USA News and Discussions

User avatar
Time_Traveller
Posts: 2023
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 4:49 pm
Location: Clermont, Indiana, USA, October 7th 2019 B.C.E

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by Time_Traveller »

wjfox wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:13 pm Trump is now under criminal investigation for potential violation of the Espionage Act. Possibly relating to classified nuclear documents. 

He's now doing his usual what-aboutism, accusing Obama of something similar and typing in BLOCK CAPS!!1. 

Trump says he declassified every document seized by the FBI. But the fact is, the President does not have this ability for documents that are classified by statute (like nuclear secrets and identification of intelligence operatives).

This is going to be very interesting. Could they FINALLY nail him? The violations carry up to 10 years in prison per document.
Life hopefully fingers crossed.
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.
User avatar
joe00uk
Posts: 121
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 5:00 pm
Location: UK

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by joe00uk »

wjfox wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:13 pm Trump is now under criminal investigation for potential violation of the Espionage Act. Possibly relating to classified nuclear documents. 
Wow it's like they really want Jan 6th to happen again but to go all the way next time.
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

The Warrant Authorizing the FBI Search of Trump’s Home is Unsealed — and It’s Alarming
by Sean Collins
August 12, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) Two key documents related to the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on Monday are now available to the public: the warrant that authorized the raid, and the property receipt that details what federal agents recovered.

Together, the documents provide a clearer picture of how the search came together, and both the size and scope of the seizure.

The documents indicate the warrant was issued to investigate potential violations of the Espionage Act. That act states, among other things, that an official entrusted with sensitive or classified information who allows it to be taken away from its secure location through “gross negligence” or who knows it’s been removed from safety and doesn’t tell federal officials can be fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years. They also suggest an inquiry into possible improper removal or destruction of federal records, and obstruction of a federal investigation.

The receipt suggests 11 sets of documents were recovered, including items related to French President Emmanuel Macron, handwritten notes, photos, and top-secret materials.

Trump decried the search, claiming in a statement, incorrectly, that his home was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” Reports quickly began to emerge that the search was premised on recovering sensitive information that needed to be secured. A Thursday Washington Post report stated that classified nuclear documents may be among those recovered; that’s concerning given the wide range of allies and adversaries who’ve had, and continue to have, access to the golf club that serves as one of the former president’s homes.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politic ... ar-a-lago

Here is an extract from another article in Vox which states the obvious:
Former President Donald Trump has denied taking any nuclear-related documents, calling the Post’s reporting a “Hoax.” Trump has been known to issue false and misleading statements before, of course, which raises the question: If Trump had nuclear secrets lying around his house, what might they be?

“It could be anything ranging from something that would endanger the lives of hundreds of millions of people to something that has no impact on anything whatsoever. That’s how vague the classified categorization is,” Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science and nuclear weapons, told me.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politic ... ump-taken

Endanger “the lives of hundreds of millions.” Presumably, that also includes the lives of people living in countries allied to the U.S., such as the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. But yes, a lot of freedumb loving Americans (and others) will not believe there was a threat from the potential of Trump to peddle these secrets to the highest bidder for his own personal gain. Besides, many believe that Trump should be above the law, although they never quite come around to explaining why.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Trump Is Pushing Us Toward the Abyss
by Zack Beauchamp
August 12, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) That former President Donald Trump was reportedly hiding nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago is shocking, even to those of us who expect the worst of Trump.

Even after the release of the warrant and property receipt on Friday afternoon, we don’t exactly know what the documents were or even if they are related to America’s nuclear arsenal or that of a foreign power. Trump, for his part, predictably slammed the report on social media, calling it a “hoax.” But if the Washington Post’s reporting is even remotely accurate, it raises troubling questions about why the former president decided to purloin the documents. It also explains why the Justice Department was willing to go to such extreme lengths to recover them.

Yet while Attorney General Merrick Garland’s logic in authorizing the search now appears sound, its consequences appear increasingly dire.
On Thursday, a man identified as Ricky Shiffer — a Trump supporter who attended the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot — attacked an FBI building in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a nail gun, ultimately dying in a confrontation with police. On Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, Shiffer indicated that he was motivated by the FBI raid. “We must not tolerate this one,” he wrote in one message.

On Friday, Temple Beth David — a South Florida synagogue attended by the federal judge who authorized the search — was scheduled to host evening services on the beach. But a member of the synagogue on Thursday said that the Beach Shabbat event was canceled amid a deluge of antisemitic threats. The judge’s involvement in the synagogue had been publicly identified in a Tuesday Twitter post by Lenny Dykstra, a former New York Mets outfielder and convicted felon, who followed up with antisemitic comments about Beth David’s religious practices.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/authors/zack-beauchamp
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Cracks Emerge in GOP’s Mar-a-Lago Response
by Andrew Solender
August 13, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) Republicans are dividing over how or whether to defend former President Trump after the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago — and what to do about some members' heated rhetoric toward law enforcement.

Why it matters: Documents released Friday bolster reports that the search involved highly classified materials believed stored in violation of the law at the ex-president's private residence.

