Thread: Legal Charges Against Trump

There’s every chance that he will, the man only likes sycophants

True, true.

And because it's so much fun:

House Democrat Sues Trump, Giuliani And 2 Far-Right Groups Over Capitol Riot


Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is suing former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and two far-right groups — the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers — for allegedly conspiring to incite the deadly violence on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

The lawsuit, filed on Thompson's behalf by the NAACP and the civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, accuses Trump and the other defendants of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Actby trying to interfere in Congress' certification of the Electoral College count. The legislation was part of a series of Enforcement Acts at the time intended to protect the enfranchisement of Black citizens from violence and intimidation.

The suit is the first against Trump since the Senate acquitted him Saturday in his second impeachment trial. Seven Republicans broke with Trump and voted for his conviction on the charge of inciting an insurrection, but the tally still fell short of the 67 needed to convict him.


After the vote, the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, delivered a scathing speech in which he blamed Trump for the violence on Jan. 6 but said he voted to acquit because he believes a former president can't be tried by the Senate. McConnell also said Trump can be held liable in the court system.
Thompson's lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and seeks compensatory and punitive damages, aims to do just that.

"I am privileged to partner with the NAACP to have my day in court so that the perpetrators of putting members of Congress at risk can be held accountable," Thompson told reporters Tuesday.
The main sweep of allegations, as well as many of the details, presented in the lawsuit mirrors those made by House managers in Trump's impeachment trial. The lawsuit alleges that Trump spent months pushing baseless claims about election fraud, primed his supporters with lies and ultimately directed them Jan. 6 at the Capitol.


It claims that Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers conspired to incite a mob, march on the Capitol and, through force, intimidation and threat, prevent Congress' counting of the Electoral College votes.
"The insurrection at the Capitol was a direct, intended, and foreseeable result of the Defendants' unlawful conspiracy," the lawsuit alleges. "It was instigated according to a common plan that the Defendants pursued since the election held in November 2020."

The lawsuit accuses the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of spearheading the assault on the Capitol while Trump and Giuliani, his lawyer, incited the mob. Several members of both of the far-right groups are facing federal charges — including conspiracy — in connection with their actions on Jan. 6.
The lawsuit lists Proud Boys International, a Texas limited liability company with chapters around the U.S., as a defendant. The Oath Keepers, meanwhile, is a militia organization that is incorporated as a nonprofit in Nevada.

. . . . and more

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/96837...r-capitol-riot

Originally Posted by Cujo

Proving it will be the problem.
They stirred up a crowd at a rally but did they incite them to insurrection.

I think that was proven beyond all doubt by the evidence presented at the trial.

There's a direct line from Trumps lies to the crowd (before, during and after) and statements from those involved and why they were and who they thought it was for.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Proving it will be the problem.
They stirred up a crowd at a rally but did they actually incite them to insurrection is what they'll have to prove and I expect that'll be difficult unless they can find people that will testify that they were specifically instructed to go to the capitol building and attempt to take over. ('fight' could taken many ways as they have claimed)

They aren't zombies under mind-control of a tyrant. They acted of free will and anger. What will happen if criminals all start stating that someone famous induced them into committing their crime?

Originally Posted by Wakey

They aren't zombies under mind-control of a tyrant. They acted of free will and anger. What will happen if criminals all start stating that someone famous induced them into committing their crime?

It's the law you imbecile. I see changing nicks hasn't got you out of a single digit IQ.

18 U.S. Code § 373 - Solicitation to commit a crime of violence

So in that case, all movie-producers who show people profiting from crimes of violence in their movies can face the same charge.

I see your buddies have been furiously greening you

Originally Posted by Wakey

So in that case, all movie-producers who show people profiting from crimes of violence in their movies can face the same charge.

Stupidest comparison in the history of comparisons.
Who do we think this poster is?

Try saying why it's stupid rather than obsessing about who said it.

Originally Posted by Wakey

Try saying why it's stupid rather than obsessing about who said it.

Really? It's pretty obvious, I really don't think it needs explaining.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Who do we think this poster is?

It'll be smegly . . . not even our mods would let Fluke back that quickly

Originally Posted by Cujo

Stupidest comparison in the history of comparisons.

Yes, it is

Originally Posted by Wakey

So in that case, all movie-producers who show people profiting from crimes of violence in their movies can face the same charge.

Go and have a lie down, there's a dear.

Donald Trump’s Tax Records Finally Turned Over For New York Investigation



lock him the fvck up

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment

Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices.

Executing a search warrant is an extraordinary move for prosecutors to take against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer for a former president, and it marks a major turning point in the long-running investigation into Mr. Giuliani.

The federal authorities have been largely focused on whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping Mr. Giuliani search for dirt on Mr. Trump’s political rivals, including President Biden, who was then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan and the F.B.I. had for months sought to secure a search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s phones.

Palm Beach Police Have Reportedly Discussed Trump’s Possible Extradition If He’s Indicted

Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Florida are reportedly developing a contingency plan in case Donald Trump is indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.


As the former president continues to wage war with political foes from Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his businesses are still under a grand jury investigation into allegations of banking and tax fraud. This raises the possibility of Trump being extradited to New York if he’s charged with wrongdoing on these matters. Politico reported Thursday that Florida officials are holding discussions about what they would do in that scenario.


