the defendant needs to release, the defendant must comply.
The FBI can ask for a warrant if the defendant refuses to comply,
The FBI skipped the step that protects the civil liberties of all Americans. Such actions are part of the rights Americans are supposed to have. They do not exist in the type of totalitarian world you wish to create.
This is a long but excellent interview of Prof. John Mearscheimer on the current global great powers situation.
Most of the video is about Russia/Ukraine. And Mearscheimer is pretty bleak.
He does not see this ending well at all.
Further he beleives the probability of a nuclear war is greater now than during the cuban missle crisis.
I am not going to cover the analysis – which I thought was excellent.
The moderator pushed him and I beleive he said something to the effect that there is about an 80% probability of a humiliating russian defeat in the long run that does not end up with a nuclear war. But his point was – That is WORSE than during the cold war.
During the cuban missle crisis, Both Kennedy and Kruschev fully understood that nuclear war had to be avoided at all costs,
And Both were looking for a face saving way out of the crisis.
The Result was Russia publicly agreed to remove its missles.
The US secretly agreed to remove missles from Turkey
And the US agreed never to invade Cuba.
Neither the US nor the USSR faced an actual existential threat from “losing” the Cuban missle crisis.
It would be a humilation for either country, but it would not cascade.
Russia losing in Ukraine which seems likely. is both humiliating and an existential threat.
Worse still way to many americans are talking about actually defeating Russia.
About regime change, about breaking up Russia like the USSR was broken up.
The mere discussion of these types of outcomes raises the odds that Russia goes nuclear.
Again LOTS of further analysis is in the video.
Then he addresses China – which he thinks is a far more important long term issue.
Mearschiemer was unaware of or did not get asked about the current protests,
So his analysis is all contingent on what is occuring in China now not resulting in
the collapse of Xi or the CCP. Which would frankly alter global politics radically.
But presuming Xi/CCP retain power – Mearschemier sees the conflict between the US and china growing.
Regardless, it is very long, but very fascinating.
https://youtu.be/HBiV1h7Dm5E
“Further he beleives the probability of a nuclear war is greater now than during the cuban missle crisis.”
I don’t place odds on the possibility of nuclear war because it is so catastrophic that the slightest movement in that direction is of tremendous importance. The dolts who run the nation and Western Europe wishing to ‘get’ Putin are out of touch with reality.
We are not dealing with who wins or loses, as Russia and Ukraine lost no matter the outcome. The left acts their usual way, pushing their way to get to the head of the line while destroying it.
Look at ATS with all his shenanigans. He posts mistruths, tries to confuse, lies, deceives, and even creates spiteful deletions of other person responses. Is anything he does constructive? No. But everything is pointed at destroying the line he wishes to push to his advantage.
“Worse still way to many americans are talking about actually defeating Russia.”
It is pure stupidity and superficial political games. What the world requires is stability. I hate Putin, but unthreatened, he is a stabilizing factor. Could things be better? Yes, but before advocating change, one requires assessing the future. That is the hard part of making such a decision.
“the collapse of Xi or the CCP. ”
I don’t think there will be that much of a long-term change in the CCP if Xi falls, except the government might focus more on the economy than the military, which will change the dynamics. Xi might even move in that direction without removal. Regardless, China’s ultimate policy direction remains the same.
The world needs US dominance which adds stability and the ability to develop economically.
China is simple.
China has only one model for dealing with what is happening right now. Violent repression of protestors, which may now number in millions.
When Xi or someone calls out the military – what happens next ?
That is the binary deciding factor. And we will almost certain get there shortly.
East Germany – and subsequently all of the USSR collapsed because Honnecker called out the Tanks, and they were not willing to fire on east german people. He called to Russia for help and Gorbachev said no.
China is not going to be decided by the most prominent leaders in China.
It is going to be decided by lieutenants and captains, and whether they will follow orders and kill probably hundreds of thousands of protestors.
If they do – lots of blood, and the CCP endures. If they do not, we get something significantly different.
My bet is Xi is toast no matter what now. I forget who was the head at the start of Tianament Sq. – but the leadership of the CCP changed twice during that event – first to mare acomodating and when that did not work to hardliners.
Probably thousands were subsequently killed.
This is MUCH larger, the carnage is going to be huge.
Conversely if the ordinary soldiers refuse to murder chinese citizens. The CCP is done. What will follow ?
That is very hard to say. One of the problems with Tianamen sq. is that as I noted an accomodationist force took power near the start.
But the “protestors” were never ever to formulate the change requests they wanted. Hardliners did not take power because the protestors demanded too much. but because it was not enough to know what you do not want.
Despite the statues of liberty – there is near zero information on western government in China. The people who had any education of that at all are DEAD. The cultural revolution purged china or much of its past and lots of that of the west.
The ONE possible saving grace for China is Hong Kong. There are about 20M people there who are one of the wealthiest regions in the world, and they have both actual experience with western government and are highly educated in the western values necescary to build a government.
That is VAGUELY similar to the east/west German thing – except that Hong Kong can not bail out China – which does not need bailed out.
But it can bring a non-communist government to China.
Regardless, if the CCP falls – all bets are off as to what follows.
Separately as Coase noted in “How China became capitalist” in 2013. China MUST embrace political as well as economic freedom sometime soon. It has gone as far as it can with “socialism with capitalistic characteristics” – which is the current CCP dogma.
We also forget that Xi is a reversion. China was becoming incrementally freer every year prior to Xi’s ascendance – in 2013.
Xi has increase chinese nationalism and agressively moved to a more power projecting China. That was much less true prior to Xi.
We should also not forget that though a large portion of China is fairly western favorable. That under Xi and to a lessor extent before, there is a stong chinese nationalist sentiment that Chinese media has ACTIVELY amplified, and that the Chinese are taught that it is time to remedy more than a century of western humiliation of China.
We forget that even through 1900 China was the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth, and had been for a very very very long time.
It may have been stagnant and slowly decaying, But when the British came to China China was a far more powerful empire.
Many chinese feel the west stole from China its rightful position in the world.
Think BLM and reparations only with 1.6B people who are NOT a minority in their own country.
The good news is as I said MOST chinese are western freindly.
” It has gone as far as it can with “socialism with capitalistic characteristics” – which is the current CCP dogma. We also forget that Xi is a reversion. China was becoming incrementally freer every year prior to Xi’s ascendance”
I won’t comment on most of what you wrote but I will tell you a bit of my thinking.
1) China thinks itself the center of the world. That existed when Nixon was President and exists today.
2) China is willing to permit certain economic freedoms as long as they do not interfere with the CCP.
3) Corruption in China is normal.
4) The CCP runs China. The exact dogma followed might exist based on the individual leader.
5) China has serious stability (and economic problems).
Different cultures break China up into parts.
The population is getting old.
East – West fractionation: The rich east is dependent on trade with America and Europe. The west is poor and would like some of that money.
“China thinks itself the center of the world. That existed when Nixon was President and exists today.”
Not broadly true and like evrywhere driven by propoganda. Further not important so long as it is not coupled with government and force.
I do not care if china thinks they are the center of the world.
Americans – Even I think we are. I think the US the the shining light on a hill. And that is what we should continue to aspire to.
Not this idiotic shame the left wants to drown us in. We have done bad things. We are still an incredibly great nation – and so long as we are not using force against others I do not care how arrogant we – or the chinese are.
“China is willing to permit certain economic freedoms as long as they do not interfere with the CCP.”
The people and the government are not the same. When I was in china in 1998 it was the most capitalistic place in the entire world.
“Corruption in China is normal.”
Absolutely but it is quite different from here.
Corruption in china is an institution. It is expected, But it is also self regulating.
In china it is more like “tipping” in the US. You know exactly what is expected. You give more for good service, less for bad.
When we adopted our daughter we had to bring $6500 in brand new crisp $100 bills, 2 cartons of marlboro’s and a bottle of Remy Martin.
We were in more danger carrying that with us in the US. The actual adoption fee was only about 3500, the rest was divided as bribes – though tips is nearly as accurate. At the time going to eastern europe was in theory cheaper. But we were repeatedly warned – In China you will pay $6500 no more, no less. There will be no complications. If anything tries to get more – they will be in serious trouble. You will not be threatened.
You will not be kidnapped. If you adopt from eastern europe you have to be very careful. You can get kidnapped and held for ransom or the adoption cost can change if they think you can pay more, or you can get robbed.
“The CCP runs China. The exact dogma followed might exist based on the individual leader.”
The CCP is well past communist dogma. When the chinese government today talks of socialism – that is “newspeak”
There are few communists in china today – there are far more in US universities.
The better comparison – particularly to Xi right now would be Italian fascism.
Not so ideological, but lots of upper level power struggles.
“China has serious stability (and economic problems).”
I beleive so. It is very hard to know. But there are lots of indicators that China is about to slip into a DEFLATIONARY recession.
And/or a political revolution.
With better Government China can continue its 3-5% growth per year indefinitely, maybe higher.
It will take a long time to reach US standards of living. But that is possible.
So long as our competition is purely economic – that is a good thing not a bad one.
I would further note that the standard of living in the rest of asia and even Africa is linked to China.
While there is SOME efforts to move from investment in china to other parts of asia – those are weak.
There was a massive asian investmnet buble that burst in the late 20th century, much like the US housing bubble but worse. \
The core issue is that most of the rest of asia is not as stable as china and will not get the same investment.
The same is true of africa – except that skill levels are even lower.
Regardless, as standard of living in China rises – Many industies leave China – just as they did the US.
They either automate to reduce labor and more to a few high skilled jobs, Or the move to poorer countries seeking lower labor costs.
I would note we saw something very similar with Japan after WWII. First they were cheap low cost labor, I do not know that you are aware but Textile manufacturing moved from the US to Japan before it moved to China. I do not think there is much textiles in Japan today.
This is the normal progression. Japan in the 80’s was supposed to overtake the US – it did not.
They are doing fine, but while they can get close, they can not match US productivity and standard of living.
And Japanese factories have moved to the US.
The fundimetnal change China needs is an end to what are essentially fascit regimes.
The more I think about it the more appropriate fascism is to describe the CCP today.
They are authoritarian, and they are nationalist.
But again do not assme that all of china is nationalist because the governemnt is.
“Different cultures break China up into parts.”
Complex – China has about 100 ethnic minorities.
But 95% of chinese are Hahn Chinese – one race.
That race breaks down into a couple of distinct cultures – but only 3 major ones.
But a massive numbr of tiny minorities.
“The population is getting old.”
I do not think that is their big problem – that is a japanese problem and maybe a european one.
There big problem is a shortage of women. The imbalance is small but the consequences are drastic.
Women get kidnapped in china today. And men have poor maraige prospects until they are older and successful.
“Not broadly true and like evrywhere driven by propoganda.”
Broadly true? What does that mean? Fight with the history books and fight with historical Chinese rhetoric.
“Further not important so long as it is not coupled with government and force.”
It is Important when the government of China makes it so. Do you think China’s actions are peaceful? Were China’s actions against Hong Kong not Important? If China invades Taiwan, will that not be Important as well?
“The people and the government are not the same.”
I think that is obvious.
“When I was in china in 1998 it was the most capitalistic place in the entire world.”
Capitalism, though perhaps non-existent in repressive governments, still exists among the people whether they recognize it or not.
“We were in more danger carrying that with us in the US. ”
I traveled through China for over a month. I don’t know that your money is safe in all parts of the country though where they want you to go is safe. I didn’t have an American tour and hired translators and transportation along the way. They were licensed and refused to take me to places I wished to go. Sometimes, I would disappear from the translator and go my own way.
You are unjustly glorifying China and diminishing America’s stature. I wish what you said was true in China and America, but I doubt it is.
As far as economic growth rates in an underdeveloped country:
If you have a fruit stand selling oranges, you can radically increase the growth rate by adding other fruits and later vegetables.
If you have a grocery chain in 50 states, there is no question the growth rate will be far lower. It is better to earn 5% off a Billion dollar enterprise than to double your money on an enterprise worth only a dollar.
That said, China has done remarkably well to the disadvantage of America. China uses slave labor without concern for life, steals property, and pollutes the planet.
” I do not know that you are aware but Textile manufacturing moved from the US to Japan before it moved to China”
…And textile has moved to other places in Asia, such as Vietnam. The movement is the normal flow of production based on varying levels of technology and the cost of human labor.
“The fundimetnal change China needs is an end to what are essentially fascit regimes.”
That is a desirable change, but we must note that America has moved in the fascist direction.
“I do not think that is their big problem – that is a japanese problem and maybe a european one.”
It is. Economic problems arise along with stability issues.
“Women get kidnapped in china today. ”
That conflicts with what you said earlier about safety in China.
“Broadly true? What does that mean? ”
It means what it says. True of some, not of all.
“It is Important when the government of China makes it so.”
Correct, as I have just argued, the situation with China alters radically if this results in the downfall of Xi and a return to the governance prior to Xi or something even freer which it likely.
Our future relations with China, whether China is a serious threat depends on how china is governed.
“Do you think China’s actions are peaceful?”
Prior to Xi – yes, after no.
” Were China’s actions against Hong Kong not Important?”
Very important.
Hong Kong is very important
As should this be another Tianemen square moment, Hong Kongers know what a free government looks like.
““The people and the government are not the same.”
I think that is obvious.”
It is the point we seem to be disagreeing about.
““When I was in china in 1998 it was the most capitalistic place in the entire world.”
Capitalism, though perhaps non-existent in repressive governments, still exists among the people whether they recognize it or not.”
I recomended reading Coases “How China became Capitalist” – Even today China is not underground capitalist.
It is arguably the most capitalist country in the world.
At the very least it is the most successful merger of capitalism and an authoritarian form of government.
From Mao’s death to Xi though capitalism grew at the margins, the ultimate result was a thoroughly capitalist economy (or nearly so, because certain state run industries did not fade) with an increasing authoritarian government.
China today compares much better to Italian fascism – except that it is possibly more successful and less socialist.
It is an authoritarian government with a capitalist economy.
In the long run that is not sustainable. But it certainly exists.
“You are unjustly glorifying China and diminishing America’s stature.”
Nope. No doubt there are lots of places in China one would not be wise to go.
I was in China for a month too. I hired people to take me to all the “touring china” places – the great wall the Forbidden city, the ming tombs etc.
Like you I also wandered on my own well off the beaten path.
“As far as economic growth rates in an underdeveloped country”
3.5% growth is sustainable in a developed country with low taxes, a light government burden. The US did so through the 20th century.
It has not been able to do so since.
Japan did so for sometime. Since the 90’s they can not get 1% growth.
Even with weak US growth europe can not manage to get within 3/4% of the US.
There is no fundimntal reason why China as it is now can not sustain 3.5% growth.
That is not the 9% growth it saw in parts of the 90’s.
But it is better than the US have done in 20 years.
“That said, China has done remarkably well to the disadvantage of America.”
False. There are very few jobs that have gone to China that you would want back in the US.
This argument gets made constantly – whether it is China or previously japan or mexico or ….
Growth in standard of living means producing more of what humans value for less human effort.
The US does not gain if it is not constantly making every single part of the economy more efficient.
However you think China harmed the US – the alternative would be either more US automation and less of those jobs – that is what we are seeing as some of that returns to the US, or more poor immigrants from central or south america taking those jobs.
Biden is bringing millions of people from south and central america into the US – if they remain the results will be an expansion of jobs for low skilled and low paid people. The market will adapt to the resources available.
Remember one part of the law of supply and demand is that supply creates its own demand.
If there is a large pool of unskilled labor anywhere in the world – someone will find a productive use of that labor.
Conversely if the US wants rising standard of living that REQUIRES the destruction of low paid low skill jobs and the creation of higher skill higher paid jobs.
Jobs in the US going to china or anywhere else NEVER harms the US.
There is a small harm to a small number of US workers unable to adapt and find better jobs. But that is small, and the net benefit from the shift of more workforce to higher skilled jobs significantly outweighs that.
“China uses slave labor without concern for life, steals property, and pollutes the planet.”
Very little different from the US a century ago.
While I care about some of the genocidal things that the chinese are doing to the uighers.
I do not care about chinese working in condictions we would call slavery – much like US early 20th century factory work, that are doing 5 times better than they were 20 years ago.
“…And textile has moved to other places in Asia, such as Vietnam. The movement is the normal flow of production based on varying levels of technology and the cost of human labor.”
And exactly what you are saying above falsifies your claims before.
EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRY will ALWAYS look to lower production costs. There are many ways to do that. It will do everyone that it can.
One way is to seek lower labor costs at the same skill level. Another is to use less higher skilled more expensive labor.
What will NOT happen no matter what is for things to stay the same. That ALWAYS leads to falling behind and failure.
““Women get kidnapped in china today. ”
That conflicts with what you said earlier about safety in China.”
Nope. The overall crime rate in china is much lower than the US.
“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
— Ronald Reagan
“The world needs US dominance which adds stability and the ability to develop economically.”
Mearscheimer has argued that the cold war – a bipolar world with MAD was the most stable.
From the collapse of the USSR to the rise of Xi wr had essentially a unipolar moment.
I would say that was more stable, but there certainly was lots of war.
We have a weird mess right now. Russia is a diminishing world power. But for nukes no one wold care about russia.
Frankly peace in Ukraine would be easier to reach without nukes. and Russia could be weakened without being destroyed
But nukes change everything.
I would note that while China is a dangerous nuclear power – and no sane person wants a nuclear exchange with China.
Hundred of millions would die – But NOT atleast 3Billion. Further unlike Russia China is much more likely to back down if hey are losing.
China is a rising power. It is not desparate. It can lose a fight without being humiliated and know that in a decade it will get another chance.
Russia is declining and nothing at all will stop that.
Regardless, I STRONGLY suspect that the next 40 years is going to be more – though smaller conflicts like Ukraine.
I have already heard arguments that the US should do with Syrian rebels what is it doing with Ukraine.
We could easily take out Asad. The impediment is that Arming the kurds will piss off Turkey – a NATO ally.
The Kurds are a politically dangerous people. There are very large numbers of them in Turkey. Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Yet they have no country.
Even in the short term – expect a significant increase in regional violence.
Global recession and rising food prices are a recipe for violence accross the world.
Do we remember, Lybia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia and Somalia ?
“Mearscheimer has argued that the cold war – a bipolar world with MAD was the most stable.”
He is correct, and that is why when there was talk about a peace dividend, I said it didn’t exist.
—
“Russia is declining ”
It is declining economically and demographically. That makes our actions eminently stupid.
Agreed. Russia was in deep trouble over the next decade+ even without this war.
John, in your former responses, you have made many comments about Ukraine, including your belief that Biden is doing a good job. Do you hold firm to that?
I never commented, but I don’t understand how you draw such conclusions. Too much is unknown. Why would Biden do better in Ukraine than he did in Afghanistan? Aren’t we more at risk for nuclear war? Where is the taxpayer’s money going?
I am at a loss when I hear such positive statements. If you can explain your position, do so. But first, start with the assumption that there would be no Ukraine War if Biden lost the election.
“John, in your former responses, you have made many comments about Ukraine, including your belief that Biden is doing a good job. Do you hold firm to that?”
That depends ALOT on the future.
I would strongly suggest listening to the Mearschemer interview on unherd. Aside from the analysis it presents alot of history.
I doubt Mearscheimer is a right wing foreign policy expert or especially targeting Biden.
But the FACT is that the US has from atleast 2008 through to the present EXCEPT during Trump’s presidency, completely F#$K’d up regarding Russia. There is some evidence that Obama actually had both good intentions and probably wanted to go the right direction with Russia.
But Clinton and Biden were actively engaged in the stupidest foreign policy in US history. That created unnecescary conflict with Russia, made us an adversary when we should have been actively trying to strengthen our ties.
The US and the west have enormous common culture with Russia. There is no sane reason in the world that we should EVER have tried to push Russia towards a rising China.
The price for Russian integration in the the west was to allow Russia to dominate the POLITICS of its immediate neighbors.
For the US to NOT intervene in Russian efforts to install russia freindly governments in Ukraine, Georgia, Cheknya, Belarus, …
While that is at odds with american values. It is not something we have not tolerated before, and it is a far sight better than Russia, invading or destroying its neighbors. Russia is one of the most paranoid countries in the world. We are in the midst of criticising rising nationalism in Poland, Hungary, even France, Italy and Sweden (and the Ukraine). But Russia is incredibly nationalistic.
And nationalism and paranoia are a bad combination. This theme that Putin sought to recreate the USSR is a western invention with no evidence. Every single Country Russia has “invaded” has been as a result of the WEST talking about incorporating that country into Europe and particularly NATO. Russia does not want NATO on its borders. And it is willing to go to war to avoid that.
I was surpised to learn from Mearscheimer that the Biden admin had ONCE AGAIN started talking seriously about incorporating Ukraine into NATO starting in early 2021 as Biden took office. Contra the western claims. Putin invaded Ukraine over the threat of Ukraine joining NATO,
And Putin has made his intention to use the Russian military against any russion border country that even hints at joining NATO.
This is a huge red line for Putin – and Russia – and contra western media – this is a popular position in Russia.
So when you ask about Biden and Ukraine the answer is not simple.
Biden caused this. He caused it by botched energy policy, by a botched afgahan withdrawn and by poking the bear – which he has a LONG history of. The more I learn the more I blame Biden for this war.
The initial ability of Ukraine to hold off Russia is all on the ukrainians themselves – and to the small extent it is not, it is US weaponry recieved SOLELY under Trump, and US military training that started in 2014. under Obama.
The more I learn the better I find Obama’s foreign policy regarding Russia (and ukraine) and the more I learn how horrible Clinton and Biden were during the Obama administration. Probably the worst by Far was Clinton who increasingly looks like the most incompetent secretary of state ever. She looked at the Sec State position as a grooming position for President. She channeled her inner Chenney – looking to establish serious neo-con foreign policy cred, and as a result made huge blunders that have cost the US in europe and the mid east.
I do not think Biden’s forte or interest was foreign policy. Though he was VERY active in foreign policy. But ALL of his activity was directed towards PERSONAL gain. But he was still disasterous. I do not think that Obama was a foreign policy genius. But his foreign policy was a mess, and the primary reason for that was Biden and Clinton off doing their own thing at odds with what Obama wanted.
