Tag: jack smith
Stephen Miller's Latest Loony Claims Of Trump's Immunity From Prosecution

Stephen Miller's Latest Loony Claims Of Trump's Immunity From Prosecution

You’re going to love this: the latest brief in the Mar-a-Lago documents case came from Stephen Miller. Yes, that Stephen Miller, the one who came up with the plan of ripping babies out of the arms of their mothers at the Southern Border. He still defends it as a good idea and has given interviews saying there are plans to repeat the policy of breaking up families if Trump is elected in November.

Miller has another wonderful idea this time -- that it was just fine for Donald Trump to leave the White House in 2021 taking a truckload of top-secret documents with him, because they were Trump’s secrets, not the government’s. Miller’s right-wing legal operation, the America First Legal Foundation – old Stevie just can’t get away from those intimations of the Nazi era, can he? – filed a friend of the court brief with Judge Aileen Cannon down in Florida supporting Trump’s position that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) allows him to do whatever the hell he wants to with his White House papers.

The PRA allows no such thing. The act, passed by Congress after the criminal presidency of Richard Nixon, requires every president to turn over all papers deriving from his time in office to the National Archives. Miller’s little nest of right-wing legal mice say the PRA doesn’t apply to Donald Trump because, well, because Donald Trump says so.

It's a little more complicated than that, but not by much. Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a reply brief to Miller’s 28 pages of legal blatherings. Leaving aside its signature page and certificate of service, Smith’s reply brief is all of five pages long. Smith uses a single word to describe the three contentions of Miller’s legal arguments: Wrong.

Reading the Special Counsel’s brief, you can feel him wearying of replying to Trump’s blizzard of filings in the cases Smith has against him in Washington and Florida. Trump’s basic position, backed up most recently by his loyal underling Miller, is this: Yeah, I did it, but you can’t get me because I’m Donald Trump.

Miller’s brief supporting Trump takes the utterly absurd position that the charges against him in the Mar a Lago case must be dropped because they all derive from a criminal referral by the National Archives, which spent 18 months practically begging Trump to turn over his trove of secrets before they called the FBI. Miller’s legal brief says the National Archives can’t call the FBI because all they are is a records depository and don’t have the statutory authority to report a crime. According to Miller’s MAGA theory, the National Archives needs a “regulation” to be allowed to pick up the phone and report a crime.

Smith, with Job-like patience, points out that if Miller is right, that means if a thief enters the National Archives and starts waving a gun around, it would be impermissible for the Archives to call the cops. Smith’s brief points Judge Cannon to the fact that the National Archives, as an entity of the federal government, has an inspector general on its staff, and by federal regulation, all inspector generals are “required to report expeditiously to the Attorney General whenever the Inspector General has reasonable grounds to believe there has been a violation of Federal criminal law.”

The Special Counsel has had to file response after response to motions made by Donald Trump to dismiss charges against him, and every one of those motions takes the same position. Yeah, he did it, but this is why you can’t go after him. He’s immune from prosecution. The prosecution is “selective and vindictive.” Because everybody else got away with it, so should Trump.

Trump is accused in the Mar-a-Lago case of removing important national security information from the White House and failing to secure it by storing top-secret papers, including some that contained secrets about nuclear weapons, in places like a bathroom and a ballroom. But that’s okay, according to Trump’s lawyers, because according to yet another case against Trump, “the President’s actions do not fall beyond the outer perimeter of official responsibility merely because they are unlawful or taken for a forbidden purpose.”

Judge Tanya Chutkan had it right when she dismissed Trump’s first claim of absolute immunity. What he wants is a get of out jail free card. Reelecting Trump will give him a whole pocketful. Every time he holds a rally, he promises to free “the January 6 hostages” with presidential pardons.

That’s bad enough, but what we’ve really got to be afraid of is his promise to turn around and put his enemies in jail. At his rallies, “lock her up” has turned into a chant of “lock them up.”

Remember, we are them.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

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"Stay Peaceful": The Tweet Trump Never Wrote On January 6

"Stay Peaceful": The Tweet Trump Never Wrote On January 6

On Sunday, ABC News reported on alleged statements from Donald Trump staffers forced to testify to special counsel Jack Smith about events on January 6, 2021. Included was former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, who continues to work for Trump as a paid adviser to his election campaign. Those statements shred any idea that Trump did anything other than support the insurgency.

