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Donald Trump and the aftermath of his presidency

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Cowley

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Quite an interesting development.


Mr Trump said in a statement that Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach was "occupied by a large group of FBI agents".
Monday's search was reportedly connected to an investigation into Mr Trump's handling of official papers.
"These are dark times for our nation," Mr Trump's statement said. "Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before."
 

nlogax

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Quite an interesting development.

Usual pro-Trump rabble whining on about it after the event. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's statement / threat for Garland was particularly fun.
“Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,”

Highly doubtful that Garland's intending to flush any of his documents down the bog, right?
 

Shrop

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Usual pro-Trump rabble whining on about it after the event. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's statement / threat for Garland was particularly fun.

Highly doubtful that Garland's intending to flush any of his documents down the bog, right?
There's something fishy about this. Much as I detest a lot of what Republicans stand for, I have to concede that they are very clever, or perhaps more accurately, they're good at hoodwinking the gullible American public.

There's something fundamentally wrong, indeed sinister, about the fact that someone who is clearly guilty of directly inciting a riot which led to multiple deaths, can still be out of jail, let alone being seriously considered for running for the next election, yet in the USA it's happening right before our eyes. So I do wonder whether part of this ongoing and very worrying charade, is that this raid on Trump's Florida home is actually part of a Republican game, designed to head off future attempts to see justice done. A bit like injecting someone with a small amount of a disease, when the real aim is provide future immunity.
 

najaB

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So I do wonder whether part of this ongoing and very worrying charade, is that this raid on Trump's Florida home is actually part of a Republican game, designed to head off future attempts to see justice done. A bit like injecting someone with a small amount of a disease, when the real aim is provide future immunity.
Unlikely. A raid on a former President would necessarily have been signed off by someone close to if not by the AG himself.
 

Strathclyder

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Quite an interesting development.

Was literally going to post that BBC article. In line with the Jan 6th Commission getting the contents of Alex Jones' mobile (I'm convinced that wasn't a total accident/a result of blithering idiocy) and the Justice Department publicly broadening their investigation of January 6th to include leading figures of the MAGA world, plus the investigations into his and his organizations' financial improprieties in New York, this merely adds to the already extremely perilous - and self-inflicted - legal hurricane he's engulfed in.

Usual pro-Trump rabble whining on about it after the event. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's statement / threat for Garland was particularly fun.


Highly doubtful that Garland's intending to flush any of his documents down the bog, right?
Like I said before: Every accusation/deflection that comes from the far-right is a confession.
 

sor

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Usual pro-Trump rabble whining on about it after the event. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's statement / threat for Garland was particularly fun.


Highly doubtful that Garland's intending to flush any of his documents down the bog, right?
Nice bit of nominative determinism in that statement too, another McCarthy witch-hunt coming if his party retakes control of congress
 

Strathclyder

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Nice bit of nominative determinism in that statement too, another McCarthy witch-hunt coming if his party retakes control of congress
Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

Is it just me, or is the McCarthy name predisposed to always be associated with witch hunts/outright lies, incompetence, self-servitude, paranoia and general cowardice in US politics? The present McCarthy is somehow even more smarmy in his spinelessness than the last one was, if that were possible.

Further to and somewhat related to this, the entire Madison Cawthorn saga shows that the GOP can easily get rid of a toxic member of their ranks when they put their minds to it, but just chose/choose not to when it comes to the rest of them (Trump, Gaetz, Greene, Hawley etc). Part of me understands why (don't want their base turning against them for one), while most of me just continues to be baffled.
 
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brad465

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The US Justice Department are asking for the warrant used to search Trump's resort to be publicly released, while AG Merrick Garland has revealed he personally approved the warrant:


The US Justice Department is asking a Florida court to unseal the warrant that let FBI agents search former President Donald Trump's home.
If granted, the request would make the documents available to the public.
Attorney General Merrick Garland also revealed he personally approved the warrant, which was executed at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago property on Monday.
The Justice Department has so far not revealed the reason for the search - but the unsealed warrant could.
Mr Trump has until Friday to object to the unsealing - or could release details of the warrant himself.
Monday's FBI search is believed to be connected to an investigation into whether the former president removed classified records and sensitive material from the White House.
Until now, the Justice Department has followed its normal practice of remaining silent during an investigation - and documents such as search warrants traditionally remain sealed during a pending investigation.
But Mr Garland said he was asking a court to make documents connected to the search warrant publicly available, in the public interest.
He said his decision was also influenced by Mr Trump publicly announcing the search had taken place.
"The public's clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favour of unsealing," Justice Department lawyers said in a motion filed in federal court on Thursday.
Monday's search was the first time in American history that a former president's home has been searched as part of a criminal investigation. It was criticised by Mr Trump and other Republicans as politically motivated.

But speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Mr Garland defended FBI agents and Justice Department officials from the accusations.
"I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked," Mr Garland told reporters.
He also said the decision to search was not taken lightly. "Where possible it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means," he said.
In a statement on Thursday the former president said his team was "cooperating fully" with the with federal investigators.

What's worth noting is Garland was Obama's Supreme Court nominee in 2016 that Mitch McConnell got the Senate to block. If he manages to bring down Trump for the currently alleged crimes leading to the search, they won't be the only "justice done".
 

jon0844

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I think Trump is taking a new approach of sounding like he's cooperative and has nothing to hide, but already having planted the seed that evidence may have been planted by the FBI.

One assumes this means Trump knows what they've found and taken, but if he can prep his base to assume anything from now on was planted, he can just deny everything and create a new conspiracy.
 

najaB

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I think Trump is taking a new approach of sounding like he's cooperative and has nothing to hide, but already having planted the seed that evidence may have been planted by the FBI.
The problem with that is that his lawyer (well, one of his many lawyers!) was present during the search - they would have to be prepared to perjure themselves (and risk debarment) to go along with that story.
 

Giugiaro

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Just a thought, as a consequence of the 2021 United States Capitol attack and the recent attack on the Cincinnati FBI building.

Obviously Trump doesn't have a formal terrorist group, much less an organized one.
But looking at how his accusations almost work as orders for his most radical and violent supporters, could these events fall into the category of terrorism?
 

nlogax

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Obviously Trump doesn't have a formal terrorist group, much less an organized one.
But looking at how his accusations almost work as orders for his most radical and violent supporters, could these events fall into the category of terrorism?
Whatever way you look at it these are all acts of terrorism. Let's see if there's an outcome from the Jan 6th committee.
 

Busaholic

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I assume even the Americans don't have a history of handcuffing children, so, given Trump's famously small hands, I hope they are ensuring they've got handcuffs ready to secure him when the time comes, which may not be far away. As one of the TV networks opines, ''the walls are closing in'' on him, at last.
 

gg1

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The problem with that is that his lawyer (well, one of his many lawyers!) was present during the search - they would have to be prepared to perjure themselves (and risk debarment) to go along with that story.
Trump could easily get around that by sacking the lawyer concerned then claim they were part of the conspiracy to frame him.
 

najaB

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Obviously Trump doesn't have a formal terrorist group, much less an organized one.
But looking at how his accusations almost work as orders for his most radical and violent supporters, could these events fall into the category of terrorism?
Look into stochastic terrorism - any recent dictionary will probably have an entry "see: Trump, Donald J,"
 

ainsworth74

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I assume even the Americans don't have a history of handcuffing children
I'm sorry to break it to you but...

Body Camera Footage Shows Arrest by Orlando Police of 6-Year-Old at School​

The episode, which occurred in September, prompted fierce criticism of the treatment of young children by law enforcement. The officer who arrested the girl was fired.

At first, Kaia Rolle, 6, appeared not to understand what the police officers were doing.

“What are those for?” she said, eyeing the zip ties the officers had brought to the school office in Orlando, Fla.

“It’s for you,” one officer responded.

As he tied them on, she started to sob: “No, don’t put handcuffs on. Help me!”

Newly released body camera footage, first published by The Orlando Sentinel this week, captured these and other jarring details of how the officers arrested Kaia in September and led her through the school into the back of a police vehicle, despite her anguished pleas for them to let her go. Kaia was arrested after throwing a “tantrum” at school earlier that day in which she kicked a school staff member, her grandmother has previously said.

...


Key West Police arrested an 8-year-old at school. His wrists were too small for the handcuffs​


Police officers at a Florida elementary school arrested an 8-year-old boy who had allegedly hit a teacher -- only to realize the boy's wrists were too small for the handcuffs.

