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The investigations into Donald Trump’s activities and Hillary Clinton’s are very different because their actions were so different. Lifelong conservative republican, Marine, and FBI director for a decade, Robert Mueller documented ten instances of Obstruction of Justice. It is against federal campaign laws to solicit campaign contributions from a foreign national. It has been made clear that opposition research is a thing of value. [The Commission has held a long and diverse list of goods and services (both tangible and intangible, both easy and difficult to value) to qualify as contributions, including: • opposition research;1] . The Trump campaign solicited opposition research from the foreign national Natalia Veselnitskaya with whom Don jr and others met on the third floor of Trump Tower. Donald Trump also violated bank and tax laws by radically changing the value of Seven Springs in a short time period; he raised the value he assigned to it when he used it as collateral for a loan and he lowered the value he assigned to the property to reduce his tax liability.
That's not a typo. In 1995, he bought the home for $7.5 million, and in 2013, it assessed at $18.9 million, but in between, Trump said it was worth $291 million. He soon after changed his mind and put its value at a less ridiculous figure.
So what explains that radical, one-year exaggeration? Trump, according to Cohen's materials and testimony, used inflated figures like these to deceive financial institutions for his benefit.
And if the evidence is correct, and the president tried to perpetrate a fraud against financial institutions, that could be a felony -- for which the statute of limitations has not expired.
Donald Trump also pressured the prime minister of Ukraine, Prime Minister Zelensky, to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden’s activities, dangling foreign aid already approved by Congress for Ukraine as bait. He didn’t ask for an actual investigation or to pursue an investigation quietly and determine if prosecution was appropriate. He simply wanted the announcement of an investigation of the son of his most likely political opponent. Making the receipt of foreign aid already approved by Congress (and Congress had already determined that the country met the anti-corruption standards) depend upon helping him politically by announcing an investigation into the son of his most likely political opponent is an abuse of power.
The House Impeachment Managers have proven that the President's abuse of power and congressional obstruction amount to the constitutional standard of ``high Crimes and Misdemeanors'' for which the sole remedy is conviction and removal from office.
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The first Article declares that the President abused his power by soliciting foreign interference to help his bid for reelection in the 2020 United States presidential election and conditioning United States government acts of significant value on the foreign power's cooperation. The second Article declares that the President obstructed Congress by directing the categorical, indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas for witness testimony and documents deemed vital to the House Impeachment inquiry.
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V. ARTICLE I: ABUSE OF POWER Article I of House Resolution 755 provides that, in the conduct of his office, the President abused his presidential powers, in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, through a scheme, or course of conduct, to solicit interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. presidential election for personal political gain. The scheme included President Trump soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election to his advantage and the disadvantage of a potential political opponent in that election.
It could also be viewed as soliciting a thing of value from a foreign national. Thus, this act was committing two crimes at one time. Finally, he attempted a coup in several ways by attempting to stay in office despite losing the electoral college according to the popular vote of the states. Included in this is inciting the insurrection which could also be seen as a crime on its own, apart from its usage as a means of staying in power despite losing the electoral college vote. There is also the investigation in Fulton County when Donald Trump pressured elections administrators to “find” enough votes to give him one more vote than his opponent, President Joe Biden, who defeated him. Finally, there is the matter which led to the search at Mar A Lago.
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James Comey stated that no “reasonable” prosecutor would file charges against Secretary Clinton in these circumstances.
“Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey announced after a lengthy recap of the investigation apparently designed to protect the integrity of his agency in a highly charged political atmosphere.
James Comey is a lifelong republican. Therefore, it can hardly be argued that this was an act of partisan loyalty.
From the FBI website:
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I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them...we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort….Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information...Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information...With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked.
And finally we have this important statement by Director Comey:
our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
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This was from the director of the FBI, a republican, who led the investigation. Notice that Secretary Clinton was not deemed to have willfully violated the law or to have intentionally mishandled classified information.
