In a recent interview, Donald Trump brazenly declared that if he were to reclaim the presidency, he would expeditiously fire special counsel Jack Smith, asserting he would do so “within two seconds”. This statement underscores Trump’s ongoing attempts to evade accountability for his numerous legal predicaments, including serious charges related to the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents.
Trump’s remarks came as he faced mounting scrutiny from Smith’s investigations, which have already led to significant legal challenges. The former president has routinely labeled Smith as “crooked” and has shown a disturbing inclination to attack judicial figures whenever they threaten his political ambitions or legal standing. His intent to dismiss Smith further illustrates his contempt for the rule of law, positioning his personal interests over justice.
During the interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump was questioned about whether he would prioritize self-pardon or firing Smith. His quick response highlights a strategy focused solely on self-preservation rather than addressing the serious allegations against him. Trump’s history of attempting to undermine investigations into his conduct raises concerns about his respect for lawful governance.
As Trump continues to navigate his legal troubles, he remains steadfast in his belief that he can manipulate the legal system to his advantage. Despite the significant implications of his threats, he expressed confidence that Congress would not pursue impeachment should he act against Smith. This reflects an alarming level of entitlement and disregard for accountability.
Trump’s penchant for praising judges who deliver favorable rulings, such as U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, further complicates the integrity of the judicial process. His selective admiration for judicial figures, juxtaposed with his attacks on others, paints a clear picture of a man willing to exploit the system for his gain. As the 2024 election approaches, it remains to be seen how voters will respond to Trump’s overt attempts to escape justice.
Former President Donald J. Trump hinted at a potential link between Iran and the two assassination attempts against him, despite officials stating no evidence supports this claim. Intelligence agencies had been monitoring a possible Iranian plot before a gunman targeted Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania and another man attempted to shoot him at a Florida golf course. However, investigations have not found any connection to Iran in these incidents.
During a speech in North Carolina, Trump criticized the FBI for allegedly slow progress in investigating the assassination attempts and suggested Iranian involvement. He also accused the FBI of being too focused on him and individuals arrested for the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, which he referred to as ‘J6 hostages.’
Despite frequently accusing President Biden of warmongering, Trump claimed he would have threatened military action against Iran if they had made such threats. He stated that as president, he would warn Iran that any harm caused to him would result in severe consequences for the country.
President Donald Trump addressed the latest kerfuffle-cum-constitutional crisis in a Friday morning tweet following Attorney General Bill Barr’s apparent intervention in the sentencing of Roger Stone.
Stone was found guilty of seven felony counts last November, including lying to Congress and witness tampering during the investigation into Russian intelligence and interference in the general election. As such, prosecutors recommended a seven to nine-year prison sentence, which Trump criticized vocally. Barr eventually intervened to recommend a lighter sentence, to which Trump tweeted his thanks.
In an interview with ABC News, Barr claimed that he would never be bullied by anyone (including the president) and criticized Trump’s tweets for creating a distraction. It is worth noting that, despite his claims otherwise, Barr appeared to do exactly what Trump had asked, eventually earning Trump’s praise. So that’s the context… still with me?
Ever one to jump on a news cycle, and get ahead of a story, Trump addressed this story obliquely, saying that he has the “legal right” to ask his attorney general to do anything in a criminal case.
“The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” A.G. Barr This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!
“Trump just openly and explicitly stated that it’s perfectly within his authority to direct his Attorney General to open criminal investigations into anyone he wants,” offered Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent, in as a pure expression of what many will see as an open flouting of checks and balances in the U.S. government.
This is the very point made Thursday night on CNN by Jeffrey Toobin following a Washington Post report about this very concept. “The idea [James Comey] committed a crime is absurd. The person in a really perilous condition right now is the CNN contributor Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation from the U.S. Attorney’s office right now. And, you know, has had his case dangling out there. The president obviously wants Andy McCabe prosecuted and it’s just grotesque that you have the President of the United States behaving this way with the power of prosecution exercised in this way.”
The attorney general IS appointed by the president, then confirmed by Congress. And it’s not unusual for the top law enforcement official to work hand in glove with the sitting president. Many might read Trump’s tweet, however, as a rather foreboding omen of what may come to Trump’s political foes.