I do not know who was responsible for the Iran stupidity – that appears to be post clinton and distant from Biden, so maybe that was Obama’s own mess. But mostly Obama tried to do the right thing with Russia and was thwarted by his own VP and Sec State.
And the whole world is suffering from that.
So right up to the moment Russian Tanks drove into Ukraine – Biden as a F#$Kup.
When it became evident that The Ukrainians were capable of holding their own against Russia – But were going to require MASSIVE US logistical support to prevent collapse when they ran out of weapons. Biden moved quickly, and I support that.
At the same time Biden – through Boris Johnson tanked what were likely to be fruitful negotiations in Turkey.
Essentially Ukraine was told – negotiate for peace and the US will drop you like a rock. Keep fighting and the US will give you every single weapon and other support you need – right down to aiming the artillery, and we will help you fight russia right down to the very last ukrainian.
That action on Biden’s part was immoral and criminal. The best outcome to this was peace in march – as bitter a pill as that might have been to Ukraine.
As Mearscheimer and some others point out – every success of UKraine significantly increases the chances that Russia goes nuclear.
Putin has SORT OF claimed his redline is NATO involvement. But the FACT is NATO – and the US particularly are heavily involved in this war.
The SU is doing everything short of pulling the trigger on the artillery. We are locating targets, transfering targeting information making targeting decisions, downloading it all to mostly US artilery tubes and letting the ukrianians pull the trigger.
We are very heavily involved in this and Putin is not ignorant of that.
Every time you hear a supply line cut, a depot blown up, and airfeild cratered, a warship damaged, down to a tank destroyed – every humiliation that Putin endures – is between Him and the US, between him and Biden. And he KNOWS that.
Mearcheimer starts his interview using the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor as a worthwhile model for Russia right now.
Japan was an aspiring super power, they were undoubtedly a regional hegemon. But they were in nearly every possible way constrained by the US. Roosevelt was ACTIVELY engaged in humiliating the Japanese – a people that do not take humiliation well.
Japanese leaders knew full well in 1941 that they had absolutely no chance in a war with the US. They knew that what they were doing was likely suicidal. But the US had a chokehold on Japan and was not letting go. They felt they had no other choice.
So they committed suicide.
The japanese leaders were not lunatics. They were rational people. They were no more or less rational than Putin. We were not dealing with terrorists, or religious fanatics from the mideast. They may not have been western but they were smart and rational.
And they picked suicide.
As Mearscheimer said Do not ever corner a great world power – BTW Japan is not the only example of that. There are multiple examples of that through WWI and the west humiliated Germany at the end – how well did that play out ?
The more obvious it becomes that this is Biden vs. Putin and that the US is deliberately humiliating and seeking if not the destruction of russia the destruction of their economy an the marginalization of Russia as a world power. The more likely it is that Putin will risk using Nukes.
Mearscheimer points out – and I believe possibly correctly that Russia nuking some part of Ukraine MIGHT be the step needed to bring everyone to the table to discuss an actual peace. Because ANY western response has a very high probability to leading to global nuclear war.
We are likely in greater danger of a nuclear confrontation right now than during the Cuban missile crisis.
With results that make that look like a roman candle.
It is well past time for a peace deal with Russia NOW,
So no I am not so supportive of Biden now.
Of course we have a problem because some KEY elements of a deal are impossible.
The teritorial stuff is trivial – aside from saving face – Putin does not care about teritory.
Immediate cease fire at current lines. But Russia backs away from its claim that the Donesk is Russian territory.
Basically it and crimea remain formally part of Ukraine but under Russia administration for the time being.
It is the rest that is hard. Ukraine will want a security guarantee, and Russia will want a guarantee that Ukraine never joins NATO.
Those are essentially mutually exclusive. If the US or NATO guarantee Ukraine against further Russian agression – that is indistinguishable from joining NATO – which Russia will not accept. But without a guarantee from western powers – Ukraine should not agree.
MAYBE you could get a deal with a guarantee from Poland, and other immediate Ukrainian NATO neighbors.
It is quite obvious That Russia can not possibly manage against any two NATO countries today.
Regardless the more successful Ukraine is, the less likely a deal is, and the more likely Putin tries a hail mary.
We agree on Russia and restricting NATO’s advances. As I mentioned a while back, I thought the peace dividend didn’t exist when the Berlin Wall came down. I have always felt that cultural ties bind people together, so we should have acted differently toward Russia. Once we became the sole super-power we became blind and had no direction.
—
“Japanese leaders knew full well in 1941 that they had absolutely no chance in a war with the US.”
My understanding is they thought they would lose but if they expanded enough a deal would be made and Japan would keep part of its ill-gotten rewards.
The peace dividend was very real, between that and the entitlement reform that occurred under Clinton we were well on our way to fiscal sanity and solvency. With only resolving social security and medicare as significant problems.
I think that Bill Clinton is a repugnant person. As president I think he was a foreign policy failure. But he was remarkably good economically – even though he did participate in sowing the seeds of the housing bubble – of course he had plenty of republican help.
Everybody though universal home ownership would be so good that we should blindly do anything we could without considering the unintended consequences.
Regardless, the point is that There was a peace dividend. It was very real. And subsequently we have blown it.
Even today – I would probably halve the defense budget.
But I would do so KNOWING that meant more soldiers would die – When, not if we got into a conflict.
One of the hardest things to grasp about government is that quite often good things with some good results are still actually bad.
We can not solve one problem through government without causing others.
I want fully legalization of drugs. All drugs – I do not want an FDA, I do not want the state regulating aspirin or pot.
I want you to be able to buy heroin with as little state interferance as buying bread.
The only thing I support is making it a crime to sell to minors. I do not want government run needle exchanges or methadone clinics.
Those can be done by charity or for profit.
I know that people will die as a result of this. The evidence show that over the long run that is likely less rather than more.
But even if there is an actual increase in drug related deaths. the fundamental benefit is a dramatic reduction in crime and violence.
People do not kill each other to sell bread. The next largest benefit is that the law enforcement and our prisons can focus on violent crime.
The net is significantly positive. But it is not perfect – people will die. Probably less. but not likely the exact same people.
Parents will lose their children and can beleive that but for legal drugs they might not.
“The peace dividend was very real,”
There was no peace dividend, and history has proven so.
I can not grasp how you think that.
Clinton damn near had a balanced budget for 2020.
Look around and look at what our military expenditures have to be while not even keeping parity.
A bipolar world was more focused, easier and less expensive.
So your evidence there was no peace dividend is that military expenditures declined ?
That is PART of why there WAS a peace dividend.
100+ years of military spending
Note that US military spending increased through the 80’s and declined through the 90’s and then doubled from 2000 to the present.
Today we spend 3 times what China does. 10 times what each of the next 5 countries do and more than the top 10 countries in the world combined.
We could cut military spending in half still spend much more than china, still be the strongest military in the world forever,
and the cost ?
In the event of a war We might loses twice as many soldiers to reach victory.
The 2022 election has caused me to reassess Biden – or the children actually running the show.
I am still pretty sure Biden is cognitively in decline, but less so than before.
someone is runnign the show, and whoever it is engaged in an election stratgety that Had Biden at the forefront that by everything I beleive to be true should have failed miserably – yet the result was an incredible success.
Did Biden do that ? Maybe he is just a puppet, but SOMEONE did.
Someone in this administration is not dumb as a post.
That does not mean that they are not leading the nation off a cliff,
but it does mean they are not failing at EVERYTHING.
That they are succeeding at things I think are bad and evil. Does not change the fact that they are succeeding.
Kanye got in trouble for saying positive things about Hitler. I have no idea what he said – and absolutely nothing about Hitler should ever be deemed as good. And obviously ultimately he was a disaster.
But SOME of his actions were both evil and brilliant, and had he stopped before invading poland the world would be radically different today.
Or even after occupying france.
Further starting from that frame. There are 3 different measures at least of any presidential action.
It is effective.
Is it evil.
Is it stupid.
More recently Biden seems to be hitting the first two more than the last.
Why would Biden do better …. ?
I do not know, But as I said above, He seems much less incompetent, and more malevolent.
“So your evidence there was no peace dividend is that military expenditures declined ?”
No.
At the time, I thought there would be no peace dividend and that we had to adapt to a unipolar world. Then we would see if there would be a peace dividend or not. We went from a stable situation to an unstable one. Our adaptation was poor.
What we see since, proves me correct.
Through 2000 military expenditures either declined or at worst did not increase.
Through 2013 we have lived in the unipolar world. while China was a predictable emerging threat, it did not truly become a threat until Xi took power.
The unipolar moment was very real. the US handled it abysmally. There were more rather than less golobal conflicts, and we got ourselves sucked into most of those and dealt with them badly.
Don’t forget that they also got the May 11 grand jury subpoena for “any and all documents or writings in the custody or control of Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings.” Christina Bobb, Trump’s Custodian of Records falsely claimed that a diligent search had been carried out and they’d all been returned. That failure to turn over subpoenaed documents was why they got the search warrant. But don’t expect Meyer to admit that it was all lawful, he’s a Trump sycophant and will make up excuses for law-breaking on Trump’s part.
” But don’t expect Meyer to admit that it was all lawful”
In Nazi Germany it was lawful to take the Jews to the gas chambers. You aren’t much better. You will subjugate half the nation to your desires.
You OBVIOUSLY have no understanding of either morality or the constitution or the law.
You have not established that Trump lied or was deceitful.
Regardless, all lies and deceit are not immoral or illegal. You would understand that if you actually understood either law or morality.
You are not entitled to whatever you wish to know about others.
People are entitled to protect their own privacy.
Anyone is free to allege that the government violated one of their constitutional rights, and to go to court to cure that infringement.
Yet, the very first line of the opinion that you obviously have not read, says that there is no right to challenge violations of 4th amendment rights.
You celebrate and declare that the decision must be correct – because the person you beleive to be the bad guy has lost.
But you fail to grasp that should this decision determine the ACTUAL law – EVERYONE would lose.
No one could ever challenge a violation of their right to privacy – their 4th amendment rights again.
But this is typical of left wing nuts – make it up as you go. Decide cases based on which party you like rather than the law, the constitution and actual rights.
“ You have not established that Trump lied or was deceitful.
Regardless, all lies and deceit are not immoral or illegal.”
Trump did. When he lied on his affidavit attesting that he turned over everything to the Archives. LYING on the form is a crime. Especially when the FBI is involved. That is why they had probable cause to get a warrant. Deceit in order to obstruct an investigation IS illegal. Trump had documents that were not legally his to keep. He refused to return them after being asked nicely for nearly two years. Refusing to turn over property that was not his is theft.
Trump’s 4th amendment rights’ were not violated. He’s at fault for intermixing personal and government prosperity on his property. The Warrant specifically stated that anything intermixed with those documents WILL be taken. The recent ruling affirmed that Trumps claims were pure crap and judge Cannon’s rulings and appointment of a special master was not legal. She had no jurisdiction.
It has already been established that Trump lied and was being deceitful. That is why he was fighting the DOJ against using the damning evidence recoverers from his property AFTER declaring in a LEGAL document that all classified documents were turned over. Clearly that lie was established.
Nobody is making stuff up as yo allege. You just want to deny th facts before you and pretend it’s not relevant. We will find out soon just how bad Trump messed up on the documents case. He will be indicted, it’s the severity of the charge that is unknown.
Which subpoena, which affidavit involved the FBI ?
You are unbelievably unaware of the FACTS.
You do not “go to court” to get a warrant. – You go to a magistrate.
There is no hearing.
There is no oportunity to challenge the evidence or claims.
Quite often the magistrates do not even read the applications – that is not “court”.
That is also precisely why the 11th appeals court is OBVIOUSLY wrong.
Warrants are a search and seizure that is what the 4th amendment is all about.
There is an actual RIGHT not to be searched and to have your property seized.
As I have addressed with you previously rights are not overcome trivially.
When government uses FORCE to violate a right – and make no mistake as the 4th amendment makes clear,
All of us have the RIGHT not to be searched or have our property seized.
The person whose RIGHTS were violated is ALWAYS free to go to court to challenge that abridgement of their RIGHTS.
This decision that you are fawning over says people who were searched and had their property seized have NO REDRESS unless and until they are charged criminally,.
This decision is actually far more egregious but otherwise similar to the Carter Page FISA warrant.
The Government came to the court – FISA warrants do ACTUALLY require going to court,
They LIED in their affadavit. They presented two different hoaxes as the evidence to support the warrant request.
Then they got a warrant that allowed them to spy on not just Carter page, but anyone he talked to,
Andyone they talked to, and anyone those people talked to.
So an enormous number of people RIGHTS were violated – without any adversarial review in court.
The 11th appeals court got it completely wrong.
As the Page Warrant demonstrated – rights do not exist without ACTUAL judicial oversight.
I would further note the “separation of powers” claim was completely stupid.
Each and every branch of govenrment has oversight powers on the other two.
It is not a violation of separation of powers to subject the actions of another branch to scrutiny, it is actually a constitutional requirement.
To violate separation of powers you have to try to take over the role of another branch.
The court trying to conduct a criminal investigation – as Judge Sullivan did, would violate separation of powers.
The court trying to decide if an investigation is lawful is its constitutional DUTY.
Replace the right to privacy with the right to protest, and see if the 11th appeals court decision still works.
Can the government refuse to issue a protest permit, refuse to provide a reason and when you take them to court the response of a court is – your not allowed to go to court to protect your right to protest ?
If the appeals court was actually correct about the caselaw – which they are not – searches are challenged after the fact all the time.
Then the caselaw OBVIOUSLY violates the constitution.
“ Which subpoena, which affidavit involved the FBI ?”
The archives had a subpoena issued to trump to produce the documents that he was refusing to turn over. The only reason they did that was because he was constantly refusing to hand over documents that did not belong to him. When he finally relented and handed over to the archives documents and signed an affidavit stating those were all of the documents. It turned out not to be true. When it was discovered he had highly classified documents he was not supposed have the FBI was notified and they got a search warrant. They had probable cause AND evidence that he lied.
“ You do not “go to court” to get a warrant. – You go to a magistrate.
There is no hearing.
There is no oportunity to challenge the evidence or claims.
Quite often the magistrates do not even read the applications – that is not “court”.“
Mere semantics. Getting a warrant does not involve an opportunity to challenge the evidence or claims. All the FBI has to do is present credible evidence of probable cause to the magistrate and he signs off on it if the evidence is convincing enough. As it turned out the FBI was right. Trump lied in his declaration to the FBI and the archives. There was even video evidence that the documents were not secure because people who couldn’t be verified to have top secret/SCI clearance were moving boxes of documents.
“ There is an actual RIGHT not to be searched and to have your property seized.”
Correct, BUT that right is if law enforcement has NO PROBABLE CAUSE. In Trump’s case there was, plus there was evidence that he obstructed the investigation.
You’re using an entirely different case to rationalize the “egregious” nature of the FBI legally searching his property. That’s just denying the facts and claim wrongful conduct.
The rest of your ranting nonsense has nothing to do with the fact that judge Cannon was out of her jurisdiction when she improperly kept law enforcement from using legally obtained evidence.
Then you will be able to produce that subpeona.
There was no such thing.
The archives has no power to issue a subpeona.
With the exception of legislatures, Subpeona can only be issued by lawyers where there is a court case.
For NARA to subpeona Trump, they would have had to go to court, and if they had, Trumps lawyers would have appeared to present him and challenge the case – oh and Trump would have gotten subpeona power too – because that is how that works.
Trump would have been able to subpeona NARA for all communications with the Whitehouse. And for a variety of reasons Executive priviledge would not apply.
You are correct there was a subpeona. But it had nothing to do with NARA.
There is a GJ in DC investigating J6. DOJ lawyers involved in that issued a GJ subpeona for documents. Trump’s official record keeper, produced what they belived was responsive to the subpeona. I do not know all the details – and I am certain you are clueless.
Regardless, the next step if DOJ beleived Trump had failed to comply with the subpeona was to ask the court for a court order.
There is a judge that is assigned to the GJ for specifically that type of purpose.
Had DOJ gone to the judge for an order – Trump would have been asked to come in and explain why such an order should not be issued.
Judges rarely if ever issue court orders drecting non-parties to act without letting them argue their position.
It would be near certain that Trump’s lawyers would have responded – that the GJ is investigating J6, They are only entitled to documents related to J6.
You do not seem to grasp that while you can not issue a subpeona without a court case (unless you are a legislature),
that if you can issue a subpeona – you can subpeona ANYTHING. But that does NOT mean you are entitled to get it.
This is also one of the mistakes made with Bannon and Navaro that will inevitably come back to bite the democrats.
Subpeonas are NOT self validating. Only a court can order a subpeona enforced, just as a warrant can only be issued by a court.
You are in contempt when you violate a court order, you are obstructing when you violate a court order.
Subpeona’s are not meaningless. But ultimately a subpeana is just a demand, the power behind it is that of a court, and that power does not exist until the court says so. And courts do not issue court orders ex parte very often.
This is all pretty fundimental law.
I am sure there are quirks and details I have glossed over – but they are not relevant to this.
Have you ever issued a subpeona ? I have – dozens of them.
Have you ever had someone fail to comply with a subpeona ? I have.
Do you know what the remedy is ?
Call the FBI ? – nope, they will laugh at you. H311 I could not get a sherrif to enforce an actual court order.
The actual remedy for failure to comply with a subpeona is to go to court and get a court order.
And when you do, the other party shows up, tells the judge why your subpeona is defective, overbroad, ….
And the court decides what it will order – not you, not the other party.
As I said I have issued subpeona’s before.
I can subpeona all your unicorns. And when you fail to produce I can go to a judge and get laughed out of court.
NARA did not issue a subpeona because to do so they would have had to go to court.
That would have had two problems – Trump would have gotten subpeona power, because both sides in a case can subpeona each others.
And the caselaw strongly favors Trump.
The DC GJ did issue a subpeona. But the DC GJ’s scope was J6. That is the legitimate scope of any DOJ/GJ related subpeona.
It was in DC so probably the court would have ordered whatever DOJ wanted regardless.
But Trump could appeal a GJ court order, and it is not likely that appeals courts would have allowed the DOJ to go beyond the GJ scope.
Regardless, what you claim happened – not only did not, but it could not.
Subpeonas just do not work that way.
“The archives had a subpoena issued to trump to produce the documents that he was refusing to turn over.”
Nope. NARA has never gone to court. NARA is not a party to anything in court, and has never been.
NARA and trump were in communication and negotiations, but nothing ever went to court, and you can not get a subpeona without a court case.
“The only reason they did that was because he was constantly refusing to hand over documents that did not belong to him.”
Nope, they litterally never went to court. Nor is Trump obligated to give NARA what it wants.
One of the reasons NARA never went to court is that it would lose.
There is no case in which the courts have required an ex-president to produce documents based on a NARA demand.
Every case in which an expresident was ordered to produce documents, was when DOJ sued for documents in relation to a criminal investigation.
The NARA case was a loser from the start that is why it never happened.
Biden may be stupid but whitehouse lawyers are not morons, nor are those at NARA.
They are unlikely to go to court when they are certain to lose.
“When he finally relented and handed over to the archives documents and signed an affidavit stating those were all of the documents.”
Nope, completely wrong case. Neither trump nor his lawyers have EVER issued an affadavit that said – “those are all the documents”.
What they have done is provided an afadavit saying those are all the documents responsive to a specific court order.
The instnace usually cited that keeps getting included in this – that was a lawsuit in NY, and the matter is resolved the court has accepted that Trump turned over all documents.
There is a separate repsonse to the DC GJ, but again that is limited to the legitimate scope of that subpeona and as I recall Trump has not signed that.
“It turned out not to be true.”
No it turned out this did not happen.
“When it was discovered he had highly classified documents he was not supposed have the FBI was notified and they got a search warrant. They had probable cause AND evidence that he lied.”
Mostly wrong. It is beleived the FBI did use evidence that there were classified documents at MAL and that those documents might have been shared with someone unable to access them to get a warrant.
We do not know because nothing consequential in the warrant application has been unredcated.
That is all the DOJ/FBI needs to get a warrant. No one is deputing that.
But that is NOT the basis for a general warrant. The laws cited in the warrant are all espionage related, therefore the only legitimate evidence that can be recorved by the warrant is classified information or documents specifically related to classified information.
DOJ./FBI took way more than that. They must return everything else.
Further If Trump can demonstrate the marked documents are not classified
those must be returned too.
“Mere semantics. Getting a warrant does not involve an opportunity to challenge the evidence or claims. All the FBI has to do is present credible evidence of probable cause to the magistrate and he signs off on it if the evidence is convincing enough.”
All correct, and precisely why a person can challenge the execution of a warrant AFTER.
There is no right that exists that you can not go to court to seek its protection.
If warrants are unreveiwable – which is complete idiocy courts review warrants in nearly every case in which they are issued all the time,
then there is no 4th amendment right to be secure in your person or papers or property.
I would note that Carter Page sued over the FISA warrant. He unfortunately lost, but not because of lack of jurisduction or inability to challenge, but because the people involved all had qualified immunity.
Trump can sue to get his property back. He can not sue the agents or margestrate or lawyers for malfeasance in requestion or executing the warrant.
“As it turned out the FBI was right.”
Nope, if the FBI had been “right” – there would be an indictment already.
There is never going to be an indictment here.
There is no crime.
“Trump lied in his declaration to the FBI and the archives.”
Still fixated on this mytical whatever – it keeps changing names in your reports – strong evidence you do not know what you are talking about.
Regardless, civil court records are public. If NARA subpeona’d anything and Trump produced an affadavit – you would have it.
You don;t.
“There was even video evidence that the documents were not secure because people who couldn’t be verified to have top secret/SCI clearance were moving boxes of documents.”
That is a basis for a warrant. If True that would be a basis for a warrant. But we do not know that is true – if that video was part of the affadavit – it was not made public, the video was not made public, if it actually exists the FBI can not disclose that without the agent dislosing it committing a federal crime. You are arguing based on a news story. How many times do you have to be duped before it becomes clear to you that media claims about DBI/DOJ evidence are almost always FALSE.