Part of the Key West police bodycam footage of the December 2018 arrest was released on Monday by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the boy's mother.

On Tuesday she filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that the officers used excessive force, that school officials failed to intervene, and that the city and school district violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The lawsuit says the boy has special needs.

Key West Police declined to comment to CNN, citing the litigation.

But in a statement to the Miami Herald on Monday, Key West Police Chief Sean T. Brandenburg said that his officers did nothing wrong and that they followed standard operating procedures.

The mother, Bianca N. Digennaro, said in a Zoom press conference Tuesday that her son was arrested, taken to jail, finger-printed, DNA-swabbed and had his mugshot taken that day.


Then, of course, there was the atrocities carried out on the US - Mexico border when US Government officials were ripping children out of their parents arms which was recently detailed in The Atlantic (the article is extremely long but well worth reading in full) in heart wrenching detail:

Recently, I called Nazario Jacinto-Carrillo, a 36-year-old farmer from the western highlands of Guatemala whom I first wrote about in 2018. Back then, with his field barren and the price of crops stagnant, his family had been straining to survive on the $4 a week he brought home during harvest season. Most days, he and his wife went hungry; some days, his two young children did too. They were destitute and felt unsafe in their community. So that spring, he and his 5-year-old daughter, Filomena, set off for the United States. A “coyote” guided them to the American border near San Diego. All they had to do was walk across.

Things didn’t go as planned. As six Border Patrol agents surrounded them, Filomena grabbed onto one of Nazario’s legs, as did another girl her age with whom they were traveling. The girls screamed as the agents pulled the three apart, one of them holding Nazario by the neck. Nazario eventually agreed to be deported back to Guatemala because, he said, a federal agent told him that if he did so, Filomena would be returned to him within two weeks. This false promise was made to many separated parents, who were later portrayed by the administration as having heartlessly chosen to leave their children alone in the United States. “I would never abandon my daughter,” Nazario told me when we first spoke. More than a month had passed since Nazario’s deportation, and Filomena still wasn’t home.

Nazario’s voice cracked as he interrupted my questions with his own. When will Filomena be returned to Guatemala? How many weeks? What number of days? When is the United States government going to give back the children it kidnapped? What does it want with them? They’re children.

It would take nearly three months, a team of lawyers, the sustained attention of journalists, and a federal court order for Filomena to be reunited with her family. By then she was 6; she’d celebrated a birthday in U.S. government custody.

When I called Nazario again recently, his children were still hungry and his family still felt unsafe. I told him that four years later, some parents still don’t have their children back. “I honestly don’t know what to say,” he said. When I asked him if Filomena, now 9 years old, thinks back on what she experienced in the U.S., he handed her the phone so she could answer herself. She eked out a few words that I couldn’t understand and then went silent and handed the phone back to her father.

“Sorry,” he told me. “She’s crying.”
The brutality of Zero Tolerance was immediately evident. The father of a 3-year-old “lost his s—,” one Border Patrol agent told The Washington Post. “They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.” The man was so upset that he was taken to a local jail; he “yelled and kicked at the windows on the ride,” the agent said. The next morning, the father was found dead in his cell; he’d strangled himself with his own clothing.
Neris González, a Salvadoran consular employee charged with protecting the rights of migrants from her country in U.S. custody, was stationed at a CBP processing center in McAllen when she read about Zero Tolerance. “In my little mind,” she told me, “I thought they were going to separate the families” by putting parents in one cell and children in another. “I never thought they would actually take away the children.”

But when she walked into the processing center for the first time after Zero Tolerance was implemented, she saw a sea of children and parents, screaming, reaching for each other, and fighting the Border Patrol agents who were pulling them apart. Children were clinging to whatever part of their parents they could hold on to—arms, shirts, pant legs. “Finally the agent would pull hard and take away the child,” she said. “It was horrible. These weren’t some little animals that they were wrestling over; they were human children.”
González says the sound in the facility was chilling—the children’s cries formed an ear-piercing, whistling wind. The sound worsened when it came time for her to leave at the end of the day. “They grabbed me, squeezed me, hugged me so that I couldn’t leave.”

For her, the scene triggered flashbacks to the war in El Salvador, where thousands of children were disappeared and the sound of their wailing mothers was hard to escape.

