Donald Trump Announces 2016 White House Bid

[spaminator]

Actor Jay Johnston, known for 'Bob's Burgers' character, arrested on Capitol riot charges
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Kunzelman
Published Jun 07, 2023 • 2 minute read

An actor known for his roles on the comedy television shows “Bob’s Burgers” and “Mr. Show with Bob and David” was arrested Wednesday on charges that he joined a mob of Donald Trump supporters in confronting police officers during the U.S. Capitol riot, court records show.


Jay Johnston, 54, of Los Angeles, was arrested there on charges including civil disorder, a felony. He is expected to make his initial court appearance in California on Wednesday. An attorney for Johnston didn’t immediately respond to a telephone call and text message seeking comment.


Video footage captured Johnston pushing against police and helping rioters who attacked officers guarding an entrance to the Capitol in a tunnel on the Lower West Terrace, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. Johnston held a stolen police shield over his head and passed it to other rioters during the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, the affidavit says.

Johnston “was close to the entrance to the tunnel, turned back and signaled for other rioters to come towards the entrance,” the agent wrote.


Johnston was the voice of the character Jimmy Pesto on Fox’s “Bob’s Burgers.” The Daily Beast reported in December 2021 that Johnston was “banned” from the animated show after the Jan. 6 attack.

Johnston appeared on “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” an HBO sketch comedy series that starred Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. His credits also include small parts on the television show “Arrested Development” and in the movie “Anchorman,” starring Will Ferrell.

United Airlines records show Johnston booked a round-trip flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., departing on Jan. 4, 2021, and returning a day after the riot, according to the FBI. Thousands of people stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 after attending then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally.


While the mob attacked police in the tunnel with pepper spray and other weapons, Johnston helped other rioters near the tunnel pour water on their faces and then joined in pushing against the line of officers, the FBI says.

“The rioters coordinated the timing of the pushes by yelling ‘Heave! Ho!”‘ the affidavit says.

Three current or former associates of Johnston identified him as a riot suspect from photos that the FBI published online, according to the agent. The FBI said one of those associates provided investigators with a text message in which Johnston acknowledged being at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The news has presented it as an attack. It actually wasn’t. Thought it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed and I found it quite untastic,” Johnston wrote, according to the FBI.

More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes for their conduct at the Capitol on a Jan. 6. More than 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 18 years, according to an Associated Press review of court records.

Actor Jay Johnston, known for 'Bob's Burgers' character, arrested on Capitol riot charges

Jay Johnston was arrested on charges that he joined a mob of Trump supporters in confronting police officers during the U.S. Capitol riot

torontosun.com

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

It was just a normal tourist visit with legitimate political discourse.

 

[spaminator]

Trump says he's been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Eric Tucker, Jill Colvin And Michael Balsamo
Published Jun 08, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 4 minute read

MIAMI — Donald Trump said Thursday that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.


The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately publicly confirm the indictment. But two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said that the indictment included seven criminal counts. One of those people said Trump’s lawyers were contacted by prosecutors shortly before he announced on his Truth Social platform that he had been indicted.


The indictment enmeshes the Justice Department in the most politically explosive prosecution in its long history. Its first case against a former president upends a Republican presidential primary that Trump is currently dominating and any felony charges would raise the prospect of a years-long prison sentence.

Within 20 minutes of his announcement, Trump, who said he was due in court Tuesday afternoon, had begun fundraising off it for his 2024 presidential campaign. He declared in a video, “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!” and repeated his familiar refrain that the investigation is a “witch hunt.”


The case adds to deepening legal jeopardy for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that also could lead to criminal charges. As the prosecution moves forward, it will pit Trump’s claims of sweeping executive power against Attorney General Merrick Garland’s oft-stated mantra that no person, including a former commander-in-chief, should be regarded as above the law.

The indictment arises from a months-long investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump broke the law by holding onto hundreds of documents marked as classified at his Palm Beach, Fla., property, Mar-a-Lago, and whether Trump took steps to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover the records.


