Trump keeping 'war plans' makes it 'inconceivable' that he will escape indictment: former DOJ official - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism
By: David Badash, The New Civil Rights (Raw Story - Celebrating Years of Independent Journalism)
I'm sure trump has a reasonable explanation, ... er, I mean a lie his gullible supporters will believe...
A former top U.S. Dept. of Justice official says it is "inconceivable" that Donald Trump will not be charged, based on reports Special Counsel Jack Smith has an audio recording of the ex-president admitting he was in possession of a classified Pentagon document detailing a possible attack on Iran.
"I think if this audio tape exists, this is not a question of if there are going to be charges. It's just a question of when," announced NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann, the well-known former FBI General Counsel who worked at DOJ for two decades.
Importantly, Weissmann, who made his remarks on MSNBC Thursday, notes that the document in question, if it is as described, contains "war plans."
"And the proof that we have learned just publicly is so strong. And Jack Smith is such a competent and aggressive prosecutor. It is inconceivable to me that this would not be charged, and having a tape recording of the prospective defendant admitting his possession of a classified document that he had no right to have," Weissmann says.
"And not just any classified document. I think it's really important to remember that what he talks about reportedly, is a classified document involving something that is unbelievably sensitive, which is war plans of the United States against another country."
Where news broke Wednesday NYU Law professor of law Ryan Goodman, a former U.S. Dept. of Defense Special Counsel, wrote: "War plans are among the most highly classified documents. Puts pressure on DOJ to indict, and a jury to convict."
Some say, based on the audio, Trump might have been holding the document as he was being recorded at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort, allegedly discussing it.
"Make no mistake. This is squarely an Espionage Act case," Goodman also said, calling the news a "bombshell."
Explaining the gravity of the document, Weissmann notes, "this is not just taking love letters of Kim Jong Un or salacious material about the president in France. This is exactly what the Department of Justice and the intelligence community is worried about."
Continuing to explain just how serious this is, Weissmann served up the ground rules.
"Let's remember government documents, whether classified or not, belong to the government. They are not to be retained by a private citizen. And the former president is a private citizen. So for instance, when I was in the Department of Justice, the number of documents I could take when I left the Department of Justice would be zero. So you're not supposed to have that possession of government documents. If they are classified, there can be an additional type of charge, but it's not required that that material be classified or classified at a particular level."
"What you're looking at here is whether the person either knowingly took the documents or knowingly retained the documents. Important this tape recording, if it exists, as recorded, is that you've got Donald Trump admitting that he has in his possession a classified document - doesn't matter if it's Secret, Top Secret, it's classified, that itself is a crime."
And then finally, with respect to dissemination, the recording is that there does appear to be at least some dissemination of the information because Donald Trump, although he doesn't turn the document over or quote from it, he does talk about what is in there. In other words, the reason we're all talking about the fact that involves war plans involving Iran is because reportedly that is what Donald Trump said was in the document. If that proves out, that is a form of dissemination."
On social media later Thursday, Weissman tweeted, "Days, not months..." suggesting he believes an indictment of Trump would be coming sooner rather than later.
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all of their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) to whom you are replying to preserve continuity of this seed. Any use of the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" or the TDS acronym in a comment will be deleted. Any use of the term "Brandon", or any variation thereof, when referring to President Biden, will be deleted.
'as i understand it'
lol
he doesn't understand dick
fucking moron
"game over"
Proof once again that Trump is at best a fricking dumb ass.
trump's lawyers say they can't locate that document and didn't know it existed...
oops...
sounds like legal grounds for a few more search warrants to me...
better yet, jail the POS until his lawyers can produce the document.
We are almost at the "I did it, so what" stage of Trump denials about this.
he did that on hannity's show already...
that doesn't give him a get out of jail free card
that POS should be cooling his heels at club fed now, until he produces that document. the FBI should be tossing every property he owns until they find it.
LOL
In this case an evil-lifelong-criminal moron.
Without a doubt.
Not morons. Traitors.
Traitor is it exactly. In the past, he would have been up in front of a firing squad.