 

Gloster

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I assume even the Americans don't have a history of handcuffing children, so, given Trump's famously small hands, I hope they are ensuring they've got handcuffs ready to secure him when the time comes, which may not be far away. As one of the TV networks opines, ''the walls are closing in'' on him, at last.

I think you missed the word ‘white’ between ‘handcuffing’ and ‘children’. That would have made the statement true.
 

TwoYellas

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I like presidents that after saying in 2016:

'You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you are innocent why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?'

Then don't carry on to plead the Fifth Amendment 440 times on Wednesday!
 

Shrop

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... given Trump's famously small hands, I hope they are ensuring they've got handcuffs ready to secure him when the time comes, which may not be far away. As one of the TV networks opines, ''the walls are closing in'' on him, at last.
You think the walls are closing in on Trump? A lot of people in the UK thought the walls were closing in on Boris, but they didn't for many, many months until his own MPs eventually put him into an untenable position, and even now Boris still somehow seems to believe he didn't do anything wrong (eg he still thinks there was nothing wrong about him having a party whilst everyone else was locked down).

However even this doesn't provide a template for the demise of Trump. In the USA, Trump has an alarming amount of influence over contentious issues like their deliberately inadequate gun control and their outrageous refusal to address climate change. Boris was upsetting the majority of his electorate of all political persuasions with Partygate which is why his own party eventually and very belatedly turned on him, but that was different. In the USA the situation isn't Trump vs sense things in the same way that it was with Boris. No, gun control, climate etc are things which the misguided Republicans love to cling on to, as well as often having vested interests in, and most of them still see Trump as their best champion to defend their appalling stance on both things. The wholly partisan Republican position was evidenced by their refusal to sanction Trump's impeachment in 2021, which would go much the same way today as it did back then.

So I'm afraid that much as I would be delighted to see Trump get his come-uppance for his part in the killing of people during the White House riots, I can't see it happening any time soon, if ever.
 

jon0844

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Ultimately, at some point the GOP is going to realise they need to find a new 'leader', and there are plenty of other right-wing maniacs that could step in and take over.

They will have no choice but to distance themselves and say 'we hardly knew the guy'. That's what will end Trump from ever remaining in politics again.

At this point, while many are saying it's some big conspiracy, I suspect there are many Republicans who are keeping very quiet and watching how things pan out. Many will likely seek plea deals if they had any involvement.
 

Busaholic

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You think the walls are closing in on Trump? A lot of people in the UK thought the walls were closing in on Boris, but they didn't for many, many months until his own MPs eventually put him into an untenable position, and even now Boris still somehow seems to believe he didn't do anything wrong (eg he still thinks there was nothing wrong about him having a party whilst everyone else was locked down).

However even this doesn't provide a template for the demise of Trump. In the USA, Trump has an alarming amount of influence over contentious issues like their deliberately inadequate gun control and their outrageous refusal to address climate change. Boris was upsetting the majority of his electorate of all political persuasions with Partygate which is why his own party eventually and very belatedly turned on him, but that was different. In the USA the situation isn't Trump vs sense things in the same way that it was with Boris. No, gun control, climate etc are things which the misguided Republicans love to cling on to, as well as often having vested interests in, and most of them still see Trump as their best champion to defend their appalling stance on both things. The wholly partisan Republican position was evidenced by their refusal to sanction Trump's impeachment in 2021, which would go much the same way today as it did back then.

So I'm afraid that much as I would be delighted to see Trump get his come-uppance for his part in the killing of people during the White House riots, I can't see it happening any time soon, if ever.
I was quoting one of NBC, ABC, CBS or CNN, though obviously not Fox! Yes, I'm not saying it's a Slam Dunk, but it's getting to the point where Trump can't be sure of retaining the loyalty of anyone, including his own family, who may spill the beans in order to save their own skins.

The situation re Johnson is totally irrelevant to this in every regard. He may have sought to ape certain of Trump's actions, and both are complete strangers to truth, but the American Justice System with all its imperfections does, in theory, provide far more onerous sanctions on those wielding power with the penalties to match. Fifteen year sentences for those who'd get a slap on the wrist on the UK, assuming they ever got put in front of a court. Why was Prince Andrew so determined to stay away from the USA and the clutches of its courts?
 

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