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On the other hand, for over a year and a half the federal government has attempted to induce Donald Trump to return these documents which contain information valuable for our national defense. Yet, he would not do so. This demonstrates a choice to defy the federal government. A Trump appointed judge found probable cause to believe a crime was occurring. We have since learned that the Espionage Act was involved, the names of covert spies, information about our nuclear weapons, and other vital defense information was in these documents being held at Mar A Lago.
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Thus, Dana Milbank writes that he’s fine with treating Trump according to the ‘Clinton standard’, but the real issue is that Trump was willful because the federal government repeatedly requested that the documents be returned over the course of a year and a half. Furthermore, there has been no suggestion that Hillary Clinton violated the Espionage Act. Moreover, from what has been reported, the documents at Mar A Lago were more vital to our national security.
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The Washington Post elsewhere examines key differences between the two.
What about Clinton’s emails? How Trump’s document controversy differs.
Republicans have complained that Trump could face legal jeopardy when Clinton was never charged. But applying the ‘Clinton standard’ reveals key differences
A core principle of our justice system, after all, is that the law be applied equally.
But that doesn’t mean the two situations are the same or even particularly similar. Even as our understanding of why the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month remains incomplete, some key differences have emerged.
But a key difference is that there is a lot of evidence that Trump resisted relinquishing these documents when the government repeatedly came knocking for them.
In a legal filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers insisted that he had been cooperating with Justice Department requests. In fact, however, the narrative they laid out, as well as other documents and interviews, show that Trump ignored multiple opportunities to quietly resolve the FBI concerns by handing over all classified material in his possession — including a grand jury subpoena that Trump’s team accepted May 11. Again and again, he reacted with a familiar mix of obstinance and outrage, causing some in his orbit to fear he was essentially daring the FBI to come after him.
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Let’s consider what Trump kept stashed there where a Ukranian born spy posing as Anna de Rothschild was.
Former President Donald Trump jeopardized some of the nation’s most classified defense and intelligence material -- from intercepted foreign communications to intelligence gathered by spies -- by stashing it improperly at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to an unsealed FBI affidavit. Some of the records contained markings indicating they contained intercepts of foreign communications, intelligence gained from human sources, and data collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law that set up a secret court to primarily approve spying on foreign nationals within the US.
This is a major issue since there was such limited security there. She golfed with him and she had access to Mar A Lago.
Reports of former President DONALD TRUMP storing 11 sets of classified documents, possibly containing nuclear weapons-related and “special access program” info, at Mar-a-Lago have centered attention on the sensitivity of those papers.
But the more important aspect, according to a former official who assisted GEORGE W. BUSH's handling of the government's classification system, is the lack of protection of those items.
But he doesn’t have the right to leave those papers lying around Mar-a-Lago for anyone to access, especially when the club is a counterintelligence nightmare with horrific security.
That, and the Presidential Records Act, is why Leonard felt it was “appropriate for the government to insist on recouping possession.”
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Russian-Speaking Immigrant Allegedly Entered Mar-A-Lago Using Fake Identity, Met With Trump, Report Says
The FBI has launched an investigation into a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant named Inna Yashchyshyn, who allegedly posed as a member of the Rothschild banking family to gain access to former President Donald Trump's inner circle at Mar-a-Lago, according to reporting from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
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At this point, the differences between the two should be quite apparent and the differences justify the prosecution of Donald Trump and the decision to not prosecute Hillary Clinton. If a decision is made to prosecute Donald Trump, republicans have threatened mayhem and riots. These aren’t simply republican voters and 3 percenters etc who violently support Donald Trump. The threats are coming from Senator Lindsay Graham and one of Trump’s attorneys and other prominent leaders within the Republican Party. From what we can tell, prosecuting Donald Trump for the Mar A Lago fiasco (and there are many other laws that he clearly broke as I wrote above) would be completely justified. These threats by Republican Party leaders if their former president is prosecuted when the facts and the law say he should be prosecuted are truly terrible. This is because it seems likely that Donald Trump violated the law (actually many serious laws) and it is possible that Donald Trump will be prosecuted. If this is the case and it is possible that both are the case, then we have leaders (including the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, the former president of the United States) of the Republican Party threatening civil war and riots and mayhem if somebody guilty of serious crimes is prosecuted. The logical conclusion of this is, in my view, absolutely staggering. At this point, the Republican Party seems to be more a criminal organization than a legal, law-abiding political party. And they are repeatedly using and threatening violence to achieve their political goals (cf the insurrection). Conservative attorney George Conway says that the DOJ has Donald Trump “dead to rights”. Andrew Weissmann says that the former president will be prosecuted.