Prosecutors have said that Trump took roughly 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including some 100 that were seized by the FBI last August in a search of the home that underscored the gravity of the Justice Department’s investigation.

Trump and his team have long seen the special counsel investigation as far more perilous than the New York matter — both politically and legally. Campaign aides had been bracing for the fallout since Trump’s attorneys were notified that he was the target of the investigation, assuming it was not a matter of if charges would be brought, but when.

But it remains unclear what the immediate and long-term political consequences will be for Trump. His first indictment spurred millions of dollars in contributions from angry supporters and didn’t damage Trump in the polls. No matter what, the indictment — and the legal fight that follows — will throw Trump back into the spotlight, sucking attention away from the other candidates who are trying to build momentum in the 2024 presidential race.


Trump has insisted that he was entitled to keep the classified documents when he left the White House, and has also claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.



The case is a milestone for a Justice Department that had investigated Trump for years — as president and private citizen — but had never before charged him with a crime. Garland was appointed by President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election in 2024.

The former president has long sought to use the mounting legal troubles to his political advantage, complaining on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign. He is likely to rely on that playbook again, reviving his longstanding claims that the Justice Department — which, during his presidency, investigated whether his 2016 campaign had colluded with Russia — is somehow weaponized against him.


Among the various state and federal investigations that Trump faces, legal experts — including Trump’s own former attorney general — had long seen the Mar-a-Lago probe as one of the most likely to result in indictment and the one where evidence seemed to favour the government. Court records unsealed last year showed federal investigators believed they had probable cause that multiple crimes had been committed, including the retention of national defence information, destruction of government records and obstruction of an investigation.

Since then, the Justice Department has amassed additional evidence and secured grand jury testimony from people close to Trump, including his own lawyers. The statutes governing the handling of classified records and obstruction are felonies that could carry years in prison in the event of a conviction.


Signs had mounted for weeks that an indictment was near, including a Monday meeting between Trump’s lawyers and Justice Department officials. After that meeting, Trump said on social media that he anticipated he could be charged, even as he insisted that he had done nothing wrong.

Though the bulk of the investigative work had been handled in Washington, with a grand jury meeting there for months, it recently emerged that prosecutors were presenting evidence before a separate panel in Florida, where many of the alleged acts of obstruction scrutinized by prosecutors — including efforts to move the boxes — took place.

Trump’s legal troubles extend beyond the New York indictment and classified documents case.

The special counsel has a separate probe underway focused on efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County is investigating Trump over alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election in that state.

Trump says he's been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents

Donald Trump said Tuesday he's been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Donald Trump described Pentagon plan of attack and shared classified map, indictment says
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Eric Tucker, Jill Colvin and Alanna Durkin Richer
Published Jun 09, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read

MIAMI — Former President Donald Trump described a Pentagon “plan of attack” and shared a classified map related to a military operation, according to a sweeping 37-count felony indictment related to the mishandling of classified documents that was unsealed Friday and that could instantly reshape the 2024 presidential race.


The indictment paints a damning portrait of Trump’s treatment of sensitive information, accusing him of willfully defying Justice Department demands to return documents he had taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and even enlisting aides in his efforts to hide the records and even telling his lawyers that we wanted to defy a subpoena for the materials stored in his estate.


“I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes,” one of Trump’s lawyers described the former president saying, according to the indictment. He also asked if it would be better “if we just told them we don’t have anything here.”

Startling in scope, and in the breadth of allegations, the indictment is built on Trump’s own words and actions as recounted to prosecutors by lawyers, close aides and other witnesses. Totaling nearly 50 pages, the detailed charging document — with allegations that Trump not only intentionally possessed classified documents but also cavalierly and boastfully showed them off to visitors — is likely to be harder for fellow Republicans to attack than an earlier New York case derided by some analysts as weak.


The indictment includes 37 counts, including willful retention of national defense information, obstruction and false statements, that taken together could result in a yearslong prison sentence.