The reason they are false is because lying to the press is not a crime. Leaking to them is.
” BUT that right is if law enforcement has NO PROBABLE CAUSE.”
Probaly cause is determined by article II magistrates. These are NOT courts. Judicial review is the purview of Article III courts. Judge Cannon is an article III judge. ALL actions of All article II tribunals are reviewable by the appropriate Article III judge.
You would think hat as your claims keep running into concrete walls that you might learn something.
I would note though your error above is glarring and huge.
Warrants are sometimes issued by Article III judges. They are still reviewable.
The is no act that violates the rights of anyone that is not judicially reviewable.
And judicially reviewable means – the party alleging that their rights were infringed may ALWAYS go to an article III court, to challenge the infringement of that right.
Inarguably Cannon has jurisdiction.
“In Trump’s case there was, plus there was evidence that he obstructed the investigation.”
False and irrelevant. Do you think saying “evidence” means something ?
How is it that evidence turns into findings of FACT ?
That occurs in trial courts.
Warrants require evidence. They do NOT require findings of fact.
Appeals courts do NOT deal in evidence. They deal in findings of law primarily, and on very very rare occasions findings of fact.
This is not one of those. Regardless, appelate courts do not deal with evidence.
The process of turning evidence into findings of fact is what trial courts do.
Again Cannon has jurisdiction.
“You’re using an entirely different case to rationalize the “egregious” nature of the FBI legally searching his property. That’s just denying the facts and claim wrongful conduct.”
I have no idea what you think this means.
I would however note that the very same FBI office and many of the very same FBI agents were involved in the Carte PAge warrant.
Yes, that actually is evidence.
Past misconduct is admissible as evidence in claims of present misconduct – where the conduct is similar enough .
Participating in one fraudulent warrant is admissible in a challenge to another.
in my state there was a huge lawsuit brough by the State public defenders association. It was discovered that the State AG had a secret list of law enforcement officials that it suspected had lied in court. Not ones that had been proven to have lied, just suspected.
The courts determined that the list had to e made available to all defense attorney’s in the commonwealth, and that it could be used to challenge the credibility of any law enforcment officer that was on the list.
Yes, past miscounduct matter is court, and alone is a legitimate basis for a challenge.
Had DOJ done its job properly Everyone who touched the entire carter page warrant should have been fired. None of them can testify credibly in court again. That is the legitimate price for being associated with a fraud on the courts.
“The rest of your ranting nonsense has nothing to do with the fact that judge Cannon was out of her jurisdiction when she improperly kept law enforcement from using legally obtained evidence.”
Except that as you keep going – your argument gets worse and worse.
Reinhardt is an article ii magistrate. He is called “judge” and but he is not an article III judge and he has no article iii court.
The only reason that Article II tribunals are even allowed to exist is because they are reviewable by article III courts.
Reinhardt has the authority to sign off on a warrant. He does NOT have the authority to make final determinations of law or fact.
He does not constitute a constitutional review.
This is not some special magic or an insult to him.
It is just the normal way things operate.
The fact that Reinhardt is Article II is further significant. That means that despite titles and robes he is part of the executive not judicial branch.
He is part of law enforcement – not the courts.
You are litterally arguing that the actions of the executive branch are unreviewable by the courts.
Perhaps you have heard of Marbury Vs. Madison.
“Trump did. When he lied on his affidavit attesting that he turned over everything to the Archives. LYING on the form is a crime.”
You are confusing facts and cases.
NARA has not gone to court. There exists no afadavit of any kind saying that all of anything was ever turned over to NARA.
One of the reasons that does not exist is NARA did not go to court to ask for anything.
It is likely they did not because the caselaw is against them.
The ONLY cases in which the government has been able to recover documents from a president is when there is a CRIMINAL investigation.
There was not crime.
There was a subpoena by an Attorney in the DOJ – not the courts, for specific records from MAL, from Trumps custodian of records – an Attorney who testified that everything requested was turned over.
If The US Attorney running the GJ in DC beleives that documents he was entitled to were not turned over he can:
Go to court and get a court order for those records.
Or file charges against the attorney.
Neither was done.
Why ? Because DOJ would likely have lost. Or more accurately had the subpeona limited to material responsive to the actual investigation. You can not subpeona anything you want. You can only subpeona material relevant to the investigation you are conducting. There are further complications because this was a cross district subpeona. Which in and of itself makes it harder to enforce.
Neither you nor the 11th appeals court seems to consider the fact that the 4th amendment exists and the DOJ/FBI can not just demand anything they want.
“Especially when the FBI is involved.”
The FBI’s involvement was limited and not legitimate.
“That is why they had probable cause to get a warrant.”
We do not know that and we likely will not find out about that becuase the 11th appeals court has just shutdown the ability to challenge any aspect of the warrant.
We do know that nothing in the redacted warrant constitutes probable cause.
“Deceit in order to obstruct an investigation IS illegal.”
As a broad statement that is false.
Obstruction requires a CRIMINAL investigation. The NARA case is not criminal. That is why Biden shifted everything to the DC court.
In DC a GJ was investigating J6 – there is nothing to this entire case that has a nexus to J6 so nothing Trump or his attorney’s did constitutes obstruction of an unrelated investigation.
Whether you like it or not, it is not a crime for Trump to posses classified materials.
It is a crime to steal them. There are other ACTS involving classified documents that are crimes.
But prior to filing the warrant request with Reinhardt there was no allegation of a crime involving classified documents.
Even today we do not actually know whether any of these documents are actually classified.
Because again – contra the claims of the the 11th – ex presidents are actually unique, because as president they had unlimited power to declassify. Therefore unlike anyone else it is not possible to presume a documents is classified because it once was classified and is now in the possession of an ex-president.
In an appeal the appellate court must ASSUME all facts in favor of the non-moving party.
In this case they must assume the documents are no longer classified.
They must do that BEFORE applying the law. This is especailly true of appeals prior to the final determination of the Trial court.
The appeals court can not create findings of fact on its own. Only Trial courts can do that.
That is one of the reasons that appeals courts are very limited in taking cases prior to final decisions.
If you have an actual order from Cannon – not Reinhardt, not Deary that makes a final finding of fact that the documents in question are currently classified – then the appeals court can presume that finding of fact. That is not what happened – and that is only one of many factual assumptions they appeals court made that are outside its jurisdiction.
“Trump had documents that were not legally his to keep.”
That is still not actually known. AGAIN NARA, and DOJ had the opportunity to go to court and have that decided in a court.
They did not do so. A major part of what you do not grasp here is that you keep making assumptions that you do not know to be true.
Real Courts do not work that way. Every single contested claim of fact must be determined by evidence in a trial court.
Not by just assuming whatever you want.
“He refused to return them after being asked nicely for nearly two years.”
False. Trump provided NARA and later FBI access to MAL and all documents.
They took what they wanted at the time.
I would note “return them” makes they presumption that this stuff was not Trump’s.
We already know that the DOJ/FBI took lots of stuff that was inarguably Trumps – isn’t that theft ”
Whether you like it or not DOJ/FBI/NARA never went to court to establish any right to anything they took.
That is what is occuring with Cannon. That is what the 11th appeals just interfered with.
“Refusing to turn over property that was not his is theft.”
Legally False. If I have a rake, and you notify me that it is your rake, and I refuse to give it to you. That is not theft.
I am in possession of the rake, and you are not. To successfully claim the rake is yours you must go to court and prove the rake is yours.
You do not just get to assume it. Whether you like it or not the caselaw is that NARA does not have the authority to compel presidential records to be turned over to it. Please go read the clinton’s tape case.
There are many cases in which Presidents have been required to turn presidential records in their possession over to government.
Every single one of those involved a criminal investigation. What we have here is DOJ constructing a circular and therefore invalid claim.
Essentially we can demand the records back because we got a criminal warrant to get them.
The “crime” can not be mere possession of the documents the government wants.
I would further note that the 11th is wrong regarding the presidential aspect of this.
Like it or not presidents have the absolute power to declassify records. they also have the absolute power to determine what whitehouse records are personal and what are not. Please read the actual law on this.
Both of these are unique to presidents.
“Trump’s 4th amendment rights’ were not violated.”
We do not know that – that is for a TRIAL court to decide. That is the actual point.
The 11th appeal did not have jurisdiction, The trial court did. Nor did the 11th appeal have the knowledge to make a decision – the process of determining whether the 4th amendment was violated was ongoing. No final decision had been made.
“He’s at fault for intermixing personal and government prosperity on his property.”
False and irrelevant.
“The Warrant specifically stated that anything intermixed with those documents WILL be taken.”
Correct and a legal error that Cannon was correcting that the 11th appeal botched.
You may not steal property that you KNOW is not yours just because it is adjacent to property that you CLAIM is yours.
” The recent ruling affirmed that Trumps claims were pure crap and judge Cannon’s rulings and appointment of a special master was not legal. She had no jurisdiction.”
Then the 4th amendment no longer exists. You do not seem to grasp the logical problems with your own argument.
This case was very badly decided. That will ultimately be corrected. Maybe on appeal to the SC though maybe not.
Or maybe when Republicans come for Biden’s records starting in January.
Or maybe when State AG’s start using their law enforcement powers to go after Biden – after all the 11th appeals has just said a criminal warrant is not reviewable. And YOU have said repeatedly that everybody must do whatever a subpeona says or go to jail.
Prepare to go to jail.
“It has already been established that Trump lied and was being deceitful.”
No it is just something you beleive.
“That is why he was fighting the DOJ against using the damning evidence recoverers from his property AFTER declaring in a LEGAL document that all classified documents were turned over. Clearly that lie was established.”
Again please review the ACTUAL cases – that is not what happened. Details matter – and you do not know any of them.
I would note that you still refuse to address the fact that we do not know that ANYTHING recovered is classified.
Trump’s lawyers have conceded that some documents are MARKED classified – there appears to be very few actually classified documents – because mostly what DOJ has is FOLDERS marked classified with nothing in them.
“Nobody is making stuff up as yo allege.”
Of course you are – all the time -0 every sentence from your mouth is a collection of unproven assertions, that you claim are known facts and therefore proof of lies. But you can not even keep the facts straight.
NARA made requests – they were given access, they took what they wanted, and then later claimed there was more.
They were allowed to return and take anything else they wanted – they did, The FBI came, they had full access to everything.
They took what they wanted and left. They advised MAL to put another lock on the Document closet – which was done.
Neither DOJ nor NARA went to court. Contra YOUR claims – there are no affidavits involved, just emails and other communications
Because nothing ever went to court. The govenrments NARA claim died a long time ago.
SEPARATELY, DOJ used the J6 Grand Jury to subpoena documents from MAL. The custodian of records – a Trump lawyer provided the documents that she deemed responsive to the subpeona. She provided an Afadavit to that effect.
I would note that there was a similar case involving the NY AG. The NY AG submitted a subpoena for records, Trump’s attorney’s provided them.
The AG went to court claiming that the subpoena was not fully complied with. The COURT ordered Trump to produce records that were allegedly being hidden, held Trump in contempt fined him significant money every day. Trump’s attorney then went everywhere that the NY AG
said the unproduced documents were, found nothing, returned to court with an affaavit that she had searched everywhere and found no responsive documents. The contempt order was lifted and the fines returned.
There were confused claims by left wing nuts like you that the Trump attoney was in trouble because she signed the affadavit and obviously missed the “classified” documents at MAL. But left wing nuts like you stupidly miss the fact that you can not subpeona everything in creation.
Documents subpeoned must be responsive to the case before the court.
There was no NARA subpoeona so we can skip that. There is absolutely no remaining issue regarding NARA because NARA never went to court – where they likely would have losted.
The DC GJ subpoena was never tested in court – because DOJ/FBI skipped going to court. If it had been tested in court, Trump would have been ordered to produce all documents relative to the J6 investigation – not whatever DOJ wanted.
I would love to see your claim that the Classified Documents at MAL were responsive to the J6 investigation.
There is a reason there was no attempt to enforce the DC GJ Subpoena – eventually DOJ would have lost.
Again you can not subpeona whatever you want.
Finally the same is true of the Warrant. Whether you like it there is not some “You did not cooperate in unrelated court matters, therefore we can take everything you own” legal standard.
The warrant is specific to the completely separate claim that the Espionage act was violated.
The warrant itself was overly broad. Myriads of legal experts including Turley have already asserted that.
That Alone is a reason the 11th appeals court erred. They have just ruled there is no means to narrow an overly broad search warrant.
Further – while it is normal to presume that an Afadavit supporting a warrant is truthful and contians the necescary evidence.
It is not like we have not seen completely bogus warrants issued by THIS FBI AND DOJ – unless you have fogotten the Carter Page FISA warrant.
Regardless, all of us have very good reason to beleive that there is not proper support for the violations listed in the warrant contained in the affadavit. It is certainly true that what has been unredacted looks alot like the Carter Page warrant where the FBI improperly relied on news reports of claims that were false and it could have known so if they had checked themselves. The evidence used for a warrant need not be strong enough to convict. But the quality must be greater than obviously bogus news stories.
The point is that Warrants are not prima fascia valid – which is what this court is claiming.
They are NOT unreviewable. It is OBVIOUSLY not a separation of powers issue.
The FACT is so Far Cannon has been spot on and the 11th appeals has been full of schiff.
“You just want to deny th facts before you and pretend it’s not relevant.”
No I expect that what actually is a FACT as a matter of law, will be decided before a trial court, where each party can present evidence, and test the evidence of the other party.
“You no longer have an excuse.
That means you are lying – again.”
Svelaz is lying or is worse off intellectually than we think. He constantly denies information previously sent on the same day. To prove him a liar, I saved one discussion with two hyperlinks that repeated the same data. He didn’t respond to that one either, proving him a liar or very dumb. He can choose his poison.
I would bet against Trump being indicted. I highly doubt anything will come of the MAL raid.
Trump’s greatest risk of being indicted is by the DC GJ over J6.
While there is no actual basis for such indictment – it is DC and we already know that DC is red queen justice.
I fully expect at least 2 years of harassment by the SC. I expect lots of legal battles, many of which Trump will lose.
There will be enormous amounts of politics here. Biden clearly wants Trump indicted. This is personal. Further Biden has every reason to be terrified that Trump will beat him in 2024.
You can beleive whatever you want about the odds of that, it is completely beyond debate that Should trump get elected in 2024, he is cleaning house in DOJ/FBI pretty much everywhere, and after that he is absolutely going to do to democrats what they have done to him.
Trump called Hillary after the 2016 election and told her that he was not going after her.
He kept that commitment.
He is not doing that again. Trump will likely dig Biden’s body out from the grave to prosecute him at this point.
Further, you will have massive number of very angry republicans who will be happy to exact revenge on democrats.
And because you have so thoroughly undermined the rule of law – you will be defenseless.
It is my view that Garland appointed an SC to get out of the frying pan.
The problem is not his anymore.
I have not followed the criticisms of this SC so far.
But allegedly he is worse by far than Mueller.
Regardless we are in the post Mueller collusion dellusion world.
The SC will be under a very very bright spotlight.
If you think trying to indict Trump without an absolutely airtight case is not going to backfire on you.
Go for it.
“Trump did. When he lied on his affidavit attesting that he turned over everything to the Archives. ”
This has been addressed repeatedly – you are confusing different legal cases. This is constantly done by those on the left.
You are also confused about who signed an affadavit and what that affadavit actually said.
Put simply – You are wrong. And you have been told to check the facts repeatedly.
You no longer have an excuse.
That means you are lying – again.
“LYING on the form is a crime.”
An affadavit is not a form.
Please learn something about the stuff you are talking about – so that you can alteast make your false statements more credible.
“Especially when the FBI is involved.”
NO, only when the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation, and the person you are accusing of lying knows that.
If an FBI agents walks up to you in a dinner and says “what did you have for lunch” You are not obligated to answer, and if you do you are not obligated to tell the truth.
If however he says “we are investigating a robbery down the street, did you see anything ?”, you are still not obligated to answer – though failure to do so will likely make you a suspect. But if you do answer, you must do so truthfully.
I would note that “to the best of my knowledge there are no Classified documents at MAL” is only going to be a prosecutable lie if you can prove – there were actually classified documents at MAL at the time. Not declassified but marked documents. That the person answering knows that, and knows that they are still classified. Given that the president of the united states has the power to declassify anything at anytime while he is president, you will never meet that standard.
“That is why they had probable cause to get a warrant. ”
Bzzt wrong. We do not know whether they had probable cause. Establishing whether they did requires access to the redacted portions of the affadavit of probable cause. So far nothing that was unredacted comes within 1000 miles of probable cause.
“Deceit in order to obstruct an investigation IS illegal.”
We have been through this before.
One of the huge problems you have is litterally with the warrant and the raid itself.
It is self evident that no one at MAL was aware of a criminal investigation into classified documents.
You can not obstruct an investigation you do not know exists.
The entire NARA mess you keep relying on is NOT criminal.
Nor is it actually a crime for an ex-president to possess classified documents.
Nor do we know that these documents are classified.
Nor do we know how they got to MAL.
“Trump had documents that were not legally his to keep.”
Again a conclusion that you can not reach without knowing all the facts – and you do not.
“He refused to return them after being asked nicely for nearly two years.”
False, NARA had full access to MAL to look for whatever they wanted.
They took several boxes – I beleive 15. No one stopped them.
Trump is actually on record telling staff to give NARA and FBI whatever they wanted.
Later the FBI came – again they were given full access.
They told Trump to add another lock to his closet and they requested security footage – which they were given.
Contra YOUR claim Trump and his staff Fully cooperated.
All of the above is documented. Actual relations with NARA and FBI were Cordial – or atleast Trump and his lawyers and staff thought so, until the FBI/DOJ stopped communicating in late June – probably as they were preparing their raid.
AGAIN the DOJ/FBI took the most draconian measures to address this, when they had other remedies available.
“Refusing to turn over property that was not his is theft.”
Again false.
“Trump’s 4th amendment rights’ were not violated.”
You do not know that. Trump claims they were. He went to court to make that claim – that is how we challenge government viloations of our rights. And that is precisely why the 11th appeals court is wrong. If there is no right to challenge an alleged infringement on your rights in court.
There is no right. The constitution gives us the right to be secure in our homes, person and papers. Anyone who beleives that the government has violated that right is free to challenge that in court. But the 11th appeals just said no. If that holds – there is no 4th amendment right.
A right that the courts will not protect is not a right.
“He’s at fault for intermixing personal and government prosperity on his property.”
There is no “its your fault that your rights were violated” – even actual criminals retain their rights.
You are clueless.
All you are doing – like the 11th is proving your ignorance. And bias.
“The Warrant specifically stated that anything intermixed with those documents WILL be taken.”
i.e. the warrant was overly broad and that can be challenged in court.
“The recent ruling affirmed that Trumps claims were pure crap and judge Cannon’s rulings and appointment of a special master was not legal. She had no jurisdiction.”
Obviously wrong.
If cannon does not have jurisdiction – there is no 4th amendment, and every special master ever appointed was a violation of the law.
That is a ludicrously stupid claim.
BTW the special master is a complete tangent. It has nothing to do with this. Special masters are appointed by judges in cases involving the review of significant amounts of challenged records, as a convenience for the judge and to reduce the risk that the judge might have to later recuse themselves. Cannon was free to review the material herself and make the determinations herself. I would further note that she was also free to toss the entire warrant. To do so she would have to find it was overly broad – but that is a fact within her power to do.
This whole claim that she had no jurisdiction was nonsense from the start.
It is actually the 11th appeals that has no jurisdiction over any decisions of Cannon’s until they are final.
This is litterally how ALL appeals work. There are only very rare instances where non-final decisions of trial courts are reviewable by appelate courts.
There is NEVER more than one court with jurisdiction over a case at one time. The Trial court nearly always has jurisdiction until it issues a final order. If a final order is issued. When a final order is issued – the trial court loses jurisdiction. If the final decision is appealed – at he appeals court NOW has jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is always exclusive.
This is how things work in REAL courts, every day. I have seen plenty of appeals courts turn down appeals – because the trial court still has jurisdiction. I have seen plenty of trial courts try to issue orders or to correct errors in prior orders after an appeal has been made.
Only one court has jurisdiction at a time.
That is to prevent nonsense like this.
One of the reasons is because YOU and the 11th appeals refer to a bunch of facts in their opinion. But appealate courts do not determine facts.
They are NOT fact finders. They are restricted to findings of law, and they must accept the facts as they receive them.
Where a lower court has not issued findings of fact, The appelate court must find all facts in favor of the non-moving party.
This is the legal standard that applies throughout the courts for matters where no findings of fact have been made.
You are free to beleive all the things you have claimed above. But NONE of them are FACTS that the appealte court is free to use until the lower court finds them to be facts.
Your and the 11th’s claim that Cannon had no jurisdiction – can not be made based on any facts that have not been agreed on by all parties.
It must rest SOLELY on the law. Any part of the 11th decision that you read that refers to facts that Cannon has not issued a finding of fact, or that Trump and DOJ have not agreed on, must be treated as TRUMP claims – no matter how absurd that claim – until the fact is adjudictated at the trial court.
I would note that the 11th claimed that Cannon had no jurisdiction. A jurisdiction claim can ONLY rest on the law – not the facts.
So again – read the 11th opinion, redact everything in the opiniion that refers to a fact, and see if there is anything left.
Ultiamtely you and the 11th are completely wrong about this.
And you are too blind to see not only that you are wrong, but that no sane person would want it this way.
Republicans in the house are preparing subpoenas.
DC courts have already ruled that if someone does not comply with a house subpoeona they are guilty of a crime and should go to jail.
No due process. The house is not required to go to court to overcome claims of lawyer client priviledge or executive priviledge,
the subpeona alone must be obeyed – there is no right to challenge it.
That is what YOU have argued. That is what DC courts have concluded.
And that is the legal state as Republicans start issuing Subpoenas.
While House democrats used the DOJ to prosecute – the constitution allows the House to enforce its own contempt citations.
The house can arrest someone it finds in contempt and hold them in the jail in the house until they clear the contempt.