Whether Graham understands the differences between the two or not, the fact that these types of threats are coming from a sitting republican senator and other prominent republican leaders reveals the dangerous nature of today’s Republican Party. Not long ago, they claimed to be the party of “law and order” and “back the blue” and the party that supported law enforcement. They tried to push this claim when there were BLM protests after the murder of George Floyd even though violence and destruction was minimal and limited to a tiny percentage of those who protested. However, the insurrection revealed that all of their claims to care about law and order and to back law enforcement were lies; they never really cared about this at all. These threats make that even more clear.
From Morning Joe at the six minute mark in the video below:
”Half of Donald Trump supporters support civil war Donald Trump is prosecuted..” but “55,56, 57 % of Americans think that the investigations into Donald Trump should move forward...” and “there is a growing awareness in the Republican Party, there is a growing awareness on the right that Donald Trump is the same president that , Donald Trump, (who) sneaked into the White House in 2016 after the letter (issued by James Comey and given to House Republican leaders), even Donald Trump said that it would not have happened on any other day, we could have had elections ten days in a row, I would have lost nine days, this was the day I could win, then Republicans lost in 2017, they lost local races, they lost local races in 2018 , in 2019, he is the only president since Herbert Hoover to lose the White House, the Senate, and the House in one term and now he has anointed candidates who are going to lose Pennsylvania, that are going to lose Arizona, that are backing him away from him fascinatingly, and it’s actually making Ohio a really competitive race, and that’s why you are starting to hear …. that Donald Trump is not the magic man that is going to win elections, he motivates democrats to vote, he motivates independents to vote,
Ben Shapiro tweet, “There is a reason why Democrats want to keep Trump at the center of the conversation, half of independents say that Trump is a major factor in their vote and they are breaking 4 -1 for the Democrats. Republicans shouldn’t play that game. If they do, they are cruising for a bruising.”
returning to Joe Scarborough, “and then Brit Hume came out and said the same thing. You lose with Trump, if you are the Republican Party, you probably win without him and yet this ever shrinking base seems to be more focused on violence, this ever shrinking base supporting Donald Trump, even within the Republican Party which, of course, puts the rest of the Republican Party just in a losing position, “
switches to Willie Geist, “ Yeah and this is something that Ben Shapiro said, Brit Hume and others are saying, something Mitch McConnell has been saying privately for a very long time. And we’ve seen it kind of spill out into the public saying, we’ve got bad candidates, and the subtext of that is we’ve got bad candidates because of the ones hand-picked by Donald Trump but also having Donald Trump at the center of the conversation, but also talking about an election that happened two years ago is not helpful to a party that believes it has a weak president on the ropes with low approval ratings although those are coming up, support is increasing for Joe Biden but they believe that this is fertile territory as you’ve said many times Joe, republicans should win in a wipeout just based upon historic (Joe Scarborough interrupts saying, “Big, it should be a huge year..” ) [returning to Willie Geist] precedents and the president’s approval ratings and everything else they have going for them (inflation, price of gas, ..) and yet they find themselves in a position where they may lose the Senate (he should have added the House as well) and they think that they have it in their grasp and the House is going to be much tighter potentially than they thought it would be “
(returns to Mika and Joe, especially Joe) ,”I will tell you one thing, Mika, that plays along with that, and Willie’s right, this should be a massive, massive year for republicans, you look at historically, you look at inflation, you look at what people are saying about the economy right now [this makes zero sense — yes the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters with negative growth in the gdp and this did happen, but look at the relentless and strong job creation numbers and any negative talk about the economy other than about worldwide inflation is silly] now, this should be a massive, historic landslide year for the Republican Party much like 2010 and 1994 (2010 is a terrible comparison — we had won so many seats in Congress, seats that were not sustainable, that there could be nothing but substantial losses — we had Senate seats in Nebraska {of all places} and Alaska and Arkansas and even Louisiana among other states )
