TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2023
Someone should broadcast "the truth:" We're so old that we can remember the way things were before Fani Willis came down with her indictments of Donald J. Trump.
Jack Smith had already presented his federal indictments of Trump. This past Sunday, on C-Span's Washington Journal, viewers were invited to state their views concerning this question:
TELEVISE FMR. PRESIDENT TRUMP'S 2020 ELECTION INTERFERENCE TRIAL?
Normally, there are no cameras in federal courts. Should an exception be made for that "election interference" trial, assuming it actually happens?
Should we televise that trial? If it came to a vote, our vote would be yes—but we can't say we really care about this. In our view, televising a trial isn't likely to address our nation's deep-seated cultural / political / journalistic / dare we say "epistemic" problem.
Many C-Span viewers held a different point of view. Repeatedly, viewers called in to state their view concerning the wisdom of televising some such trial.
Many callers addressed this issue in terms of what might best allow "the truth" to emerge. Callers sometimes got over their skis at certain points, as in this call from Liz in Chicago on the "No, don't televise" line:
PEDRO (8/13/23): OK. Let's hear from Liz. Liz in Chicago, on the "No" line.
LIZ IN CHICAGO: Hi. Yes, I believe that we should not televise it, for several reasons. The first one being that, before, when we had things televised, it was a different world. We had a different news media, and we had no social media blowing things up.
I believe that if it does get televised, it will be chopped up into pieces and the bots will go after it, and social media will blow up and things will get too distorted, and the country will become even more divided, and that's the last thing we need.
So I think that, if they are going to tape it, maybe do the trial, don't televise it, and then, when people start complaining or whatever, put out the stuff that tells the truth, because we are having a real hard time telling truth from fiction.
I understand that is why everyone wants it televised. Unfortunately, we have other players in the game who are going to distort the truth for those who are not as educated, or who have only limited resources to see the news, like down in the South or whatever, where they only have a choice of one radio station.
PEDRO: OK. That's Liz there, in Chicago.
(To hear this exchange, just click here, then move to minute 19.)
In our view, Liz was directly on point in certain ways, out over her skis in others.
Is there really some place in the South "where they only have a choice of one radio station," and apparently no TV or cable news? That's where this particular call ended up, following a bit of overthinking based on an accurate statement about the way one part of our culture has changed.
In the past, "it was a different world," this C-Span caller said. We had "a different news media," she said. We had "no social media."
She may have been thinking back to the world of Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley—to a world where TV news consumed thirty minutes per day, and you had only two or three major choices.
Almost surely, Liz in Chicago was right about one thing. If we televise this federal trial, a range of entities will swing into action and things "will get distorted."
Of course, that's also going to happen if we don't televise the trial. That brings us to Liz's novel idea about how to address this problem:
In the view of this good, decent fellow citizen, we should maybe videotape the federal trial. Then, "when people start complaining" (or whatever), we should "put out the stuff that tells the truth" about the matter at issue.
At present, we're "having a real hard time telling truth from fiction," this concerned caller said. For ourselves, we'd agreee with that general view, but the caller failed to address the basic question:
Who will decide what "the truth" really is at any particular point?
Way back when, Walter and David rendered such judgments, and there weren't a lot of other places to go. At 6:30 P.M. (5:30 Central), we were handed "the truth" by Walter and David, after which the sitcoms came on, or maybe the latest Gunsmoke.
Liz in Chicago wants to wait for a dispute to break out. At that point, some unnamed person or entity should step up and broadcast "the truth."
In fact, many callers to C-Span offered their formulas for helping us see "the truth." Everyone wanted "the truth" to emerge, but these callers seemed to disagree about what "the truth" really is in this general matter.
In our view, Liz in Chicago got several things right. Whether we televise this trial or not, many people are going to rush forward to distort "the truth."
In the process, there's little doubt—"the country will become even more divided." But who will decide what "the truth" really is in any particular circumstance?
While we're at it, also this:
Except in certain narrow areas, is there any such thing as "the truth?"