Trump is due to make his first court appearance Tuesday in federal court in Miami, where the case was filed. He was charged alongside Walt Nauta, an aide and close adviser to Trump who prosecutors say brought boxes from a storage room to Trump’s residence for him to review and later lied to investigators about the movement. A photograph included in the indictment shows several dozen file boxes stacked in a storage area.

The case adds to deepening legal jeopardy for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that also could lead to criminal charges. But among the various investigations he has faced, legal experts — as well as Trump’s own aides — had long seen the Mar-a-Lago probe as the most perilous threat and the one most ripe for prosecution. Campaign aides had been bracing for the fallout since Trump’s attorneys were notified that he was the target of the investigation, assuming it was not a matter of if charges would be brought, but when.


Enumerating the defense and foreign intelligence-related information included in the documents, prosecutors wrote that their “unauthorized disclosure … could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Noting the “tens of thousands of members and guests” who visited the “active social club” of Mar-a-Lago between the end of Trump’s presidency in January 2021 through the August 2022 search, prosecutors argued that Trump had “nevertheless” stored the documents there, “including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, and office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.”

Donald Trump described Pentagon plan of attack and shared classified map, indictment says

Donald Trump described a Pentagon “plan of attack” and shared a classified map related to a military operation, according to an indictment.

torontosun.com

 

[Hoof Hearted]

So the engrained/ entitled/ ensconced Liberal Establishment goes after Trump again...what's new??

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

So the engrained/ entitled/ ensconced Liberal Establishment goes after Trump again...what's new??

When did this engrained/entitled/ensconced "Liberal Establishment" start, just out of curiosity?

 

[harrylee]

 

[petros]

When did this engrained/entitled/ensconced "Liberal Establishment" start, just out of curiosity?

Google Laurentian Consensus or Laurentian Elite

Have a nice day!

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

You think the alleged "entrenched Liberal Establishment" of the United States of America was caused by or started with a bunch of Canadian liberals?

OK. You have a real fine day now too, hear?

 

[pgs]

When did this engrained/entitled/ensconced "Liberal Establishment" start, just out of curiosity?

The day Trump won the Republican nomination .

 

[harrylee]

The day Trump won the Republican nomination .

Long before that....Does the name Clinton ring a bell?

 

[Hoof Hearted]

No different in Canada.

Every election, the Conservatives have to beat not only the Liberal Party, but the stacked Liberal media, the stacked Liberal Unions, and the life-long Liberal vote. It's a miracle they get into power every now and then.

 

[spaminator]

Sketch artist accused of making Trump too ‘good-looking’
Author of the articleenette Wilford
Published Jun 19, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 1 minute read

A courtroom sketch artist has been called out for depicting former President Donald Trump as younger and fitter than he is in real life.


“It’s rare I get any kind of feedback,” William J. Hennessy Jr. told the Boston Globe.


Hennessy, 65, was one of three sketch artists who covered Trump’s arraignment in federal court in Miami last week.

Hennessy’s courtroom illustrations of Trump had many criticizing his work, complaining that the sketches looked nothing like the man.

One Twitter user said it looked as if Hennessy was “going off of a photo of Trump from 40 years ago.”



Another added, “Clearly William J. Hennessy Jr. thinks Trump is young and thin.”

One person wondered, “Is this William J Hennessy Jr’s audition to do Trump’s official White House portrait?”

One person likened it to a “recent photo of his son Barron,” and included a split image of the sketch and Trump’s 17-year-old son.



Of his Trump sketches, Hennessy said the reviews are about “50-50” – some good, some not-so-much.

“Some said he looked too thin, too young, and some said he looked too good,” Hennessy said, noting to the Globe that the negative feedback seemed to come from people who “didn’t care much for Trump.”

He added that when he sketches, the goal is to capture the courtroom scenes like a camera would.

