If you don’t know why not having the supposedly bombshell will implode their case, remember the movie Presumed Innocent starring Harrison Ford. I read the book by Scott Turow when it came out and have seen the movie many times. But the important point for this rant is that the entire case crashed when the prosecution couldn’t produce the glass having supposedly incriminating fingerprints.
MORE ON THE INDICTMENTS
First I saw today that Trump actually signed an order to declassify all the Hurricane Crossfire documents the day before he left office. It’s covered in the link below which has a link to the actual document.
And something I heard today on Hannity that I had not heard before was the interesting fact that the supposedly smoking gun audiotape is talking about a document that the prosecutor doesn’t have, so that pretty much makes the bombshell is a sparkler.
FOLLOW ON
It just occurred to me to ask on what basis did Trump’s security clearance end when his term ended. I don’t even think the president has a security clearance. He has the power to grant them but I don’t think anyone grants him one. So who can terminate his authority to review documents created during his presidency? Maybe Magoo but he certainly didn’t do that at noon on 1/20/21.
I think that Trump’s team should question Smith’s assumption. I personally think that a president should have access to any material created during their time in office. This of course would destroy Smith’s case as it should. You need to remember that prior to what I consider the unconstitutional PRA, presidents had unfettered ability to take whatever they wanted from their time in office.
Please make Smith explain the statutory basis for his declaration!
DJOKOVIC
Big shoutout to Novak for winning the French Open this morning for his 23rd major making him the GOAT.
18 US CODE §793 (e)
The above is the statute used to indict Trump. It is not what I was referring to on Friday because I didn’t know it existed. I was familiar with provisions dealing with classified information and in fact I got out my copy the federal criminal code and rules of criminal procedure and basically everything to do with federal crimes. A new version is printed every year and I got mine and it only went up to section d. So I figured e-h must have amended after my time. The version I have is from 2004. The last year I was in the government. So I figured it must be later than that but in fact it was apparently added in 1995 or 1996, so I don’t know why it wasn’t in my version. I didn’t spend the time to figure out what happened, but the exact text of section e follows. Read it and then I’ll comment on what’s going on.
Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
All right, notice that this section doesn’t mention classified information! Smith didn’t want to get into a contest over a president’s ability to declassify anything and everything without going through any process. No one can put a process on the president’s constitutional powers All classification authority comes from him and so does all declassification authority. Smith steered clear of that controversy.
If you bothered to read the indictment, which I did, you will know that it doesn’t mention the Presidential Records Act which is the non criminal law at bottom of this whole controversy. And as has been mentioned in this space previously, the act has potential constitutional problems but remember in the Bill Clinton audio tapes in his sock drawer case it decided that anything a President determined was personal papers was outside the statute. So whatever Trump said was personal was personal.
As an aside, the indictment says that on January 20, 2021 at noon Trump ceased to be president and his security clearance and need to know were terminated. Now Smith put this in so he could claim that Trump had no right to possess any of the documents involved. An interesting point that will be litigated but harkens back to my point a little while ago. If the president’s ability to read classified information ceases when he leaves office, why do all the ‘intelligence’ officials keep theirs? If Trump gets back in, terminate their clearances immediately and issue your own EO on classification and straighten out a bunch of the bs.
QUICKIE
I want to put this up before the weekend just so you know that I didn’t plagiarize something some pundits will say. And I believe that I have ranted about this before during the Hillary email scandal and it’s based on my actual expertise as the attorney responsible for national security matters for twenty years. So here’s the heads up. The Espionage Act only applies when someone takes classified data with the intent to use it to injure this country and provide it to an enemy. I deal with this more extensively later when I have the time to actually read the indictment but just wanted to let you know that merely possessing classified information that maybe you’re not supposed to have is not a violation of the Espionage Act.
VENUE
Basically a criminal case has to be brought where the alleged crime took place. Since all the alleged criminal activities took place at Mar a Lago, the case needs to be brought in South Florida. Apparently the Special Counsel finally woke up had a south Florida grand jury issue the indictments. However what I don’t understand is how he could do this since most of the witnesses and documents were presented to a grand jury in DC. I looked it up and in fact the main grand jury was in DC. Now to be clear, I am anything but an expert in this area but I don’t see how testimony and documents presented to one gj can be used by another unless they read it all and it doesn’t appear that that happened here.
Like I said I’m not an expert and so I must be wrong about this because I haven’t heard any of the real experts raise this as an issue.
Now for the good news. Trump might actually get a fair trial. If I remember correctly RDS won in Miami and got either a strong minority or the majority of the Hispanic votes down there. Also since we are talking a criminal case, it only takes one vote to stop a guilty verdict. In that area it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who immigrated from Cuba or Venezuela or Nicaragua who is very familiar with political persecution and would say no.
Additionally the same Trump judge that presided over the issues surrounding the raid and document disagreements is going to be the judge on this case and she issued a decisions favorable to Trump so again I think he can get a fair trial and will either be acquitted or get a hung jury and that would end it because before they could retry it Trump or some other Republican will be in the White House and fire Jack Smith.
I’ll rant over the weekend on the actual charges.
TIMING
I heard on Hannity’s radio show today that he was scheduled to be off tomorrow but changed it because DOJ told the press to expect something tomorrow and he believed it was going to be the Trump indictments over classified documents.
And then I saw later on the Fox News app that the Magoo bribery scheme had just been exposed.
And then DOJ jumped the shark and indicted Trump tonight. For me it’s deja vu. Just like Pelosi and the original impeachment. They needed to divert attention from Magoo’s crimes so went early on the indictments. It’s more look at the shiny object over here and ignore the criminality over there.
I will deal with the substance tomorrow when more is known, but wanted you to know what is really going on.
UFO’S
A guy recently came out and said that our government has actual alien spacecraft that crashed and alien pilot remains and that the spacecraft are built from materials that do not exist on this planet. Now many people are saying it’s bullshit because if it’s true we would have reversed engineered it and be way more advanced than we are now.
Now let’s consider the stupidity of that premise. If these craft are made from elements and materials that don’t exist on earth, how the hell do you create them? Totally bogus nonsense!
I intended to write a lot more but I will just say for all of you who think god created the universe with billions of galaxies and planets in the ’Goldilocks’ zone but just used them for our night light. You are just stupid.
What’s the Goldilocks zone you ask? It’s the space in galaxies that are not too hot or too cold but just right for life as we know it and there are billions of planets in that zone. We are not alone. I personally think that the Big Bang was a fart from a black hole. And in fact recently there was photograph of galaxies dropping out behind a black hole. One after another. Just saying.
TUCKER
As I’m sure most of you know Tucker premiered his new Twitter cast last evening at I believe six o’clock. I didn’t know about it because I’m not on Twitter and it certainly wasn’t announced anywhere I saw. Anyway this morning it was everywhere and you could click on a Twitter link and watch it. If you haven’t I highly recommend it. It’s only ten minutes and is vintage Tucker monologue.
Tucker got I think something like 11 million views in the first half hour and as of 2 pm today the number was over 80 million. This of course proves my point that his audience will go wherever he goes and I may have to get a twitter account if it becomes a daily occurrence
However,as I figured would be the case, there wasn’t a peep about it on the Five. And I don’t believe it will be mentioned in any fox show tonight. It’s too embarrassing for them for their stupidity in letting him go. His 80 million views are more than all Fox prime time views for several weeks combined. Tucker is going to destroy cable news!