You claim that no court has jurisdiction to accept a 4th amendment challenge – so be it.
State AG’s across the country can start issuing warrants against democrats and confiscate their property.
The 11th has just said that a 4th amendment claim is not review able by the court.
You never ever think about how will things work when the shoe is on the other foot.
I pointed out that we now KNOW for a fact that the chinese government through TikTok bots interfered in the 2020 election to benefit Biden and democrats.
Time for a Special counsel NOW.
Hillary and other democrats tried to persuade electors to flip their votes in 2016.
Insurection – send her to jail. She also participated with Tribe in drafting the constitutional memo that Eastmen used as the basis for his actions in 2020. She and Tribe are part of the J6 insuraction then too.
She has still not ceded the 2016 election – Insurection and election denier.
The rule of law means that the law must mean the same thing for republicans and democrats, for rich and poor, for black and white.
And you do not get that.
The DOJ/FBI selected Cannon. They did so by conducting a search at MAL.
Reinhart is the Magistrate for that region of FL,
Cannon is the Trial Court Judge for that region.
Cannon has being doing an excellent job on this case – both administratively and constitutionally.
DOJ/FBI Dearly and the appeals court have failed miserably.
Just using an administrative manner. DOJ wanted incredibly short deadlines – that it was not even theoretically possible for them to meet.
Dearly botched this. Cannon established longer deadlines – and DOJ failed to meet them.
Cannon has been dealing with meddling from all sides, despite the fact that by law this is HER case. She is the trial judge.
This appeals court keeps accepting and improperly ruling on DOJ challenges that are not appropriate at this time, and that the appeals court does not have jurisdiction over.
Again something you do not seem to understand. With extremely rare exceptions a party CAN NOT appeal an action of a trial court until it is final. Yet that has happened repeatedly in this case.
The appeals panel is trying to micromanage a case they do not have jurisdiction over.
The untimely appellate court decision you are citing denies ANYONE the right to challenge an alleged violation of their 4th amendment rights.
Again – you have no understanding of morality.
you have no understanding of the law.
You have decided that Cannon must be wrong – and you do not even know about what, because you think she favors Trump.
You have decided that the appelate court must be right – because you think they oppose Trump.
The decisions of courts are about the law and constitution.
Those decisions impact not just Trump but ALL of us.
You are like the left wing protester in my city was was just convicted of a felony and sentence to years in jail.
I defend her, and hope that she will win her case on apeall.
But I have no sympathy for her.
While ranting about the injustice of her own case, she railed about the January 6th protesters.
The rule of law requires ONE LAW, ON CONSTITUTION that applies the same to all of us.
If January 6 protesters do not have constitutional rights – neither do other protesters.
If the 4th amendment does not protect Trump, it does not protect anyone.
Anything less is immoral.
But you do not have any understanding of morality.
You prove that repeatedly. You make up morality as you go, and that is obvious.
“ The DOJ/FBI selected Cannon. They did so by conducting a search at MAL.”
Nope. Trumps lawyers did. They were shopping for a friendly judge. The judge who signed the warrant had jurisdiction, not Cannon.
“ Cannon has being doing an excellent job on this case – both administratively and constitutionally.
DOJ/FBI Dearly and the appeals court have failed miserably.”
Nope. Cannon had no jurisdiction over the case. She fabricated a reason to clams jurisdiction after Trump’s lawyers filed an incoherent motion that Cannon herself pointed out was not proper. She even tried to help these haphazard lawyers file a proper motion. She was biased toward trump from the get go.
Once again you get the facts wrong.
Moving on.
We learned today that the Chinese government used TikTok during the 2020 election to bash republicans and praise democrats.
We aren’t you demanding a Special Counsel ?
You claimed the Russians intefered with the 2016 election – and your nonsensical, belief in that had you frothing at the mouth for years.
You are STILL pushing that narative.
Regardless, the chinese government was actually pushing their own political adds on TikTok seeking to influence US elections.
I thought you said foreign election interference was illegal, immoral and repugnant and that the party that benefited – whether intentionally or not must be removed from power.
Just to be clear – I do not care. Fundimentally it is free speech. While I do not think that china has a Constitutional right to free speech in US politics, I also do not think it is a good idea to try to do anything about it. Further, Free speech is still an actual right.
China, Russia, who cares, bring it on,
Of course this raises other questions – like what is Joe’s involvement ? After all Joe was visiting China in 2019 as I recall.
Further we KNOW there are all kinds of financial entanglements between Joe and China – and the expectation is that we are about to find LOTS more. So did Joe go over to China to coordinate Chinese help to get him elected ? Mueller NEVER found Trump, the Trump family, or Trump surrogates actually in Russia with any possibility of contact with nefarious Russians. But Joe and Hunter have been in contact with – and taking money from nefarious Everybody from all of our enemies.
I listened to YOU tell me for years how evil that was – please explain why you have no problem now ?
Speaking of China – Biden say the US is looking into alleged Chinese investment in Twitter. Because ? Twitter is not a public company.
There are no actual national security issues. We do not even know that there is any chinese investment. And Musk has been busily killing bots – many of which come from China.
Musk also sent Starlink to Ukraine and to Iran, and has been actively working to help protestors of brutal regimes worldwide maintain contact with the free (or increasingly not so free world)
But who IS KowTowing to China ? Apple, Google. Apple phones are made in China, and they have a large presence in China and Apple just pushed a “security update” that disables the means by which Chinese protestors were evading the Chinese police.
Google is single handedly responsible for creating and maintaining the “great firewall of china” which prevents the chinese people from unfiltered access to the rest of the world.
I beleive Musk just announced the Tesla Phone. Prototypes will be available soon. It might be on sale in early 2023.
Many interesting new features – satelite link capability so that even when you have bad cell service – you still can connect, and go to the internet.
Chinese protestors could use that. 5 cameras much better than the best apple cameras. And a neural link that allows some forms of brain machine interface, i.e. you can think to communicate with your phone. I doubt this is very advanced. But we have been working on BMI for a long time. I had some involvement 2 decades ago. Many other features.
Apple has purportedly announced that no, no, no, they never threatened to pull Twitter off the app store. There are several antitrust lawsuits against apple and google in the EU, Ireland, and UK regarding the 30% fee they take on everything.
Former Twitter head of Trust and Security has gotten out ahead of Musk’s announcement of Twitter 2020 election interferance and admitted that she was never comfortable about pulling the hunter biden story. And that she now realizes that was a big mistake – Election interferance.
Is the FEC going after the Biden campaign for what are essentially illegal campaign contributions and election interferance from China ? Or from Twitter ? FaceBook? Google ? ….. ?
You can pretty much guarantee that whatever democrats accuse republicans of – it is what they are doing themselves.
Then we have the SBF fiasco.
Basically SBF stole money that people had stored in his Crypto exchange – that is like taking money out of people bank accounts, used it in his Hedge fund, personal life, and political contributions – 99.99% to democrats in 2022. And then Lost it all. Bankrupting himself and everyone else.
I do not care about those invested in his hedge fund – hedge funds are risky. But crypto exchanges are just supposed to be bank accounts.
He stole depositors money. But this is worse – cyrto exchanges are not actually necescary. FTX will not be the first to go bankrupt. Crypto is volatile and the exchanges have all been badly managed and they are a huge target for hackers.
But exchanges are not actually necescary. You can securely keep crytpo currency, on your computer – backed up in the cloud, on a USB stick.
Regarless, FTX went bankrupt – just barely AFTER the election. So the next question is to what extent were democrats complicit in the actual theft SBF engaged in ? No matter what they are guilty of recieving stolen property. Are democrats going to give back the $40M in political donations that SBF stole from the people on his crypto exchange ? SBF wiped out about $30B, that is actually a significant fraction of the losses from the collapse of the housing bubble.
And Where is the Biden administration on protests in China ? or Iran ?
But no the left can not talk about those – hear are people ACTUALLY engaged in political protest, in actual insurrection, with the openly expressed intention of bringing authoritarian regimes that cheat in elections down.
This administration Owes China – the CCP, Xi, not the chinese people. This adminstration is so desparate to strike a deal with the Ayatolahs that is is mum on the government murdering protestors.
Even Obama on leaving the presidency said his one regret was not getting behind the green revolution in Iran.
Biden has learned nothing from his mentor.
Some humor for you – law and order micro agressions victims unit.
https://youtu.be/lICcbBg9mgM
This is a case of in person election fraud in PA.
It is a single incident, But these things almost NEVER occur singly.
This same type of fraud is 1000 times as easy – and can be conducted large scale anywhere you have mailin voting.
Further PA is a voter ID state – when you vote you are supposed to be requited to provide Voter ID – that was the deal that allowed Act 77 to get passed – no more democrat lawfare against the PA voter ID law. Of course PA republicans did not grasp that democrats were just going to use Covid and the PA courts to complete rewrite all PA election laws.
Regardless, if you can forge ballots and envelopes, then you can flood an election with fraudulent Mailin ballots.
And with piss poor verification of signatures those fraudulent ballots will get counted.
If you want to engage in mailin voting fraud large scale, what you need is the ability to counterfeit ballots and envelopes – that is easy.
Then you need access to voter registration records – those are publicly available, though there are more complete records you can buy from other sources. You sort the voting records to eliminate people who voted in the last 3 elections. And you fill out ballots and envelopes for the remaining voter registration records. Buy casting fraudulent ballots only for people who have not voted in a while, you decrease the frequency with which your counterfeit ballot will conflict with someone who actually votes. That of course presumes that the polls are actually looking for conflicts – which mostly they are not.
https://youtu.be/uwtXqf-IEsY
“ You have decided that Cannon must be wrong – and you do not even know about what, because you think she favors Trump.
You have decided that the appelate court must be right – because you think they oppose Trump.”
Nope.
Cannon WAS wrong. I didn’t just decide. Multiple law professors and experienced lawyers knew her rulings were not based on sound legal reasoning. She even made suggestions to Trump’s legal team on how to properly file a motion. She stopped the special counsel from doing his job when he put Trump in the difficult position of having to prove his claims.
“ Cannon has being doing an excellent job on this case – both administratively and constitutionally.
DOJ/FBI Dearly and the appeals court have failed miserably.”
No she didn’t. She was bending over backwards to accommodate Trump’s demands. Every legal scholar and professional lawyer pointed out how badly flawed her legal reasoning was. Even the judges on the 11th circuit made it clear her rulings were not legally sound.
“ Just using an administrative manner. DOJ wanted incredibly short deadlines – that it was not even theoretically possible for them to meet.
Dearly botched this. Cannon established longer deadlines – and DOJ failed to meet them.”
Wrong. The DOJ moved quickly and by the book because they needed to know who had access to the classified documents, who moved them, and how were they stored. They had the capability to move quickly and efficiently. Trump’s lawyers were modding deadlines to file motions constantly and he wanted to delay delay delay. Dearly had a plan to efficiently go thru the documents but Trump complained to Cannon and she obliged like a good Trump judge.
“ Again something you do not seem to understand. With extremely rare exceptions a party CAN NOT appeal an action of a trial court until it is final. Yet that has happened repeatedly in this case.“
It was not a trial court you idiot. He was not on trial. This was criminal investigation. They CAM appeal a court motion they disagree with.
“ The appeals panel is trying to micromanage a case they do not have jurisdiction over.”
The appeals panel is doing its job. That’s what they do. It’s literally what the rules are. It seems you are the one who doesn’t understand how the law works.
It was not a violation because Trump broke the law.
““ You have decided that Cannon must be wrong – and you do not even know about what, because you think she favors Trump.
You have decided that the appelate court must be right – because you think they oppose Trump.”
Nope.
Cannon WAS wrong. I didn’t just decide. Multiple law professors and experienced lawyers knew her rulings were not based on sound legal reasoning. She even made suggestions to Trump’s legal team on how to properly file a motion. She stopped the special counsel from doing his job when he put Trump in the difficult position of having to prove his claims.
”
You are wrong accross the board.
The quality of law school professors today Sucks.
All reasoning – not just legal reasons has descended into does my side win.
We have debated the proper means to read the law – the reason for a rules based system of constitutional and statutory construction is to avoid the very nonsense you and YOUR purported experts run afoul with.
The law is not supposed to be some game where the side with the greatest number of professors advocating a possition or the greatest number of judges or the greatest number of supreme court justices is inherently right.
The foundations of the law are moral principles, and the fundimental moral principle is individual freedom – without that morality does not exist.
The means we use to build from there is LOGIC – not emotion, not concensus, not alleged expertise.
Most of the claims you make I am not familiar with – probably because you spend you life on left wing nut sites with a long history of lies and errors. I doubt most of what you say – because it defies logic – and whenever I check – YOU ARE WRONG.
You blurr details, then you borrow facts from one thing to another. You pretend unrelated events of actions are all part of the same thing.
Quite litterally the 11th appeals panel has just found that no one has 4th amendment rights – we get this nonsense from YOU and your left wing nut law professors and biased and blind judges all the time.
You are incapable of seeing that if the legal claims you make were the actual laws or rules – they would not work. And you ignore that Your own standards apply to YOU also. You evade that – because the same bevey of laws and judges will do the same thing again – and decide the outcome they want and then force the law into it.
As a trivial example – YOU insist that Trump was illegitimate because some tiny bit of abysmally bad political adds mostly after the election and divided equally between sanders Trump and clinton were run in later 2016. Oh, no our elections are corrupt, Trump won becuase of russian influence. We must have a special counsel immediately.
Yet, The Chinese ran a ton of political adds on TikTok favoring democrats and bashing republicans and what do we get from you ? Crickets.
The problem is that YOU and every single “expert” on anything you cite – only cares about getting to their preferred outcomes.
You are incapable of logic and reason. you cherry pick or even make up facts, you ignore inconvenient ones and manufacture facts as you need.
You do this in everything every where.
I have explained why the 11th appellate is wrong – they decision obliterates the 4th amendment.
That is the unavoidable consequence of their decision.
You want to pretend that is legitimate,
Fine prepare to live in a world with no right to privacy. Where government can confiscate your property as it wishes by making things up.
Where you and your lawyer can not discuss anything without government intruding.
Just so you are clear – the government power to conduct an investigation RIGHT NOW, is not a right, In fact “equal protection” and “Due process” Require that governments powers ALWAYS are subordinate to protecting individual rights.
Again for you it is all about Trump – or whatever your personal villain is at the moment.
You cheered when the government arrested pro-life protestors on sidewalks in front of abortion clinics – but even after a proabortion protestor tried to assassinate a supreme court justice you claimed that protestors were free to protest on the sidewalks in front of the homes of supreme court justices in violation of federal law.
The point is not about prolife or proabortion – it is that you NEVER apply law consistently. Your claims – and those of all the “experts” you cite are all driven by the ends you desire.
That is the rule of man, not law, and it ends incredibly badly. That is tyranny, and that is fascism.
Nothing Cannon has done prevents the FBI or SC from conducting their investigation. No one on earth beleives that FBI and DOJ will not ultimately get the relevant material they gathered at MAL. But inarguably they should NOT get anything that is not relevant to the criminal allegations in the warrant. They should NOT get personal property that has nothing to do with the specific crimes alleged in the warrant.
They should not get anything involving communications between Trump and his lawyers. They should not get papers that have nothing to do with the crimes alleged in the warrant.
Why is that hard for you to grasp ? A warrant is not an excuse for FBI agents to rummage through the former first ladies panties.
This Warrant has nothing to do with NARA’s claims – which are not criminal, so all papers that are not marked classified should be returned to Trump. NARA is free to go to civil court to make the claim you think has merit.
If the FBI/DOJ think Trump posesses evidence related to other crimes – Get a warrant specific to THOSE crimes.
” Cannon has being doing an excellent job on this case – both administratively and constitutionally.
DOJ/FBI Dearly and the appeals court have failed miserably.”
No she didn’t. She was bending over backwards to accommodate Trump’s demands.”
No she is correctly apply the 4th amendment.
YOU are the one that makes this all about Trump. It is not.
The left claims they want criminal justice reform. A good part of that would be actually followin the law and the constitution we have – which is there to protect peoples rights – not just Trumps.
“Every legal scholar and professional lawyer pointed out how badly flawed her legal reasoning was. ”
False, another of the common errors of those on the left. That is no different from claims that all public health experts told us to wear masks.
If any sets of exerts are completely unified about something – you KNOW something is wrong. Most likely as with Covid, what that actually means is that dissenting voices are being supressed.
Regardless, you do not need to be a legal expert to grasp that warrants do not give you carte blanche. Myriads of experts including Turley here some time ago said that The Warrant Reinhardt signed had serious problems with being overly broad.
All Cannon is doing is trying to correct the defects in the warrant.
General warrants are unconstitutional in the US.
Cannon could quite legitimately throw the whole warrant out as an unconstitutional general warrant.
You the SMALL cotterie of left wing nut legal expert – who BTW have been consistently wrong about pretty much everything.
should thank Cannon for trying to preserve your unconstitutional warrant.
The alternative is we disregard the unconstitutionality of general warrants, and add another check mark to the list of charges in the declaration of independence that King George did to justify the american revolution that left wing nuts are following.
YOU have argued that the warrant gave the FBI the power to confiscate not just documents marked classified that they found, but the entire rest of the box, plus the adjacent box on either side. Why was the warrant limited to that ? Why not say if you find a classified document you can confiscated every documented in the room ? or every document in the building ? Or every document in all of MAL. Or every document in Florida.
A warrant is not valid and constitutional just because it says something.
You can guarantee that the FBI and law enforcement throughout the country watches the courts carefully.
The decision you are touting explicitly says there is no post execution judicial review of search warrants.
What that means idiot is that if the FBI or a police officer can get a magistrate to sign off on a warrant,
that no matter what that warrant says – law enforcement can do, and no one can review it.
That if a police officer can get a magistrate to sign off on a warrant that says – the police can search and seize anything, anywhere, anytime, that warrant is valid according to this court – because no trial court has jurisdiction to constraint it.
“Even the judges on the 11th circuit made it clear her rulings were not legally sound.”
With obviously unsound legal rulings of their own.
“Wrong. The DOJ moved quickly and by the book because they needed to know who had access to the classified documents, who moved them, and how were they stored. ”
Again your off on some idiotic tangent.
First the DOJ/FBI did NOT move quickly – there was a long delay between the issuance of the warrant and its execution.
The ended up rushed because they realized they were up against the DOJ rule that nothing that might effect an election can be done publicly during the 90 days prior to an election. Regardless, the initial delay and the subsequent rush are their problems and I do not care about them – except that if we have mailin and early voting – the 90day window should be from the time the first ballots are mailed anywhere in the US.
Regardless, that is a different issue and as always you use the wrong facts from tangential issues.
DOJ proposed a scheduling order to Deary for the review of Classified Documents. Trump technically agreed to the order, but sugested Deary give DOJ more time – because there was absolutely no way DOJ could perform the task they had to do in the time in THEIR schedule.
Deary gave DOJ the order they wanted. Cannon stepped in and Gave the DOJ significantly more time – but less than half what Trump suggested.
DOJ was unable to complete their task in the time Cannon had given them and so had to come and ask for an extension.
I would note this nonsense is commonplace. Prosecutors nearly always seek expidited schedules. They gamble – usually correctly, that the defense will not be able to meet them, and that the delay will be charged to the defense. While not relevant in this case – no one has been charged. Prosecutors have a limited amount of time from charging a person to bringing them to trial. In my state it is 180 days.
No one gets to court in 180 days. The prosecutors set the defense up to ask for a delay, and the court suspends time for defense requested delays.
All the claims by the 11th appeal and you that time was of the essence are complete nonsense. Cannon could delay this for 6 months – not that she would, and there would be no impact. Nothing is going to happen quickly. Frankly nothing is ever going to happen regarding the MAL raid anyway. This is all political theater.
As I said before Trump’s real danger is the DC GJ and J6. Not because there is a tiny bit of a case, but because DC juries, and judges are unifromly abysmal and politically biased. But that is a double edged sword – while much of the country will jail trump if you ever actually prove a real crime – which you never will, because Trump has not committed real crimes. the more political things appear the weaker support is and the more dangerous proceeding is.
Almost the entire country knows that Clinton got a Freebie, and that YOU ran a politically corrupt FBI and then Special Counsel investigation.
Put simply – the DOJ/FBI have no credibility.
Which is another reason that you should have let Cannon do her job. DOJ would have eventually gotten the relevant materials.
But more importantly the people would have seen a process that they could trust.
You do not understand that winning lawlessly is not only a loss – it makes you look politically corrupt.
“They had the capability to move quickly and efficiently. Trump’s lawyers were modding deadlines to file motions constantly and he wanted to delay delay delay. Dearly had a plan to efficiently go thru the documents but Trump complained to Cannon and she obliged like a good Trump judge.”
Not according to the facts. Trump agreed to Deary’s schedule. DOJ not only failed to meet it, but failed to meet Cannon’s more reasonable schedule. It is DOJ that has been filing motions and going to the appelate courts.
The least you can do is get your facts straight.
The small conflicts between Deary and cannon are irrelevant. They quite literally have no legal significance. Deary is technically an advisor to the Judge. He has no actual authority. He serves two purposes, first to avoid tying Cannon up personally reviewing all this material.
It this was about one or two documents, no special master would have been appointed. The 2nd reason is to avoid being forced to recuse herself because of what was in the documents. Lets assume that in some document that is CLEARLY inadmissible, there is some information that is very damaging but not relevant to this case. If the judge reviews the documents, decides that document can not be admitted, but because has seen it, she can not continue as the judge for the rest of the case. That is why we have special masters.
The reality is that Deary was trying to act as the judge – which he is not. His purpose was to review the documents. NOT to adjudicate legal issues. Repeatedly he overstepped, or acted stupidly – such as creating a schedule that DOJ wanted but could not possibly meet,
Cannon only intervened when necescary to keep things running smoothly.
I would note that the actual scanning and catagorization of the documents was to be completed by DOJ just after the election.
It was not.
You are correct that everything was being delayed – but completely wrong about the source of the delay.
BTW this is not unusual. There is an enormous amount of strategy for both the defense and prosecution in delay or expediting a case.
