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Judge Likens Trump to ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and Denies Attempt to Block Potential Fulton County Indictment

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A Fulton County, Georgia Superior Court Judge has rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to block District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, quash any report that might be released from the grand jury, and disqualify Willis from investigating or prosecuting the case – essentially an attempt to block any possible indictment. Willis has strongly suggested if she moves to obtain a grand jury indictment it would likely be in the first two weeks of August.

Finding that Trump does not have standing to make the requests, Judge Robert McBurney writes that the ex-president’s claims of possible “‘injuries’…are either insufficient or else speculative and unrealized.” Lawfare’s Anna Bower was first to report Judge McBurney’s denial.

“They are insufficient because, while being the subject (or even target) of a highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides a basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigation,” McBurney says, adding: “Trump knew this.”

In a footlight highlighted by The Messenger’s Adam Klasfeld, Judge McBurney also writes: “And for some, being the subject of a criminal investigation can, a la Rumpelstiltskin, be turned into golden political capital, making it seem more providential than problematic. Regardless, simply being the subject (or target) of an investigation does not yield standing to bring a claim to halt that investigation in court.”

READ MORE: Trump Thinks He Won’t Be Indicted Because He Won His Impeachment Trial

From a German fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin “is a mysterious gnomelike man who spins straw into gold for the benefit of a beautiful miller’s daughter, in exchange for her future firstborn child,” according to Britannica.

Also pointing to the “Rumpelstiltskin” mention, Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes: “McBurney‘s ruling is unsparing. He notes, glancingly, Trump has capitalized on his potential prosecutions despite claims that he’s suffering harm from them.”

Cheney adds, “And, most bitingly, McBurney notes that Trump *already* knew his motion was dead on arrival — because he’d been slapped down by the 11th Circuit on the exact same issue: Trying to short-circuit the documents investigation before an indictment.”

As to Trump’s request to block release of any grand jury report, the Judge writes, Trump seeks “to have the Special Purpose Grand Jury’s final report locked away from public view forever. Such permanent silencing of that investigative body is not what either statutory or case law generally allows.”

READ MORE: Trump Claims ‘Nothing in the Constitution’ Says Even if He’s Convicted and Sentenced He Can’t Run for President

And since the existence of any report has not been made public, McBurney suggests Trump’s request is premature: “motions to quash or expunge are M00T.”

The judge also discredited Trump’s efforts to have Willis disqualified, calling it a “bold request.” McBurney makes clear Trump has not shown any conflict of interest exists, and says District Attorney Willis has not made any partisan or political claims about the case.

“The drumbeat from the District Attorney has been neither partisan (in the political sense), nor personal, in marked and refreshing contrast to the stream of personal invective flowing from one of the movants (apparently referring to Trump.)

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‘Incomprehensible’: More Classified Docs Were Found at Mar-a-Lago, Unsealed Court Filing Reveals

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May 21, 2024

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Donald Trump had more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that were not originally found when the FBI completed its execution of a search warrant, according to a recently unsealed 87-page court document in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case. Trump faces 40 felony charges in the case, including 32 directly related to classified documents..

“No excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote, according to Forbes. Judge Howell “notes the government forced Trump’s attorneys to search Trump’s properties even after FBI investigators searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.”

Trump’s attorneys conducted searches of some of his other properties after the FBI “raid,” including his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump Tower in Manhattan, and other storage units and offices.

More classified documents were located at “an off-site office, a storage unit and at Mar-a-Lago, Howell wrote, noting Trump’s lawyers found a box with four documents that included classified materials in a Mar-a-Lago closet.”

READ MORE: Republican Calls for Economic ‘Shut Down’ While Accusing Biden of Marxist Agenda

Politico added, “The FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago confirmed that dozens of other classified documents remained on the property — but as Howell notes, there were at least two more rounds of classified materials found on Trump’s property following additional searches.”

In a damning portion of the filing, Forbes also reports, Judge Howell “asserts Trump purposely obstructed the government’s investigation after it subpoenaed him to turn over all the remaining classified documents in his possession, saying the government ‘sufficiently demonstrated’ Trump violated the obstruction statute by showing he ‘intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents bearing classification markings’ from his attorneys.”

Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal contributor, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance remarked, “This makes Judge Cannon’s foot dragging on this case even more incomprehensible. Not like it involves serious matters, or anything.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has ground the trial to a halt, most recently putting an indefinite suspension in place.

ABC News adds that Special Counsel Jack Smith believed Trump “instructed aides to return several boxes they had previously removed from a storage room in the [Mar-a-Lago] club’s basement — without being caught on camera.”

READ MORE: ‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

Judge Howell wrote that after Trump attorney Evan Corcoran “informed Trump of the subpoena for video footage on June 24, 2022, it set into motion a scramble by [co-defendant Walt] Nauta to change his travel plans and fly from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida.”

“The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24, 2022 phone call reflects the former president’s realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room before [redacted] search was captured on camera — and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off camera,” Judge Howell wrote. She added: “This theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room, which necessarily occurred at some point between June 3, 2022 — when the room had approximately [redacted] boxes, according to FBI agents and [redacted] — and the execution of the search warrant on August 8, 2022 — when agents counted 73 boxes.”

 

 

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Republican Calls for Economic ‘Shut Down’ While Accusing Biden of Marxist Agenda

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May 21, 2024

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U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is calling on Congress to “shut down” the U.S. economy over the southern border, while accusing President Joe Biden of Marxist policies and denouncing his border legislation that Donald Trump ordered killed months ago.

Congresswoman Spartz on Tuesday spoke to Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo in a rambling interview on the Senate bipartisan border bill that Donald Trump ordered killed. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is one again trying to pass it.

