Tag: Donald Trump

Bill Barr’s ‘clean-up exercise’ to save his reputation actually reveals he was far more corrupt than anyone realized: columnist

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Former Attorney General William Barr is attempting to resuscitate his image after two years of using the Justice Department as a partisan defense agency for former President Donald Trump. In a new interview with reporter Jonathan Karl, Barr claimed he always knew Trump’s election conspiracy theories were “bullsh*t” and that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) begged him to help push back on them.

But on Monday, writing for The Washington Post‘s “The Plum Line,” columnist Greg Sargent argued that far from exonerating him, Barr’s new revelations show the depths of his corruption.

“Having gone to extraordinary lengths to help Donald Trump corrupt the presidency, William P. Barr is working overtime to launder his post-Trump reputation,” wrote Sargent. “But the former attorney general’s latest clean-up exercise may end up showing that the stain of his corruption is even darker than we thought — in a way that soils other Republicans as well.” Continue reading.

Donald Trump’s January 6

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The view from inside the Oval Office.

Seems like quite a few crazies,” said the president.

A little more than three weeks before rioters and revelers stormed the Capitol on January 6, several thousand Trump fans and fanatics gathered in Washington, D.C. There were the Proud Boys in elaborate dress, ZZ Top beards, and tie-dyed kilts — Enrique Tarrio, a Proud Boy organizer, got in line and took a public tour of the White House — who seemed to have appointed themselves Trump’s protectors and vanguard, as the Hells Angels had once done for the Rolling Stones. There were Trump impersonators and a wide variety of other made-for-the-cameras MAGA costumes. There were veterans — or people in military gear trying to suggest patriotism and firepower. There were older men and women, too — more Las Vegas than Altamont. Virtually all without masks.

“It’s like Let’s Make a Deal,” said Trump the next day to a caller, referencing the long-running game show from the 1960s — many of his references have never left this psychic era — on which audience members dressed up in foolish costumes to get the attention of the host.

The speakers at the December 12 event were themselves a retinue of Trump attention seekers: Michael Flynn, the former general who had briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser before being rolled out of office for lying to the FBI, had, after pleading guilty, reversed himself and abjectly reaffirmed his Trump loyalty, finally getting his pardon just days before the rally. Sebastian Gorka, a figure of uncertain provenance and function in the Trump White House during its first months, was one of the early oddballs to be pushed out when John Kelly became chief of staff and had pursued a Trump-based media career ever since. Also speaking: MyPillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell, a former drug addict and a current fevered conspiracist. Continue reading.

Former Trump Organization executive agrees Trump probably deserves to go to jail after ‘what I’ve observed over 20 years’

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Speaking to CNN host Jim Acosta on Sunday, former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res agreed that former President Donald Trump probably deserves to go to jail, from her observation.

The two discussed the deepening seriousness of the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against the Trump Organization. 

“I hear them talk about going after the Trump Organization, but the Trump Organization is not General Motors,” Res explained. “It was just a kind of loose thing that we called ourselves. I think it was incorporated, but later, after I started there. I’m sure that everything, every operation that he has, is held in a holding company or an LLC. So I’m not exactly sure what entities or where they’re going with this. Now, as far as Trump was concerned, if they were to get evidence against Trump, it would be to the extent that really nothing major has ever happened, to my knowledge. And this is confirmed by other people that worked for him much later, that he didn’t know about, nothing major. So, he is in with both legs.” Continue reading.

Republican Congressman can’t understand why Trump supporters went to ‘worship a loser’ at Ohio rally

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Former President Donald Trump’s Ohio rally is being mocked by many for being a celebration of a “loser.” Now Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) is joining in on the mockery.

Speaking to CNN Sunday, Kinzinger called the rally, eight months after the election, “a rally for a loser.”

“There are a lot of people that I’ve talked to that are mad at me for just telling the truth, which used to be a pretty basic low bar,” he told CNN host Pamela Brown. “That really truly believes that Donald Trump was elected president again. What you saw yesterday was a recycling of all his old talking points. It was a rally of a loser president. He’s the first president to lose re-election in decades. And I don’t know why these folks would go there and just short of worship a loser. They did. The interesting thing is he didn’t talk much about the candidate running against Anthony Gonzalez, who is a fantastic person, Anthony is. The guy running against him, at one point, Trump made it sound like he negotiated world peace in North Korea. The guy worked advance, which is really an entry-level position, not to put it down, but not negotiating with world leaders. And then he went into old recycled talking points. The problem is people believe this. They really do. And there are enough people that, frighteningly, believe he’ll be president again in August.” Continue reading.

Bombshell Barr interview reveals Trump had ‘criminal intent’ in election lies: ex-prosecutor

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On his YouTube channel, where he generally explains legal things for the layperson, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner walked through the recently posted interview with former Attorney General Bill Barr in The Atlantic. 