It is nearly always true that most defendants want cases to proceed as fast as possible, but that their lawyers are not capable of it.
It is nearly always the case that prosecutors are NOT capable of moving quickly – but constantly bluff because they are subject to a 180 day clock. But higher profile cases with wealthy parties have far more complex strategies. Quite often – as in this case, Trump and his lawyers were able to move much faster than DOJ.
Or more simply – you have your facts muddled. The DOJ strategy was to make a mess of things and then blame the SM process for the mess.
In this instance they succeeded – But THEY not Trump made the mess. They pushed impossible schedules and then failed to meet reasonable ones. They litigated against things that made no sense just to gum up the works and then blame the process.
“It was not a trial court you idiot. He was not on trial.”
Yes, it is, Trump filed a civil rights claim that his 4th amendment rights were violated.
Just as he would have had his 1st amendment rights been violated.
“This was criminal investigation.”
DOJ/FBI was engaged in a criminal investigation. But this case is a civil case. That is another error on the part of the 11th appeal.
I would note that if there are ever charges filed against Trump – we will go through all of this all over again.
Trump was taking a gamble with this lawsuit.
There are political advantage to him of the lawsuit. But if there ever actually were criminal charges filed, it is better for him to wait to challenge the evidence in a criminal court.
I and Turley and many ACTUAL legal experts have noted that the warrant smells like a “general warrant” – I do not know if Trump made that claim here. If he did his burden as the moving party in civil litigation would be higher. And a decision against him would harm him if the case ever became a criminal case. Regardless, in a criminal case Trump has a good argument this was a general warrant – then the whole thing gets thrown out, and the evidence completely excluded.
I would further note – something you and the appelate court completely miss. You say this is a criminal investigation But DESPITE the fact that we all know differently – it is not a criminal investigation of Trump. because the moment that DOJ/FBI name Trump as a target all the rules change. Many of the arguments you make and you claim are relevant to the appealate court aside from being false and a complete misunderstanding of facts and events and blurring many things together, are also allegations of crimes. Yet, no one has charge Trump with those crimes. The DOJ can not allege obstruction of justice in court without charging obstruction of justice – which they have not done.
Muellers case against “the russians” in NY got tossed because he tried to do there – what he got away with in DC and putt a while lot of allegations in front of a jury without evidence.
The Federal Judge in NY required Mueller to provide prima fascia evidence of a crime, before allowing him to charge that crime in court, and then refused to allow evidence that was unrelated to the actual crimes charged. When Mueller tried to go arround the judge by making the allegations to the press the Judge told him to provide the evidence or withdraw the case – which is what Mueller did.
The Fact is that Mueller NEVER had a case against these russian companies. They were not involved in anything. Mueller thought they were going to run home to Russia and not try to defend themselves in court.
We had versions of this in reverse in the Durham trials. Durham was prohibited from putting on evidence that was not related to crimes that he had actually charged Sussman with. Though I think some of the judges decisions were overbroad in general he was correct.
You can not charge someone with one crime and then try them on another.
I would note that NONE of the DC courts followed that rule with Trump related defendants. Lots of evidence that should not have been admitted was.
“They CAM appeal a court motion they disagree with.”
“Appeal from an interlocutory order. Interlocutory appeals are extremely rare; a three-part test determines whether the collateral order exception to res judicata makes such an appeal possible:
the order must have conclusively determined the disputed question;
the order must “resolve an issue completely separate from the merits of the action”;
the order must be “effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.”
(Hallock v. Bonner, 387 F.3d 147 (2d Cir. 2004).)”
In general your claim is FALSE.
“The appeals panel is doing its job. That’s what they do. It’s literally what the rules are.”
It is literally NOT what the rules are – see above.
As I said before – only one court has jurisdiction over a case at a time. ALWAYS the trial court first.
This case is a civil claim against the government of violating Trump’s 4th amendment rights.
It is as inherently valid as any other civil right claim. It is no different from a claim that your first amendment rights are violated by government.
While civil challenges to warrants and seizures are not common, they are not rare either – they have occured in cases pretty much exactly like this. They have actually occured in cases whether the claim is more attenuated than this – such as where the warrant is against a third party.
Contra the 11th this is a decided issue and THEY are wrong. Cannon has jurisdiction.
If she did not – not merely would 4th amendment claims be barred but all violations of constitutional rights would be barred.
There is not some part of the constitution that says 4th amendment rights are inferior to those to the 1st amendment.
“It seems you are the one who doesn’t understand how the law works.”
“It was not a violation because Trump broke the law.”
Both wrong and irrelevant. Trump did not violate the law, you have actually provided no evidence that he has – your claims do not constitute the proof you think they do. But more importantly – he has not even been charged with ANYTHING, much less convicted.
Your belief that Trump broke the law – is NOT admissible. The court is not permitted to treat as facts the future expectations of left wing nuts of the DOJ.
The appellate court is correct about one thing – this civil case is causing relatively minor inconvenience to a DOJ criminal investigation that is going nowhere.
The problem is that is irrelevant. Constitutional rights trump government wishes.
I have REPEATEDLY pointed out to you that the use of FORCE by government must be justified.
In this instance we have a conflict between an individuals obvious constitutional right to be secure from the intrusion of government in their person, papers and property. Trump has claimed that the government violated that right. Just like anyone else claiming that a right has been violated – Trump is entitled to go to court seeking redress for the violation of that right.
It is the NORM that people going to court alleging violations of their rights inconvenience government.
Contra the 11th – that does not bar their doing so.
I would note that Trump has an indesputable case that his rights were violated – every warrant ever issued is a violation of 4th amendment rights.
The fact that a warrant was executed is more than sufficient to bring a case to court. Again a major error on the part of the appelate court.
Just to be clear – just because your constitutional rights are violated – does not mean you win in court.
Government IS allowed to use FORCE to violate indiviuals rights.
But only when that violation is justified.
Determining whether that is the case is a question of Law, and a question of FACT. That FACT finding portion of that is the exclusive domain of Trial courts – and yes Cannon is a CIVIL Trial court.
Contra you and the 11th appellate – there is no question that Cannon has jurisdiction.
The vast majority of your (and their) arguments are of the form – But Trump can not win.
That is irrelevant. The 11th is the court without jurisdiction. I cited the law regarding appeals to the actions of trial courts while that court still has jurisdiction above. None of those criteria apply – ALL of them must.
Scheduling decisons are rarely if ever subject to appeal. Administrative decisions as a whole are rarely if ever subject to appeal.
To a large extent the administration of a case is unappealable – the trial court judge is omnipotent.
With respect to findings of FACT, the trial court is ominpotent and unreviewable.
It is only with respect to the trial courts decisions of Law that are appealable.
And even then only when they are final.
“ If the 4th amendment does not protect Trump, it does not protect anyone.”
The 4th amendment did not protect trump when he stupidly intermingled his personal effects with stolen documents. The 4th amendment is not absolute. He undermined his defense when he lied about not having any more documents.
“The 4th amendment did not protect trump when he stupidly intermingled his personal effects with stolen documents. ”
Incorrect.
“The 4th amendment is not absolute.”
Correct, and that is why we have trial courts, to decide in this specific case with these specific FACTS whether the governments actions in violating the 4th amendment were jusified.
Whether that is true is determined by a trial court, after hearing the evidence, and reviewing the law. AFTER the trial court has done so, Then the appeals court is free to find errors in the Trial courts application of law.
“He undermined his defense when he lied about not having any more documents.”
Not true, but also not relevant. And proof that the matter belongs in front of a trail court, which is where questions of fact are decided.
I would note that the government “undermined there case” when they repeatedly searched MAL with Trump’s permission and were allowed to take whatever they wanted.
The poor skills of those searching MAL with permission, are not a basis for a warrant. much less the confiscation of unrelated property.
In fact Trump’s willingness on SEVERAL occasions to allow searches of MAL and allow the government to take whatever it wanted, is evidence a warrant was not needed.
Regardless, this is all – both my arguments and your tangential. At this time neither Trump nor the govenrment are challenging the warrant itself.
So all the arguments about motives and lying and whatnot are irrelevant.
Trump is seeking the return of documents the government is not entitled to based on the warrant.
That also means your NARA nonsense is irrelevant.
This is not a NARA case. This is an espionage act case. The government is literally entitled to nothing from this warrant that is not potentially evidence of a violation of the specific laws cited in the warrant.
There are some exceptions to this – such as the “plain sight” rule – but papers in boxes that the agents did not go though during the search are not “plain sight”.
The government is entitled to anything that it took that is evidence of violations of the spionage act – that means anything marked classified, or anything observed during the search that discusses classified material that is not otherwise priviledged.
The govenrment is not entitled to other documents having nothing to do with the espionage act.
Otherwise you have an unconstitutional general warrant.
Cannon is NOT reading the 4th amendment as narrowly as I am.
Despite the fact that NARA is not a party to this warrant – they can not be NARA is not a criminal law. NARA can not get documents from Trump via warrant. Cannon has requested the special master to divide the documents into I believe it was 5 categories.
And appears intent on providing DOJ with documents that are not related to the espionage act, not Trump personal documents and fall under NARA. I think that is beyond her remit, But Trump’s lawyers have not objected at this time, and she has allowed Trump’s lawyers to make claims that specific allegedly white house documents are personal. Though Cannon has not offered any suggestion as to whether she will favor Trump on those claims.
She has already bent over backward FOR THE DOJ by allowing NARA related claims into a dispute over documents seized using a warrant.
“ The untimely appellate court decision you are citing denies ANYONE the right to challenge an alleged violation of their 4th amendment rights.”
Nope.
Trump was claiming a special privilege because he is a former. President. All the court did was affirm that nobody is above the law. Including trump.
“” The untimely appellate court decision you are citing denies ANYONE the right to challenge an alleged violation of their 4th amendment rights.”
Nope.
Trump was claiming a special privilege because he is a former. President. All the court did was affirm that nobody is above the law. Including trump.”
Claiming that your constitutional rights have been violated is not a special priviledge.
There are specific issues in this case that are unique specifically because Trump was president recently and almost certainly when the documents were transfered to MAL.
95% of this case can be decided without addressing anything related to the presidency.
Trump has no special priviledges with respect to the ordinaries vageries of warrants etc.
But to claim that the fact he was president during atleast some of the handling of these documents is something the court can ignore – THAT is a real violation of separation of powers.
It is littlerally arguing that an act that was performed legally while a person was president becomes illegal when they are no longer president.
Biden handles classified documents every day.
If Trump or some other republican wins in 2024, can they take office and charge Biden with violations of the espionage act, for actions he took while president ?
Of course not.
The fact that Trump was president inarguably gives him powers and authority while president that no one except the president has.
Those powers go away when he is no longer president. But the actions that took place while president remain, and remain lawful.
Even if they would not be lawful if done today.
It is AGAIN the court that erred.
Regardless, this is a stupid claim – you are litterally arguing that you can not become president without violating the espionage act.
Do you understand that no president ever has received a security clearance. They do not have an FBI background check, they do not fill out an SFQ86, They are not granted by some authority a TS/SCI.
The president by virtue of being president has not just an all access to anything anywhere anytime security clearance, but the authority to grant access to anyone the power to classify or declassify unilaterally and on a moments notice.
While Trump is incorrect that a president can declassify something by thinking. He is correct that he does NOT need to recite some magic incantation. merely handing a classified document to a person without clearance to read it either immediately declassifies it or immediately grants clearance to that person.
There is a massive massive legal problem related to these allegedly classified documents.
How did they get to MAL in the first place ?
If they were moved by Trump or at his direction while president, there are only two possibilities.
They remain classified, but his access is legal.
They are declassified by virtue of being removed from a secure setting to an insecure one while president.
I would further note with respoect to your claim that expresidents are not above the law.
Presidents are not above the law either.
But the law explicitly is different for presidents in a few specific areas – this being one.
And it is also explicity different for ex-presidents – by executive order.
Ex-presidents retain there all access to anything security clearance – in fact most government officials retain security clearances after leaving government.
While the current president can rescind that access – or that of anyone, that can not be done secretly.
Further the current president can limit the access of an expresident – or anyone, but he can not limit access to what is already in their posession secretly.
Biden can say – do not give Trump anything else, he ca do that secretly.
But he can not say “i rescind your security clearance, your possession of classified documents magically now becomes a crime without your even knowing.
Biden or DOJ can demand the return of classified documents, But those documents have to still be classified, and saying no would not be a crime. Biden or DOJ would just need to go to court and order the return of these documents – something they never did.
One of the reasons for all of this is that they would likely lose.
There remains a very strong argument none of these documets are classified.
“What was immoral about the DOJ and the FBI following the law? ”
They did not follow the law.
Subpeonas are enforced by going to court and getting a court order.
Not by getting a warrant.
DOJ/FBI has already admitted that they took material outside the scope of the warrant.
They sort of had to – it was obvious to all of us.
They also played games with the courts and the legal system trying to leaverage the favorable judges, juries, grand juries and FBI agents in DC,
to act outside their jurisdiction in FL.
“Trump LIED in an affidavit assuring the FBI and the archives that there were no more documents to turn over.”
Nope, you do not just get to assume the facts as you claim.
The FBI had no legitimate role in this until the warrant was issued.
“Obviously when they found out that was not true LYING on the affidavit which is a legal declaration triggered legally the FBI’s search warrant. ”
Both false as to the facts, and false as to the law.
Lets assume you file a fraudulent tax return. Does that allow the FBI to get a warrant to search your home for child porn ?
“They were right to search because obviously Trump lied about there being no more documents THAT is the crime.”
No true and not a crime. You keep trying to make up crimes.
“Trump was obstructing an investigation and lying to the FBI which is also a crime.”
Nope, asserting actual legal rights is not a crime. The only “investigation” the FBI was conducting was in DC related to J6.
Something that would be self evident to you if you were paying any attention to the facts.
DOJ/FBI have OBVIOUSLY been playing games from the start.
In FL Trump had a federal judge that would follow the constitution, and an FBI office that was not going to get sucked into political abuse of power.
The very fact that all the things you CLAIM are a basis all came from DC, is the evidence that you are WRONG.
There was no FBI investigation in FL. Neither NARA nor FBI went to court – because that would have had to occur in FL.
This whole mess would have died completely – except that the DC FBI office came to FL and persuaded Reinhart to grant them a warrant.
Which he never should have done – he should have told the DOJ and FBI to go back to DC as this is outside their jurisdiction.
Regardless, they gamed Reinhardt and got a warrant.
But because they got a warrant in FL to search property in FL, Trump was able to go to court in FL to protect his 4th amendment rights.
“They did everything by the book.”
Not even close.
A subpeona is a demand by a party with no power to enforce that demand.
All redress regarding a subpeona rests with a Court. In this case a court in DC, whose jurisdiction was limited to DC.
“It was Trump’’s own stupidity and arrogance that led the FBI to raid his house. It was his own fault.”
False, but lets assume that is true – stupidity is not a crime, arrogance is not a crime.
You still do not grasp that willfully refusing to kowtow to illegitmate requests and authority is not a crime.
The actual FACTS are that a politically corrupt DOJ and FBI found that the LAW prevented them from acting as the pleased outside of DC.
While they could act outside the law in DC with DV judges and DC GJ’s they could not get past the fundimental problem that Trump was in Florida. These documents were in Florida, and the Florida Courts, and the Florida FBI field office was not playing ball.
“Of course i do know what immorality means.”
Obviously you do not.
“Trumps actions were immoral in the sense that he was lying, being deceitful, dishonest and using a judge he chose so he could avoid a Judge that was actually going or be impartial. He was also breaking the law.”
Obviously you do NOT know anything about morality or FACTS,.
Biden lies if you breaths. You lie every single time you post.
You have not demonstrated that Trump has lied. Though you constantly make that claim.
I would further note that lying is rarely illegal – the entire left would be in jail.
And all lies are not immoral. Which would be obvious to you if you knew the slightest thing about morality.
Parents lie to their children all the time.
People lie to each other all the time – when others attempt to violate their privacy.
Plantiffs do not get to choose their own Judge. Trump ended up with Cannon because she is the 12th circuit judge assigned to the area where MAL is located. Just as Reinhart is the magistrate for that area.
Cannon is actually OBVIOUSLY impartial – the process that she ordered – is the NORMAL process where a search warrant results in law enforcement taking MORE than they were allowed and taking things that are priviledged.
There is absolutely nothing unusual about this – as you would know it you paid the slightest attention to the Cohen case in SDNY years ago.
That is also WHY the 3rd cir ct of appeals is the court that is OBVIOUSLY Biased. They are calling unusual what is relatively normal.
I would note that DOJ/FBI have already admitted they took documents they should not have.
That alone established that the appeals court is acting outside the law.
Finally – no Trump was not breaking the law.
As of Today there is STILL no actual claim that the law was broken.
This has been covered thoroughly. A crime is an ACT. Hillary ACTED to remove Classified Documents from the control of government without the authority to do so. As President Trump has the authority to do so. To have a crime you need an ACT that occured AFTER Jan 20,2021.
You do not have one.
So it is OBVIOUS that you have no clue about morality.
A major part of your problem is that you do not understand where morality comes from.
Morality derives from Free will.
There is no such thing as morality if there is no such thing as free will.
To be immoral and ACT must use force or fraud to violate the freedom of others.
That is why Slavery is always immoral – whether it is illegal or not.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
Of course you should – if you make a moral claim about another person YOU are obligated to demonstrate it.
I have made moral claims about YOU – and I have demonstrated them.
“YOU are very capable of finding out what the courts said.”
The decision is posted and the very first line is incorrect as a matter of law.
I have read the rest. And unlike you – I am well aware that a court can produce an oppinion using the law that produces any result they want – merely by ignoring any law that conflicts and reading the law they do overly broad. That is what this panel has done.
The test of a court oppinion is not “does this sound reasonable to me” – especially when it confirms your personal biases.
The test is whether it fallows the basic principles of the law.
This decision not only does not – the decision is litterally at odds with the 4th amendment – as well as the fundimnetal principle of judicial review.
The appeals court is litterally saying that neither the magistrates actions, the warrant itself, nor the execution of that warrant, nor the material collected by that warrant are reviewable by the courts.
That is complete and total idiocy.
Atleast 1/3 of all prosecutions in the US involve legal battles over warrants, and admissible evidence.
Further even where there is no criminal prosecution – or none yet, court challenges to warrants as well as what is seized are extremely common.
The 4th amendment specifies thew requirements for violating another persons privacy – to conduct a search, and to seize property.
4th amendment law is the most heavily litigated law in the US.
And this court is OBVIOUSLY on the wrong side of it.
Taken as written this opinion says that no one can go to court to challenge a search or seizure.
You have to be completely stupid to believe that. Yet, that is very literally what the first line of the opinion states.
I do not know how this will go – because I do not think the fight over what was seized is pivotal in this case.
The most fundimental issue is that there is no crime. I highly doubt DOJ or the SC will try to prosecute this because they will have to do so in Florida, and they will have to do so in front of Cannon. And there is ultimately nothing that even this panel can do about that.
I would further note that the Supreme court justice for Florida is Thomas.
” It’s as easy as googling it and reading the rulings.”
I have – the decision is wrong. I have pointed out why it is OBVIOUSLY wrong above.
As written this decision removes the 4th amendment from the constitution.
” You won’t bother with the rest of the statements because you know they are right and you don’t want to admit it.”
No unlike you I do not look at what occurs in court and ask – Did my side win.
I ask – what does this mean more broadly.
This decision means there is no 4th amendment.
“No that is the court’s opinion. That is what they just said in their ruling.”
Correct, and it is part of why the panel is in error.
There is no final decision in this case – there is very limited power to appeal trial courts without a final decision.
But even if there had been a final deisions – this panel is OBVIOUSLY wrong.
DOJ/FBI went to a magistrate, they requested and received and executed a warrant. In the execution of that warrant they took more material than they were permitted to by their own admission. Further they took priviledged materials.
Whether you or this court like it or not, the target of a warrant has the legal right to challenge the warrant and its execution.
Just as a person has the right to challenge the governments efforts to limit their 1st amendment rights.
This case is no different – Trump went to court with a claim that his 4th amendment rights are being violated.
What this 3 judge panel just ruled – is that you can not go to court to challenge alleged violations of your 4th amendment rights.
In fact so far no one has actually asserted that Trump has done anything illegal.
DOJ/FBI have claimed that the law was violated – they had to to get a search warrant.
But todate DOJ/FBI have not actually claimed Trump broke the law.
I would note that they are studiously avoiding doing that,
The allegedly classified documents at MAL ARE evidence of a violation of the espionage act – SO LONG AS they did not arrive where they are as an act of a president.
So long as DOJ/FBI do NOT allege that Trump violated the law – only that the law was violated, the very thorny legal question of whether these documents are classified at all is being ducked.
To be fair – both sides are playing the same game here.
Deary demanded that Trump’s lawyers put up or shutup regarding whether these documents are still classified.
Deary can not do that, and Trump;s lawyers were not going to do so.
But Deary can assume the documents are classified.
Neither Trump nor his lawyers are likely to claim these documents are declassified at this stage.
The governments burden of proof for a warrant is too low.
This is sort of like the OJ case – only backwards.
If judges and the courts followed the law correctly – they could and likely would decide FOR the DOJ/FBI at the current level.
But against DOJ/FBI should this go to a criminal trial.
At this level Trump must prove the documets are declassified.
At a criminal proceding DOJ must prove they ARE classified.
If Trump challenges classification at this level he will likely lose – and he should.
But if he does so now, and loses, that will make it harder to win should this become a criminal proceeding.
I think there is a snowballs chance in hell of the classified documents case ever going to a criminal trial.
There will be lots of court battles here – Trump will lose some and possibly win some.
But regardless of DOJ wins or losses this is not going to a criminal trial.
Such trial would have to be in Florida, it would near certain be in Judge Cannon’s court.
Despite a poor apelate bench this is also Thomas’s District.
If the government goes to court against Trump and loses – that would be devastating to DOJ and Biden.
That is just not a risk that I see them taking.
I think the appointment of the SC was a deliberate effort to try to reduce that risk.
But it will not be effective.
The reality of this, is that the whole thing is political theater.
