Below is my Fox.com column on the shift of fortunes for former president Donald Trump in the last week. Trump does not appear to be necessarily moving ahead legally but he is still prevailing politically in a curious war of attrition.
Here is the column:
While Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up,” former president Donald Trump proved this week that the same could be said about “just sticking around.” Trump had one of the best weeks as cases and critics seemed to implode from the disqualification effort in Washington to the scandal in Georgia. Yet, Trump is not out of the woods and is facing significant threats in what is becoming a war of attrition.
In Washington, the Supreme Court gave a chilly reception to the disqualification effort that bordered on the glacial. While law professors like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe insisted that the basis for barring Trump from office under the 14th Amendment was “unassailable,” the justices seemed utterly unconvinced and there is the possibility that the entire effort could now be defeated unanimously. Even liberal justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson called the effort anti-democratic.
In Georgia, the case against Trump is floundering as allegations mount against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her intimate relationship with her subordinate special prosecutor Nathan J. Wade. This week, a court filing alleged that Willis and Wade filed false claims in court on when their relationship began. The two prosecutors have insisted that they only became intimate after Willis hired Wade. Wade’s former lawyer has reportedly come forward to contest that claim.
That allegation, if true, could make the continuation of Willis and Wade in the case untenable. Various defendants being prosecuted in Georgia are accused of false statements and filings in court. Of course, the removal of Willis and Wade will not necessarily end the case, but it will present logistical and optical problems for the office.
There are also calls for the removal of Alvin Bragg in New York, who is accused of being lax on crime overall despite his determined effort to convict Trump.
Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion. Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, went to jail and lost his law license. At the Justice Department, various FBI officials from the Russian investigation were accused of wrongdoing and forced out of the Justice Department. That included James Comey who was found to have removed FBI material after Trump fired him and gave it to a friend who leaked it to the press. Another official pleaded guilty to criminal conduct associated with the Russian investigation.
In politics, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who attacked Trump for his treatment of women, was forced out of office for sexual harassment. Michael Avenatti was sentenced to a long prison term for fraud and other crimes. Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) who voted for Trump to be convicted in the Senate is now under indictment for corruption.
Even in the arts, Trump critics have fallen from great heights. Comedian Kathy Griffin has not only become persona non grata after her gory depiction of a beheaded Trump but she is now beseeching people to buy tickets for a languishing come-back tour. Alec Baldwin, who scathingly played Trump, has been criminally charged after shooting a movie crew member.
Of course, it is fair to note that some of Trump’s allies have fared equally badly, including those convicted or facing trial such as Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others.
Yet, there is no question that time has worked in Trump’s favor in fulfilling certain narratives. He has accused the Democrats of trying to rig elections. While debunking claims in 2020, Democrats like Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold bulldozed any high ground by trying to prevent citizens from voting for Trump as he leads in the polls.
Likewise, Trump long mocked President Joe Biden over his age and mental deterioration. This week, Special Counsel Robert Hur justified his declination of criminal charges against Biden in part due to his “diminished faculties.” He said that his team was concerned that a jury would find him a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden then proceeded to hold a press conference to show that he was mentally sharp. It was a disaster. Biden not only came across as a cranky octogenarian telling reporters to get off his lawn, but he proceeded to confuse the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.
Now, 76 percent of Americans are concerned about Biden’s mental fitness to be president.
Even more important was what the report said about Biden’s underlying conduct. Despite false claims by Biden in the press conference, the report found that he had willfully retained classified material, mishandled such material for years and disclosed classified material.
If that sounds familiar, it should. The pictures and allegations are strikingly similar to those involving Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Indeed, the report showed that every element of the crime was evident, which is likely why Hur tried to use Biden’s memory and sympathetic demeanor to justify his decision. Yet, it suggested that a less sympathetic defendant with a better memory would have been charged.
That unsympathetic figure is sitting in Mar-a-Lago facing 37 counts.