In theory, our logicians should be helping us explore such questions. But they seem to be locked in their ivory towers, leaving us out here alone.
Tomorrow: Rep. Cohen's search for "the truth"
Dershowitz explains that the indictment was based on misquoting Trump. In quoting his call for a demonstration, the prosecutor left out his words "peacefully and patriotically."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vNBZjrA9fM&ab_channel=TheDershowWithAlanDershowitz
You are going to have to specify which indictment you are talking about now.
DeleteIs Dershowitz going to claim that Trump was misquoted when he lied about the various types of fraud that occurred in the Georgia election?
Inserting the words "peacefully and patriotically" absolves the president from plotting a coup?
DeleteWe see the president's intentions in his fake elector scheme and his efforts to overturn voting in 6 swing states. The insurrection was part of the plot, giving Pence the opportunity to stall the certification of the election. It doesn't matter whether the words peacefully were part of his statement or not, except to the various 1/6 insurgents who engaged in violence and were prosecuted for their efforts on behalf of Trump.
Too many 1/6 convicts have felt betrayed by Trump's call to arms, to be fooled by Dershowitz's sophistry.
To clarify, Dershowitz is not claiming that “the indictment” was based on misquoting Trump, however Dershowitz’s legal analysis is nonsense, since Trump is not being indicted for incitement or insurrection.
DeleteCan’t help noticing Dersh sticks to blabbing on TV rather than joining Trump’s legal team. Well, they pay you and you don’t have to worry about being truthful.
DeleteDid Dersh explain why, after uttering the word "peacefully" once, and waiving armed protesters through the security, he went back to watch the festivities on TV and then sat his treasonous ass down for a hamburger meal and didn't lift a finger to put an end to the attack on my US Capitol?
DeleteYou're a real asshole, David.
@12:16 - another pontificating clown who hasn't bothered to read the indictment.
DeleteOne can not find “the truth” by being excessively literal: “Is there really some place in the South”. Somerby cracked the case!
ReplyDeleteWhat a bizarre blog, with its weird collection of right wing “commenters”: the one that lies about having a cousin, the one that pretends to be a woman, the one that pretends to be a lawyer, and of course the Russian trolls.
No disrespect to people who call in on CSpan but Bob is not exactly cutting to the heart of the week’s events. It’s not really media criticism.
DeleteFor good or bad, the public is pretty used to televised trials. The only consideration would be the safety of the participants, since Trump is a sleazy hood trying to intimidate them.
DeleteThis trial itself is about the efforts of the President to distort the truth about the 2020 election in order to stay in office.
ReplyDeleteShowing the American people how the President distorted the truth might help people, especially Trump supporters, realize how truth has been distorted around other issues, by the President and his minions. Doing this before the Nov election might change some votes.
Currently, the president and his criminal enterprise are busily manufacturing and spreading lies about Biden. There is no more truth to the attacks on Biden than there were to the attacks on our voting system in 6 key states. The goal is similar, to obtain the office of the presidency. The current conspiracy involves more than just lying -- it includes a plot to smear Hunter Biden using a laptop and foreign countries attempting to meddle in our next presidential election (as they did in 2016). It can be seen as an extension of the criminal enterprise charged in this new indictment, involving some of the same people (especially Giuliani).
Trump's supporters were victims of his crimes when they participated in the 1/6 insurrection. They are currently victims when they unknowingly spread his "Biden crime family" lies and are conned into voting for a man who doesn't deserve their trust or their vote.
We cannot force MAGAts to watch a trial, any more than we can force them to understand these latest indictments or recognize that the insurrection was wrong. But every little bit helps.
"Trump's supporters were victims... conned into voting for a man who doesn't deserve their trust or their vote."
DeleteNo. They are conned because they let themselves be conned. They enjoy being conned. They relish the con.
And then quite a few of them blamed their actions on Trump.
Delete1:48 I can’t parse your comment, not disagreeing with your sentiment necessarily, but going to have to chalk your comment up as a non sequitur.
DeleteI think it’s important that we recognize the extent to which Trump supporters are victims, so we can better apply a solution.