“I don’t editorialize,” Hennessy said. “I just draw what I see.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1668946478226702338

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1670272721694117888

Trump courtroom sketch artist takes criticism in stride: ‘It’s rare to get any feedback’ - The Boston Globe

Some on social media have taken issue with one of three sketch artists who attended Trump’s arraignment in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.

bostonglobe.com

Sketch artist accused of making Trump too ‘good-looking’

A courtroom sketch artist has been called out for depicting former President Donald Trump as younger and fitter than he is in real life.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Infowars host Owen Shroyer pleads guilty to Capitol riot charge
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Kunzelman
Published Jun 23, 2023 • 3 minute read

WASHINGTON — Infowars host Owen Shroyer, who promoted baseless claims of 2020 election fraud on the far-right internet platform, pleaded guilty on Friday to joining the mob of Donald Trump supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol.


Shroyer, who didn’t enter the Capitol but led rioters in chants near the top of the building’s steps, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of illegally entering a restricted area. The charge carries a maximum sentence of one year behind bars.


U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly scheduled a Sept. 12 sentencing hearing for the 33-year-old Shroyer, who has hosted a daily show called The War Room With Owen Shroyer for the website operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Shroyer stood in front of a crowd with a megaphone and yelled that Democrats are “tyrants.”

“And so today, on January 6, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!” he shouted.

Near the top of steps on the Capitol’s east side, Shroyer, who’s from Austin, Texas, led hundreds of rioters in chants of “USA!” and “1776!” He later said in an affidavit that he stood with Jones as Jones tried to deescalate the situation.


But, prosecutors wrote in a court filing, “Harkening to the last time Americans overthrew their government in a revolution while standing on the Capitol steps where elected representatives are certifying a Presidential Election you disagree with does not qualify as deescalation.”

Hundreds of people have been charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting a joint session of Congress for certifying the 2020 presidential election victory by Biden, a Democrat, over Trump, a Republican. Shroyer, who was charged in August 2021 with four misdemeanour counts, is among a few defendants who neither went inside the Capitol nor were accused of engaging in violence or destruction.

Shroyer’s attorney has accused prosecutors of trampling on Shroyer’s constitutional rights to “protest, speak freely and report the news.” Defence attorney Norm Pattis said Shroyer attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally as a journalist who intended to cover the event for his Infowars show.


“The First Amendment permits and protects the rights of individuals to assemble and engage in demonstrations that confront and criticize the government, even when those demonstrations become rowdy or unruly,” Pattis wrote.

Prosecutors said the First Amendment doesn’t protect the conduct for which Shroyer was charged.

“Shroyer’s claimed status as a journalist does not immunize him from criminal prosecution,” prosecutors wrote.

Shroyer, who has worked at Infowars since 2016, said he went to Washington, D.C., with Jones and others who worked for the website. Jones hasn’t been charged with any Jan. 6-related crimes.

An Infowars video promoting “the big D.C. marches on the 5th and 6th of January” ended with a graphic of Shroyer and others in front of the Capitol.


A day before the Capitol insurrection, Shroyer called in to a live Infowars broadcast and internet program and said, “Everybody knows this election was stolen.”

“Are we just going to sit here and become activists for four years or are we going to actually do something about this, whatever that cause or course of cause may be?” he added, according to prosecutors.

Shroyer said in an affidavit that he accompanied Jones and his security detail to Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.

“I walked with Mr. Jones up several steps and stood near him as he addressed the crowd from a bullhorn urging them to leave the area and behave peacefully,” Shroyer said.

Phone records showed that leaders of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group were in contact with Jones and Shroyer before and during the Jan. 6 riot, according to the House committee that investigated the attack. Enrique Tarrio, who was the Proud Boys’ national chairman, texted with Jones three times and Shroyer five times during the riot, and Proud Boys chapter leader Ethan Nordean exchanged 23 text messages with Shroyer in the two days before Jan. 6, the committee said.


Tarrio, Nordean and two other Proud Boys leaders were convicted in May of seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors said was a violent plot to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.

Shroyer is one of two Infowars employees arrested on Capitol riot charges. Samuel Montoya, who worked as a video editor for Jones’ website, was sentenced in April to four months of home detention. Montoya entered the Capitol and captured footage of a police officer fatally shooting a rioter, Ashli Babbitt.