The result of testimony by Scavino and others who were present in the White House as the Trumpist mob stormed the Capitol doesn’t just confirm what was already known—that Trump sat and watched images of the insurrection without taking action—it undercuts a critical item that supporters have been using in an effort to distance Trump from assaults on police and threats against members of Congress.

A tweet including the phrase “stay peaceful,” which appeared on Trump’s Twitter account almost half an hour after the pro-Trump forces smashed through the windows of the Capitol, was not written by Trump. Instead, it was both written and posted by Scavino while Trump sat cheering on the attack.

The “stay peaceful” part of the tweet was always a lie. The message appeared over an hour after police on the scene first reported injuries and called for backup as the Trump mob forced them to retreat to the Capitol steps and broke through line after line. It was far too late for Trump’s supporters to stay peaceful.

The brief tweet seems to be urging Trump supporters to at least halt their assaults on the police, though it notably doesn’t call for them to withdraw from the Capitol.

But even this small gesture turns out to be a lie. According to the testimony reported by ABC, the tweet came as Trump was sitting in the White House dining room “with his arms folded and his eyes locked on the TV,” angrily cheering on the insurgents. After 20 minutes of trying to get Trump to send some kind of message to calm the situation, Scavino and other aides stepped out of the room.

When they did, Trump pulled out his phone and posted to Twitter.

This tweet spurring the insurgents on was authentically written and posted by Trump.

After seeing this message, Scavino and others returned to the dining room and told Trump this wasn’t what was needed to resolve the situation. “But it’s true,” said Trump. When he was told that Pence had to be rushed to a secure location, Trump responded, "So what?"

It was only after this, with pro-Trump insurgents already inside the Capitol and assaults on police continuing, that Scavino—who also had access to Trump’s Twitter account—wrote and published the “stay peaceful” tweet. Scavino reportedly showed the tweet to Trump before it was posted and was given permission to send it.

During the afternoon, at least six of Trump’s closest assistants urged him to say something to end the situation. Trump either ignored them or outright refused. He did the same when Ivanka reportedly appeared to beg him to end the insurrection.

Instead, Trump just kept watching Fox News coverage. When he did speak, it was to justify the assault or to continue false claims that he had won the election. As images of the rampage inside the Capitol were shown, Trump reportedly said only, “This is what happens when they try to steal an election.”

Finally, almost two hours after the Scavino tweet, Jared Kushner talked Trump into sending a video that eventually helped to end the event. But even then, that brief video informed the insurgents that they were “very special,” declared that Trump loved them, and insisted that “this was a fraudulent election.” It wasn’t a warning to the insurgents. It was a pat on the head.

The new elements of this story show that Smith’s investigation has only clarified and reinforced the worst of what was already known about Trump’s actions—and inactions—on Jan. 6. Trump wasn’t ignorant of what was happening at the Capitol, he was fixated on those events, watching every minute unfold. He didn’t just fail to act, he refused to act in the face of repeated requests from his closest advisers, members of Congress, and his daughter. Scavino only agreed to provide this testimony to Smith’s office after losing a battle over a federal subpoena.

The single action of the afternoon that was seen by some as exculpatory wasn’t written or posted by Trump. Instead, Trump was directly responsible only for the tweet that encouraged his followers to take out their wrath on Pence.

Trump had better hope his pressure tactics against his Supreme Court appointees are effective. That could be his only chance.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Jack Smith

Copy of Smith's Immunity Case Brief Suggests Trump Committed Serious Crimes ​

In his recent briefing challenging former President Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith suggested the ex-president may have committed multiple serious offenses.

The Daily Beastreported Wednesday that in an 82-page briefing Smith's team submitted over the holiday weekend to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump could have carried out any hypothetical crime, from ordering the FBI to fabricate evidence against political opponents, ordering a US military assassination or selling nuclear secrets to a foreign country. Smith made this argument in response to Trump's assertions that immunity would apply in any situation where there is "correspondence with a state official about a matter in which there is a federal interest, a meeting with a member of the Executive Branch or a statement on a matter of public concern."