Without a doubt, Trump supporters encompass an uncanny mix of traits that include both wanting to be dominant and yet also willing to be servile to certain type of authoritarian.
Right, Hector is saying Trump supporters are not victims but chose their guy willingly. I think that is pretty clear, not a non sequitur at all.
DeleteTrump supporters are not particularly dominant but perhaps think they should be (as men), so they identify with Trump's supposed strength. Actually Trump is a baby, a coward, and whines about how he is being victimized regularly. Now he is claiming to have been targeted by a witch hunt, which makes him a huge victim. I think Trump pretends to be a victim in order to excuse his authoritarianism and his trampling over other people (bullying).
2:46,
DeleteThe dictionary gives, as an example of ‘con’, persuading someone to buy worthless property. Suppose we say Trump has persuaded his supporters to buy worthless property. If they were truly being conned, when it was pointed out to them that the property was worthless, they would realize they’d been conned, and turn against Trump.
But Trump supporters don’t do this. Instead, they attack the person who tells them the truth. That’s why it’s accurate, though paradoxical, to say they like being conned.
At least no one is over generalizing.
Delete6:04,
DeleteAfter almost 3 years of debunkment, 68% of Republicans maintain the 2020 election was stolen.
You should try dissuading one of them from this view sometime, and see how it goes.
Great.Sixty-two percent of Democrats don’t believe the results of the 2016 election. So how do you diagnose that? They all enjoy being conned as well? So the Trump supporters and the 2016 democratic election result deniers are basically the same. Or what's the excuse for the Democrats? They are right? That situation is different?
DeleteMany Democrats still believe that there was collusion or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016. Which there may have been. But there's never been anything remotely close to conclusive evidence that there was. So it is still after all these years of conspiracy. So how do you diagnose that? They are all correct?
DeleteYou are ALL exactly, eggs fucking zactly the same as Trump supporters. You are fooled as much as them. You are propagandaized as much as them. You are wrong about things as much as them. You are manipulated and abused by powerful institutions as much as them. It's weird right? You're not as smart as you think you are and you don't matter. God but please let's just make that between us and leave your ego out of it!
Delete6:55,
DeleteSure, both Democrats and Republicans support Universal healthcare for all Americans (including the black ones), but isn't the fact that Democrats admit it in public a difference?
At the end of the day, the only REAL difference between these deluded Democrats and Trump voters who are being propagandized, is the outright upfront bigotry of Republican voters.
DeleteWho knew?
6:55,
DeleteThank you. Finally, someone who hasn't been propagandized into believing I didn't win the 2020 Presidential election.
How'd you like to be my Secretary of State?
4:12 I get what your saying but your comment, as worded, is still a non sequitur, and furthermore, I think your assessment of Trump supporters is inaccurate and unhelpful.
Delete6:47, 6:49, 6:55 all your claims are inaccurate and thus irrelevant. I understand you’re upset about something, hopefully you find some peace, nobody here can help you, primarily due to logistics as well as your own internal biases.
6:47,
DeleteYou raise a valid point, with the big difference being this:
In 2016 we know there was Russian interference on Trump’s behalf but it’s impossible to know how dispositive it was. So Democrats who state (I think falsely) that Trump won because of Russia are not stating a belief that can be authoritatively disproven.
Whereas in 2020 you had Bannon saying, prior to the election, that if Trump lost he would simply declare victory and flood the zone with shit. On election night, before all the votes were even counted, Trump declared victory. Then the zone was flooded with shit via months and months of the most obvious, grifting, tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories that were proven false again and again. Yet you still have the 68% figure.
Differences in degree matter.
DeleteThat is not a persuasive argument.
In 2016 before the election and after Clinton and the FBI flooded the zone with shit for years and years with the most obvious, grifting, tin foil hat, spy novel nonsense about Russia and the Trump campaign that was proven wrong again and again and again and again and never made any sense at all in the first place. Especially in the context of a multi-billion dollar election. And of course after all those years not a single person was even indicted! Differences in degrees may matter but I don't see how they do here. And then they would still be just degrees. Democrats are a few degrees less conned and fooled and stupid than Trump supporters? Okay. That doesn't seem like something to be excited about or proud of. Both constituencies still, in the end, believed on a mass scale something that was demonstrably false. One side may be a few degrees less gullible and stupid and conned than the other depending of course totally on who is doing the judging but really they are all pigs in the same pen.