More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 600 of them have pleaded guilty, while over 100 others have been convicted after a trial.

Infowars host Owen Shroyer pleads guilty to Capitol riot charge

Infowars host Owen Shroyer pleaded guilty on Friday to joining the mob of Donald Trump supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

In an audio recording, Donald Trump discusses a ‘highly confidential’ document with an interviewer
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Jun 27, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read

WASHINGTON — An audio recording from a meeting in which former President Donald Trump discusses a “highly confidential” document with an interviewer appears to undermine his later claim that he didn’t have such documents, only magazine and newspaper clippings.


The recording, from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort for people working on the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information.


The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance at the meeting with Trump — including a writer, a publisher and two of Trump’s staff members — were shown classified information about a Pentagon plan of attack on an unspecified foreign country.

“These are the papers,” Trump says in a moment that seems to indicate he’s holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. “This was done by the military, given to me.”


Trump’s reference to something he says is “highly confidential” and his apparent showing of documents to other people at the 2021 meeting could undercut his claim in a recent Fox News Channel interview that he didn’t have any documents with him.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers, and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said on Fox. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a 38-count indictment that also charged his aide and former valet Walt Nauta. Nauta is set to be arraigned Tuesday before a federal judge in Miami.

A Trump campaign spokesman said the audio recording, which first aired Monday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” “provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.”

http://cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/06/26/trump-audio-classified-documents-ac360-vpx.cnn

In an audio recording, Donald Trump discusses a ‘highly confidential’ document with an interviewer

An audio recording has emerged from a meeting in which Donald Trump discusses a “highly confidential” document with an interviewer.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

FBI and Homeland Security ignored 'massive amount' of intelligence before Jan. 6, Senate report says
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Mary Clare Jalonick
Published Jun 27, 2023 • 6 minute read

WASHINGTON — The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security downplayed or ignored “a massive amount of intelligence information” ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol, according to the chairman of a Senate panel that on Tuesday is releasing a new report on the intelligence failures ahead of the insurrection.


The report details how the agencies failed to recognize and warn of the potential for violence as some of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters openly planned the siege in messages and forums online.


Among the multitude of intelligence that was overlooked was a December 2020 tip to the FBI that members of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys planned to be in Washington, D.C., for the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and their “plan is to literally kill people,” the report said. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the agencies were also aware of many social media posts that foreshadowed violence, some calling on Trump’s supporters to “come armed” and storm the Capitol, kill lawmakers or “burn the place to the ground.”


Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel, said the breakdown was “largely a failure of imagination to see threats that the Capitol could be breached as credible,” echoing the findings of the Sept. 11 commission about intelligence failures ahead of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The report by the panel’s majority staff says the intelligence community has not entirely recalibrated to focus on the threats of domestic, rather than international, terrorism. And government intelligence leaders failed to sound the alarm “in part because they could not conceive that the U.S. Capitol Building would be overrun by rioters.”

Still, Peters said, the reasons for dismissing what he called a “massive” amount of intelligence “defies an easy explanation.”


While several other reports have examined the intelligence failures around Jan. 6 — including a bipartisan 2021 Senate report, the House Jan. 6 committee last year and several separate internal assessments by the Capitol Police and other government agencies — the latest investigation is the first congressional report to focus solely on the actions of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

In the wake of the attack, Peters said the committee interviewed officials at both agencies and found what was “pretty constant finger pointing” at each other.

“Everybody should be accountable because everybody failed,” Peters said.

Using emails and interviews collected by the Senate committee and others, including from the House Jan. 6 panel, the report lays out in detail the intelligence the agencies received in the weeks ahead of the attack.


There was not a failure to obtain evidence, the report says, but the agencies “failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners.”

As Trump, a Republican, falsely claimed he had won the 2020 election and tried to overturn his election defeat, telling his supporters to ” fight like hell ” in a speech in front of the White House that day, thousands of them marched to the Capitol. More than 2,000 rioters overran law enforcement, assaulted police officers, and caused more than $2.7 billion in damage to the Capitol, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report earlier this year.

