The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Monday
Aug222022
Today's "Trumpy Tribune" News
Two entries/pages today. Non-Trumpy news appears in the second entry. Whatever comment you may wish to make, please enter it under the Trumpy Tribune page.
** Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office, [multiple] people said: that first batch of documents returned in January, another set provided by Mr. Trump's aides to the Justice Department in June and the material seized by the F.B.I. in the search this month.... And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months ... suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both.... Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021 ... before turning them over.... The Justice Department investigation is continuing, suggesting that officials are not certain whether they have recovered all the presidential records that Mr. Trump took with him from the White House.... Even after the extraordinary decision by the F.B.I. to execute a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, investigators have sought additional surveillance footage from the club....
“Mr. Trump's allies insist that the president had a 'standing order' to declassify material that left the Oval Office for the White House residence, and have claimed that the General Services Administration, not Mr. Trump's staff, packed the boxes with the documents.... National Archives officials spent much of 2021 trying to get back material from Mr. Trump, after learning that roughly two dozen boxes of presidential records material had been lingering in the White House residence for several months.... In May, after conducting a series of witness interviews, the department issued a subpoena for the return of remaining classified material....
"On June 3, Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national security division of the Justice Department, went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with two of Mr. Trump's lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, and retrieve any remaining classified material.... Mr. Corcoran went through the boxes himself to identify classified material beforehand.... Mr. Corcoran showed Mr. Bratt the basement storage room [off a well-trafficked hallway] where, he said, the remaining material had been kept.... Mr. Corcoran then drafted a statement, which Ms. Bobb, who is said to be the custodian of the documents, signed. It asserted that, to the best of her knowledge, all classified material that was there had been returned....
"While much of the [Mar-a-Lago security] footage [the DOJ obtained] showed hours of club employees walking through the busy corridor, some of it raised concerns for investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. It revealed people moving boxes in and out, and in some cases, appearing to change the containers some documents were held in." ~~~
~~~ Marie: If you don't have a NYT subscription, this article would be a good one on which to "spend" one of your monthly freebies. It's a lot easier to read than are my chopped-up "highlights." ~~~
~~~ Marie's Notes:
(1) I know I'm repeating myself, but here's a reminder that Trump's waving his Special Declassification Wand over a roomful of boxes does not make documents contained therein any more or less sensitive.
(2) "Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over." Don't you suppose as he was going through the boxes, he was telling an aide, "Copy this one, copy this one." You can bet Trump has squirreled away copies somewhere ... else. To interested parties, a copy of a strategic top-secret document is just as valuable as the original.
(3) Presuming some of these "multiple people" talked to or will talk to investigators, there's your evidence that Trump was the hands-on leader of the gang of docu-thieves. As Rachel Maddow put it Monday night, Trump's personal review of the boxes' contents "writes itself into the indictment."
(4) Quite a few people besides Trump seem to have handled those classified docs at Mar-a-Lago, among them Trump himself, the lawyers Corcoran & Bobb as well as the "people moving boxes in and out." You can be pretty sure that few or none of those people had top-secret clearance.
(5) "... two dozen boxes of presidential records material had been lingering in the White House residence for several months...." Those "lingering boxes" would have been accessible to a variety of White House staff & sundry guests of Donald & Melanie, most of whom did not have clearance to read them or take them home in their underwear.
(6) Corcoran & Bobb, by respectively drafting & signing a statement that all of the classified docs had been returned, put themselves in legal jeopardy. (As national security attorney Bradley Moss put it on MSNBC, "MAGA stands for "Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.") Either Corcoran & Moss were lying or Trump misinformed them. I'll bet they will be easy to flip. Andrew Weissman, a lead attorney on the Mueller investigation, said on MSNBC, "That is exactly what happened in the Paul Manafort case. Manafort told his lawyers what to convey to the Justice Department, which appeared to be untrue. We quickly got an order saying there was no attorney-client privilege there. The lawyers then said they had relied on Manafort's representations, and we charged Manafort with lying." (Paraphrase.)