You oversimplify. Clinton lost because 1) campaign mistakes due to hubris in part; she lost Bernie voters for good reason and Stein took enough votes to matter. 2) Her unlikeability factor 3) Russian interference via social media, that was publicly encouraged by Trump. 4) Roughly 10 Benghazi hearings that yielded nothing in terms of her culpability but resulted in a text message “scandal” that McCarthy publicly stated was working to weaponize voters against her. 5) The eleventh hour James Comey statement about reopening the FBI investigation, a statement that Giuliani who had close contacts with the NY FBI branch signaled was upcoming days in advance. 6) Wikileaks public disclosure of stolen Clinton campaign emails that was judged coordinated with the Russians. You wrongly overstate the conclusion that there was no collusion between Trump’s team and the Russians. The bipartisan senate subcommittee led by Republicans identified Manafort as a conduit to a Russian later identified as a Russian intelligence agent and that he passed campaign intelligence to this actor. Large blocks of text in that report were blacked out in reference to this. Manafort was described in the report as a grave threat to the counterintelligence community; he was closely tied to Russian anti Ukraine agents and of course is doing jail time currently. Mueller did NOT say there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, only that the collected evidence did not suffice to charge them with such. So you oversimplify in order to absolve Trump’s team from involvement with the Russians when no one of authority who had investigated the matter did so, irrespective of the Steele dossier which correctly identified Manafort as a conduit between the Trump campaign, which he was managing, and Russian intelligence. Manafort, Russian agents and Don Jr. in fact met in Trump Tower and discussed their offer of assistance. Your what-about-ism argument here falls far short of convincing based upon known facts.
DeleteThere's so many mistakes and lies in this response it's hard to know where to start but no, Mueller did not say that the collected evidence was not sufficient to charge Trump with collusion. Anyone who makes that claim did not read the report. The report contradicts that on its first (and second) page! I guess that's really all anyone needs to know about this particular comment.
DeleteBut the point is not to relitigate the question of collusion which was never made any sense at all and for which there was never any conclusive evidence but the point is that like Trump supporters, exactly like Trump supporters, people like yourselves still believe this dream theory years and years and years and years later after it's been investigated. So the question is what is the psychology behind that? Behind someone like yourself making comments like you have here that are tin foil hat and easily disproved? Why would you believe that after all these years? Is it because you enjoy to be conned? Or are you just naturally stupid? Or is it confirmation bias? What is the psychology of Democrats that leads them to believe completely crazy spy novel conspiracy theories years and years and years and years after they've been investigated and found to be inconclusive?
And how are these responses different from the responses of trump supporters who also believe unproven crazy conspiracy theories? And if it's a matter of degrees, How many degrees? How long are the degrees? Who determines what and how long the degrees are?
DeleteLet's figure out how to rationalize this so Democrats look really really good and Republicans look really really bad now that we have established that both Democratic voters and Republican voters look really really gullible and dumb - both indulging in fantasies that support their political preference and that were perpetuated by the leadership of each party and each party's media monkeys.
And sweetheart please don't try to relitigate the collusion accusations here, all these years later, with some completely cockamamie claptrap about polling data. As if the Trump campaign with their hundreds of millions of dollars and help from Facebook and Google's top experts at targeting voters needed help from Russia of all places to run their Facebook ads. The whole idea is completely preposterous when you put it into the context of billion dollar elections. Trump did not need help from Russia and Russia didn't have the power to give him any meaningful help. The whole story is a fantasy invented as a scapegoat. It was initially invented by the Clinton campaign as a October surprise Swift boat.
Delete3:56,
Delete"Both constituencies still, in the end, believed on a mass scale something that was demonstrably false."