IT gives, Biden, Democrats and the left more ability to smear Trump.
BUT it keeps Trump in the news which has thus far been as damaging as it is beneficial to the left.
Further the longer there is no result the weaker Biden looks and the stronger Trump looks.
Put simply while there will be lots of legal games over the next couple of years, nothing is going to a trial in front of a Jury regarding MAL.
The DC J6 GJ is more dangerous to Trump. While the case is complete garbage, there is far greater probability of success – because the DC courts are a complete disaster. But that is so well know that there is a large danger that proceeding will backfire.
“No, the immoral action came from Trump.”
Again you have no understanding of morality
“He decided to take documents that were not his to take.”
False. The president can take whatever documents they want.
” Every court including the Supreme Court has made that clear to trump and his lawyers.”
False. Cannon has been correct from the start. the appelate pannel has been wrong.
SCOTUS has merely refused to intervene. They are not obligated to intervene.
SCOTUS can only take so many cases a year. Not taking a case does not mean the case was correctly decided.
As Volohk – one of the BEST sources on constitutional law in the country pointed out.
The First case was messy, Because some of the claims Trump made fell into the domain that WAS subject to interlocutory appeal.
That meant that SCOTUS could not simply tell the appelate pannel they had no jurisdiction. Essentially SCOTUS would have to address the case in peices and that meant they would have to hear it.
“Judge Cannon overstepped her authority and had no jurisdiction to rule on the case.”
Cannon’s “authority” is the 4th amendment.
The appelate court has just ruled that you can not challenge infringement on 4th amendment rights.
That you do not understand that is obvious error is the evidence that YOU and they are immoral.
“Turley keeps ignoring that pertinent point because he KNOWS Cannon was wrong to even take the case.”
Try rewriting this so that it makes sense.
“The 11th circuit court essentially told Cannon to dismiss the case because she has no jurisdiction at all.”
Cannon is the 11th cir. ct. This was a 3 judge 11th cir appelate pannel.
You get facts wrong all the time – such as you pretending the DOJ/FBI, GJ in DC have jurisdiction in Florida.
Regardless, CORRECTLY stating what this court decided:
The courts have no jurisdiction over allegations of violations of 4th amendment rights.
Unless you agree with that – then the court decided WRONGLY
You are unable to separate yourself from your Trump derangement, to actually look at the real meaning of the decision.
I aould further note that the decisions is obviously wrong – because probably atleast 1/3 of all criminal cases in the US involve challenges to searches and seizures. Search and Seizure law is the single largest area of criminal law.
I would further not that 4th amendment Civil challenges – which is what this was, are far less common. But they still occur all the time.
This court has claimed that the federal courts do not have jurisdiction over claims of violations of 4th amendment rights.
Once again – you prove yourself unable to grasp either morality of the law.
I right that can not be enforced does not exist.
Finally, If you know nothing else, you KNOW that Trump successfully did much the same thing in SDNY in the Cohen case – where he was a 3rd party and had LESS rights, and he won. A special master was appointed and priviledged material was denied the DOJ/FBI
In this case Trump’s position is stronger – he was the party searched – everything taken is legally presumptively HIS property.
The DOJ/FBI already admitted they took things that were outside the scope of the warrant.
And beyond the claim of priviledge – which is OBVIOUSLY something that is within Cannon’s and the courts jurisdiction.
Trump has an OBVIOUS right to recover any property the DOJ/FBI took that was not within the legitimate domain of the warrant.
That you are defending this is stupid.
You – like the appelate court do not appear to grasp you are making BROAD claims – not narrow ones.
Rights do not exist if individuals can not go to court to challenge violations.
This decision claims that violations of 4th amendment rights can not be challenged in court.
That appears to be OK with you.
And you wonder why you are accused of immorality
Once again I am forced to say
“Turn about is fair play”
Biden had better start burning documents now.
If the 4th amendment no longer exists. if President no longer have any control of their own administration documents, if those with power can skip going to court and jump directly to criminal warrants to enforce their will, if property seized by executing a search warrant is not subject to judicial review, if 4th and 5th amendment rights are not inside the domain of trial courts then that must be true for democrats.
I recall Pres. Trump challenging the media and then saying “somebody should look into that”
The ONLY reason I was not completely aghast, is because no one was going to.
Trump frequently SAID some very authoritarian things. But the remarks were off the cuff, not serious and never resulted in action.
President Biden has SAID that the US government is paying close attention to Musk and Twitter. And OBVIOUSLY he means it.
Biden has set numerous federal agencies on Musk and Twitter – and that despite Twitter being a completely privately held company which the federal government has almost no authority over.
We have heard Svelaz and others here repeatedly tell us that Twitter is a private company that it can have whatever rules that it wishes, that it can descriminate against conservatives, that it can impose is rules as it pleases.
Yet, suddenly that is no longer the case.
I would suggest to those who think that Trump is the problem, that the GOP would do better if there was a someone else leading the party.
The biggest news right now is that center left mega billionaire and richest person in the world has magically been transformed into a hateful, hating, hater white supremecist, anti-semite nazi, because he bought twitter, and is not going to continue its incredibly biased left wing nut censorship regime.
Musk is not merely being attacked by progressive looney’s, but by the media, by the US government, by foreign governments and by other left wing nut influenced monopolies.
And for what ? For failing to continue the left wing biased censorship regime. For actually wanting free speech.
If Musk can be successfully painted as a hateful, hating hater – anyone can.
I heard a clip by Ben Shapiro criticising Trump for meeting with Kanye and Fuentes.
Some of the criticism is valid.
But it would only be relevant if everyone but Trump was perfect.
The FACTS today are that anyone who holds views at odds with our institutions will be framed as an evil nazi, white supremecist hateful, hating hater.
That will be true whether they are Fuentes, or Trump or Romney, or Musk.
I was suprised at how rapidly and darkly Tulsi Gabbard shifted as she left the Democratic Party.
For a while I thought her portrayal of how dark and dangerous things were was while correct, too strong.
Our institutions have been taken over by the left. But they left is still only a small portion of the country.
Poll after poll shows that on most issued as much as 80% of Americans are OPPOSED to nearly everything the left wants.
Less than 10% support the policies and objectives of the left.
My expectation going into the 2022 election was that the individual race polls were wrong – that republicans would do better than polling
as they have in every election cycle since 2016 (or earlier).
I am still trying to assess the results – Republicans won the popular vote – by about what the polls predicted.
I had expected they were going to do better than the polls predicted.
But they did not win the races the polls predicted. That alone should cause a great deal of suspicion.
I beleive nearly every close race in the country went the same way – that NEVER happens naturally.
BTW we had the same in 2020, though actually not as bad as 2022.
There are all kinds of tactics and strategy questions.
But there is a more important question.
Why did a nation that by unbeleivably large margins beleives the left is wrong about everything, still vote for democrats.
Based on issue polling – this election resembled Reagan Carter – where Republicans obliterated democrats.
But that is not what happened.
My current assessment is that the left won the war of slander.
I listened to Biden’s “reichstag speech” before the election and said – that was a mistake. Biden is turning voters off, no one will beleive this nonsense.
The evidence appears to be that I was wrong. That the left mostly successfully painted everyone who disagrees with them as hateful hating haters, as white supremecists, as nazi’s.
The good news is that even with this massive wave of slander and hatred, democrats lost the popular vote and barely held back a red tidal wave.
Democrats forget that 22,000 votes out of 150M that is 0.0147% of the vote is the difference between Biden wining, and the election going to congress. And 45,000 votes would have tipped the election to Trump. 100K – less than 0.1% votes would have given republicans the presidency, the house and the senate.
The difference between a red tidal wave in 2022, and a fizzle is a very small number of votes.
All of this is serious reason to worry about election fraud.
The closer elections the more likely fraud.
Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to do better in 2024 – as they absolutely should be doing.
I do not much care if Republicans go with Trump or DeSantis. It will not change anything.
Nor would it change anything if they go with someone like Kaisich, or Romney.
Two things will happen with a purportedly less controversial candidate.
The first is that about 6-8M Trump voters will sit out the election. And that is the kiss of death for republicans.
The second is that any republican candidate will get the Trump treatment.
The left wing nuts here say nice things about Republicans that “stand up to Trump” – some of which I agree with.
But they have no problem flipping on them on a dime.
Barr was an evil Trump drone – until he left office and said SOME critical things about Trump.
I still remember McCain and Romney being slanders as nazi’s and right wing extremists.
Right now we are watching Musk get the “Trump Treatment”. Does anyone expect that on Election day 2024 that DeSantis, or Cruz, or Pence or Halley, or any other republican will not have successfully been painted as a racist, white supremecist hateful, hating hater.
In the Callifornia Recall – Larry Elder was painted as a racist white supremecist, hateful hating hater.
There is ZERO doubt that will be the strategy of democrats.
The problem with the 2022 election is that strategy proved successful.
The only good news is that it was BARELY successful.
The best thing Republicans have going for them in 2024 is that at best we will be just be crawling out of what will likely be a pretty bad global recession.
That Should NOT be a requirement to win elections. We should NOT be electing the least incompetent party only when things have gone to h311.
I have never disagreed with Gabbard’s assessment of what was going on. I was expecting that 2022, would mark voters rejecting the venomous and hateful tactics of the left.
That did not happen – and that is actually a very bad thing.
Republicans and most of the country should be very depressed right now.
A tiny portion of people have gained control of our institutions and excercise power throughout our government.
I still think that position is incredibly precarious.
That is why the attacks on Musk are so incredibly virulent. Musk succeeding even in a small way could easily trigger a cascading failure on the left.
But right now I do not know whether the cracks in the hedgemony of the left over institutions will widen or close.
And I do not see anyone else who has answer to that.
I have another concern.
I have repeatedly compared what is going on to the cultural revolution in China.
The analogy is not perfect – but it is pretty close.
Just before WWII Stalin wiped out much of his military leadership – this was not specifically an ideological move. People not opposed to Stalin were murdered merely because they MIGHT be a threat in the distant future and to terrify everyone under Stalin and so maintain power.
Stalin did the same thing in Poland after occupying it – wiping out military officers and any poles that might oppose the USSR after the war.
Mao used the Sultural revolution in the same way – Mao breifly empowered an anarchistic and crazy wing in the CCP to either massacre or drive into submission most of the “traditionalist” within the CCP – these were NOT “capitalist roaders” – many had been on the Long March with Mao.
These were not Mao’s enemies. They were just people with enough power to threaten him in the future.
After unleashing the crazies – Mao turned on the crazies too.
I cited the strategy of Mao and Stalin above because that strategy is both intrinsic to the cultural revolution and separate from it.
Mao did not give a crap about the values of the cultural revolution – he used it for power.
One of the reasons I have argued that what we see now in the US is NOT exactly like the cultural revolution is specifically because – there is no Mao, there is no Stalin. The cultural revolution was not possible without Mao.
Therefore it should not be successful in the US.
And yet here way are. Still in the midst of something very similar.
One assessment that needs changed is that regarding Biden.
While I still think he is an incompetent puppet.
It is a FACT that Biden was incredibly politically successful in this election.
Biden is inarguably “the winner” – Whether that is Biden the incompetent puppet and credit goes to the puppet masters, or Biden is actually a macheivelian political genius.
I do not know. I suspect it is a bit of both.
Regardless, Biden is no more competent at governing that he was a few months ago,
But it is inarguable that he successfully made republicans sufficiently toxic to prevent what should have been a tsunami.
And he did so against what should have been impossible odds.
It is important to recognize and accept this because if we can not understand what happened and what is happening, we can not change it.
Svelaz rants about young voters – he is actually atleast partly right. They were instrumental in both 2020 and 2022, and that is very important.
It is why Biden is not taking a lesson from the long list of things that voters think he has done wrong.
Because he can not reverse on those without losing a significant portion of under 30 voters. and this election made crystal clear they OWN the democratic party.
I do not know whether Biden is competent, but he is unarguably more powerful than I thought.
And that actually makes things much more dangerous.
A bottom up cultural revolution is no consequential threat. It will ultimately die on its own.
One with support and direct from the top is very dangerous.
“I would suggest to those who think that Trump is the problem, that the GOP would do better if there was a someone else leading the party.”
Despite contrary evidence, I said a while back, of his own volition, Trump will decide not to run. That is the way I saw the odds, then and today. That doesn’t mean he won’t run, but I can provide good reasons a Trump run might benefit Republicans.
He is not the problem, as suggested by many. Whoever gets the vote to run will be labeled similarly but perhaps be more attractive to some of the RINOs that eat at the table of greed and corruption.
The Nazi fascists on the left and this blog will deny their adherence to such horrible ideologies, but they favor immoral acts and subjugating the people. They lie as is being revealed as we speak. It is not a surprise that the former tainted general counsel for the FBI was the council for Twitter where he continued to push the same lies.
Ben Shapiro was a Never Trumper, but he is bright. I have listened and talked to him, but perhaps he is too young to have an inner feeling of the corruption of our political class, and the elites Likely, he is upset over Trump’s meeting with Kanye based on the anti-Semitism expressed by Kanye. Kanye’s words must have been very painful to him, as Shapiro is a religious Jew and lives it.
I see your optimism remains. I don’t have such optimism as I carry around the deaths of too many people and the imprisonment of others. I think my fears are more realistic than the optimism surrounding me, but that is only my personal biased opinion. I will repeat what I said in the past, full bellies will wear rose-colored glasses until it is too late.
You talk about the number of votes. Do you remember Stalin was a member of the Bolshevik Party? Bolshevik meant majority and Menshevik minority, but in reality, it was the opposite, and the minority party, The Bolsheviks, prevailed. So much for numbers and polling. That the red wave did not appear did not surprise me.
I’ll leave the discussion of international events for another time.
You discuss Svelaz, but his brain has only minimal intellectual development. He thinks a warrant is the same as going to court to settle who the papers belong to. Engaging with him is like trying to hammer jello into a wall. He has no abilities and is here to play with like the common hamster.
I would love to beleive that someone less confrontational that Trump would appeal to moderates – and somehow still attract Trump voters.
But wishes are not reality. The left has painted every republican since Reagan as a Nazi fascist, and they are increasingly sucessful.
And that is very distrubing. I am suspicious that the current Musk/Twitter spat might be the turning point – one way or the other.
Just to be clear. Musk has already slipped from his strict all speach that is legal stance – and I am OK with that.
My expectation is that he will likely allow ALOT of content moderation on Twitter. But it will be as rigidly as possible rules based, and as allegorically implementable as possible. First because the involvement of humans introduces political bias, and because the involvement of humans is expensive. I also expect a rules based and transparent appeals process.
The more difficult challenge is the missinformation nonsense that the EU is pushing.
I find it incredibly disturbing that at a time when nearly everyone has come to accept that our public health experts failed.
That they were wrong constantly – that we STILL are seeing governments demand the censorship of “misinformation” and actually using Covid as the basis.
Musk has aparently implimented his own approach to “minsinformation” tagging – which is extemely short sighted and wrong, but atleast it is not censorship. Anyone can volunteer to become a community expert, there are conditions you have to agree to, and you have to be vetted and verified, and afterwards you are rated, But this all plays into the left. LEFT wing nuts are ACTIVE that is one of our permanent political problems.
The vast majority of us want the status quo, or at best slow change. We do nto want everything changing everywhere all the time.
And we do not want to have to fight every day to prevent that.
Many on the left – oddly people you can not get to vote without delivering a ballot to their couch, are perfectly happy spending all day censoring other people, or pushing to change the world.
Teh way to correct misinformation is a NORMAL comment to a post.
Musk might have to do undesirable things in the west while he puts the pieces together. If he succeeds, I believe the censorship from western European nations will disappear. His power will exceed those trying to play the same game as played by the old Twitter.
What is imperative is that Twitter is not destroyed like Parlor was.
Ordinarily I think that would be unlikely – but then the rapid destruction of Parlor by the left was unprecedented and should have resulted in a Billion dollar tortuous interference decision against Apple, Google, Twitter and Amazon.
Musk is only harder to cancel – because doing so would “shock the conscience”. but the destruction of Parler shocked the conscience.
That did not change anything.
Musk is a tougher nut to crack and he has more weapons. But the only thing in the long run that makes him “invincible” is the possibility that should the left succeed, that millions of people will decide the left has gone too far.
2022 proves millions of people who hate what the left is doing, do not hate it enough to vote them out of power.
Musk is very very very hard to take out. But he is not invincible.
He is an incredibly capable genius. I would pick him to replace Trump as president – accept that he can’t without amending the constitution.
But he is in TWO new domains for him – social media, and left wing nut cancel politics. And he only needs to fail in one.
That said I am VERY impressed so far.
I have been back on twitter and it is much more fun than it used to be. It is much more light hearted.
Left wing nuts are bitter humorless trolls, that poison everything.
I would have – and did advice Musk to focus on Fixing Twitter – not living on twitter as “cheif twit.”
He has disregarded that advice. And is doing well at it.
He appears to be pretty politically adept.
I though that Musks threat to bring out his own phone – was just a threat.
But apparently a very impressive Tesla Phone will have working prototypes in December and might be available in early 2023.
Regardless making a smart phone can’t be any harder than making an electric car.
I have an iphone that badly needs replaced.
I am now trying to hold off for the Tesla Phone. Aside from the politics it is actually better for my work related needs that my work phone.
I have two phones, one is used more as a combo camera portable computer, and the other primarly as a communication device. The latter is dying. My “work phone” has a low light camera that has been a bit improvement for me. First it means I can often get acceptable pictures in dark places without wasting time getting out a flashlight – I can not use flash, because that will suck down my battery.
Musk’s new phone has a low light camera that has no equal on current smart phones. Aside from closets – SOMETIMES I have a portfolio of projects to do in a day. The most I can typically manage is 5, But with the apple low light lense I was able to do 7, because I could still do a project in twilight. A bit better an I could continue to work in the dark. Getting 9 projects in a day is doubling the money I can make in one day on the most profitable projects. Or alternatively it lets me reduce my price and win more bids for portfolios. Either way is a win win.
The Tesla phone separately has satelite communications – which is also a big deal for me. It means no more Cell Phone dead zones as I travel.
I beleive it connects to Star link. If it does so and data can be transfered affodably that would be another big win for me. I constantly need to transfer 10G or more of photos a day – ASAP. The faster photos get back the office the faster I can turn projects. Again money.
Right now 5G works great – some of the time. Most of the time, I can not transfer one whole project, before I start the next, or before I get home and can connect my phone to a computer. I have actually looked at buying Starlink and putting an antena on my car. There are youtube videos on doing it. It works, but it is not supported, and requires modding the antenna and so far they only have mods for older antennas.
Back to topic.
If musk can keep from being obliterated. Any Twitter 2.0 – regardless of how much content moderation (censorship) there is, so long as it is rules based, transparent, and not politically biased. Will ultimately end the woke censorship regime everywhere.
We are seeing cracks with things Like Diseny essentially pleading for a non-confrontational role with Florida, and begging parents to bring their kids back to Disney. I honestly can not beleive that Disney was stupid enough to get into the culture wars – especially in the child focused way that it did. Disney is a brand completely wrapped arround kids – especially YOUNG kids, And the viewing of young kids is controlled by parents.
And one of the left’s worst problems is that you can convince a 35yr old single white women that she is an evil white supremecist, suffereing from white priviledge and whatever guilt ridden nonsense you want to try to slather on her. The same women has a child, and you do NOT mess with the child. She may buy that she is a crypto racist, but NOT her child,
We can all talk about equity in everything that involves our selves. But every single parent on earth want shit every best for their child, and screw their neighbors kids. If my kid is smart or talented – the school better have an excellent gifted program. If they are athletic – an excellent sports program. If my kid is average – I still want the education that will give them a much better than average chance.
I do not want my kid to have equal oportunity. I want them to have the best I can manage. If I am rich – I will pay to get my kid better.
If I am not, I will still fight like a pit bull for my kid. Children are the one place in the world where every single parent in creation says F#$K equity – get my kid every possible advantage.
” but then the rapid destruction of Parlor by the left was unprecedented and should have resulted in a Billion dollar tortuous interference decision against Apple, Google, Twitter and Amazon.”
I agree, but I know little about Parlor or its structure. Twitter is different. I believe Musk is in an enviable position. Twitter is well-known and backed by a man with tremendous resources.
First, Apple and Google recognize that if they destroy Twitter, a suit against them could lead to a $ 44 billion + judgment against them. Musk owns Twitter, and he alone is in control. His opponents are public corporations where the officer must protect their investors. Imagine if Apple loses $44 billion + dollars and revenue from the fight. These executives might become personally liable for $44 billion +.
I don’t know what Apple and Google can do to Twitter. Earlier I asked questions about the platform that I lack knowledge of, but I assume one can use Twitter without an Apple App. One can go directly to the Internet. Whether the app adds a lot more to the experience is unclear to me, but the ability to go directly to Twitter through the Internet buys time until the problem is solved.
Musk has a lot of weapons. He has billions of dollars to use in a fight and no stockholders to hold him back that Apple and Google have. He has information that he has permitted to become public while being smart enough to keep a lot of that ammunition hidden. That adds threats against others as they do not know what he has.
I think the dangerous threat against Musk is government and the government’s ability to attack Musk’s other businesses and Musk personally.
I think Musk will prevail. Many of the decisions Musk makes will be based on distractions rather than money, and the government might play a big part.
The only fundamental difference between Twitter and Parlor is that Musk has a great deal more power.
Tom Cooke has apparently just testified in the house that Apple has no plans to remove twitter from the app store.
Which is he sticks to is important.
But Twitter absolutely can be destroyed by the left, just not without a dangerous public fight.
Apple and google can remove it from the app store, cloudflare and akami can remove it from caching and block DNS,
Advertisers can be driven away.
The EU can make impossible demands.
There are other ways I have not touched that can be used to make twitter almost non-functional.
Musk financed a significant part of the twitter buyout. He or his investors must come up with all shortfalls on twitter revenue, AND they must come up with the interest on the loans.
At the moment the good news is Musk appears to be ahead of the curve on much of this.
Contra claims by the left – Twitter has reduced so called “hate speech” buy about 30% since musk took over.