"In each of these scenarios, the President could assert that he was simply executing the laws; or communicating with the Department of Justice; or discharging his powers as Commander-in-Chief; or engaging in foreign diplomacy," DOJ prosecutors wrote. "Under the defendant’s framework, the Nation would have no recourse to deter a President from inciting his supporters during a State of the Union address to kill opposing lawmakers — thereby hamstringing any impeachment proceeding — to ensure that he remains in office unlawfully."

Anti-Trump conservative attorney George Conway tweeted that the briefing includes an "interesting choice of hypotheticals," and sarcastically remarked that "it took quite an imagination" for Smith's team to suggest those crimes. Of course, one of the major concerns in the former president's classified documents trial is that Trump took top-secret documents pertaining to nuclear weapons with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving the White House.

The briefing includes arguments similar to those Smith made when challenging Trump's immunity claim in US District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing the scheduled March 4 trial. Chutkan temporarily paused proceedings while the higher courts considered the immunity question, following her early December ruling against the former commander-in-chief. The trial date has not yet been changed despite the ongoing appeals process.

Jack Smith's team is arguing to the DC Circuit that the judiciary should reject Trump's immunity claim, after the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejected the special counsel's request to have the nation's highest court hear the immunity question ahead of the appellate court. A three-judge panel consisting of two appointees of President Joe Biden and one George H.W. Bush appointee will hold a hearing to decide the question next week.

Trump's scheduled March 4 trial in Washington, DC for alleged election interference will take place on the eve of the pivotal Super Tuesday primaries, where delegate-rich states like California and Texas will hold their nominating contests along with roughly a dozen other states.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

John Eastman

Report: Jack Smith May Be Close To Indicting Major Trump Coup Plotter

Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith is requesting court records from a lesser-known case in California, and the dates of records requested line up with the dates that former Donald Trump attorney John Eastman took the stand.

Politico reported Thursday that Smith's team is asking for records from the State Bar Court of California pertaining to Eastman's disbarment proceedings. The far-right attorney has been in the Golden State defending his law license, which state bar officials are fighting to have stripped in the wake of Eastman's felony indictment in Fulton County District Court. Smith's team requested transcripts from October 30, November 2 and November 3. All three days correspond to days when Eastman was called to testify in-person. Bar officials reportedly asked Eastman about his conversations with Trump and other elected officials as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith didn't disband his grand jury after it indicted the former president. Because Eastman has been revealed to be "co-conspirator #2" in Trump's indictment, and because Smith's grand jury has gone quiet in recent weeks, Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney wrote that Smith may be planning to indict Eastman as part of his election interference investigation in Washington, DC.

Following Eastman's testimony in California in October and November, a judge made a "preliminary finding" that Eastman violated the ethics of his profession by assisting Trump in his efforts to overturn election results in the courts. In recent weeks, California bar officials have been presenting "aggravating" evidence that would be used in arguments to justify stripping Eastman's ability to practice law, possibly including the speech he delivered to a crowd of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.

John Eastman is the author of the so-called "Eastman Memo" that laid out the plan for Trump's legal team to postpone Congress' certification of Electoral College votes, with the help of Vice President Mike Pence. According to the memo, Republican senators would lodge objections to certifying counts in battleground states President Joe Biden narrowly won, like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, citing the submission of an alternate slate of electors. At that point, Pence would cite the alternate elector slates as reason to declare those states' results in dispute, thereby declaring Trump to be the winner of the 2020 election. Eastman theorized that Democrats would object to Pence'e declaration, meaning that the final decision would be punted to the House of Representatives.

Eastman's memo then hypothesized that because the US Constitution stipulates that each state's delegation gets one vote in the House of Representatives, Trump would be elected president by the GOP-controlled House. At the time, Republicans had control of 26 state delegations, with Democrats only having control of 24. Eastman then proposed Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military quell protests that would inevitably result from Trump's coup.

In addition to his role as one of Trump's attorneys, Eastman is a major player in the conservative legal world. The former law clerk to Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went on to become the founding director of the far-right Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and remains a senior fellow at the influential conservative think tank. He's also the board chair of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.