The report revealed one thing that could ultimately work against Trump in the investigation over whether he committed voter fraud in Georgia. After the state was called for Joe Biden, Trump called the governor and secretary of state to urge them to “find” him votes to overthrow the election. 

According to Kirschner, the interview with Barr proved that Trump was well aware that there was no voter fraud, no election problems and that he lost the 2020 election. Barr told him and Trump acknowledged it, speaking about himself in the third person saying, “you must hate Trump.” Continue reading.

Wisconsin GOP leaders call Trump ‘misinformed’ after the he claims they’re hiding election corruption

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Almost eight months after now-President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election, the former president continues to falsely claim that he was the real winner in Wisconsin — and he is bashing the Wisconsin Republicans who refuse to join him in the Big Lie. In an article published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on June 26, journalist Molly Beck takes a look at “divisions” among “Wisconsin Republicans over whether and how far to litigate the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”

Those divisions, according to Beck, were evident during the Wisconsin GOP’s annual convention on June 26. A small group of delegates, Beck reports, want to oust Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican over the 2020 election. At the convention, Beck reports, Vos announced that he “was hiring, at taxpayer expense, a former conservative Supreme Court justice to oversee an investigation by retired police detectives into the election — the third such review Vos has called for.”

However, Trump has been railing against Vos for not doing more to promote the Big Lie. Continue reading.

Wisconsin Republican used leftover funds from his failed campaign to attend Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ rally

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After losing to incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Kind in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District in the 2020 election, far-right Republican Derrick Van Orden had some campaign funds left over — and according to the Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger, he used some of that money to attend then-President Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6. 

Van Orden is running for Congress again in 2022, and he has been endorsed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy despite the fact that he openly promoted Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

In an article published by the Beast on June 27, Sollenberger explains, “Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and small-time actor, has previously acknowledged attending the January 6 rally, but has repeatedly claimed he never entered the Capitol grounds. However, social media posts from the riot suggest that isn’t true. A Facebook image from January 6 shows Van Orden standing on a wall on the Capitol grounds that was inside a restricted area. The Daily Beast recreated the photo on Friday and confirmed that Van Orden would have had to cross police barricades to reach that area.” Continue reading.

Trump’s big lie about 2020 results suffers legal and political blows in key swing states

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It was a bad week for the Big Lie — former President Donald Trump and his allies’ false claims that widespread fraud is to blame for his 2020 election loss.

In one battleground state, Republican senators issued a report that eviscerated Trump’s lies about voter fraud. In another, a judge undercut Trump’s supporters’ hopes to examine nearly 150,000 mail-in ballots. And one of Trump’s closest allies, Rudy Giuliani, was suspended from practicing law in New York. 

Trump and his conspiracy-minded supporters have eagerly been anticipating the conclusion of the problem-plagued audit of Maricopa County’s results in Arizona, but regardless of its final report, it will have no impact on the 2020 election results, as the election was already certified. Trump repeated his election lies at a rally in Ohio Saturday night, but last week’s blows underscored the reality that their options to continue contesting the 2020 election are narrowing. Continue reading.

Bill Barr on Trump’s election fraud claims: “It was all bullsh*t”

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Former Attorney General Bill Barr said the Justice Department always knew Trump’s claims of election fraud were “bullsh*t,” according to an excerpt from journalist Jonathan Karl’s upcoming book published in the The Atlantic.

Why it matters: Barr’s new comments come as Trump continues to propagate the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged.” Republicans in swing states now are conducting“audits” of election ballots based on false conspiracies about the election. 

Flashback: Last December, Barr told the AP: “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.” Continue reading.

Terrorism expert: Trump remains a major ‘national security’ threat to the United States

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Some Republicans recently accused New York Times reporter Maggie Gallagher of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” when she reported that according to her sources, former President Donald Trump believes he will be “reinstated” as president by August. But in fact, Gallagher’s reporting was accurate, and John Cohen— the top counterterrorism official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — believes that Trump’s delusion could lead to more political violence in the United States. On June 25, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace discussed Cohen’s warning with MSNBC contributor and former FBI counterterrorism expert Clint Watts, who commented on how much of a national security threat Trump continues to be.

Wallace, a Never Trump conservative who served in the George W. Bush Administration, told Watts, “It’s just jaw-dropping that the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president’s utterances are now a national security threat on an hourly, daily basis — to which Watts responded, “It is remarkable that it continues on.”

Watts told Wallace, “It’s also remarkable because there is still significant online discussion of this, which means —think if you’re a believer in this conspiracy, and you’ve seen everything from QAnon to January 6, the inauguration occurring, ballot recounts failing — and you still are pursuing this fantasy. How would it not lead to violence over time?” Continue reading.