President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Republicans deeply concerned that the DoJ is weaponized under Biden while lacking any proof have no issue with their frontrunner campaigning on the promise to weaponize DoJ.

 

Yes, let’s all follow the advice of the brilliant and stable Keith Olbermann. From Palmer Report:

Democratic Party leadership has reportedly urged House and Senate Democrats to avoid going on TV and commenting on the Trump indictment. This is a very smart move that makes impossible for the media to paint the indictment as partisan. So if course the Twitter pundits are portraying this as a stupid, naive move on the part of the Democrats. “Why are they playing nice? They should show more fire! It’s time for the Democrats to take the gloves off!” All the usual stupid bullshit slogans that Twitter pundits love chanting about the Democratic Party. Yes these pundits are giving precisely the wrong advice. They always do. If the Democrats actually followed the dumbass simplistic advice handed out by the Twitter pundits, the Democrats would lose every single election.

So ask yourself this when it comes to all these Twitter pundits who constantly bash the Democratic Party, even while pushing terribly simplistic magic wand style advice that would never work: are these Twitter pundits simply morons who are too stupid to know how stupid they are, or are these Twitter pundits con artists who are trying to prey on YOUR lack of familiarity with how anything works? Either way these Twitter pundits, whose brand is based on being “savvier” and more “aggressive” than the Democratic Party, never have an ounce of actual insight to offer. Every bit of advice they give is completely idiotic. Every “clever” idea they offer is moronic and would never work in the real world. And every word they say seems aimed solely at getting ahead by dishonestly bashing the Democratic Party, so they can look smarter than the Democratic Party, in the eyes of Twitter followers who don’t know anything even works.

There are actual criticisms to be made of the Democratic Party. There’s more than one idea when it comes to Democratic Party strategy. But these Twitter pundits, who have based their brand on being more smart and fierce than the Democratic Party, have never once said anything accurate or useful that could actually help the Democratic Party. These are buffoons who sit in the cheap seats, don’t even understand the basic strategy of the sport (or pretend not to), and yell out simplistic nonsensical criticism of the coaching staff that’s only seen as “clever” by the drunks around them who are being emotionally baited into responding positively to pure gibberish.

 

With regard to the Marcy Wheeler link I posted a few posts back. - for those who either don't know who Marcy Wheeler/Emptywheel is or who clicked through and did a tl;dr, she's positing several things.

First is that while the thirty documents listed in the indictment are all legitimately Top Secret, the most secret of them were not listed. While there is a legal process to examine such documents,, declare that they are too secret to discuss in open court, and use them to prosecute without revealing them, the process is very time consuming. Trump's lawyers can be counted on to drag that process out, delay delay delay. She thinks that Jack Smith may have a quick strike in mind instead. There was a case with an NSA worker who made a very major leak several years back. Rather than go through this process, NSA and prosecutors decided to simply declassify all the documents and discuss them openly in court. This meant that any techniques/software that was revealed had to be discontinued, any human sources warned and withdrawn, and any such that involved foreign intelligence services required those countries to do the same. They then convicted and buried the defendant very quickly. Her thought is that taking the same approach re the docs in the Trump indictment would allow much faster prosecution, particularly when considering the federal court's recent record of impatiently dismissing Trump's by now transparent attempts to postpone and delay any court action against him, as shown in the 1/6 cases. Smith may go for a quick conviction here for a number of reasons, then develop the following cases over time.

Her second point was that DoJ has been very selective in charging Walt Nauta. Testimony and video evidence shows that about thirty cases of documents were flown to Trump's Bedminster resort, which has not been searched. DoJ does not have the testimony and suspected locations to search as they did at Mar a Lago, and cannot get a search warrant as a result. If they can crack Nauta and force him to testify, they can get that warrant. She's betting that Jack Smith has a New Jersey grand jury available that we are not aware of, just as he had one in Florida. They can bury Nauta if they choose to add all the charges that could be applied to him. There was an easily overlooked bit of testimony regarding the boxes shipped to Bedminster. Nauta requested new lids for some of those document boxes "can we get new box covers before giving these to them on Monday? They have too much writing on them..I marked too much". Presumably he had marked the boxes containing secrets in a way he considered too revealing.

Trump might destroy/try to destroy any documents still at Bedminster, but I'm betting that DoJ has an informant or two in there, either voluntarily or someone that they have flipped. If he tries to destroy them or ship them out and word gets out, the Feds will hit it with a freaking SWAT team, and he's burnt toast if they can catch him at that.

She's been on this in depth for quite some time, and she's been right far more often than wrong over the time line - wrong perhaps in the short term, but often proven right in the long term. Interesting.

 

Of course if everything is being done according to regulations and by the book.

Of course if everything is being done according to regulations and by the book, multi billion dollars of paper currency are not printed up in single press runs and loaded into semi trucks.

But we're taking about Fatfuck. The more stupid and improbable and unworkable (and illegal) a scheme is ...

 

John Barron’s new alias is Elvis Patterson.

 

Here's a more realistic and fact based look at potential sentencing for Trump based on the indictment. Note: It isn't 400 years, and there will be math.

What sentence might Trump get, if found guilty?

 

I have to be out and about tomorrow – Happy Arraignment Day, America! – and now maybe I should feel kinda uneasy about that. It will be interesting to see if law enforcement shows a bigger public presence in and around grocery stores, retail outlets, houses of worship, etc.

 

He's been indicted. It's put-up or shut-up time. Of course they've been saying the same BS for years. ("Republicans are happy that the Access Hollywood tapes killed his campaign, Republicans are happy that his pledge to pull the U.S. from NATO killed his campaign, etc.)