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Jonathon Lemire 11 minutes in:
“(republicans because of the bad news revolving around Donald Trump want to) distract, deflect, talk about something else, they see the polls, their senate candidates are in trouble in a number of states, they are worried also about their ability to flip the House
[contrasted with]
And then you have President Biden, who is quite simply, on a roll, democrats, they have momentum, they have the wind at their back, a series of legislative wins, some bipartisan, some democrats only, and there is just a new energy, White House aides I spoke to say the place feels revitalized, they feel like as we hit Labor Day, the stretch run of the campaign, democrats love where they are and they are painting republicans as being out of touch with main street Americans on a number of issues: abortion, guns, yesterday we really heard him forcefully speak in defense of police and law enforcement, republicans aren’t doing that either, and then tomorrow night which is really sort of the kick off, democrats say to this stretch run, he’ll talk about how republicans are out of step with American values and democracy itself, it’s a primetime speech being delivered at Independence Hall. The stakes are big for this president and democrats feel like this is the moment when they make the case to the American people that the Republican Party does not represent American values.”
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Then we have Ari Melber and The Beat. This entire video is worth watching and it is only a little over ten minutes long.
Wednesday, Aug 31, 2022 · 8:04:57 PM +00:00
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Dem
Some of the transcription doesn’t read well. That’s because when people were speaking, they didn’t speak like they would write. I tried to be as faithful to the actual words spoken as I could while still presenting a coherent and intelligible text. It is likely difficult for the reader to formulate a thesis that ties the entire diary together in a coherent manner. I apologize for that failing. I spent many hours putting this diary together while pushing through my insomnia.
A thesis might be: Good news for the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden and bad news for the Republican Party and former President Donald Trump is evident in the events of the last couple of weeks. The investigation into the storage of documents at Mar-A-Lago looks increasingly serious and differs materially from the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. There is good reason to believe that a prosecution of Donald Trump is on the horizon. Everything that Trump touches dies and this includes the political fortunes of the Donald Trump endorsed republican candidates who are running in the midterms. Given historical trends, inflation, and the current president’s low approval ratings, it ought to be a great midterm for the Republican Party. However, their extremism, the serious nature of the investigations into Donald Trump, Dobbs, and other missteps have left the GOP on their heels. In contrast, President Biden and the Democratic Party have enjoyed a series of legislative wins and have had other good news boosting their chances for an unusually successful midterm.
Wednesday, Aug 31, 2022 · 8:30:21 PM +00:00
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Dem
A text I wrote to a friend:
“I am deeply concerned by the threats of violence from republicans if Donald Trump is prosecuted, whether it be for the events at Mar-A-Lago or his other crimes. That’s not because I am worried arout riots or a “civil war” although that does concern me, but rather I am concerned because these threats are not only coming from the violent white nationalist groups which support Trump like the 3 percenters and the Oath keepers and the like, but that they are also coming from elected republicans holding high offices and from prominent leaders of the Republican Party. It is very dangerous for our country to have one of the two major political parties in our country threatening riots and a civil war if one of their leaders is prosecuted when it looks like he has committed serious crimes. This makes it very much appear that the Republican Party is a lawless organization seeking power by any means necessary or possible instead of being a legal, law-abiding political party. Some 75 million voters voted for Donald Trump and these people almost exclusively get their “information” from extremist sources pushing for violent “solutions” to their political problems. Thus, they are likely to follow where Republican Party leaders lead even if it means violence. The insurrection was not a one off. Our country and our democracy are seriously imperiled.