Actually he would not.....He has not been tried or convicted of treason and even back then it was necessary. Ah, inconvenient details of living in a non authoritarian country.
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looks like they've got more than enough evidence for any republican court of law. give the POS a cigarette and a blindfold... /s
We pretty much knew he would pull this crap as soon as he gave classified information to Russian officials. I wouldn't say he's a spy. He's too stupid. He's just too dumb to keep his big, stupid mouth shut when he has a chance to brag, and sees being in on all the big secrets as something to brag over.
We all knew why Putin wanted him in office.
everything has a monetary value to him and he has convinced himself that he could cash in on those documents, one way or another, even though they belong to america, not him ...
I wouldn't be surprised if there's more search warrants forthcoming, if it hasn't happened already. toss his trump tower condo, his bedminster golf club and home, his plane, the homes of his defective spawn, etc, etc... lock him up until he turns them over, just like anyone else that is illegally retaining classified materials. they just sentenced an air force colonel in florida to 3 years for illegally having classified documents in his home ffs...
That's it EXACTLY Sandy - the bragging - I don't know why, but I couldn't put it into words what the former 'president' was doing when it came to classified document like these
It's like - I KNOW what's in them but I can't tell you - and gloating while bragging about it
like a stupid child - an adult whose emotional growth was stunted at the middle school level or younger
Dare I say it? This time they really really really really realy really have him.
Given how much our justice system loves the rich, i bet gets away with it.
Unless of course they can actually prove guilt of something illegal.
I'm looking forward to the verbal assaults on his supporters.
Based on what I see on NT he has less supporters than you may think. Unless of course you count supporters as people that are not saying "Orange man bad, orange man traitor" a few dozen times on every seeded article. It seems alot of people here would actually rather not see Trump as the nominee. Now if the Dems could only nominate a viable alternative maybe we would have less people voting for Trump with a clothes pin on their nose (assuming he is nominated).
I know the truth hurts to the supporters/enablers of the former 'president'
That is totally irrelevant to what I said. That would be like me saying I know the truth hurts when Biden supporters finally realize Joe is totally incompetent(assuming they ever wake up to the truth at all).
Of course some people refuse to admit Trump was ever actually president. They usually use quotes around the word president when referring to him. Talk about denial.
People still supported Reagan for years...
Comparing Biden with Reagan.......interesting
Same shit different day. You don't remember everyone saying Reagan had Alzheimer's? The talk of the town was that Nancy actually ran things.
Biden is re-asserting the Reagan Doctrine with his aid to Ukraine. Reagan came to office following the Vietnam War and an anti-US Military abroad mood. Reagan turned to building international coalitions to reign in the Soviets and demonstrate power to other [potential enemies. He provided weapons, training and intelligence, as well as financial, diplomatic and humanitarian support.
Maybe we can count on Jill Biden like the country did with Edith Wilson from Oct 1919-Mar 21.
I seem to recall that particular narrative picked up steam after Reagan was out of office and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, not while he was running for president.
It does beg the question though: If Nancy ran things back then exactly who is running them now?
anything can happen between now and election 11/24. the purpose of elections is to give the voters a voice in the selection of the person that would best represent the interests of the collective american public, in america and the world. suggesting that there are americans that would choose a person with several pending criminal issues, and an alleged personal connection in the efforts to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power over a person whose age and dated accusations from dubious sources that have yet to be substantiated after numerous attempts, makes me question their allegiance to our constitution as well as their patriotism.
There was rumblings before he left office if I recall correctly.
Funny talking about how the dems should do this or the dems should do that, or else we will have to vote for trump...
Sounds like excuses to me.
are you sure you want to go down that road?
I seem to recall the same but I don't think it was really catching on until later. I don't recall him being quite as gone as Joe seems to be.
But I will admit I am not positive about that.
Did I say something that is not true or are you going to divert and say something like "but but but republicans"?
Sounds like the dems don't think they can supply a good candidate and any candidate should win because they are not Trump. That may have very well worked in 2016 before their candidate had 3 years (so far) of bad policies under his belt. Next time around just running on "not Trump" may not be enough.