Hur tried to distinguish the cases by citing Trump’s failure to cooperate and his efforts to allegedly obstruct the investigation. However, that explains the obstruction counts. The problem are the other counts for retention and mishandling. Some of those charges require a simple showing of gross negligence. Hur found willful misconduct by Biden, but dismissed similar charges.
For many, the two special counsel investigations have proven, again, a two-tiered legal system. In Florida, Jack Smith went after Trump with an abandon while in Washington Hur showed an avoidance that proved insulting to both the president and the public.
Polls show most Americans believe that the FBI has been politicized. Even in Georgia, a recent poll found 77 percent believe that politics played a major role (59%) or some role (18%) in charging Trump.
None of this means that Trump is out of the woods. It is possible that he could scuttle the federal investigation if he is elected or even pardon himself. However, cases in Georgia and New York can still move forward absent legal challenges. Moreover, he has had a couple of rough weeks including a massive award in a defamation lawsuit and a pending ruling that could bar him from doing business in New York and potentially hundreds of millions in damages.
The biggest concern remains timing. While polls indicate that the public sees a political motive of some of these cases, a majority of voters in swing states also indicate that they would be swayed by a conviction against Trump.
Perhaps for that reason, Smith continues to push courts to allow him to try Trump before the election. However, with a pending appeal over immunity, he may be running out of runway. The Justice Department has long opposed trials within a couple months of an election. A Trump trial would likely go months, making any date after the summer increasingly difficult. If Trump is elected, Smith knows that there may be support to drop the cases from an exhausted public in 2025.
However, at this rate, Trump may be counting less on vindication than attrition.
The title is a soothing ointment for the left wing and generally corrupt DC criminal cabal. They know way more people, a vast supermajority, prefer Donald Trump to any of them. So they have been lying and conning and scamming since at least early 2015 against Trump and all his supporters, in order to illegally sway public opinion, so the crushing defeat “should never materialize to their utter humiliation”.
Well, they claimed they had it sewed up in 2016 and that their horrendous slit hitler hillary the skag cuck had a 100% or worst possible 98% chance to win, but even with the endless lies and Hunter biden mob mafia family cover up, THEY FAILED TO THEIR UTTER SURPRISE AND HORROR.
They immediately went on carrying out further crimes and rampages of lies, and declared their defeat “the middle finger from the populace”.
Even from the “right” that was the agreed upon conclusion. All those voters were just nasty little angry people who for no good reason other than their terrible unkempt and uncouth composition, were flying the bird at them, it was a “personal insult to the ruling elite class of families of washington DC, A DIRECT INSULT TO THEM.
You see, it wasn’t a vote for Trump. They all said it. They never asked why, they immediately internalized it to themselves, and declared it an INSULT, the middle finger as they all said, over and over again.
So for Trump to be “vindicated”, is something the deranged powers that be probably could not handle. They would no doubt come up with some new excuse, so testing the waters with “attrition” is very helpful.
I see, so besides NARA and FBI warning Hunter, the lawyers, Joe biden, and thadministration of the oncoming desire for the stolen highly classified joe biden document stash, warning them ahead of time so they could secret away and clean it all up and cover it all up, they allowed an entire office that absconded with 7 entire boxes full of illicit secret US government documents off to some biden lawyer they snagged from their chinese sales site in biden penn center.
LMAO TOTAL FRIKKING CRIMINALS IN COLLUSION
By Ben Whedon
Published: February 12, 2024 4:17pm
Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson on Monday asked that Attorney General Merrick Garland account for special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials making no mention of a batch of materials the National Archives recovered from the president’s attorney’s office in Boston.
Hur’s report became public last week and stated that “[o]ur investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” It further declined to bring charges against the president, in part, on the basis of his poor memory.
Writing to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Hur, the GOP lawmakers asserted that “[t]here appears to be a significant factual omission in Special Counsel Hur’s report on his office’s investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.”
Grassley, Johnson letter on special counsel report
In March of 2023, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed that it had retrieved nine boxes from the office of Biden attorney Patrick Moore that had been taken from the Penn Biden Center in Washington. Those materials were then transferred to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. At the time, NARA had not reviewed the materials.