You missed my point completely. The effect of Russian interference on the 2016 election is not 'demonstrably false'. It is unknowable.
And as a general matter, Democrats can be criticized for cherry picking evidence and ignoring facts they find inconvenient. Whereas Republicans wallow in stupidity and nonsense.
That's why QANON has found a home in the GOP. That's why Fox News fired Chris Stirewalt for correctly calling Arizona for Biden. That's why, even now, Trumpists are claiming he's been indicted because of his political speech when the plain facts say otherwise. Under Trump, GOP stupidity is a feature, not a bug.
I'm not talking about Russian interference I'm talking about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016. That is the mass scale delusion of which I speak, not the current goal post moving of a claim of simple Russian interference which has never been in dispute.
DeleteFor instance, the commenter above made demonstrably false claims about the Mueller report that are refuted on this second page! And that is not stupidity? What is it then?
Delete"And as a general matter, Democrats can be criticized for cherry picking evidence and ignoring facts they find inconvenient. Whereas Republicans wallow in stupidity and nonsense."
DeleteThis is complete bullshit. This is a subjective, partisan claim. I guess you can't see it. It's kind of the point of this blog. We can't see our flaws and logical mistakes and gullibility in ourselves as well as they can. Just like we can easily identify their stupidity and gullibility whereas they can't see it in themselves.
8:37,
DeleteBoth sides are so much alike, you'd think they'd agree on who should be President of the United States of America. The actual real difference between both sides is that the blue tribe is voting for equality for all, while the red tribe votes for the ones who tickle their bigotry.
For those who haven't been propagandized by their media silos into believing I didn't win the 2020 Presidency, I still have some openings in my Cabinet. If you are interested in being my Secretary of State or Secretary of Education, please let me know.
DeleteBoth sides are stupid, but the Right side are also bigots. That's why they don't vote for Democrats.
DeleteNo doubt, it's the outright bigotry of the red tribe which is the real difference between the voters.
Delete5:27 its hard to engage in a conversation with someone who cannot even get through page 2 of a document without misreading it. Mueller stated that on multiple occasions the investigators were lied to by members of the Trump campaign about their contacts with Russians and that they could not establish a coordinated effort that satisfied their definition of such, NOT that it did not occur. The only inaccuracy in the post you criticize is the Mana fort is in jail. Your leader, who the Mueller report stated acted to obstruct their efforts, pardoned him in December 2020, a member of his campaign who was found to have serviced a Russian agent with campaign information. As usual a Trump supporter can't get his or her facts right.
Delete8:37,
Delete“It's kind of the point of this blog.”
No. The ‘point’ of Somerby’s blog is to get Dems to acknowledge the faults on their own side, not to equate the two sides.
Somerby over and over describes Trump as being so ‘disordered’ as to qualify as insane. So Somerby believes the man the GOP will most likely nominate for the third time running as President of the US is literally insane.
There is no comparable situation on the Dem side, and to deny this rather obvious fact, while it many not be partisan, is certainly obtuse.
8:01,
DeleteRussiagate was invented by the corporate-owned, mainstream media, as a reason why Trump won the 2016 Presidential election.
It was actually the third or fourth reason the corporate media gave (remember when they tried "economic anxiousness? LOL).
This is what happens when you start out your investigation into how something, and you first dismiss the reason it happened---that Republican voters would crawl threw a football field of broken glass to vote for a bigot. Blaming it on the Clinton campaign is a delusion people who have been propagandized believe.
Remember, it's easy to see others flaws, even if you have the same flaws yourself.
Is there any difference between being so delusional you think Trump won the 2020 Presidential election, and being so delusional you think Russiagate was pushed by the Clinton campaign, and not by the corporate-owned media?
Delete9:59,
DeleteRemember, corporate-owned media have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for their shareholders.
What pushed the coverage of Russiagate was Dem viewers' unquenchable thirst for any shred of proof, or even reasonable conjecture, of collusion between Trump and Russia.
10:09,
DeleteNice one.
No wonder CEO pay is so low.
LOL.
We brought an investigation against Trump whose proof was dependent on Trump himself confessing?