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "The federal magistrate judge who authorized the warrant to search Donald Trump;s Mar-a-Lago estate emphasized Monday that he 'carefully reviewed' the FBI's sworn evidence before signing off and considers the facts contained in an accompanying affidavit to be 'reliable.' Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart offered his assessment in a 13-page order memorializing his decision to consider whether to unseal portions of the affidavit, which describe the evidence the bureau relied on to justify the search of the former president's home. Reinhart ruled last week that he would consider unsealing portions of the affidavit after conferring with the Justice Department and determining whether proposed redactions would be sufficient to protect the ongoing criminal investigation connected to the search. But in his order, Reinhart emphasized that he may ultimately agree with prosecutors that any redactions would be so extensive that they would render the document useless." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Oh yeah? That's what Politico says. Bearing in mind that Politico is somewhat right-wingy, it is not nearly right-wingy enough. The headline on the Fox "News"' report covering the same judge's same ruling is, "Judge Reinhart formally rejects DOJ argument to keep Trump affidavit sealed, calls raid 'unprecedented.'" This is largely bull. The written order backs up Judge Reinhart's oral order delivered last week, telling the prosecution to produce a redacted copy of the affidavit for his consideration. In the order, Reinhart acknowledges that it's possible that "partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion...." As for a "raid" on Mar-a-Lardo, I did a wordsearch of the judge's order, and the only reference to a "raid" is a Business Insider headline & link about how Breitbart & a former Trump aide have doxxed FBI agents involved in the search. Judge Reinhart does not use the term "raid." As for "unprecedented," well, yeah. Reinhart does refer to "an unprecedented search of a former President's residence." That's because law enforcement has never had to search the home of a real president. Since the passage in 1978 of the Presidential Records Act (in response to Nixon's plan to retain his papers [and tapes!]), no real president has been suspected of stealing documents & other items from the White House.
~~~ Probable Cause? 
According to Judge Reinhart's order, "On August 5, 2022, the Court issued a search warrant for the Premises after finding probable cause that evidence of multiple federal crimes would be found at the Premises ('the Warrant'). An FBI Special Agent's sworn affidavit ('the Affidavit') provided the facts to support the probable cause finding." Emphasis added. ~~~
Motion ad Whinem. Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "Hours after Judge Reinhart issued the order, lawyers for Mr. Trump filed a motion asking another federal judge [Aileen Cannon] in Florida -- ... whom Mr. Trump named to the bench -- to appoint an independent arbiter, known as a special master, to review the documents seized during the search for any that fell outside the scope of the warrant or that were protected by executive privilege or attorney-client privilege. The motion, which was filled with bombastic complaints about the search -- 'The government has long treated President Donald J. Trump unfairly,' it said at one point -- also asked the Justice Department to provide an 'informative receipt' of what was taken from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's home and club in Florida, on Aug. 8. His lawyers wrote that the inventory left at the property by the agents who conducted the search was 'legally deficient' and did 'little to identify' the seized material.... 'The United States will file its response in court,' [a DOJ spokesman said]." This report also covers Judge Reinhart's order. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post story, by Perry Stein & others, is here. The Guardian's story on the Trump's motion for a special master is here.
~~~ Andrew Weissmann, appearing on MSNBC, said he was tempted to call Trump's motion a press release and noted that it was full of false statements. DOJ lawyers, he noted, often remark that the department expresses itself in court, so its response to the "press release" may be of interest, filling out some of the info that might be blocked in the search warrant affidavit. ~~~
~~~ Stephen Collinson of CNN: "... Trump's filing -- the most concrete and aggressive formal legal move in the case so far -- is a classic of its genre. It fits squarely into the ex-President's history of using the legal system to delay, distract, distort and politicize accusations against him, a strategy that has often worked well to spare or postpone serious accountability. And it is also a characteristic example of how the former President often mixes and matches political and legal strategies when he comes under investigation."
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "The National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified material -- including 'special access program materials,' some of the most highly classified secrets in government -- in 15 boxes recovered from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in January, according to correspondence between the National Archivist and his legal team. The May 10 letter -- posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump's authorized authorized liaisons to the National Archives to review papers from his presidency -- showed that NARA and federal investigators had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by the warehousing of these documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as by Trump's resistance to sharing them with the FBI.... [The letter, from National Archivist Deborah Wall,] describes earlier correspondence in which Trump's team objected to disclosing the contents of the 15 boxes to the FBI.... The letter also shows that... DOJ asked President Joe Biden to authorize NARA to provide the records to investigators despite an effort by Trump to claim executive privilege over the records. Wall indicated she had rejected Trump's claim because of the significance of the documents to national security.... Biden, according to Wall, then delegated the privilege decision to her, in consultation with the Justice Department."
Jamie Gangel & Evan Perez of CNN: "The Justice Department has issued a new grand jury subpoena to the National Archives for more documents as part of its investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, two sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN. This latest subpoena, issued on August 17, is in addition to a subpoena the Department of Justice sent to the Archives earlier this year, requesting the same documents and information that the Archives had previously handed over to the House select committee investigating January 6."
Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "The group of congressional leaders charged with reviewing the most sensitive intelligence information has asked the Biden administration for access to the documents seized from ... Donald Trump's private residence in Florida, according to two people with direct knowledge of the request. The inquiry from the so-called 'Gang of 8' comes as lawmakers from both parties ... [are] unwilling to be ... bystander[s] in the political and legal fallout following the FBI's Aug. 8 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. It follows a similar request from Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), two Gang of 8 members who asked the nation's top intelligence official to draw up an assessment of possible national-security risks related to Trump's handling of the sensitive documents."
Geneva Sands of CNN: "The phones of several top Trump-era Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were deactivated when they left their positions and the data contained on them likely wiped, a court filing released late last week shows. The revelation came in a public records dispute between ICE and watchdog group American Oversight, which has sought emails and text messages from former acting ICE directors Thomas Homan, Matthew Albence and Ronald Vitiello in a controversial immigration-related case.... Under Trump-era rules, ICE instructed employees to erase data from their agency-issued mobile phones when they returned their devices or left the agency, according to the court filing."
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "The main argument against prosecuting Donald Trump -- or investigating him with an eye toward criminal prosecution == is that it will worsen an already volatile fracture in American society between Republicans and Democrats.... But [this notion] rests on two assumptions that can't support the weight that's been put on them. The first is the idea that American politics has, with Trump's departure from the White House, returned to a kind of normalcy.... [The other] is that it treats inaction as an apolitical and stability-enhancing move -- something that preserves the status quo as opposed to action, which upends it.... Fear of what Trump and his supports might do cannot and should not stand in the way of what we must do to secure the Constitution from all its enemies, foreign and domestic."
In yesterday's Comments thread, both Patrick & Ken W. warned us to get out the barf bags before reading National Review editor Rich Lowry's fact-challenged op-ed in the New York Times about what he claims is the "partisan" and "suspicious" nature of the investigations of Donald Trump. It seems Brian Beutler of Crooked agrees with Patrick & Ken:
Nearly every paragraph of Rich Lowry’s execrable op-ed contains a deception, delusion, or lie, but this part here is where he confesses to marrow-deep GOP corruption: if Trump faces real accountability for actual crimes, the GOP will gin up false pretexts to imprison Democrats. pic.twitter.com/7Vu4Sz27lc
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) August 22, 2022
Jon Swaine, et al., of the Washington Post: "Sensitive election system files obtained by attorneys [-- notably Sidney Powell --] working to overturn ... Donald Trump's 2020 defeat were shared with election deniers, conspiracy theorists and right-wing commentators, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post. A Georgia computer forensics firm [SullivanStrickler], hired by the attorneys, placed the files on a server, where company records show they were downloaded dozens of times. Among the downloaders were accounts associated with a Texas meteorologist who has appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show; a podcaster who suggested political enemies should be executed; a former pro surfer who pushed disproven theories that the 2020 election was manipulated; and a self-described former 'seduction and pickup coach' who claims to also have been a hacker.... The data files are described as copies of components from election systems in Coffee County, Ga., and Antrim County, Mich.... Data security expert Harri Hursti said in a court filing ... that widespread release of server images 'lowers the barrier to planning an attack against any election management system running this Dominion software.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: I don't quite understand exactly what Sidney's squad obtained & what they would do with it, but it sounds like they did compromise Dominion election systems & apparently intended to hack the systems for nefarious purposes. If not, why would you send the stuff to a seduction-coach/hacker guy? As usual, the Trump team members mind one of characters in a comic crime movie like "The Lavender Hill Mob."
Amy Wang & Peggy McGlone of the Washington Post: "The political action committee controlled by ... Donald Trump has made a $650,000 contribution to the Smithsonian Institution that will almost entirely fund portraits of Trump and former first lady Melania Trump for the National Portrait Gallery, marking the first time in recent memory that a political organization has financed a former president's portrait for the museum.... Two artists have been commissioned for the paintings of Donald and Melania Trump, but their names have not been released. The commission fees for the two Trump portraits will be $750,000, to be covered by the Save America PAC donation and a second private gift of $100,000 from an as-yet-unannounced donor, [a Smithsonian spokeswoman] said.... In the past, those portraits have been funded by private donations, usually from the supporters of the outgoing administration." ~~~
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Reader Comments (15)
It would be interesting to know, but we probably never will, just who
the crime family of Palm Beach had planned to sell information to.