“Oddly, Special Counsel Hur’s report did not mention NARA’s retrieval of the nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s office,” the pair wrote. “This apparent omission is significant given that, according to NARA, the Department of Justice requested that NARA recover the boxes. In fact, in March 2023, NARA informed our offices that ‘while NARA has not yet reviewed the contents of the nine boxes, the FBI has.'”
“If the FBI did review the contents of the boxes, it is unclear what was found, to include any classified information, and whether the FBI informed Special Counsel Hur’s office of its findings,” they went on. “Further, it is unclear if Special Counsel Hur had any awareness of or reviewed the information contained in these nine boxes. It would be extremely troubling if Special Counsel Hur failed to investigate the contents of these nine boxes particularly given that we first publicly revealed the existence of these specific boxes on March 27, 2023—nearly one year ago.”
For years people have been saying we need a outsider to clean up our government. We had a true outsider elected as president and look how he’s been treated by our political class and the bureaucracy if you believe anything our media says you need to be aware that in 2013 a very important law was allowed to expire that prevented the media from spreading propaganda to American citizens put in place during WW II. So now our media is allowed to spread pure propaganda and has been doing so. Why is that Trump doesn’t have the same rights as all ex-presidents have, you want to know why he hasn’t been charged for insurrection is because he requested the National Guard for crowd control and it was denied. The president is not allowed to order the military to act on American soil. He was the first and probably the last true outsider ever voted in as president.
to whom it may concern(and i hope everyone is concerned)
I’ve been watching and listening to alot of people , saying to follow the law but no one is defending the law, which really frustrates me, All the legal people i see on different talk shows , and no one that i have seen lately has mentioned the right trump had to keep them records,and how Garlands DOJ has broke the law according to the presidential records act. and Wray has supported this lawless venture. I’m just a reg. guy tired of hearing how the so called legal minds , claim to support the law but will not defend the law.
thank you for your time Rex
The 2012 case arose when the organization Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit seeking Clinton’s documents pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. Litigation ensued to pressure the National Archives into retrieving the materials. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that control over presidential records rests squarely in the hands of a former president:
“The National Archives does not have the authority to designate materials as ‘presidential records.’ It lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them.”
The judge adopted the very argument made in court by the Justice Department:
“(Seizing the records) is an ‘extraordinary request’ that is ‘unfounded, contrary to the Presidential Records Act’s express terms, and contrary to the traditional principles of administrative law’.”
So, there you have it. Garland defied both the DOJ’s own legal interpretation of the law and previous court precedent to target Trump in advance of an important national election. His flagrant abuse of power bears the unmistakable stench of partisan politics, which has infected the attorney general’s corrupt tenure from the outset.
The FBI did not raid Clinton’s home to reclaim records. Nor did the FBI raid former president Barack Obama’s unsecured warehouse where he stored classified documents for the better part of two years. Lawless raids only happen to Republicans.
First of all 1. Neither Clinton nor Obama deliberately stole classified documents or lied about returning them, or hid them or FORCED the FBI to come after them;; there was no need for the FBI to do anything to reclaim the documents; 2. the “unsecured warehouse” was rented by NARA and it wasn’t “unsecured”; 3. the “raid” wasn’t “lawless”–it was pursuant to a lawful warrant, which Trump forced the FBI to obtain after: a. stealing the documents despite being told he couldn’t have them; b. refusing multiple polite requests to return them; c. returning some, but not all, of the documents; d. lying about returning all of them; e. lying about “declassifying” them with a thought process; declassification involves a paper trail that doesn’t exist; f. storing them where anyone coming to MAL could look at, copy, or take if they wanted to. Given Trump’s utter deference to Putin, we all should be very worried. Our allies are concerned that sources and methods may have been compromised.