DeleteThat seems immensely stupid.
Mueller made no judgement on obstruction one way or another.
Delete"Remember, corporate-owned media have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for their shareholders."
DeleteIt's why the media pushes the idea the GOP is is a political party with a real ideology, instead of admitting it's a shit-pile of bigots, morons, and grifters.
11:07,
DeleteWhat difference would it make if Trump confessed?
You can't charge him for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech.
Don't you see how this works, yet?
You'll never win an argument against a Right-winger, because they aren't arguing in good faith.
It's too bad Trump corruptly obstructed the Mueller investigation and pardoned his way out and was too chickenshit to answer questions under oath. Too damn bad. We may never learn of the full extent of his treason.
DeleteYes if the only conclusive evidence of it is his own confession, you are going to be waiting for a long time.
DeleteI guess you missed the part where he tampered with witnesses by dangling pardons?
DeleteAnd no, nobody is suggesting Trump would have confessed. But he would have either have committed perjury or taken the 5th when the questions starting getting too close to the mark.
If Trump confessed, the Republican voters, who love his bigotry would finally turn on him.
DeleteNow, pull my other finger.
1;34,
DeleteYou still don't get it
If Trump had confessed, it would have been under threat of death by the Biden crime family.
Me, Republican voters, Republican Congresspeople, and the media can do this all day, if you want.
You're not remotely interesting or clever.
DeleteGood luck proving that.
Delete1:34, the shit is starting to unravel, eh?
DeleteFormer FBI spy hunter pleads guilty to working for Russian oligarch
Charles McGonigal, once special agent in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI’s New York office, admitted that he took money from Putin crony Oleg Deripaska.
Gee, I wonder who in the NYC FBI office in charge of the Hillary email investigation was leaking shit to known ratfuckers, Joe DeGenova and Rudy the Pig Guiliani?
Wow. So the Trump campaign and Russia did collude!
Delete3:02 Nice. Got to wonder how long that kind of rot was festering in the NY FBI office, but don't hold your breath for republicans to investigate their activities in the run up to November 2016.
DeleteIt is interesting that McGonigal's Russian agent, Oleg Deripaska, also had some tight connections to a certain Campaign Manager of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, Paul Manafort.
DeleteThey should put together a multi-million dollar investigation with some of the top investigators in the world and an unlimited budget to get to the bottom of it. Oh wait ...
DeleteIt's such a huge problem at the FBI is full of Trump supporters. ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
Deletehttps://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908
DeleteIs this set of phone calls on CSPAN about televising the trial really the most important aspect of the indictments that Somerby could find to talk about?
ReplyDeleteFolks like Cronkite and Brinkley still exist. Every local station has its anchors. There are major commentators on cable news too, and some who have gone from network news to cable news. The problem isn't the lack of trustworthy reporters. It is the easy access and plethora of extremists and fringe voices on Fox specifically and on the wider internet. Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Breitbart and Russia-influenced RT, Newsmax and OAN. The extremist right has done the damage, not the demise of mainstream news, which still exists.
Somerby himself regularly watches Fox (by his own admission). He doesn't have to do that. If he had not started that habit, he might not have devolved into a pathetic weirdo.
One thing that might help the situation is the restoration of the equal time rule by the FCC. I have never heard Somerby call for that. He mostly just wants Rachel Maddow to be paid less.
In the good old days, people still had access to extremist views if they wanted to find them. The John Birch Society had its followers before the internet. There was robust Nazi propaganda available before our involvement in WWII. And there were right wing voices on the radio, as there are now on the internet. The latest invention of podcasts has produced plenty of right wing nutjobs, so simply restoring a Cronkite isn't going to change a thing.
Active condemnation by respected figures of right wing extremism might help. But look what happened to Hillary when she dared to call them deplorables (a very mild term)! Who will stick out their necks.
So we are left with our courts as the arbiter of right and wrong in the public sphere, through lawsuits and indictments that should command public respect, but are being undermined by Trump's name-calling and complaints. His MAGA followers have no more respect for judges now than they would have for a Cronkite. But if Trump is put in jail, at least the rabid right will know the limits and we might get our country back on track again.