Breaking through windows and doors, the rioters sent lawmakers running for their lives and temporarily interrupted the certification of the election victory by Biden, a Democrat.


Even as the attack was happening, the new report found, the FBI and Homeland Security downplayed the threat. As the Capitol Police struggled to clear the building, Homeland Security “was still struggling to assess the credibility of threats against the Capitol and to report out its intelligence.”

And at a 10 a.m. briefing as protesters gathered at Trump’s speech and near the Capitol were “wearing ballistic helmets, body armor, carrying radio equipment and military grade backpacks,” the FBI briefed that there were “no credible threats at this time.”

The lack of sufficient warnings meant that law enforcement were not adequately prepared and there was not a hardened perimeter established around the Capitol, as there is during events like the annual State of the Union address.


The report contains dozens of tips about violence on Jan. 6 that the agencies received and dismissed either due to lack of coordination, bureaucratic delays or trepidation on the part of those who were collecting it. The FBI, for example, was unexpectedly hindered in its attempt to find social media posts planning for Jan. 6 protests when the contract for its third-party social media monitoring tool expired. At Homeland Security, analysts were hesitant to report open-source intelligence after criticism in 2020 for collecting intelligence on American citizens during racial justice demonstrations.

One tip received by the FBI ahead of the Jan. 6 attack was from a former Justice Department official who sent screenshots of online posts from members of the Oath Keepers extremist group: “There is only one way in. It is not signs. It’s not rallies. It’s f—— bullets!”


The social media company Parler, a favoured platform for Trump’s supporters, directly sent the FBI several posts it found alarming, adding that there was “more where this came from” and that they were concerned about what would happen on Jan. 6.

“(T)his is not a rally and it’s no longer a protest,” read one of the Parler posts sent to the FBI, according to the report. “This is a final stand where we are drawing the red line at Capitol Hill. (…) don’t be surprised if we take the #capital (sic) building.”

But even as it received the warnings, the Senate panel found, the agency said over and over again that there were no credible threats.

“Our nation is still reckoning with the fallout from January 6th, but what is clear is the need for a reevaluation of the federal government’s domestic intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination processes,” the new report says.


In a statement, Homeland Security spokesperson Angelo Fernandez said that the department has made many of those changes two and a half years later. The department “has strengthened intelligence analysis, information sharing, and operational preparedness to help prevent acts of violence and keep our communities safe.”

The FBI said in a separate response that since the attack it has increased focus on “swift information sharing” and centralized the flow of information to ensure more timely notification to other entities. “The FBI is determined to aggressively fight the danger posed by all domestic violent extremists, regardless of their motivations,” the statement said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has defended the FBI’s handling of intelligence in the run-up to Jan. 6, including a report from its Norfolk field office on Jan. 5 that cited online posts foreshadowing the possibility of a “war” in Washington the following day. The Senate report noted that the memo “did not note the multitude of other warnings” the agency had received.


The faultfinding with the FBI and Homeland Security Department echoes the blistering criticism directed at U.S. Capitol Police in a bipartisan report issued by the Senate Homeland and Rules committees two years ago. That report found that the police intelligence unit knew about social media posts calling for violence, as well, but did not inform top leadership what they had found.

Peters says he asked for the probe of the intelligence agencies after other reports, such as the House panel’s investigation last year, focused on other aspects of the attack. The Jan. 6 panel was more focused on Trump’s actions, and concluded in its report that the former president criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

“It’s important for us to realize these failures to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Peters said.

— Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

FBI and Homeland Security ignored 'massive amount' of intelligence before Jan. 6, Senate report says

The FBI and the Homeland Security downplayed or ignored "a massive amount of intelligence information," according to a Senate report.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Trump countersues accuser E. Jean Carroll for defamation
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Larry Neumeister
Published Jun 28, 2023 • 2 minute read

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump is trying to turn the tables on the advice columnist who won a $5 million jury award against him in a sexual abuse lawsuit, saying in a countersuit that she owes him money and a retraction for continuing to insist she was raped even after a jury declined to agree.


Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate filed papers late Tuesday saying E. Jean Carroll should pay Trump unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and retract her damaging statements.


The countersuit comes a month after Carroll’s lawyers filed a rewritten defamation lawsuit seeking at least $10 million more from Trump over comments he made after the jury verdict in May.

The jury concluded after a two-week trial that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in spring 1996. It also found that he defamed her in comments he made denying the attack last October.


But the jury rejected Carroll’s claim, first made in a 2019 memoir, that Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.


At trial, Carroll testified that the rape occurred after a chance encounter with Trump at the midtown store, initially friendly and flirtatious, turned into a violent assault after they teased each other to try on a piece of lingerie.

Trump has consistently denied ever raping Carroll or knowing her. He said the department store encounter never happened.

In his countersuit, Trump’s lawyers cited comments Carroll made in a CNN interview after May’s verdict, saying that when she was questioned about the jury’s finding that she was not raped, Carroll responded: “Oh yes he did, oh yes he did.”

And they said Carroll also revealed that when she spoke to Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately after the verdict, she said she told him emphatically: “He did it and you know it.”


The lawyers, Alina Habba and Michael T. Madaio, wrote that Carroll “made these statements knowing each of them were false or with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.”

“The Interview was on television, social media and multiple internet websites, with the intention of broadcasting and circulating these defamatory statements among a significant portion of the public,” they added.

In a statement in response to Trump’s counterclaim, Carroll attorney Robbie Kaplan said that Trump “again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll by forcibly inserting his fingers into her vagina.”

She said four of five statements cited by the counterclaim were made outside of the one-year statute of limitations when a claim must be made and predicted the other will be dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.


“Trump’s filing is thus nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E Jean Carroll. But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon,” Kaplan said. Kaplan is not related to the judge.

Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president again next year, did not appear at the initial trial. But extensive excerpts of his recorded deposition were played for jurors, along with an infamous video revealed shortly before Trump’s 2016 election in which he bragged that celebrities can grab women sexually without consent.

Trump countersues accuser E. Jean Carroll for defamation

Donald Trump is trying to turn the tables on the advice columnist who won a $5 million jury award against him in a sexual abuse lawsuit.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Judge rejects Donald Trump’s request to toss out defamation claims by columnist
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Larry Neumeister
Published Jun 29, 2023 • 3 minute read

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s claims that absolute presidential immunity and free speech rights shield him from the defamation claims of a New York columnist were rejected Thursday by a federal judge.


The writer, E. Jean Carroll, can continue to press claims that Trump owes her at least $10 million in damages for comments he made before and after she won a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict against him last month, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said in a written opinion.


Trump tried to dismiss the lawsuit on grounds that he is entitled to absolute presidential immunity, his statements were not defamatory and that his statements were opinion protected by free speech rights.

Kaplan said Trump surrendered absolute presidential immunity as a defense by failing to assert it years ago when the lawsuit was filed. The lawsuit was delayed until recently as appeals courts considered legal issues surrounding it.

Trump countersued Carroll this week, claiming that she has libeled him by continuing to insist that he raped her even after a jury found otherwise.


After a jury returned its verdict last month in Manhattan federal court, Trump made comments on a CNN town hall that prompted Carroll to assert new defamation claims in a 2020 defamation lawsuit.

The jury award resulted from a sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit filed last November after New York state temporarily enacted a law allowing sexual assault victims to sue for damages resulting from attacks that occurred even decades earlier.

Trump’s claims in the CNN broadcast mirrored statements he made while president in 2019 when Carroll published a memoir in which she claimed Trump raped her in the dressing room of a luxury midtown Manhattan department store in spring 1996.

Within hours of excerpts from the book being published in a magazine, Trump denied a rape occurred or that he ever knew Carroll.