The did so as part of Musk’s ongoing “war on Bots”. It is increasingly appearing that much of the so called hate speech on twitter is just bot traffic.
Musk has also announced that he has solved the advertising problem. I suspect that is true. First lots of people who have “threatened” twitter – threatened to pull advertising or to leave have either done so and returned, or not actually done so.
Jim carey is aparently in his 100th “one last tweet before I go”. Most of the adverisers who said they had left, or threatened to leave, have not left.
And even if a hole was created. The loss of advertising from one source is an oportunity for another.
Balkanizing the public sphere is NOT a good thing, but it does create some market resilliance.
If Twitter loses left wing nut advertisers, that creates room for other advertisers who either support free speech or who do not care if it is an oportunity for them to advertise that they did not have before.
Remember like TV and other advertising – the total amount of advertising is a limited resource. If the media increases advertising too much they lose viewers and the value of the advertising declines.
It is very difficult to use a “app” like twitter without being in the “app store”. You are correct you can still use it through a browser on your phone.
But the experience and performance is not the same, nor is the ease of use – Smart phones are not desktops and laptops, they are infrastructure optimized for apps. It is in Some instances possible to install an app without it being in the app store – but it is quite difficult and in some cases not possible. This is actually a very important security factor for smartphones.
You are correct that many of those attacking twitter are public companies and they could see their stock prices fall, and if that happens and is attributable to the actions of the board, or managers there is potential liability and at the very least removal.
I would note that is SLOWLY coming to the fore accross corporate america. Major marketing companies have told their clients to stay out of politics and the culture wars, SLOWLY they are listening. Diseny has canned its CEO and reverted back to an interim older one.
They did so by buying out a new and expensive contract. They have taken serious revenue hits – some of that is from woke bombs, but some of it is more general anti-woke backlash for political action.
The Balenciago toddler BDSM/pedo scandal is ongoing and Balenciago is running from it as fast as they can.
There is murmurings of an anti ESG backlash.
Who would have thought that people with 401K’s care more about the return on their investment than woke nonsense ?
All of this is happening SLOWLY – it is not a tidal wave.
This is also a point would should be taken relative to the 2022 election. Ultimately it was a victory for the GOP.
A small victory, one much smaller than it should have been. But is was still a defeat for Biden and the left.
They pulled out all the stops. They doubled down on all the bad conduct of 2020 and the 4 years before,
They created new forms of bad conduct, But they did NOT reverse trends,
The big lessor of 2022 for Republicans is that getting to the tipping point – getting to the tidal wave is going to be hard.
At the same time – that IS the direction things are headed.
I would further note that there is a point at which the failures of the left cascade. I am completely shocked that we did not reach that point yet,
But we will.
The worst outcome for the GOP right now is that they are forced to regroup, and possibly that the “moderates” gain power.
I have no bone to pick with GOP moderates. I do not consider them “rinos”. There are races in which if republicans wish to win these are the people they need to run. I think that Republicans should turn their back on Neo-con. They are at odds with actual conservative or libertarian values. But most of the Rino’s are not Neo Cons. That said they should not control the GOP. That will weaken the GOP.
It will not prevent or even mitigate any of the lefts brutal attacks. Those do not stop until the quit working.
Regardless, the GOP does not self destruct by shifting away from Trump – even if it is bad strategy.
But Democrats have a much more serious problem.
Yesterdays revalation by Musk of twitters 2020 election interferance are to me a yawn – aside from details nothing released is something new that I did not know before. But despite the fact that it only changes my knowledge a little it is still a huge story.
It is no longer a theory that most of us know is true.
It is a FACT.
Nor is it limited to Twitter.
The Biden campaign directed ALL of the media in the US to tank the Hunter Biden laptop story – and they ALL did.
That is not a crime – but it is damning. Nearly ALL the media KNOWINGLY lied to assist Biden in defeating Trump
That is not illegal but it is actually election fraud.
This also means Biden lied during the debates – not only did he KNOW this stuff was true but he orchestrated supressing it.
Further the biden campaign was not alone in this. Similar request came from the Federal Government – The FBI is AGAIN participating in efforts to unseat a sitting president. That is arguably criminal. Unlike the oathkeepers nonsense – that actually is “insurrection”.
Nor are we done. We learned several further things – Twitter which was first to ban the story, very nearly did not.
There was a near 50:50 split over doing so. Within hours of the story running even the proponents of banning the story KNEW that the hacking claim that they used was false. So when Twitter banned the story they did so KNOWING they were just putting their thumb on the election – that the story did NOT violate their policies or terms of service, that the material was not hacked. That they were engaged in pure political censorship and they knew it.
The next revalation was that Dorsey was deliberately kept out of the loop – had he been made part of the decision – the story would not have been banned.
Next we learned that Twitter went to extraordinary length to kill this story that the KNEW was true.
They used tools and measures that they had only used previously to block Child Porn.
The blocked references and links to the story in DM’s They did things they had never done before and were not part of their normal process and procedure to stop this story.
Next – they did more than block the story – The suspended accounts all over the place – They suspended NY POST, the Suspended official Whitehouse accounts. They suspending Kayleigh McEanny’s account. They did this for several weeks.
So the political impact was much broader than just killing a story. They effectively silenced almost all the voices in an entire political party for as much as two weeks or more at the climax of a political campaign.
And finally we learn – again something that many of us already knew – that Twitter and FB and … have an official but semi secret back channel primarily for government officials to make request to ban accounts, ban stories, ….
That is almost the bigger deal – the US government CAN NOT direct the supression of speech.
It can not supress hate speech.
It can not supress political speech.
It can not supress false speech – misinformation and disinformation.
This is the government violating the 1st amendment in the most egregious way.
And only hinted at – but the Hunter Biden story is not an isolated incident. It is a patter of conduct that has grown since Trump took office in 2016.
“The next revalation was that Dorsey was deliberately kept out of the loop –“
I find it difficult to believe Dorsey didn’t know.
I doubt Musk will release everything now. Miranda Devine of the Post mentioned more important things. I think some of the news will come out that way and then be confirmed in a Twitter dump. Musk has to be very careful
I expect that we will see ALOT come from twitter – but not all at once.
Partly for the reasons you note.
Partly because Musk is learning politics.
If you dump everything at once, much of it loses impact.
And as I think you are noting – Job #1 is building Twitter 2.0.
Not showing the flaws of Twitter 1.0.
The revalations are mostly to keep the sharks at bay.
I think everytime you find Musk feels the threat level is too high – more will come out.
“Partly because Musk is learning politics.”
Politics and business have a lot in common. The information Musk has acts as bullets shot out of a gun. Never let yourself run out of bullets, while the danger exists.
The MSM is not covering this at all.
They are also not covering the fact that Chinese bots in TikTok was meddling in 2022.
While I do not care, we spent 4 years ranting about Russian interference.
The left has no standards except double standards.
Your business appears heavily reliant on technology. Though I continue to be active, I am not involved in the daily grind, so none of these things affect my life. I use Apple because I don’t want problems that can occur when the user has too much control. I rely on Apple, but if they step over the line with Twitter and Musk provides a phone, I will change to a Musk device.
I believe Musk will rely on Apple and Google for production, at least early on. Apple has been good to me. I bought their stock at ~$15 when the iPod came out before the first quarter returns.
The cash registers were ringing non-stop, so I asked an older employee what they were selling because they couldn’t sell that many computers. She told me about the iPod. It didn’t impress me, but the cash registers did. I bought Apple later in the day.
Disney didn’t surprise me with their mistake. They are paying big time.
Though I think we will have a lot of pain in the future, we may be reversing the cycle starting now. It will be a slow change, not because of the Democrats (the cause) but because the Republicans(they assist) don’t want to give up their power to the people. If the people don’t act strongly, our freedoms will never return.
I have multiple businesses. I am an embedded software developer, a real estate investor, and an architect running a commercial due dilligence company.
These are all small businesses. sometimes they are very busy others they are not.
I am not quite to the point I can “retire” but I am close.
retire for me, does not mean quitting work. It means no longer having to care about making a specific income each year.
I will likely keep working until I die.
The Due Dilligence business WAS growing until August. Over the past 4 years it has nearly doubled each year.
It went for a sideline hobby that gave me a couple of thosand extra a month for very little effort to a bussiness with 11 employee most part time, In august 2022. But DD has collapsed. DD is a leading market indicator. If I have no business that means commerical properties are not being bought sold or refinanced. Given that in nearly all commercial real estate the actual profits are captured at refinance – that is a powerful indicator of storms approachng. My business is currently almost as dead as it was from March-august of 2020 during lockdowns.
I am expecting a pretty severe recssion – My business and many others are already in it.
Further – it is not like we are having a recession following several years of boom. We are having a recession at the tail end of Covid
Bussinesses that barely survived are going to get slammed, and many do not have the resources to survive.
I will manage – though this is painful. I have layed people off. I have a large body of cash and outstanding AR that will be paid that I can horde carefully to keep the business opened until things recover.
I also expect that a specific government related portion of the business will start to recover shortly – because the govenrment does not give a crap about recessions.
The DD business is NOT technological. We visit properties, survey them, inspect them, take pictures, and then write reports.
Most of the people I compete with show up at a project with a camera and clipboard and take lots of notes and gather lots of paperwork.
They drive back to home or office and they uses what they gathered to write a 40-50 page report that ultimately goes to a bank.
I am using a different model. I typically show up at a project with a team – usually 2 people, but for portfolios or very large projects as many as 4 – that is how many I can get in one car with tools and equipment. Except for me these are all low skilled people. I am a registered architect.
Each of them has a few hours training to do ONE part of the survey/inspection. One person does the roof, one the exterior, one the basement mechanicals. etc. They are paid about $20/hr including travel for this. With a 4 person team on a portfolio I can do an 8 unit apparement building in 15min – including driving time to the next project on the portfolio. I have done the building survey for as many as 22 projects in one day. Portfolio’s like that are rare – but that is where my profits are. The days I get 1 project a day are what pays the bills.
Normally my breakeven is 12 projects a month. Currently I am lucky to get 1 a week – so yes I have shrunk operations cut hours, layed people off, ….
For a more typical project, 2 people show up – me and a driver who also does exteriors. I do everything else.
I do everything with pictures – and voice recordings. I dictate as I go through the project. I take massive numbers of pictures.
I use a top end iphone – which I do not ever use as a phone. it gps’s and date and time stamps the pictures. It tracks lots of other technical data in the metadata which I do not currently use – but I am writing software to make use of, not only does the picture have where it was taken, but the angle, direction, speed I was moving, camera parameters, … I am not using these yet, but I will be in the future.
Sorting pictures later is a time consuming task.
The phone has 3 lens’s one is a low light lens. It automatically switches to the correct lens. I have flash disabled – or the phone will not make it through a long project. That means I need light – I have a recargable LED floodlight on my belt – I am still looking for the right one – they all have too many features. I need on and off. Perfect would be automatic on in low light.
I also need the iphone to have Stupid camera mode – i.e. Do exactly what I tell you too, do not try to go to live photos, or flash or amy special features of the phone/camera app. I lose about 5% of my pictures because the camera decided something I did not want.
Anyway so at the end of a project I end up in the car – between 2 and 8 hours from the office, either headed home or to another project.
While headed wherever I am going next – all pictures and voice memos are headed back to the office where there is another architect, and several unskilled people who are working on the report. Sometimes we are able to deliver a report same day – before I have made it to the next project or home. The typical turn in my business is 10 business days – 2 weeks. We get penalized if we are late. Many projects are contingent on a fast turn – I have been paid as much as 3 times the normal fee + travel for an immediate turn.
The purpose of the technology is to gain advantage – many advantages.
Regardless, while I am a professional – architect and software developer. What I am discussing is the business of business.
How to think differently and either use technology or lower skilled labor or both to do a job better, faster and more profitably.
I would use even more low skilled labor – I can teach competent working class people – carpenters, plumbers, electricians
pretty much anyone capable of any working class job that requires some skill how to do everything that I do.
But most of my projects REQUIRE an architect or engineer to do the site visit.
That is typically me. And that is the most expensive resource I have on a project, so it is what I seek to optimize the most.
While technically it costs me nothing to do a job – because it is my business, and I am paid out of the profits.
Which as my wife notes, sometimes are not minimum wage – I have also made 25K in one week sometimes.
And when that happens – I am the limiting factor. I can hire low skill workers easily. But there is only one of me.
and if I must be physically present on a project – I have to optimize that where possible.
I would further note – though I am in hibernation mode at the moment. This is also a growing business.
I am talking about how I do things above, But the goal is to double the business every year.
This is not highly profitable – yet. Though just before this recession it was starting to produce a comfortable income.
Regardless, everything I am doing and everything I am talking about is about building process and infrastructure to go even bigger.
I am looking for other professions. Mostly semi-retired people looking to make some extra. There are lots of over 60 architects and engineers that can do a couple of projects a month. I have an office that can support a staff of 6. I have computer, web and cloud infrastructe to support people on the road, and working remotely. I have some parts of the job outsourced to people int he philipines.
I have lots of problems with all of this – Because I am building it. I am testing it with me and small numbers to get the glitches out so that I can scale it up later. Everything is deigned to Scale.
I am also working to break into new markets. My work today is entirely working for much larger DD firms that are working for the 10 largest banks in the world and Fannie and Freddie. I can not contact these banks directly or everyone I work for will instantly blackball me and I will be out of business. But I can market to local and regional banks. That is a completely unserved market.
I noted earlier that my DD world is indirectly for the 10 largest banks in the world.
I have repeatedly commented on the stupidity of this – “Trump lied to the banks” nonsense
In many areas I am talking from general knowledge. I have SOME epxerience in law. But mostly what I know about law is by putting my wife through the #5 law school in the country and living with the top criminal appelate lawyer in the state. One who uses me constantly as a foil to test arguments on, because particularly on constitutional (and property) law issues I am strong and offer a different perspective.
But the way Banks handle loans and refinances for hundred of million dollar projects is smack dab right in the middle of my wheelhouse.
I do not think I have done a Trump property yet. But I have done projects directly adjacent to Trump properties, and I have done Billion dollar buildings.
No only does no bank anywhere ever just take what the mortgagor of a property says as correct – it is unlikely they even read it.
Nothing even vaguely resembling was AG James is arguing has been possible for atleast 30 years – probably longer.
DD on large projects has always been intense and expensive, but it got much worse after 2008.
There are rules that not only require DD on every project, but that require demonstrated legal independence on the part of the DD.
Despite the fact that DD failures had absolutely nothing to do with the housing bubble bursting. DD was radically tightened.
Why ? Because regulators and legislators do not try to fix problems, they just try to be seen doing something and making lots of new rules for DD was easy to do and very visible.
I would further note that even though big banks as well as multi billionaire investors – such as those in Qatar (or china) often seem lackadaisical.
Kushner and some Qatari Billionaire have dinner in some resturaunt whee they blow more for a meal than I am paid for a month, and they negotiate a refinance of a billion dollar office tower in NY – and only a few massive details are worked out – what is the principle what is the interest rate, …. Those deals are ALWAYS contingent on the agreements that lawyers draw up after words. And those agreements are ALWAYS contingent on myriads of other factors including ZERO problems with due diligence.
If Trump sits down for cocktails with a VP at Deutche Bank and they agree to 2% interest on a refinance of a 2B property and shake hands on the deal, All that does is mobalize small armies of lawyers who draft a mortgage agreement that is probably the size of a text book.
And that mortage agreement has a long list of contingencies – including likely MULTIPLE independent appraisers certifying the agreed value.
If anything goes wrong in all of this – the deal dies. Deals do not die frequently – when there is a problem they get fixed.
If the property only values at 1.8B instead of 2B the principle for the refinance is reduced. If it is NOT the deal dies.
Completely separate from that I am not aware of a commercial refinance ever (maybe a fannie or Freedie) that did not require the property owner to retain 20% equity. In this country the only way you can get more than 80% leverage is a government loan and typically only to small borrowers. This is of critical importance, this is sort of the equivalent of a banks cash reservers, Equity requirements are the most important part of the lenders insurance.
Whether you are Trump or the guy with the shack up the road – you default on your mortgage, the bank forecloses. They sell at a fire sale and as long as they get 80% of the appraised value they walk away with zero loss. The borrower however gets screwed. No one protects their equity.
Neither the shack owner nor Trump can step in and say – “now wait a minute, that property is worth far more than you are selling for, you are screwing me” .
Even in the housing crisis the banks did not lose. While the banks were FORCED – in many cases litterally by the courts to accept government “bailouts” they did not want. Only a few banks were ever actually insolvent. Many had been highly profitable in 2008.
The only thing they ever were was in a cashflow crunch – they were “illiquid” There is no possibility that the properties they eventually foreclosed on were going to sell even at firesale prices at less than 80% of originally apraised value.
This whole world DOES NOT WORK the way left wing nuts and idiot State AG’s (and judges) think it does.
I am constantly shocked at the practically criminal stupidity and lack of understanding of the world in even the most successful people in government.
I am sure Trump is railing about the complete stupidity of the judge and AG James in NY – essentially saying – this whole case is made up. Nothing in business of finance works this way.
While I noted that rules changed in 2008 – and previously with the S&L failure.
There is a separate legal principle that is hundreds of years old here.
The most comkon phrasing is “buyor beware” – Caveat Emptor
While we have to a significant extent moved past that for retail sales with naive (ordinary) customers,
In exchanges involving preemptively knowledgeable and experienced buyers and sellers,
It is ALWAYS the buyers responsibility to verify everything.
If the sellor says a building is worth $2B and you buy it for $2B without checking – that is NOT fraud.
That is a Due Dilligence failure on your part.
Banks do not EVER take sellors representations as correct – EVER.
I do not know if that was in the Mearschiemer video I linked, but I was watching something that said that Ukraine is the first revision of future modern US warfare.
Obvious to Russia, and barely a secret otherwise, even if not very public is that The US is a heavily active participant in this war.
I forget what it is called – though I was involved in defense work 20 years ago, but the largest single force multiplier the Ukrainians have is the very short kill chain. It is literally a few minutes from identifying a DISTANT target to providing targeting information to either an old artillery piece or a new super long range one.
And the US is running every part of that – short of loading the shell into the artillery peice.
It is US satelites mostly that are locating targets – there is some drones involved – more earlier in the war than now.
So we have a proxy war with russia, but one in which the US is supplying the vast majority of the command and control and targetting.
The success of this is likely to change US wafare over the next 40 years.
Many different sources are saying that for a variety of reasons we are likely headed into a long period of increasing global warfare.
The US learned from Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, and …. that as effective as putting our boots on the ground were, that in the long run the american people would tire of it. The afghanistan was NOT the same as Vietnam. But there are similarities and we are in atleast a 20 year period where it will be politically very difficult to actually deploy US troops.
But what we are doing in Ukraine right now is a model that can be copied world wide.
And we are likely to need to – because the world is going to become a more conflict ridden place.
“short kill chain. It is literally a few minutes from identifying a DISTANT target to providing targeting information to either an old artillery piece or a new super long range one.”
Apply that to Afghanistan (Bagram Air Base) and one can realize how badly Biden failed.
“And the US is running every part of that – short of loading the shell into the artillery peice.”
That is not much different from classic power politics where the strong nation provides aid to the weaker ‘enemy’ nation in a battle. That keeps both enemies busy.
I am not challenging the technology – it is very impressive.
It is also a reflection of important changes in warfare.
Oddly this is to a significant portion a regression.
There is no reason to believe that specifically what is occurring in Ukraine is the way the US would fight a war with US troops against a US enemy. US war doctrine is incredibly air power driven. And there is no doubt that in any hot war with china that the side that can control the airspace around Taiwan, the south china sea, …. will win the war.
At the same time this is an unbeleivably powerful way to fight a proxy war. While the equipment we are giving Ukraine is sometimes expensive and high tech – such as HIMARS, this works with lower tech equipment, AND the equipment is nearly useless without US kill chain support.
HIMARS which has a common range of 90km and a max range just short of 400km can not hit a damn thing if those operating it can not locate the target.
The US can give any beligerant we support highly sophisticated artilery (and drones and ….) knowing that it is little more effective than WWI artilary without US satelite and targetting systems – which we are NOT sharing.
Ignoring the pride in the amazing systems – I was not affiliated with Artillery targeting,
but I worked on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Information_Distribution_System
from 2003-2006.
The separate issues is that while the US and NATO are NOT anywhere they can get shot, We are ACTIVE participants in this war.
It is a ruse that at best the US people are willfully blind to, to pretend this is NOT a war between the US and Russia.
We are doing everything but exposing our troops to enemy fire and pulling the trigger.
We are finding the targets providing the information aiming the artillery and then a ukrainian pulls the lanyard.
Putin knows this, NATO knows this. Most of the world knows this.
The US is unarguably an actual belligerent in this war.
That is important because Putin has already said that is a red line.
And we crossed it, and he knows it.
I think the odds of this going to hell are small – but not near small enough.
And going to hell, almost literally means going to hell.
If a nuclear exchange starts within minutes the outcome is completely unavoidable.
Within hours 300M will be dead.
Within a year that will be 3B – nearly half the earth.
The entire west will be effectively obliterated for atleast a century.
Only Asia will survive relatively unmolested.
Generally I like Ben too, but he tries to hard when he is making a joke – he just does not seem to have much sense of humor or fun and therefor he comes across hard and judgemental.
I have no problem with his critiques of Trump. What I have a problem with is his inability to understand that any republican will face the Trump treatment. Elon Musk is facing that now. I fully expect any moment now to see Elon Musk is a racist fascist – isn’t it obvious he was born white in south africa, he is obviously an evil hating hater.
Repeatedly over the past several years I have thought – this was it. The left finally went too far and the country will turn on them.
I do beleive that is inevitable. It is already true that on policy after policy 80%+ of the country is opposed to the left and democrats – and that does NOT mean that 20% support them – typically 10+% are undecided.
Svelaz rants about democracy and majority rule and the dangers of the minority – while HE is the minority, and somehow it is the far left in power.
That is not as accidental as it sounds. Politics is absolutely a “the sqeeky wheel gets the oil” thing. And the left is orders of magnitude more squeeky and the rest of us.