Somerby is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Soon he will be telling us that we should let the voters decide about Trump and not the courts. Even though the voters already decided in 2020 and Trump should be a has-been and not an active conspirator engaged in his latest set of crimes against the Biden family under the guise of running a pseudo campaign.
Well said. And of course many Americans exercise their right to watch zero hours of news every day.
DeleteRemember Bob’s outrage over the use of the word “forgery?”
ReplyDeleteAnyone throwing the phrase “the truth” around is apt to get a little tiresome, but alas establishing truth is pretty much what Courts are for. Anyone who now retreats to putting it in quotes all the time, after getting virtually everything about Trump wrong for years now (while ridiculing those who got it largely correct) is playing his readers.
The first distortion of truth alread happened last night, before the indictment was released. Apparently the Clerk's office posted a list of charges (or some such) and quickly took it down again. Meanwhile, Reuters noticed it and reported on it. Now the right wing is circulating a different document, also not part of the official indictment. Nothing appeared on the D.A.'s Office website -- they leaked nothing. The right is distorting that into a mess of disinformation, including the fake document being circulated. Trump of course jumped on this, using it to attack the D.A.:
ReplyDelete"Trump attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little slammed the Fulton County District Attorney's office Monday afternoon.
"The Fulton County District Attorney's Office has once again shown that they have no respect for the integrity of the grand jury process," Findling and Little said. "This was not a simple administrative mistake. A proposed indictment should only be in the hands of the District Attorney's Office, yet it somehow made its way to the clerk's office and was assigned a case number and a judge before the grand jury even deliberated."
The court meanwhile issued a statement that nothing appearing on their website as a document was legitimate without a court seal, while Willis said that she had no knowledge of clerk's or administrative procedures and didn't want to speculate about what happened. Her office is not connected in an way to the court or clerk's office.
The most shocking part of the indictment, for me, was the concerted attempt to intimidate Ruby Freeman into confessing that she committed voter fraud. Trump's people conned her into meeting with a black woman, a publicist of Kanye West, who spent an hour browbeating her. I recall from the 1/6 Hearings, her account of the death threats and her fear of leaving her house, but I hadn't realized how hard Trump's team worked on her.
ReplyDeleteWe see Ruby Freeman as a human, Trump and his supporters do not.
DeleteJust as Trump started his conspiracy before the Nov 4 election took place, he continued it after the 1/6 attempt to block certification of the election results. From Alternet:
ReplyDelete"In an analysis published Tuesday by the Washington Post, reporter Aaron Blake details 4 revelations from the Trump Georgia indictment — including that the alleged crimes “went well past” the events of Jan. 6, 2020.
“One of the more striking details comes in the 38th and 39th counts — the last charges against Trump — which date to Sept. 17, 2021, nearly eight months after Trump left office,” Blake writes, noting the charge “has to do with a letter Trump sent to [Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger in which he enclosed a report alleging that 43,000 ballots in Atlanta-based DeKalb County were not properly handled using chain-of-custody rules.”
In that letter, the Washington Post reports, “Trump suggested that Raffensperger ‘start the process of decertifying the election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.’”
Trump seems to be obsessively focused on regaining the presidency, by whatever means available. He has no intention of participating in normal election procedures (such as debates), he has no respect for FEC rules, and he seems to be determined to bludgeon his opposition, whether it is Biden or a Republican opponent. Any pretence of being a normal candidate has fallen away.
Hunter sold state secrets to Siam.
ReplyDeleteDon't be a moron.
DeleteSiam became Thailand in 1939. I don't think Hunter is that old.
DeleteBobalinsky said he and Tucker regularly traveled to Siam meeting with their acting secretary of agriculture for drinks and promises of meeting “big guy”.
DeleteSiam is not a place.
DeleteHunter looks at Clarence Thomas' corruption with envy in his eyes.
DeleteIsn’t Siam a ramen noodle company? Apparently Siam now has access to the CIA’s secret ramen recipe.
Delete