Driving the news: Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee held a press conference on Friday, before the release, in which they continued to cast the search as politically motivated.
  • But even some Intelligence Committee Republicans who participated struck a more measured tone in interviews afterward.
  • And according to the New York Times, Trump allies have told top Republicans to tone down their criticism of the Justice Department "because it is possible that more damaging information related to the search will become public."
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/08/13/crack ... -response
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Congress Sends $740 Billion Tax, Health and Climate Bill to Biden's Desk
by Andrew Solender
August 13, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) The House of Representatives on Friday passed Democrats' $740 billion tax, health care and climate bill, which now goes to President Biden's desk for his signature.

Driving the news: The bill passed 220-207 with all Republicans voting against it.

Details: By far, the largest spending provision in the bill is nearly $370 billion to combat climate change, including tax credits and funding for renewable energy, electric vehicles and energy-efficient home improvements, as well as incentives for companies to cut methane emissions. It also:

• Extends enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.

• Allows Medicare to negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs and requires drug companies to pay rebates for raising prices faster than inflation.

• Imposes a 15% minimum tax on corporations making $1 billion or more in annual profits and a 1% fee on stock buybacks.

• Invests $80 billion in the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax evasion by the wealthy and corporations.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/08/12/healt ... -congress
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Endanger “the lives of hundreds of millions.”
Well, here is some further discussion by Tom Nichols on that issue found in The Atlantic:
It’s been a bad week for nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The Russians are (yet again) imperiling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and in Florida, a former president of the United States has apparently been storing some of America’s most important secrets about nuclear weapons in his literal basement with nothing more than a few padlocks on the door.

Unnamed sources told The Washington Post that the search warrant for Trump’s home included “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,” but that could mean almost anything. Nuclear issues could, and almost certainly would, sometimes be included in the President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified digest of the most important issues facing American leaders summarized in a single report every morning. Other documents, however, might include almost anything: budgets for modernizing America’s nuclear deterrent, proposals for new weapons, evaluations of enemy nuclear developments, the status of allied nuclear forces, and multiple other sensitive issues.

These nuclear-related materials are classified at stratospherically high levels. Although most people are familiar with categories such as “Secret” or “Top Secret” (TS) certain kinds of documents and reports are even more tightly controlled with additional categories such as SCI, for Sensitive Compartmented Information; CNWDI, for Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information; and SAP, for Special Access Programs. According to The New York Times, Trump was holding documents marked TS/SCI, among other classifications.

Sitting presidents can see them all; contrary to popular belief, they do not have a security clearance. Instead, their election to the office means that they have the trust and confidence of the American people. Former presidents, however, have no such access, and when the Justice Department demanded that Trump return what he took, (including by subpoena), he failed to do so. This is something of a mystery in itself; Trump had already handed back 15 boxes of documents, but he dug in his heels on returning anything more.

I am concerned, in particular, by conversations I have seen (and some in which I have participated) on social media that suggest to me that Trump’s critics are letting their imaginations run away with them, including accusations that Trump has, or soon will, sell these secrets to America’s enemies.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters ... s/671135/

Ok, I will try and not let my imagination "run away." Still, it begs the question, what was Trump planning to do with these documents?

Nichols argues that Trump was "worried about documents mixed in among other materials that could implicate him in various kinds of wrongdoing."

I think Nichols would agree that is hardly a good excuse for defending Trump's actions or suggesting that he be above the law.

Meanwhile, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists also had an article on the matter:
The release of the search warrant was preceded and followed by a barrage of media revelations about the documents seized from the former president’s estate and the events that led to their seizure. Ahead of the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had sought “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons” in the search. The subsequent unveiling of the search warrant and inventory of items seized did not detail precisely what documents had been taken from the ex-president’s control or suggest specifically that any of them were related to nuclear weapons.

But one item in the inventory was labelled “[v]arious classified/TS/SCI documents,” indicating that it included “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” which is not intended to be viewed outside a secure government facility, the New York Times reported. In all, the FBI retrieved 11 sets of documents marked as confidential, secret, or top secret from Trump’s Florida estate.

The Post’s report that agents had been looking for documents relating to nuclear weapons set off a storm of speculation about how nuclear weapons information is kept secret, and whether Trump would have violated any laws if he did take nuclear weapons information to his Florida estate. Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein provided authoritative commentary in a lengthy Twitter thread on the difference between the classification of national defense information and the system of keeping nuclear weapons information—technically known as “restricted data”—secret. “It would be interesting if the documents in question did have Restricted Data in them, though,” Wellerstein tweeted. “Because while it has been established that a POTUS can declassify national defense information at will, RD is an entirely different category of secrecy, a parallel legal system.”


Source: https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/searchi ... t-heading

Not to mention that Trump is no longer the President of the United States. Apparently, Trump has claimed that he declassified the material while he was still president. He has also claimed that the documents were planted on his estate by the FBI. Not exactly statements that are easy to reconcile with each other, but then logical coherence was never Trump's strong suit.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the ... es-1-1-056
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

Post Reply