I would rather count on Edith Watson.
Sorry but there is no way in hell I would vote for DeSantis if he was the nom.
Just curious, what do you think are his bad policies?
as far as I'm concerned, that monumental pile of shit never was President
with trump a growing inventory of evidence of his crimes is building. with biden there's only public speculation that hasn't been put before a court for lack of documented evidence. state and federal courts rule on presented evidence to a jury, the court of public opinion does not.
are you saying that there are no republicans that believe biden didn't win the 2020 election?
That is fine, I am sure you have your reasons for that and I respect the decision.
Joes bad policies have been argued ad nauseum here(like checking the box hiring, lack of any desire to unite the country, inflation, lying, lack of transparency, playing the Trump card way past its expiration date etc). And for every time someone posts a policy or decision that they feel was bad there is someone that will try to explain why it was good or someone elses fault. The same for Trump. I am not going down that rabbit hole again so you can keep up the 'but you are wrong and Joe is wonderful" narrative that I have already heard dozens of times before but suffice it to say IMO both myself and the country were better off before Joe and ultimately the buck does stop with him. Based on recent polls I am far from being alone in that assessment.
Until there are charges they are still on a level field. It will still be up to each individual to determine how much the candidates baggage will effect their decision as to who to vote for. A good candidate would help make that decision easier.
There was not one policy that you mentioned.
I am not saying that at all. My statement was people not admitting Donald was president. Like 6.2.21. My question was did I say something untrue or did you just want to try and deflect to the republican........like you just did.
suffice it to say IMO both myself and the country were better off before Joe and ultimately the buck does stop with him. Based on recent polls I am far from being alone in that assessment.
How were you better off three years ago?
“…lack of any desire to unite the country…”
How soon we forget the efforts to avoid economic collapse in forging a bipartisan debt deal.
“Based on recent polls…”
…and thus based on nothing.
You mean the negotiations that Joe was forced into because the House actually came up with a plan and he was going to take the fall if an agreement was not reached? And he still tried to demonize the MAGA crowd as he was doing it?
If CNN can't cover for Joe and admits the country would rather have Joe not run it is quite possibly true.
both of your deflections are easily recognized by anyone that can read.
Sounds like an election denier to me.
Yet you are the one dancing around a very simple question. Cool......
“…to demonize the MAGA crowd…”
The best result of this bipartisan resolution was to put the ‘MAGA crowd’ in their place. The lunatic fringe is dead and buried and now we can proceed like adults.
I don't see anything on that chart that costs less than it did three years ago. Except maybe tomatoes....
Actually I always questioned the actual power of the MAGA crowd. I think it is partially because no one can seem to agree on a good definition of exactly who they are. Do you actually think Joe will stop saying MAGA and extreme MAGA(whoever they are) every time the Republicans disagree with him?
So, what policy again?
why would I respond to a leading question that won't be posed to both sides equally and also serves to deflect further away from the topic of this seed? what "war plans" has biden kept from his term as VP, that he has admitted to on tape, have been subpoenaed, and now can't be located by his attorneys?
Thai red peppers, but I am growing them this year.
Then by all means don't. I wish you would have thought of that before responding to 6.2.3 (which was not to you anyway). It would have saved me lots of typing.
wish in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills faster...
“…no one can seem to agree on a good definition of exactly who they are.”
The hat wearing, flag waving, rally attending, election denying, go Brandon, 1/6 apologists that to this day crawl amongst us.
I will leave that up to you
get a little closer to the edge...
That is pretty specific.
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Biden was making a big deal out of a dozen or so people.
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You question was...
My answer is that I wasn't paying higher prices for everyday household goods than I was three years ago. If you need a policy to wonkster around then how about the Inflation Reduction Act.
this thread needs to return to the topic, or it will be closed.
That topic?..
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the article topic.
Exactly.....
Well then.. if Trump is indicted and charged then found guilty it will certainly help the Republicans out. Not so sure it helps Biden or the Democratic Party out though..