If he feels that someone has done him wrong, and he can direct the AG to serve as his own personal henchman (of which there is an abundance of evidence) then what is to keep him from seeking investigations into those he feels might threaten his reelection? Oh wait, he’s already done that.
President Trump pulled the nomination of a former US attorney who oversaw the prosecution of Roger Stone for a top position in the Treasury Department, according to a report.
The withdrawal of Jessie Liu’s nomination was revealed hours after four federal prosecutors withdrew from the Stone case — when the Justice Department overruled them and said it would seek a more lenient sentence for the longtime Trump ally, Fox News reported late Tuesday.
The prosecutors had been seeking a sentence of up to nine years in prison.
Liu, a former US attorney for Washington, DC, also supervised the case of one-time White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was found guilty of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials while working for the Trump campaign.
She was scheduled to begin her confirmation hearing in the Senate on Thursday.
If confirmed, Liu, 46, would have served as undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes.
Trump previously had considered nominating her as associate attorney general, the No. 3 slot in the Justice Department, but she withdrew her name last March.
President Donald Trump says he has the “absolute right” to direct the Dept. of Justice in who and how it prosecutes, but claims that he didn’t, despite his furious tweet overnight attacking the DOJ and calling prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation of Roger Stone a “miscarriage of justice.”
Trump also called the 7 to 9 year recommendation of jail time for Stone, his ally, confidant, and former campaign advisor, an “insult to our country.” Trump often conflates himself and the nation, as if he is the country.
Saying he did not speak to anyone at DOJ Trump then said, “I’d be able to do it if I wanted I have the absolute right to do it.”
Calling the sentencing recommendation “ridiculous” Trump added, “I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous.”
“That was a horrible abberition,” he concluded, apparently meaning “aberration.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday is reportedly expected to change its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone
a day after telling a federal judge the Trump associate should serve
between seven and nine years in prison, guidance that was sharply
criticized by President Trump.
Department officials found prosecutors’ initial recommendation “excessive,” according to multiple news outlets, including The Washington Post, Fox News and The Associated Press, citing an anonymous department source.
Reports of the expected change came after Trump denounced the recommended prison term as “horrible and very unfair” in an early Tuesday morning Tweet.
“The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them.
Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Trump said, sharing a message
from a Daily Caller reporter about Stone’s prison sentence.
This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice! https://t.co/rHPfYX6Vbv
Stone, a 67 year-old right-wing provocateur, was convicted in
November of seven counts of obstructing and lying to Congress and
witness tampering related to his efforts to provide the Trump campaign
inside information about WikiLeaks in 2016.
Stone is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 20 by D.C. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee.
Prosecutors recommended in a Monday filing that Stone serve between 87 and 108 months in prison in accordance with federal guidelines.
“Roger
Stone obstructed Congress’s investigation into Russian interference in
the 2016 election, lied under oath, and tampered with a witness,” the
DOJ court filing reads. “And when his crimes were revealed by the
indictment in this case, he displayed contempt for this Court and the
rule of law.”
Department prosecutors wrote that a sentence of up
to nine years would “accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes
and promote respect for the law.”
Stone’s attorneys in a Monday night filing asked that the judge impose probation as an alternative to prison.
A Stone lawyer on Tuesday said the legal team had “read with interest” the new reporting on the DOJ’s shifting position.
“Our
sentencing memo stated our position on the recommendation made
yesterday by the government,” attorney Grant Smith told The Hill. “We
look forward to reviewing the government’s supplemental filing.”
The department will reportedly clarify its recommendation on Stone’s sentencing later Tuesday.
President Donald Trump attacked his security people as they dragged
protesters out of his Michigan rally on Wednesday. Protesters flashed
middle fingers as well as a giant banner reading, “Don the Con — you’re
fired.”
“She’ll catch hell when she gets back home with mom,” Trump said.
“You know, she screams a little bit and you know what I like to do to
avoid them. Because I’ll tell you the big problem, I can hardly hear
her. What happens is all of you people go, ‘Look, look, look.’ And the
place — so there’s one disgusting person who made — wait, wait — who, I
wouldn’t say this, but who made a horrible gesture with the wrong
finger, right? Now, they won’t say that, the fake news media. They won’t
say it. If one of us did that it would be like the biggest story ever.”