Rep. Spartz said, “we need to get them back, you know, to really put pressure to control the border. So I just don’t see anything else left there because no one wants to shut down the economy, unfortunately. We should really for such a serious issue, but Republicans are not gonna do it. And, and you know, and we’re not just going to let Democrats have messagings bill with lots of loopholes. There are way more loopholes in that bill than people even realized.”

The economy is a top issue for 2024 presidential election voters.

READ MORE: ‘Not an Accident’: Trump’s ‘Unified Reich’ Video Alarms Historians and Fascism Experts

After calling to shut down the economy, which economists for months have shown is doing extremely well, she then falsely accused President Joe Biden of socialism and enacting “socialist policies by Karl Marx.”

“I think we need to have a serious discussion what really Bidenomics is and how it resembles socialist policies by Karl Marx where it’s not just, you know, Biden administration had failed policy in a lot of fronts with its supply chain, whether we’re dealing with energy, but also they’ve been subsidizing corporations very close to the government in trying to control financial markets, in order in essence control the means of production and financial markets. That’s what socialism really is.”

The Biden administration fixed the supply chain crisis created during the Trump administration, improved the supply chain, and continues to massively invest in it.

“And now they are trying to use you know, the government power to pick losers and winners and you know, this, winners are going to be people who can pay, give campaign contribution to Biden’s reelection campaign, and losers are going to be all of us. And this is a serious discussion we need to have because this level of spending and subsidy cannot continue, it’s destructive and inflation is going to destroy the middle class and people low income.”

Donald Trump recently asked top oil and gas executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in exchange for lower taxes and a rollback of President Biden’s climate and environmental protections.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

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‘Not an Accident’: Trump’s ‘Unified Reich’ Video Alarms Historians and Fascism Experts

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May 21, 2024

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Political experts, historians, and scholars of fascism are sounding the alarm after Donald Trump posted video Monday afternoon that promised a “unified Reich,” once again echoing language used by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

“Trump’s continued use of Nazi rhetoric is un-American and despicable. Yet too many Americans are brushing off the glaring red flags about what could happen if he returns to the White House,” former Trump White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews warned. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

The video features made-up newspaper headlines claiming a Trump win of the 2024 presidential election. It asks, “What’s Next for America,” and promotes “the creation of a unified Reich.”

“The 30-second video, which Mr. Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, features several articles styled like newspapers from the early 1900s — and apparently recycling text from reports on World War I, including references to ‘German industrial strength’ and ‘peace through strength,'” The New York Times reported. “One article in the video asserts that Mr. Trump would deport 15 million migrants in a second term, while text onscreen lists the start and end days of World War I.”

READ MORE: ‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

“Another headline in the video suggests that Mr. Trump in a second term would reject “globalists,” using a term that has been widely adopted on the far right and that scholars say can be used as a signal of antisemitism.”

Political commentator and former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin posted an ABC News segment on the “unified reich” video, and remarked: “Donald Trump is openly copying Hitler’s Nazi language about a ‘unified reich’ and warning about ‘poisoning the blood’ of America, and people are still acting like this is a normal election.”

In that ABC News video, reporter Rachel Scott says, “It is normal, of course for presidential candidates to share videos with their vision for the country. It is not normal for those videos to have references to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. The Trump campaign tells us this morning that this was a video that was shared by a staffer while the former president was in court saying that staffer missed the reference but as of this morning that video has not been taken down.”

The Biden-Harris campaign quickly responded to the video, posting another video of “Trump saying that only he and his top right-hand man, Dan Scavino, have access to post on his social media accounts.”

The “unified Reich” video remained on Trump’s Truth Social platform for well over 12 hours, and reportedly was still up as of at least 8:00 AM, although it has since been taken down.

“Earlier this month,” The Associated Press reported, “Trump said at a fundraiser that Biden is running a ‘Gestapo administration,’ referring to the secret Nazi police force.”

READ MORE: Law ‘Requires’ Alito and Thomas to Recuse Says Former Federal Prosecutor

“Trump previously used rhetoric echoing Adolf Hitler when he said immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ and called his opponents ‘vermin.’ The former president has also drawn wide backlash for having dined with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist in 2022 and for downplaying the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists chanted ‘Jews will not replace us!'”

The Biden-Harris campaign also released this statement:

“America, stop scrolling and pay attention. Donald Trump is not playing games; he is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power: rule as a dictator over a ‘unified reich.’ Parroting ‘Mein Kampf’ while you warn of a bloodbath if you lose is the type of unhinged behavior you get from a guy who knows that democracy continues to reject his extreme vision of chaos, division, and violence.”

Overnight, responding to the “unified Reich” video popular historian Heather Cox Richardson warned: “It is not clear to me how anyone can any longer deny that Trump is promising to destroy our democracy and usher in authoritarianism. But it is also not clear that he is still a figure that any but the extremes of his base will follow to that end. Hence his emphasis on turning them to violence.”

Journalist Gil Duran, who covers “tech fascism,” and “billionaire extremism,” says Trump’s “unified Reich” video was not an accident.

Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, now an NBC News National Security Analyst, also noted that the “reference to Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany is not an accident.”

Former CIA analyst Gail Helt, responding to the Trump campaign’s claim it was posted by a staffer who didn’t see the “unified Reich” text, wrote: “Of course they knew. Of course they saw it. I hate Nazis.”

“Historian here,” wrote Professor of American history Dr. Manisha Sinha, snarkily responding to the Trump video. “Trump calls for a unified Reich but hey we are all being paranoid by calling him a wannabe fascist supported by neo Nazis and neo Confederates.”

Professor of history and expert on fascism and the Holocaust, the extreme right, and neo-Nazis, Dr. Federico Finchelstein, responding to a report on the “unified Reich” video, called it, “Wannabe fascism in motion…”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Why Alito’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Flag Story Just Fell Apart

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