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Trump Threatens to Prosecute Biden in Tirade Asking Why the President Didn’t Indict Him in 2020
Donald Trump unleashed an unhinged tirade attacking President Joe Biden and the U.S. system of justice, baselessly alleging that America’s current president is behind the criminal indictments he faces, and demanding to know why President Biden did not indict him before he was elected to office, when Trump was still President.
In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland rebuilt the wall between U.S. Dept. of Justice and the rest of the executive branch, including the Oval Office, a wall President Barack Obama had strengthened before Donald Trump opened large holes into it. There is no indication President Biden has anything to do with any prosecutions of Donald Trump or anyone else. A USA Today fact check makes clear: “Legal experts say Biden did not play a role in Trump’s indictment.”
But Sunday night into Monday morning, Trump on his Truth Social platform attacked President Biden again.
“The Corrupt Biden Administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech,” he wrote, before launching into an all-caps rant: “NOT CONSTITUTIONAL! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN…”
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Trump appears to be referring to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s Sunday evening decision to reinstate the gag order she paused while Trump appealed it. Trump appeared to violate that order and her previous warnings, including the conditions of his pre-trial release recently. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office requested the gag order be reinstated.
Just past midnight Trump added another post attacking Judge Chutkan over the gag order, calling her, “the very Biased, Trump Hating Judge in D.C.” He claimed she “should have RECUSED herself due to her blatant and open loathing of your favorite President.”
Trump also claimed the gag order “will put me at a disadvantage against my prosecutorial and political opponents. This order, according to many legal scholars, is unthinkable! It illegally and unconstitutionally takes away my First Amendment Right of Free Speech, in the middle of my campaign for President.”
But as Judge Chutkan wrote in her order, “the First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings must yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice—a principle reflected in Supreme Court precedent, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Local Criminal Rules, ” CNN reported. “And contrary to Defendant’s argument, the right to a fair trial is not his alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.”
It has been well-documented that Trump’s associates have said he planned to announce his 2024 presidential campaign in hopes of warding off prosecutions, or staying out of jail.
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Meanwhile, minutes later, Trump baselessly demanded to know: “Why didn’t Crooked Joe Biden tell his Injustice Department to file the lawsuits and Indictments against me 3 years ago, instead of right in the middle of my campaign for President?”
“You’re setting a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe. The same can happen to you,” he adding, leading one top legal expert to say he is threatening to prosecute Biden if he gets back in the Oval Office.
“Trump threatens Biden with prosecution,” wrote former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now an MSNBC legal analyst and p-rofessor of law, in response to Trump’s post.
Trump restarted his rant less than seven hours later, at 7:32 AM.
“Why didn’t they start the totally political BIDEN INDICTMENTS & COURT CASES Three (3) Years Ago, instead of the MIDDLE OF MY CAMPAIGN???”
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Seven minutes later: “If they started the highly political Biden Indictments 3 years ago, everything would now be finished. THEY WAITED UNTIL MY CAMPAIGN BEGAN!”
Three years ago was October 30, 2020.
Donald Trump was still president and a candidate for re-election. Election Day in 2020 was still days away, November 3, 2020.
It would have been impossible for candidate Joe Biden to order a prosecution of President Donald Trump “three years ago,” and nearly three months before Biden was sworn in to office.
But, as The New York Times reported in 2018, Trump has wanted to order the prosecutions of his political opponents.
“President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.”
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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Former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen in damning testimony Monday told jurors about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s fears in 2016 when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped, and what his real concerns were about the bombshell audio that nearly ended his nascent political career.
Cohen revealed that in 2015 when the then-real estate magnate announced he was running for president, Trump told him, “Be prepared. There’s going to be a lot of women coming forward,” according to Courthouse News.
Cohen told jurors that in 2016 “he caught wind of the fact that adult film star Stormy Daniels was shopping her story that she had sex with Trump a decade prior. Cohen said that he was concerned about the impact it could have on Trump’s presidential campaign, particularly after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape.”
“At this time, Mr. Trump was polling very, very low with women,” Cohen testified, adding that Trump “said to me, ‘This is a disaster.’”
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“‘Women will hate me. Guys, they may think it’s cool. But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”
Cohen also revealed from the witness stand that he had asked Trump how his wife, Melania Trump, was taking the news about Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who Trump allegedly paid hush money to then falsified his business records to hide the transactions in an effort to influence the election, according to prosecutors.
“How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long,” Trump told Cohen, according to his former attorney.
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen said. “This was all about the campaign.”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called that a “Remarkable moment.”
The Daily Mail adds, “Asked if Trump was angry during this frantic period of damage control that could surface the Stormy Daniels story, Cohen said ‘Yes. Because there was a negative story that could impact the campaign as a result of women.’ ”
Watch MSNBC’s report below or at this link.
‘He wasn’t thinking about Melania, this was all about the campaign’@mitchellreports and @KatyTurNBC are joined by a legal panel to discuss Michael Cohen’s testimony focusing on the hush money payment and the “Access Hollywod” tape in former President Trump’s criminal trial. pic.twitter.com/rcohWqqybS
— MSNBC Reports (@MSNBC_reports) May 13, 2024
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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.
Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”
“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.
One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.
“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”
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Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”
“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”
“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”
“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.
On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.
In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.
Listen to a short clip below or at this link.
ICYMI: @realDonaldTrump joined @NickKayal & @DawnStensland sharing his perspective on Title IX…
Watch below or listen on @Audacy pic.twitter.com/wzx0QxKPJ7
— Talk Radio 1210 WPHT (@1210WPHT) May 10, 2024
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A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.
“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”
“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.
“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.
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“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.
“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.
The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.
National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”
The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”
Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.
On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.
Watch below or at this link.
Fleischer: Trump needs to talk about Judge Merchan’s daughter.
McDowell: I think that violates the gag order
Kayleigh: No, he can criticize the judge pic.twitter.com/CLgNxNpg6B
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 10, 2024
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‘He Wasn’t Thinking About Melania’: Cohen Reveals Trump’s Fears in ‘Hush Money’ Testimony
‘He Wasn’t Thinking About Melania’: Cohen Reveals Trump’s Fears in ‘Hush Money’ Testimony
‘Grave Danger’: Trump’s ‘Raw Display’ of Power at Court Alarms Conservative
Johnson Would Contest 2024 Election Results Under the Same ‘Circumstances’
‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students