“And I’ll tell you another thing,” Trump continued. “I don’t know who
the security company is but the police came up, but they want to be so
politically correct. So they don’t grab her wrist lightly. Get her out!
They say, ‘Oh, will you please come? Please come with me. Sir. Ma’am.
Will you — and then she gives the guy the finger. Oh. Oh. You gotta get a
little bit stronger than that folks.”
The finger was not for those dragging the protester out of the area, rather it was for Trump.
Trump has been attacked over the past months for refusing to pay for
security bills for his campaign. It’s unknown if this security team that
Trump attacked Wednesday will get paid.
Not long after Donald Trump took to the stage at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night, the president launched into one of his biggest crowd-pleasers: pillorying the “deep state,” particularly by performing fan-fic-style dialogue between the “FBI lovers” Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
It’s a routine that he’s been honing on the re-election campaign trail for months, perhaps most famously during an October campaign event in Minneapolis, where he appeared to make orgasmic, panting noises—much to the audience’s delight—while doing a mock-dialogue between the two “lovers” about how much they “love” each other and hate that “son of a bitch” Trump.
And on Tuesday night, the president went a step further, claiming he’d “heard” gossip about previously unknown relationship woes between the two former FBI employees—though Trump conceded he could just be spreading pure disinformation.
“So FBI lawyer Lisa Page was so in love she didn’t know what the hell was happening,” Trump blared. “Texted the head of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, likewise so in love he couldn’t see straight! This poor guy. Did I hear he needed a restraining order after this whole thing to keep him away from Lisa? That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it’s true. The fake news will never report it, but it could be true.”
After pointing out the reporters gathered in the back so the audience could loudly boo them, the president continued to make the baseless claim that a restraining order was put in place. At the same time, Trump gave a contorted explanation of the alleged restraining order.
“Now that’s what I heard, I don’t know,” he added. “I mean, who could believe a thing like that? No, I heard Peter Strzok needed a restraining order to keep him away from his once lover. Lisa, I hope you miss him. Lisa, he will never be the same.”
It is unclear where, if anywhere, Trump got this. The White House did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
A source familiar with Page’s thinking told The Daily Beast on Tuesday night that Trump’s allegation is “absolutely untrue.”
On Wednesday morning, Page took to Twitter herself, saying “This is a lie. Nothing like this ever happened. I wish we had a president who knew how to act like one. SAD!”
Both Page and Strzok have become prominent bêtes noires for MAGA fans and Trumpworld, due to their illicit affair and the text messages they exchanged bashing Trump and discussing an “insurance policy” in the event the 2016 Republican nominee actually won against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
In an interview with The Daily Beast published this month, Page explained why she was choosing to publicly speak out now, stating: “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she said, adding that “it had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
Additionally, news broke earlier Tuesday that the former FBI attorney had sued the FBI and Department of Justice. “I take little joy in having done so. But what they did in leaking my messages to the press was not only wrong, it was illegal,” she alleged on Twitter.
President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night lashed out at the FBI, calling staff of the agency “scum.”
He also doubled down on discredited conspiracy theories following the release of a report that undermined the president’s claims that the Russia probe was a “deep state” plot meant to damage his presidency.
“When the FBI uncovered evidence showing that we did absolutely nothing wrong, which was right at the beginning, they hid that exonerating, you know that, they hid it,” Trump said.
“They hid it so nobody could see it and they could keep this hoax going on for two more years,” Trump said. “They knew right at the beginning.”
The report in fact found that the Russia investigation was launched on the basis of multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians.
Trump refers to FBI agents as "scum." He then refers to John Durham as "Bull Durham." He then refers to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama." pic.twitter.com/AxVjDCWk7H
“The FBI also sent multiple undercover human spies to surveil and record people associated with our campaign,” the president said.
“Look how they’ve hurt people. They’ve destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people. Their lives have been destroyed by scum. OK, by scum.”
While Trump and his allies have often characterized the FBI’s surveillance as “spying,” the long-anticipated report found that the FBI followed its rules in opening an investigation into contacts between Russia and Trump officials and concluded that top officials were not driven by “political bias or improper motivation” in doing so.
It did, however, did find an improper handling of applications for surveillance warrants, such as Page’s.
“I look forward to Bull Durham’s report, that’s the one I look forward to,” Trump said, referring to the 1988 baseball movie starring Kevin Costner in a riff on Durham’s name.