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trump's looking at a very strong possibility of 2 indictments within the next 60 days. save for 1, all the other declared candidates are holding their tongues hoping to inherit the maga base. if the GOP wind direction changes overnight, there's only 2 or 3 potential candidates then that won't be doing any backpedaling. the classified documents scandal is the catalyst that will cause unknown repercussions within the party. that's why I'm wagering that neither he nor desantis will be in contention this time next year. the probable GOP candidate probably hasn't even announced yet.
“…. the probable GOP candidate probably hasn't even announced yet.”
It’ll be DeSantis…warts and all. What somehow plays in Florida will not play in the states he needs to carry.
he's off on vacation while his house is on fire...
I thought you felt that the GoP base was MAGA? And you think it could change overnight?...
Yeah, and if that's the case, I would wager that whomever it is younger than Biden..
I think the majority of GOP primary voters are maga and I'm speculating that indictments could peel off a segment of those voters as well as activate more establishment GOP voters into primary participation if those indictments are damaging enough to exploit the current rift in the party. the conflicts are evident in their own polling. all guesses are equal at this stage of the game.
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Yes. The 2016 vote should have examined as the 2020 vote was.
I suspect everything the Trumplicans claimed happened in the 2020 vote MAY HAVE HAPPENED in 2016. In certain states.
What is so funny? Remember The Cyber Ninjas? You think that was funny too? You think all of the Trump inspired recounts, law suits, court proceedings were funny?
What do you think? Or, perhaps you don't. Cheap ass memes are cheap ass.
The only way Trump can avoid a political downfall is to make himself the victim, which he is doing more and more.
There are a lot of Republican voters who will never abandon him, for among other reasons, they dont believe he has done anything wrong. The question is , are there enough of those reality deniers to give him the nomination? As of right now I would say there are.
I had a relative in one of the alphabet agencies that were investigating election irregularities in states that didn't have paper ballot backups in 2016. those investigations had the plug pulled within days of trump's inauguration. sewage water under the bridge now, but it alerted them to weaknesses that were corrected for the 2020 election, the most safe and secure election in our history.
I do not understand why any news agency has not published a list of all arrests and convictions of voter fraud from the 2020 election. Their names and for whom they committed the fraud.
One example is the guy who appeared on FOX at least twice claiming someone stole his dead wife's absentee ballot and voted for Biden. I believe he was on Hannity and Tucker more than once. Well, later on he was arrested and convicted of voter fraud. He was the one that used his dead wife's ballot and voted for Trump. Am surprised MSNBC nor CNN gave this story the coverage it deserved considering what the Trumplicans were doing with 'their election' fraud accusations. And why wasn't FOX sued yet again for fostering lies which were proven in a court of law concerning this guy?
there's a guy in my state that killed his wife and forged her ballot to vote for trump. most of the documented voter fraud that occurred in 2020 across america was committed by trump voters.
The MAGA is the fraud. Will the Second Amendment ever be used to protect The Constitution from the internal malignancy of the MAGA?
The right wing had Hillary in cuffs "any day now" for over 23 years. Calm down.
... closer to 30 years. they've been running the same kind of negative PR campaign on the VP...
For fucks sake, the guy is on tape talking about classified documents that he has and possibly giving them to thrid partes. PRISON.
"I saved bin Suliman's ass." DJT. He was never asked what he saved the Saudi Crown Prince's ass from. The possible implications of that statement by a president of the US far over shadows any alleged document concerning any proposed action by the US government. If Trump goes down on this he's a lucky man. Far better than than being connected with and covering up a murder for a yet to be determined personal or political reason by another head of state.
He also believes he knows more about everything than anybody.
I'd say Trump is more typical of the ''know nothings'' than actually knowing something.
all bluster, no luster...
I'm really looking forward to watching the faithful lose their shit when trump gets indicted...
Blame the evil system and claim it has to be taken over to purge the woke...
their playbook is from the 1930's.
Almost reminds me of back in the Salem witch trial days...