Sunday, December 17, 2023

News bits: Openly authoritarian; Stolen US intelligence; Regarding the speed of justice

While the morally rotted, authoritarian radical right Republican Party bends itself into pretzels to deny or deflect from the undeniable fact that DJT is a full-blown dictator-kleptocrat, DJT just keeps tossing nasties into the GOP’s dark free speech punch bowl. One could probably say that when it comes to radical right messaging, he is a one-man
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The WaPo reports (not behind paywall) about the latest DJT nasty that is roiling the fluids in the Republican Party punch bowl:
Trump quotes Putin condemning American democracy, 
praises autocrat Orban

Trump also called Jan. 6 defendants “hostages” and again demonized immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country”

Republican polling leader Donald Trump approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary, part of an ongoing effort to deflect from his criminal prosecutions and spin alarms about eroding democracy against President Biden.

His speech at a presidential campaign rally here on Saturday also reprised dehumanizing language targeting immigrants that historians have likened to past authoritarians, including a reference that some civil rights advocates and experts in extremism have compared to Adolf Hitler’s fixation on blood purity.

And he used the term “hostages” to describe people charged with violent crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.  
Trump quoted Putin, the dictatorial Russia president ...., criticizing the criminal charges against Trump ..... In the quotation, Putin agreed with Trump’s own attempts to portray the prosecutions as politically motivated.

“It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” Trump quoted Putin saying in the speech. Trump added: “They’re all laughing at us.”
Regarding the racist dictator-kleptocrat Viktor Orban, the lying thug who killed democracy in Hungary, DJT commented about Orban’s praise of himself: Trump called him “highly respected” and welcomed his praise as “the man who can save the Western world.”

Geez people, it cannot be much clearer. DJT is a full-blown kleptocratic dictator. Corrupt dictators openly support him because they know he is one of them.
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Along with everyone else, CNN is reporting that sensitive US intelligence about the arguably successful Russian effort to put Trump in office in the 2016 election has been “lost.” CNN comments:
A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.

In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.

The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.  
The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.  
But an unredacted version of the binder containing the classified raw intelligence went missing amid the chaotic final hours of the Trump White House. The circumstances surrounding its disappearance remain shrouded in mystery.
There's no mystery here. There is about a 99.9% chance that DJT gave that stolen information to Putin or an aid or a high level supporter stole it for him. Either way, this is Trump's fault because he was in charge at the time of the theft. So, in addition to being an openly kleptocratic dictator, DJT is a filthy traitor who gives comfort and aid to dictators, in addition to having fomented his violent 1/6 coup attempt.

Shocking as it is, that morally rotted human evil is what most of the Republican Party elites and rank and file support for president in 2024-2025.
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There are very good reasons for wanting criminals to be prosecuted as fast as reasonably possible. Unreasonable delay allows criminal defendants a wonderful opportunity to complain that the delay was intentional, it hurt the defendant somehow or whatever else the accused deem worth complaining about. A great example of the repercussions of slow criminal prosecutions comes from the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith to have the USSC quickly rule whether DJT is immune from prosecution or not. Daily KOS writes:
In a furious tirade delivered during a speech in Iowa (video below), Trump lashed out at Smith's perfectly reasonable and legally astute request.

“Now they’re saying let’s rush it to the Supreme Court. We gotta rush it, rush it, rush it. They could have started three years ago. Everything - nothing changed. They could have started three years ago, but they didn’t. They started just recently with this crap. They started just recently. They could have brought this lawsuit three years ago, right after I left. It's been three years. But they didn’t do that. And now they're saying ‘We have to go immediately before the Supreme Court.’ This thing would have all been over with two years ago. But they waited and waited and waited.”
“And then they saw I was running. And they waited and then they saw I was hot. And they filed lawsuits. These are very dishonest people. That’s called election interference. These are very - and now they’re fighting like hell because they want to try and get a guilty plea from the Supreme Court of the United States, which I can’t imagine cause you have presidential immunity.”
Millions of DJT supporters will believe those lies and use it as more evidence to see a corrupt, politically motivated prosecution of an innocent, patriotic martyr. 

In May of 2021, I wrote a fun little piece and posted it here entitled Federal law enforcement continues to fail: Fire Merrick Garland. It was a complaint that Garland was letting DJT off the hook for clearly documented felonies. By then, I came to believe that Garland was not going to ever prosecute DJT for the multiple felony obstruction of justice crimes he committed to subvert the FBI and the Mueller investigation. That belief still stands as correct. Garland still has not indicted and prosecuted DJT for the obstruction felonies Mueller described in detail.

Worse than that, now DJT can never be prosecuted for some of his felonies. The statute of limitations has run out. Merrick Garland let DJT get away with felonies that struck at the heart of American democracy and the rule law. As far as I'm concerned, Garland should spend the rest of his rotten life in jail for treason. 

The ethics watchdog organization CREW compiled a table with a list of crimes credibly attributed to DJT. CREW commented: 
As of April 2023, Donald Trump has been credibly accused of committing at least 56 criminal offenses since he launched his campaign for president in 2015. Choosing not to pursue accountability for fear of political criticism or consequences is itself a deeply political act. The rule of law is not self-enforcing. The individuals who serve in the Department of Justice and in prosecutors’ offices across the country are charged with upholding it. They must pursue criminal charges against President Trump if the facts, law, and principles of prosecution support doing so.
Here are just a few of the crimes laid out in the CREW table, including felonies, for which DJT can no longer be tried or might still be open to trial for. Indictments for the Mueller obstruction charges might still be possible until sometime in 2024, but indictments seem very unlikely at this point. The felony obstruction charges were investigated and made public in Mueller's report, which was released April 18, 2019.


There’s a darn good reason that DJT obstructed Mueller’s investigation into Russia helping DJT win the 2016 election. Specifically, that is because with Russia’s help, DJT’s election made him an illegitimate president for 4 miserable years.

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