“And this report was great by the IG, especially since he was appointed by President Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump said. Using Obama’s middle name is often associated with a movement by the far right to falsely suggest Obama is Muslim.
Visiting Chicago for the first time as president, Donald Trump disparaged the city Monday as a haven for criminals that is “embarrassing to us as a nation.” The city’s top cop sat out Trump’s speech to protest the president’s immigration policies and frequently divisive rhetoric.
“There is one person who is not here today,” Trump told a friendly audience at a conference of police chiefs. “Where is he? I want to talk to him. In fact, more than anyone else, this person should be here because maybe he could learn something, and that’s the superintendent of the Chicago Police, Eddie Johnson.”
Johnson’s decision to boycott the event angered the city’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, which said in a Facebook post that “such a gesture would be an insult to both President Trump and the office of the presidency itself and would be a mark of disgrace upon the city throughout the entire nation, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot.”
But the Democratic mayor and Illinois’ Democratic governor stood in solidarity with Johnson, who announced days before the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference that he would not attend.
“This is the land of Lincoln and when you come to the state of Illinois you should respect all the people who live here in the state of Illinois,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Lightfoot also refused to meet with Trump, and said on Twitter that she supports Johnson.
“It’s no surprise that @realDonaldTrump brought his insulting, ignorant buffoonery to Chicago,” the mayor tweeted. “Luckily, in this city, we know the truth and we will not let anyone — no matter how high the office — denigrate who we are as a people or our status as a welcoming city.”
“Rather than belittle Chicago’s communities with hateful and dishonest rhetoric, he needs to go back to D.C. and face his fate,” Lightfoot said, apparently referring to the House impeachment inquiry against the president.
At a news conference later Monday, Johnson said Trump had ignored a “double digit” reduction in violent crime in the city over the past three years.
Trump has long held up the nation’s third-largest city as the poster child of urban violence and dysfunctional Democratic politics.
At one point in the address, Trump turned his daily complaint about the impeachment inquiry into a swipe at “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who authorities say fabricated a claim about being attacked by Trump supporters in Chicago earlier this year.
“You have the case of this wise guy Jessie Smollett … and he said MAGA country did it,” Trump said, using the acronym for his “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. “It’s a real big scam, just like the impeachment of your president is a scam.”
The FOP Lodge 7, which represents rank-and-file Chicago police officers, announced that it had cast a vote of no confidence in Johnson. The union’s president, Kevin Graham, was first to greet Trump on the tarmac of O’Hare International Airport, after he landed in the city.
In the speech, Trump rattled off Chicago crime statistics and claimed that Johnson puts the needs of people living in the U.S. illegally above those of law-abiding residents of Chicago. “Those are his values and frankly those values to me are a disgrace,” Trump said. “I want Eddie Johnson to change his values and to change them fast.”
During the conference, Trump signed an executive order creating a presidential commission on law enforcement to study issues like substance abuse, homelessness and mental illness. The president also announced that the Justice Department will begin a “surge” to crack down on violent crime in the United States, targeting gang members and drug traffickers in high-crime areas.
Johnson, meanwhile, is under internal investigation after he was found sleeping in a city-owned vehicle earlier this month. Lightfoot said Johnson, who called for the investigation, told her he had “a couple of drinks with dinner” before he fell asleep at a stop sign while driving home. Johnson blamed the episode on a change in his blood pressure medication.
While in Chicago, Trump headlined a campaign luncheon at his hotel in the city, raising approximately $4 million for a joint fundraising committee benefiting Trump’s reelection effort and the Republican National Committee, according to the GOP.
Thousands of demonstrators rallied outside the hotel, waving colorful signs that said “Impeach Trump Now” and “Quid Pro Quo Trump Must Go.” They also shouted chants such as “Lock him up” and “Trump must go.”
Some said they came to protest out of a fear for the country they have never felt before.
“It will take decades to put things back in place,” said Caroline Mooney, a 61-year-old marketing analyst from the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park.
“If something doesn’t happen next November, we may not recover,” said her friend Steve Schaibley, who drove 2-1/2 hours from Livingston County.
The gathering was mostly peaceful. But two people were taken into custody after apparently attacking a man waving a Trump flag. The Trump supporter was bloodied but did not appear to have been seriously injured.