Russian spies? Here's 300 million dollars for that 1 million condo
you have for sale so no one will ever know, ha, ha.
When I had a 'secret' clearance, it was on a 'need to know' basis.
I didn't need to know about troop movements. I only needed to know
about my own movements to and from wherever.
Was involved in lots of 'secret' facilities but never, ever saw any
documents marked 'secret' or 'top secret'.
I even had to sign my life away to never discuss anything I knew
about what I had done or had seen.
And here all those lackeys at Mar-a-Lardo with access to classified
material and copy machines.
They'll probably all get off scot free.
Marie,
I’m digging your Paint by the Dumber portrait of the Orange Monster.
I’m guessing, however, that the Fat Fascist already has his dweebs running through the National Portrait Gallery with measuring tapes to see which president’s picture is the biggest so’s he can demand that his be even larger. The NPG could save everyone a whole lot of trouble by just getting ahold of that big diapered Trump Baby balloon. Put it on a tether and voila! Trumpy portrait.
But if they need an actual painting of this loser and his “don’t care” “fuck Christmas” third wife, I suggest using the picture of Fatty pretending to drive a big truck, with sound effects “Vroom! Look’a me! I a big stwong twuck dwiver!” and for Melanie, that cheesecake photo of her in her Bond girl bikini holding an automatic weapon.
What a couple of clowns.
Just imagine visitors strolling by portraits of George and Martha, John and Abigail, then coming up on these two jabronis.
Outrage in Putin Land
One should never make light of someone’s demise, but it’s beyond ridiculous, the level of outrage over the death of the daughter of Putin’s whatchamacallit, political advisor (the so-called Putin’s Brain guy; I wonder if Vlad refers to him as “Turd Blossom”), in a car bomb explosion.
“This is terrible! An outrage!” they scream.
Meanwhile, here he is bombing baby hospitals in Ukraine and threatening to blow up a nuclear facility. So far, Putin has murdered almost 15,000 men, women, children, and infants in Ukraine, including military personnel, civilians, volunteers, and medical workers. But someone he knows gets killed in Russia and it’s “Holy shit! What a catastrophe! What kind of horrible people do such a thing?!?”
It’s always all about Putin. No wonder Trump loves him. Maybe he’ll demand a portrait of Putin next to his in the National Portrait Gallery. It makes sense. Without Russian help, Fatty would never have become president*.
Since we're devoting a page to the Pretender today, I'll get with the program.
So how is it that the Pretender stays in the headlines?
Many attribute it to his brilliance, his sagacious media manipulation.
I don't think so. The man is many things, but brilliant is certainly not one of them.
From his beginnings, the Pretender's so called brilliance has been positional and circumstantial. He's a wealthy narcissist who early learned that showmanship came naturally to him and that staying in the public eye benefitted him, engorging both his ego and his pocketbook. And the commercial media indulged and continues to indulge him.
That he became our pretend president was equally circumstantial, dependent on our nation's fractured history, an excess of idiot voters, his flawed opponent, a stupid FBI Director, and an Electoral College.
Again, anything from brilliance.
And now that he's the Former Guy, he stays in the news by breaking laws, something else that comes naturally to him. He does that, too, without thinking.
As I believe he does everything else.
The Pretender is not a thinker. He just acts. He's no more conscious than the wind and the rain.
He should be reported, if at all, on the weather page.
DiJiT's PAC is paying for the NPG portrait of a US prezdet?
It must be on the law-away plan for 2029, because DiJiT claims to be the sitting prez. NPG doesn't hang the portraits of current office holders.
DiJiT right now is probably trying to decide between the Louis XIV, the Napoleon, or the George III style of portrait -- there is so much gilt in each it must be hard to choose.
"Law away" is typo for lay away, but it kind of fits. Serendipity.
Special master. Another sad scam. But the longer he keeps the day of reckoning at bay, the more filthy lucre he can gobble on the never ending grift.
Now I see that that idiot Jared is getting the act. Send him $75 and he’ll send you a gen-U-whine copy of his (sounds like) dreadful tome. Autographed and everything.
I’m sure he’ll have plenty to go around. That DNF bomb is already being remaindered. But as with everything else, Kushner is a half-assed schmuck. Fatty would charge $1,000 for an autographed copy of one of his ghost written hack jobs. Oh, but that’s right. Who would pay even $10 for Jared’s exercise in self-aggrandizing, score settling waste of good paper? What a bunch.