” Letter Surfaces of Obama Foundation Admitting in 2018 They Keep Classified Documents in Unsecured Storage at Furniture Warehouse ”
LMAO – GIGI shame on you.
https://www.sott.net/article/472463-Rules-for-thee-Letter-surfaces-of-Obama-Foundation-admitting-in-2018-classified-documents-kept-in-unsecured-storage-at-furniture-warehouse
sept 2022
“The Obama administration told the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) they were going to upload the documents into a digital form for use in the Obama library. The paper documents were, still are, held at the Hoffman Estate warehouse while this digitization process took place. It should be noted, the Obama Foundation has never digitized the records, hence they renewed the warehouse lease.
Contrast against the DOJ-NSD legal position about classified records held in the secure facility of Mar-a-Lago, a 2018 letter {pdf here} from the Obama Foundation to the NARA is an example of the two-tiered selective justice system. Within the 2018 letter the Obama team admit to storing both “classified and unclassified” documents at the warehouse: [Page #2, bullet-point 7] “
When President Obama left office in 2017, NARA took physical and legal custody of the records of his administration in accordance with the Presidential Records Act. NARA made arrangements to move the roughly 30 million pages of paper Presidential records of the Obama administration to a federally acquired, modified, and secured temporary facility that NARA leased in Hoffman Estates, IL, which meets NARA’s requirements for records storage and security. NARA moved the records to Hoffman Estates because of the intention of President Obama to build a Presidential Library in the Chicago area.
Subsequently, former President Obama decided not to fund, build, endow, and donate a physical Presidential Library to NARA (his foundation is building a privately operated Presidential Center that will not have archival storage for any Presidential records). Instead, the Obama Foundation agreed to help pay for the cost of digitizing the unclassified paper records and for the cost of moving the classified and unclassified records from NARA’s temporary facility in Hoffman Estates to other NARA-controlled facilities (for which NARA otherwise would have to pay). A September 2018 Letter of Intent from the Obama Foundation to the Archivist of the United States addresses Obama’s commitment to paying for these costs; but it in no way suggests that Obama had physical custody of any Presidential records. As NARA stated in September 2022, neither former President Obama nor his foundation “had possession or control over the [Presidential] records” of his administration.
…
The Obama Foundation, an independent entity, has never had control over the records in Hoffman Estates. All records in that facility are stored and managed by NARA in accordance with archival storage standards, and all classified records were stored in an appropriately secured compartment within the facility. NARA moved these records at the end of the Obama administration to the Hoffman Estates facility under the assumption that former President Obama and his Foundation would be building and transferring to NARA a traditional, physical Presidential Library in the Chicago area. When former President Obama decided that he would not build a physical, NARA-operated Presidential Library, NARA transported the classified records back to secure locations in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. The Obama Foundation provided NARA with funds to help convert the Hoffman Estates facility and to cover some of the expenses of moving the classified records, but the foundation has never had possession or control over the records.
https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2022/nr22-001
A lot of words to describe a small piece of the puzzle that leaves out the essential things that tell one Obama and Biden failed to do the right thing, and the bureaucracy is weaponized.
Hopefully, Trump will win in 2024 and rectify the failings of the fascists presently running the country.
I personally think Trump won the election last time. If he wins again, and the powers that be find a another way to invalidate it, heaven help us. Barring a literal coup, I don’t see how they could this time, and a literal coup would come with something very ugly we don’t want to see.
That’s some serious wishful thinking. Anyone who complains this next time goes straight to prison solitary for being a white supremacist terrorist trying to overthrow our democracy, etc.
New lies are all ready, new liars with the highest of credentials ready willing and able.
Plans made with endless tens of thousands of hours, new cheats and coverups already formulated and tested.
They are already cackling.
No reason for you to think I’m incorrect, which guilty demoncrat operative has been punished? NONE
Which innocent Trumpster has ? ALL OF THEM
The coffee is already black mamba solidified hashish
Having enough money to fight the legal system is the only way One actually gets Justice in America today. It takes a great deal of money to hire Good lawyers that know the law, and are able to competently represent their client. Otherwise, One is either stuck with incompetent legal representation, or forced the take a plea deal. Over 90% of the time the people who don’t have the financial resources of a Donald Trump are going to jail no matter if their guilty or not.