“Mr. Trump did not merely deny Ms. Carroll’s accusation of sexual assault,” Kaplan wrote. “Instead, he accused Ms. Carroll of lying about him sexually assaulting her in order to increase sales of her book, gain publicity, and/or carry out a political agenda.”

The judge said the main purpose of presidential immunity was to avoid diverting the president from public duties, but it was not a “get-out-of-damages-liability-free card that permits the president to say or do anything he or she desires even if that conduct is disconnected entirely from an official function.”

Kaplan said he took into consideration that Carroll is now 79 years old and has pursued claims against Trump for 3 1/2 years.

“There is no basis to risk prolonging the resolution of this litigation further by permitting Mr. Trump to raise his absolute immunity defense now at the eleventh hour when he could have done so years ago,” he said.


In rejecting claims that Carroll’s lawsuit was about protected speech, Kaplan explained how libel and slander are handled in the courts and why Trump’s statements could be construed to fit the legal definition for defamation, including that a jury had already found it so.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately comment.

Attorney Robbie Kaplan, who represents Carroll and is unrelated to the judge, said in a statement that the judge’s ruling “confirms that once again, Donald Trump’s supposed defenses to E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claims don’t work.”

She added: “Today’s decision removes one more impediment to the January 15 trial on E Jean’s defamation damages in this case.”

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Judge rejects Donald Trump’s request to toss out defamation claims by columnist

Donald Trump's claims that absolute presidential immunity shield him from the defamation claims of a New York columnist were rejected

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

In Trump case, Justice Dept. unseals previously blacked-out portions from search warrant application
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Eric Tucker
Published Jul 05, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read
A portion of the affidavit in support of a warrant to search former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., released by the Justice Department, is photographed July 5, 2023.
A portion of the affidavit in support of a warrant to search former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., released by the Justice Department, is photographed July 5, 2023. PHOTO BY JON ELSWICK /AP Photo
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday disclosed some of the previously blacked-out portions of a warrant application it submitted last year to gain authorization to search former President Donald Trump’s Florida property for classified documents.


Key portions of the document had already been made public, but media organizations including The Associated Press had pressed for further unsealing in light of a 38-count indictment last month charging Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, with concealing classified records at Mar-a-Lago from investigators. The magistrate judge, Bruce Reinhart, declined to order the Justice Department to unseal the search warrant affidavit in its entirety but did require prosecutors to publicly file a less-redacted affidavit.


Many of the newly revealed paragraphs recounted how surveillance camera footage from inside the property showed dozens of boxes being relocated in the days before FBI and Justice Department investigators visited the home to collect records. During that June 3, 2022, visit, law enforcement officials were handed an envelope of 38 classified documents and told that all records sought by a subpoena were being turned over and that a “diligent search” of the home had been done.


A portion of the affidavit in support of a warrant to search former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., released by the Justice Department, is photographed July 5, 2023.
A portion of the affidavit in support of a warrant to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., released by the Justice Department, is photographed July 5, 2023. PHOTO BY JON ELSWICK /AP Photo
The movement of boxes by Nauta was detailed in last month’s indictment, but its inclusion in the search warrant affidavit helps explain why the Justice Department felt it had probable cause to search Trump’s home on Aug. 8, 2022, and why investigators were concerned that documents were being intentionally withheld from them.

The affidavit recounts how someone identified only as “Witness 5” was seen on multiple days carrying either cardboard or bankers’ boxes in and out of the anteroom. The affidavit does not mention Nauta by name, but the dates of the actions — as well as of an FBI interview “during which the location of boxes was a significant subject of questioning” — line up with the dates cited in the indictment.

Nauta is set to be arraigned in federal court on Miami on Thursday. Trump has already pleaded not guilty to more than three dozen felony counts, many alleging willful retention of national defence information.

In Trump case, Justice Dept. unseals previously blacked-out portions from search warrant application

The Justice Department on Wednesday disclosed some of the previously blacked-out portions of a warrant application it submitted last year.

torontosun.com

 

[Serryah]

... JFC...