Regardless, the FACT is that the vast majority of people think our government is too far to the left by far.
But in 2022 not enough of them were willing to vote that way.
The fundimental political problems the Republicans face are not Trump alienating people. They are not political extremism, they are not this lack of a message BS, The Republicans winning message is simple – “We wont’ suck this bad” – that may sound weak but that should be a huge winning message.
It is not “Rino’s” – I am happy that Trump obliterated nearly all the republicans that participated in impeaching him.
I have not problem with republicans or democrats acting independently of their party.
But the impeachments were bogus from the start – if you were too stupid to grasp that at the time – Biden has ACTUALLY committed every sin that Trump was ever accused of, and most of it barely rates a comment by Fox, much less the rest of the media.
It is increasingly evident that Biden tried to blackmail the Saudis to win an election – by delaying military funding. That he blackmailed the rail unions to delay a potentially crippling strike until after the election, and even then he was unable to solve the problem himself – Congress had to solve it for him. Which begs the question of why is this congresses business.
The two big political problems republicans face are:
Election fraud. Democrats have successfully restructured elections so that they Vote first but get counted last, And democrats are counted in massive operations where fraud can be conducted at large scale with the least people needing to know.
The good news is there is a limit to the scale of fraud that anyone can get away with. But there is very good reason to doubt close elections.
And we have MASSIVE increases in the numbers of close elections. It is only a question of time before indisputable and unhideable large scale election fraud is caught. We are repeating the mistakes of the last half of the 19th century. We finally dealt with large scale fraud when it was just too embarrassing for both parties.
The 2nd Big Problem that Republicans have is that Covid and the advent of nationwide mailin voting has brought out the couch potato vote.
It has done what Democrats have been trying to do my entire life and get those under 30 to vote.
You can get them to come to protests, To organize, to engage in all kinds of political mischeif but it has NEVER been possible to get them to come to the polls and vote. I do not understand why younger people are couch potatos in terms of voting. But they inarguably are and it is a very good thing.
But again this is not the end of the world. Republicans did not make as great a gains with minorities as predicted in 2022.
But the minority Trend is still HEAVILY towards republicans. Hispanics are in many places evenly split. In other places they are close to evenly split. Republicans are a long way from having a majority of the black vote – but they have 30% of black men., and again the Republican share is growing.
Each of the advantages that Democrats have had in the past two cycles reflects a one time jump in Democratic support.
I do not mean that it will go away – though it may. What I mean is that it is not a trend. Democrats added a large block of younger voters when did not vote before. They did not increase their share of young voters. They just increased the number of young people voting.
Those voters MAY fade, but even if they do not, Absent actually lowering the voting age to 4, That is a fragile one time gain.
To an extent the same is true of election fraud. Fraud is exponentially more likely to get caught the larger the fraud. It is also more likely to get caught the more frequently it is tried. Nevada and New Mexico are a mess. But they pale in comparison to the disaster in AZ.
I doubt that Republicans are going to get a remedy there, but the 2022 AZ election was either the worst fraud Since Lyndon Johnson or the most incompetently run election in US history. It really does not matter which.
There is absolutely zero doubt that the election was thoughly botch, and it was done so in a fashion that was HEAVILY to the disadvantage of Republicans. The only thing missing to prove Fraud is that the mess was deliberate rather than just incompetence.
And worse still it is not lost on anyone that the person most benefiting from the mess, is the person running the disastrous election who because of it will likely be the next governor of AZ.
AZ has added a new political term to our lexicon – Bin 3. Bin 3 is where you put things to F#$k things up.
Election day voters were told to put their ballots into Bin 3 if they were unable to get them to scann, and then they would get counted later by hand.
The problems is other ballots that were either already counted or that were actually spoiled were also put in “bin 3”.
The result being ballots were not counted that should have been, and/or counted that should not have been, and there is no way to fix the problem.
And this all with one election that hinges on a razor, and another that is on a knifes edge.
And the current winner is the person who was supposed to ensure trustworthy elections.
Back to my point – Democrats have recently mangled elections in their favor, But none of these tactics alters trends.
And the trend is RED.
This is depressing and it delays the inevitable. But democrats still have a serious underlying problem.
As a party they are SHRINKING not growing.
I have listened to the early postmortems – including Shapiro and these are WRONG.
There is no need to dump trump – and that would be a mistake. There are 6-8M Trump only voters. These people will sit out the election without Trump. Republicans are going to have to win them eventually, but they are not doing so in 2 yrs. And there is nothing that any other candidate can bring to the table to mitigate the loss of those voters. There are just not enough moderates to gain.
Next, While Maccarthy is doing a pretty good job of saying the right things to get to be majority leader, he BOTCHED the house election.
Aparently he was nearly as bad as McConnell, Protecting freinds and safe incumbents and not directing resources to close races.
I think they both should go, but McConnell is probably in more danger. At the same time McConnell is a brilliant politician – even if he is untrustworthy as h311. I suspect he will remain GOP senate leader – because if he does not there will be blood in the halls of he senate.
“I have no problem with his critiques of Trump. What I have a problem with is his inability to understand that any republican will face the Trump treatment.”
Many on the right live polite and dignified lives. Shapiro, I believe, is one of them. The left is raucous and dangerous, so people on the right must raise their voices and play in the dirt. Look at Svelaz and ATS, lying continuously with almost no working knowledge that is useful. It is difficult for working families to understand what is happening. They are too busy working and raising families, so one has to appeal to their emotions followed by context. Democrats only appeal to emotions, and emotions push the levers.
Shapiro can live off his smarts, but politicians can’t.
“Repeatedly over the past several years I have thought – this was it. The left finally went too far and the country will turn on them.”
I think Twitter and Disney are the turning point. Both are emotional issues that do not require significant context.
” I am happy that Trump obliterated nearly all the republicans that participated in impeaching him.”
The enemy, blue and red, surrounded Trump.
Et Tu Brutu then fall Caesar.
But Trump didn’t fall and remains a power. He will run again or pass the baton onto another. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” Trump lives, and the left knows it. That causes a great deal of uncertainty. Uncertainty can be more dangerous than risk, so we must watch out that Biden doesn’t do anything foolish such as creating the environment and causing a nuclear catastrophe.
Uncertainty is dangerous, it creates the environment for sudden radical change.
The left is actively seeking that. It is literally part of antifa’s philosophy – cause chaos so that you can be empowered to rebuild the system from scratch – ignoring EVERYTHING from the past.
But that can work both ways.
It is my beleif that this country will reach a tipping point – that we will eventually have a cascade failure on the left.
Uncertainty can go either way. It is actually LESS dangerous to “conservatives”.
In uncertainty – contra antifa – people gravitate towards established norms not radical changes.
it tends to require more than uncertainty – it requires anarchy for antifa to get what they want.
That is what we saw with the Russian revolution, and with Hitler’s rise.
The core issue today is Trust.
Can you name anything that Democrats and the left have not LIED about ?
People are not stupid. they may not know all the details.
Each lie is not dispositive for everyone.
Most of us miss most of the lies.
But people often radically change their political support over ONE specific lie.
It is a different one for everyone.
But every lie moves another tranche of people away.
Listen to all the “leaving the left” stories.
What they All have in common is one lie that caused them to reassess everything.
It is a different lie for each person.
But the common factor is that people go from supporting to often completely rejecting over ONE lie.
I am not on the right. There are many values I share with people who a few years ago I would say were on the left.
But there is a huge difference between right and left today.
For the right – the ends do not (yet) justify the means. They do for the left.
Increasingly the left lies if they breath. They lie about everything. The lies are often stupid and transparent.
But in 2022 they still worked.
“It is my beleif that this country will reach a tipping point – that we will eventually have a cascade failure on the left.”
I believe the country will be suffering more pain along with bad things but I think the turnaround started with Twitter and a couple of other things. Unfortunately turnarounds will likely not recreate what we had before. That is why a unified opposition was necessary either the first or second time Obama ran. It didn’t exist.
I do not think it is unfortunate we are not returning to the past.
A cascade failure of the left will result in the dominance of something like “trumpism” – that is not a return to the past.
Over time Democrats will rebuild and will remerge as a new threat as Trumpism gets more long in the tooth.
But hopefully we will return to the smaller political swings of the later 20th century.
Regardless, the nation is absolutely in the midst of a massive political realignment that heavily favors MAGA.
That is not permanent – the universal constant is change – but it is the trend for the next decade
“I do not think it is unfortunate we are not returning to the past.”
Again your comment is definitional. We have moved in a fascist direction. A reversal to less fascism earlier in time is better.
Trump will bow out if his health declines or if he does not believe he can win.
Under all other circumstances he will run.
As a separate matter the GOP MUST come to terms with Trump.
One of the certain problems of 2022, is that Trump was almost functioning as his own independent political party funding candidates and campaigning for them. And significant portions of the GOP were funding competing candidates and then during the general election Trump was behind one set of candidates in one set of states and the rest of the GOP behind other candidates elsewhere.
This can not happen again. In the senate McConnell was directing resources to candidates unaffiliated with Trump who did not need funding.
Simialr things were being driven by McCarthy in house races.
While 2022 was a fixzzle, it should be self evident that exactly like 2020, 2022 came incredibly close to the red tsunami that was predicted.
This is a different problem and a huge reason why we MUST focus on election integrity.
The number of elections won by razor thin margins is growing not shrinking. That is never never never good for trust.
No one distrusts an election with a 20pt spread. It does not matter how abysmally or corruptly it was conducted. If you lose by 20pts – you lost.
There is compelling evidence of large scale fraud in the California Recall election. But there is no way that it changed the outcome.
So no one cares much. Probably they should. But they do not.
But even small fraud can swing a very tight election.
when we start talking victories by 0.01% of the vote – trust in the process is absolutely critical
And we do not have processes that are trustworthy to 2%
“Trump will bow out if his health declines…”
There are other reasons for him to bow out. One cannot figure out his mind, making him a good negotiator. He is flexible and can quickly move from one direction to another.
“As a separate matter the GOP MUST come to terms with Trump.”
So must all people that wish freedom to prevail.
“Trump will bow out if his health declines or if he does not believe he can win.
Under all other circumstances he will run.”
I disagree and think there are more reasons he wouldn’t run. I’ll provide one. I don’t think he will run if he thinks his presidency won’t succeed. He might blame not running on something else, but I believe that is a major reason.
I do not think he even considers the possibility of an unsuccessful presidency.
I think he will be far more prepared and take far less bad counsel in 2024.
I think he will clean house.
What he will not do is run unless he is near certain to win.
.”I do not think he even considers the possibility of an unsuccessful presidency.”
Though President Trump doesn’t tell you his unspoken thoughts, one can see how he ran his business adventures. One thing in common among them permits an inside glance into his thinking. Those thoughts, are the polar opposite to your own.
“Those thoughts, are the polar opposite to your own.”
Not in anyway that I can tell.
Great, then you recognize there are more than the two reasons you mentioned. The reason I am talking about is one of the reasons I have so much support for Trump. I think that motivation makes him a great leader.
Well this seems like a reasonable decision in light of events and findings. Of course there is no delineation of “executive privilege” in the constitution and I have seen no one actually point to a specific law by congress in delineating “executive privilege”. It would seem to me that congress, should they ever get together in a bipartisan manner, might consider a constitutional amendment, that defines executive privilege. A constitutional amendment might set the boundaries so there is a clearer understanding of the presidents power and the steps necessary to the use of “executive privilege”. That it is abused is obvious and by both parties. Clear delineation might also go a long way in rebuilding some trust in the use of executive privilege for actual necessary executive needs and not as a catchall for events that could embarrass the president or his/her minions. I realize the world is more complex than ever but some of the complexity might be better explained and simplified by greater transparency. The executive and legislative branches need a great deal more sunlight cast on their workings.
We need more limits on the government. The European model is failing because they have little effective limitation of the government which leads to civil rights abuses and the governments can too often alter their constitutions without a more deliberative discussion with the populace.
On top of that you have the European Union which has cast aside any pretense of real voter involvement in decision making and more rule by diktat and committees of “experts” or “technocrats”. The EU is, in fact, now an oligarchy moving away from populist government towards unknown waters .
I assume they are talking about attorney/client privilege when using that word, no?
No, executive privilege and A-C privilege are legally distinct.
Above The Law, Elie Mystal and Joe Patrice all can be safely ignored, yet their descent into mindless howling at the partisan moon has left me a bit sad. It wasn’t that long ago that ATL was an excellent resource. My son, now a partner-track associate at a Big Law firm, and I used it when he was considering a career in the law and then as he evaluated his law school options. I found myself returning to it for its always left-wing but otherwise thoughtful commentary.
Now, it has all the stature of a toddler, throwing his food during an endless temper tantrum.
What I see in this whole process, is the DoJ/FBI, out of control. There is zero protection for citizens against corrupt police /prosecutors. There is no protection against an unconstitutional general warrant. Nothing can be done until trial, the appeal of that trial, then SCOTUS stepping in and applying the Constitution. That is a whole lot of “process is the punishment” govt corruption.
You can’t or don’t have to point to this issue or any issue relevant to the prior administration to show the DoJ/FBI out of control and completely corrupt. MLK Jr. Whitey Bulger. Larry Nassar. Waco and/or Ruby Ridge. You can point to a scandal a year for 60 years if you work on it.
My standard is “If you are standing beside the Hatteras Lighthouse at dawn on March 21 or Sept 21 with an FBI agent who asks you which way is east, take the fifth.” That is your only protection against these thugs.
Dear Prof Turley,
Keep this on the down low, and don’t tell everybody you know.
Imho, very few things should be classified Top Secret national security information and withheld from the public (‘we the people’). And that includes ‘sources and methods’ (see e.g. Osama bin Laden).
In this case, I would have preferred at least one neutral, objective and qualified 3rd party Special Master fig-leaf review on the status of ‘classified documents’ held by [any] former president against the claims of a sitting president’s Justice Dept. that confiscated them under penalty of law. I have little confidence in the [Biden] Justice Dept. or former president Trump. .. nor the media’s reporting on these critical national security matters.
For example, it’s one thing to know if (as reported in the media) Trump retained Top Secret nuclear weapons secrets in Mar Lago to leverage/sell on the ‘black market’ (?). It’s another thing entirely if this story had no basis in fact and was leaked to the media by a pernicious [Biden] Justice Dept. bent on the prosecution of Trump. .. by any means necessary.
I hold these truths to be self-evident:
1. For better or worse, the sitting president is the final sole authority on status of any/all ‘national security’ secrets.
2. There are no myriad elaborate classification department heads, protocols or ‘procedures’ that undermine the sitting president’s authority to determine what is, and what is not, ‘Top Secret’ national security information. Over 50 top national security officials knowingly lied about The Laptop, e.g.
3, The absence of a ‘public defense’ in the disclosure of Top Secret national security information (e.g. the ‘espionage act’/FISA) is unconstitutional. (see also existing ‘Whistleblower’ protections, such as they are.)
*note:
Edward Snowden, e.g., has offered to return home and stand trial if afforded a ‘public defense’ .. . while the tip Top Secret information he disclosed has been deemed ‘unconstitutional and illegal’ by at least two courts of law.
Snowden for President 2024 ‘The Crown Jewels of National Security’
According to Anonymous, the 11th circuit said: “In considering these arguments, we are faced with a choice: apply our usual test; drastically expand the availability of equitable jurisdiction for every subject of a search warrant; or carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former presidents.” Why not carve out an “exception” for former Presidents? “Ordinary citizens” are not subject to political prosecution by an entire political party, the Deep State, and their media allies. It is a justified “carve out”. Courts continually create procedural rules and new exceptions to those rules as time shows the need for exceptions. How many exceptions have been created to the Hearsay Rule of Evidence? There is nothing about the persecution of Trump that is “ordinary” in our history.
I said to my wife last night that without Trump, MSNBC would have no shows.
Judge Cannon’s goal was to make it look to the MAGA masses that there was something wrong and political about the Mar-a-Lago search. She fed that narrative with her ruling appointing the Special Master. She continued to feed that narrative by refusing to let the Special Master require Trump to state his legal and factual position in support of his claims so he was free to make any false claim about the search he wanted in the media. In a void such as this, Trump, supported by a vast right wing press operation, can feed the narrative of a terrible wrong done to the former President.
Now that tuis decision has been overturned, there will be very little mention of it in the right wing press, which will move on very quickly as the MAGA masses have already been told what to think of this search. If somehow Trump is ever elected President again, Judge Cannon will be top of his list for SCOTUS.
>”… Judge Cannon will be top of his list for SCOTUS.
Evidently, Judge Cannon and all three Justices on the 11th Circuit were all appointed by Trump.
Puncy
I dont have mind reading super powers like leftist. But a new President, raiding the home of the past President, is corrupt.
Trump is not required to prove his innocence. Trump really cant, because he has no idea of what crime is being looked at.
But you’ve done your job. You can collect your chit, for spitting out the talking points.
Trump is not required to prove his innocence. Trump really cant, because he has no idea of what crime is being looked at.
Well he’s Trump, which is apparently the “probable cause” to search for a crime. Kind of like Civil Asset Forfeiture, seize everything and force the victim to prove their innocence.
Olly, the leftist’s logic is repressive. They are subjugating people to their immoral desires. If for no reason a police officer assaulted a private citizen and the citizen protected himself, these turkeys (above and below) would claim that the private citizen violated the law by protecting himself. They would cite the criminal code book and pretend there was no violation of the citizen’s rights.
They are proving our Republic cannot survive without morality.
They are proving our Republic cannot survive without morality.
SM, that’s absolutely true. They would do well to read Bastiat’s The Law. This is his opening statement (emphasis mine):
The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!
If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
Olly, I take note in the words “The law perverted”,,, But we should also take note of what they say on other issues. They are perverted. They will cut breasts off of young girls while cutting young boys up and making them into girls. There is no end to their perversions.
There is no end to their perversions.
None whatsoever. What’s interesting to me is these are not new perversions they’ve just thought up. These are chronic perversions that are just being revealed. It’s like we’ve been looking at their behaviors with binoculars and all of a sudden we’re seeing them through the Webb telescope.
https://www.glennbeck.com/radio/watch-this-canadian-ad-shows-were-in-a-battle-against-evil
The warrant and affidavit both identified the alleged crimes:18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071, and 1519.
This has been pointed out to you multiple times, and you lie about it anyway.
And your argument was proven phony “multiple times, and you lie about it anyway.”
No it wasn’t. You can’t bring yourself to actually read the rulings and the evidence and the law, You’re lying to yourself because you don’t have an adequate defense other than insulting others.
Produce the rulings. Read the codes and the associated rules, regulations and laws that would involve the President. To you things are clear because those things that conflict with your vision you don’t notice. That is why foolish and uneducated people cans say things that are so wrong.
What argument?
It’s a fact (not an argument) that the warrant and affidavit both identified the alleged crimes:18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071, and 1519.
It’s a fact (not an argument) that this has been pointed out to iowan2 multiple times.
“ But a new President, raiding the home of the past President, is corrupt.
Trump is not required to prove his innocence. Trump really cant, because he has no idea of what crime is being looked at.”
LOL!! Trump broke the law. He repeatedly refused to return documents that were not his. Hiding them and lying about it is legally considered deliberate theft of government property. Trump is no longer president and he is not special. He has a very good idea what crime is being looked at. It’s several crimes. Violating the espionage act is a serious offense that carries felony convictions and prison time.
The fact remains that Judge Cannon’s decision was highly political, unsupported by law and designed to protest Trump. Now that it is nearly moot – the Special Master was almost done with its work, the Appeals Court cleaned it up so that the decision would only help Trump, not any future defendant or President.
So yes, Judge Cannon proved herself to be every bit in the pocket of Trump, and the appeals court decision took enough time to make it largely irrelevant. Mission accomplished.
“This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation. The answer is no. . . .
“Exercises of equitable jurisdiction—which the district court invoked here—should be “exceptional” and “anomalous.” Hunsucker v. Phinney, 497 F.2d 29, 32 (5th Cir. 1974).1 Our precedents have limited this jurisdiction with a four-factor test. Richey v. Smith, 515 F.2d 1239, 1243–44 (5th Cir. 1975). Plaintiff’s jurisdictional arguments fail all four factors.
“In considering these arguments, we are faced with a choice: apply our usual test; drastically expand the availability of equitable jurisdiction for every subject of a search warrant; or carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former presidents. We choose the first option. So the case must be dismissed.”
One decision does not change the fact that SCOTUS is now a right wing and theocratic preserve. It also doesn’t change that the Trump appointed “judge” in Florida made decisions that were clearly contrary to law and were crafted solely to protect the former president.
I thank the judges who ignored the siren call of Trump.
if we were a theocracy, you would have been burned alive at the stake long ago, yet here you are.
The main observation I have had after the actions by Team Trump in regards to the appointment was that Trump still wanted to prevent the Special Master from reviewing certain documents that were a part of the evidence in this case. It looked like Trump was trying to use continual delaying tactics to prevent this case from ever advancing. It suddenly became a bridge (to nowhere) too far.
I entirely agree with Turkey that:
“Previously, I noted that, while such an appointment is extremely rare and this appointment might be overturned by the Eleventh Circuit, it was not (as claimed by some) outside of the authority of courts to appoint special masters to help review seized material.”
And so did the Court of Appeals. Where I differ from the CA is in the conclusion that there was no “callous disregard” of Trump’s Constitutional rights. Looking at the unprecedented wide scope of the warrant, which was, of course, obtained ex parte from a friendly magistrate judge, it was a classic case of an “unreasonable search and seizure” forbidden by the Fourth Amendment. I fault Trump’s lawyers for apparently not making that their #1 argument. I think that was bordering on malpractice. Trump has never been well-served by his legal team, starting with Rudy.
My apologies Professor, my computer automatically misspelled your name. I note that was not the first time that has happened to a reader of your blog, giving all those Turley (spelled T-u-r-l-e-y) haters out there an opening to ridicule you. But haters do what haters will do.
“… That does not sound like judges “protecting their guy,” as Katyal claimed. …”
That sounds more like judges “protecting their gal,” [Hillary Clinton et.al.]