Seriously, I have more respect for those guys selling Feiko watches on 7th Ave. than any of the sleazy grifters in the Trump gang,
@Ken Winkes: New Yorkers cannot stand Donald Trump. I mean, they really loathe him. So I have had a great deal of trouble, despite many people's efforts to try to explain it, what Trump's appeal is. And as nearly as I can figure out, Trump is the president* of losers. People who have not done as well in life as they think they deserve, people who have given up "making something of" themselves. "If you could buy her for what she is worth & sell her for what she thinks she's worth, you'd make a lot of money," a wise woman once told me about a mutual acquaintance.
Anyway, these Trumpbots look at Trump as a loser, too, but one who has managed to beat the system time again with some combination of lies and bullying & bravado. These are the people who slow down to look at traffic accidents not because they're sorry for the victims but because it pleases them to see somebody who is worse-off than they are. But, Trump, for them, is the guy who caused the accident, but drove away without a scratch and is now enjoying himself at his destination. He's a fuck-up, but he's a fuck-up who escapes consequences.
This is, IMO, a really good reason to indict and try him for some of the crimes of which he is guilty. And, with any luck, get a jury of rational people who will convict him. The losers he leads should learn that even the successful ones sometimes get caught.
Finally heard Joy Reid say what I have been wondering about. The minute Biden was sworn in, Trump became a private citizen and so has no more right to see or retain classified government documents than I do. Claims otherwise are just bullpucky (my word, not hers). Seems like the bottom line to me and I don't understand why other pundits and commentators aren't repeatedly pointing that out.....Yeah, I do: truth and facts don't make good click bait, also it would make MAGA mad.
@joyone: I've pointed it out at least twice.
@ Marie
Yup to all that. Toss in the greedy and the racists and you've defined the Pretender coalition.
A sad, sad bunch.
To Marie’s depiction of how New Yorkers respond to Trump, I’d add that in my time in New York, he was routinely seen as a clown, a bombastic blowhard, and an embarrassment. That said, you couldn’t walk past a newsstand back then (‘79-83) without seeing his posturing mug on the tabloids. But this was also the era of Spy magazine, which coined one of the more durable Trumpy descriptions of this narcissistic idiot, born on home plate who thought he hit a triple: short fingered vulgarian, an epithet that still riles up the tracing paper-thin skin of the spoiled son of his wealthy, scheming, white supremacist daddy.
Funnily enough, one of my college classmates, who entered the New York investment maelstrom in the early 80’s told me way back then, that he had had a meeting with the Fat Fascist. Having only recently spent a head-shaking half hour in the priapic, newly constructed Trumpy Tower mausoleum, I asked him what, if anything, he noticed was weird about this bellicose bullshit artist. Without missing a beat, he said “Wow. His hands are really small!”
Hahaha.
But here’s the thing we were all missing. The general sense that Trump was a loser narcissist (in short order he had deep sixed his casinos) not long after fucking up a purchase of the Park Plaza. Seriously, his do you lose $83 million on one of the most iconic properties in America?
Fatty had no problem doing it.
But back to the not so sub-text.
Trump’s lifelong history as a vicious, violent racist and bigot. While normal, smart, decent people looked at Trump as a headline grabbing clown, he was gaining adherents among the racists for his demand that (innocent) kids be executed for a crime they didn’t commit because they were black. This, and his belligerent, insulting, non-PC mien found a huge fan base among the racists in the Republican Party (about 90% of the party).
So while most of the media was treating him as a sideshow in 2016, the ground prepared by the Cheneys, Gingriches, Bushes, Roves, DeLays, Limbaughs, and a host of wild eyed racist and misogynistic pigs promoted the gigantic growth of haters and morons.
And now it doesn’t matter what people think who knew him when, now he is their Lucifer. Better to rule evil Republicans than decent Americans.
Can we call this Pretender news, one step removed?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/us/verdict-trial-gretchen-whitmer-kidnap.html
Back in April, 2017––-a month of budding flowers and Forest's grass looking greener, Marie said this:
""Trumpbots like Trump because they're gauche & rude, too, & they think his grotesquely bad manners justify or at least help normalize their own.""
That was then ––– and since then the man of the hour is still the man of the hour–––something he wallows in even if it means his demise. He's the face of those whose lives need his bombastic barrage of fury at a deep sense of inferiority––-losers––-something money will never fix.
The economic argument for the Pretender's appeal.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/05/12/wildland-the-making-of-americas-fury-osnos-hochschild/
Doesn't mention, as P.D. reminds us of Marie's earlier observation, that Mr. T. appealed to some simple because he was and is a lout.