According to the report, Florida has an interstate extradition statute that would allow Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) “to intervene and even investigate whether an indicted ‘person ought to be surrendered’ to law enforcement officials from another state.” Trump and DeSantis are known to be allies, and the former has suggested that he would consider the governor as his running mate if he runs for president again — though DeSantis and Trump could also be formidable rivals in 2024.


Politico’s report also noted that conversations about Trump’s extradition from Florida might be a moot point if he relocates to his property in Bedminster, New Jersey while Mar-a-Lago closes for the summer season. This could actually have legal repercussions for Trump: Even though New Jersey has a similar extradition statute, Governor Phil Murphy (D) is less likely than DeSantis to stand in the way of a possible indictment.

Palm Beach Reportedly Discussing Trump Extradition

Right wing fake news lairs.

I've got nothing to say,
I've got nothing to do,
All om my neurons are
Functioning smoothly
Yet still I'm a cyborg just like you,
I am one big myoma that thinks,
My planet supports only me,
I've got this one big problem: will I live forever?
I've got just a short time you see,
Modern man, evolutionary betrayer,
Modern man, ecosystem destroyer,
Modern man, destroy yourself in shame,
Modern man, pathetic example of earth's organic heritage,
When I look back and think,
When I ponder and ask "why?"
I see my ancestors spend with careless abandon,
Assuming eternal supply, modern man,
Just a sample of carbon-based wastage,
Just a fucking tragic epic of you and I

It would be great if someone more talented than I and more familiar with U.S. legal procedures could write an article beginning "former President Trump was today arrested and booked on charges of tax fraud and fraudulent filings blah blah blah,....." and attach this photo and post it on some right wing redneck site in the hope that it'll go viral and start panic among the Trumptards.

Originally Posted by Cujo

It would be great if someone more talented than I and more familiar with U.S. legal procedures could write an article beginning "former President Trump was today arrested and booked on charges of tax fraud and fraudulent filings blah blah blah,....."

Amerikkka is a joke as an American I do not take it seriously as a nation state. It is an amazing place if you are super rich and can puddle jump over the shithole states that are full of trailer trash and think a fancy night out is at the Olive Garden. This is the mentality we are dealing with. Epicly dumb fucks like Slick who swallow the talking points without question. That dunce has never been to anyplace in the world outside of his oil job paid ticket. He is a prime example of a dimwitted fucktard.

He is the cancer that is eating America from the inside.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Proving it will be the problem.
They stirred up a crowd at a rally but did they actually incite them to insurrection is what they'll have to prove and I expect that'll be difficult unless they can find people that will testify that they were specifically instructed to go to the capitol building and attempt to take over. ('fight' could taken many ways as they have claimed)

I like this.

Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government

The campaign included planned operations against President Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and F.B.I. employees, according to documents and interviews.
May 13, 2021

WASHINGTON — A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

The campaign shows the obsession that some of Mr. Trump’s allies had about a shadowy “deep state” trying to blunt his agenda — and the lengths that some were willing to go to try to purge the government of those believed to be disloyal to the president.

Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018.

Last year, The New York Times reported that Mr. Seddon ran an expansive effort to gain access to the unions and campaigns and led a hiring effort that nearly tripled the number of the group’s operatives, according to interviews and deposition testimony. He trained operatives at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming.

The efforts to target American officials show how a campaign once focused on exposing outside organizations slowly morphed into an operation to ferret out Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies in the government’s ranks.

Whether any of Mr. Trump’s White House advisers had direct knowledge of the campaign is unclear, but one of the participants in the operation against Mr. McMaster, Barbara Ledeen, said she was brought on by someone “with access to McMaster’s calendar.”

At the time, Ms. Ledeen was a staff member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, then led by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.

This account is drawn from more than a dozen interviews with former Project Veritas employees and others familiar with the campaign, along with current and former government officials and internal Project Veritas documents.

The scheme against Mr. McMaster, revealed in interviews and documents, was one of the most brazen operations of the campaign. It involved a plan to hire a woman armed with a hidden camera to capture Mr. McMaster making inappropriate remarks that his opponents could use as leverage to get him ousted as national security adviser.

Although several Project Veritas operatives were involved in the plot, it is unclear whether the group directed it. The group, which is a nonprofit, has a history of conducting sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and advocacy groups.

The operation was ultimately abandoned in March 2018 when the conspirators ended up getting what they wanted, albeit by different means. The embattled Mr. McMaster resigned on March 22, a move that avoided a firing by the president who had soured on the three-star general.

Project Veritas did not respond to specific questions about the operations. On Thursday, James O’Keefe, the head of the group, said this article was “a smear piece.”

“Because The New York Times is losing to Project Veritas in a court of law, it is trying to smear Project Veritas in the court of public opinion,” he said. “I think the court, like me, may well be appalled at The New York Times’s continued pattern of defamation of Project Veritas.” He also released a video.

Project Veritas sued The Times for defamation last year over coverage of one of the group’s videos.

Neither Mr. Seddon nor Mr. Prince responded to requests for comment. Mr. McMaster declined to comment.

When confronted with details about her involvement in the McMaster operation, Ms. Ledeen insisted that she was merely a messenger. “I am not part of a plot,” she said.

The operation against Mr. McMaster was hatched not long after an article appeared in BuzzFeed News about a private dinner in 2017. Exactly what happened during the dinner is in dispute, but the article said that Mr. McMaster had disparaged Mr. Trump by calling him an “idiot” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner.”

That dinner, at an upscale restaurant in downtown Washington, was attended by Mr. McMaster and Safra A. Catz, the chief executive of Oracle, as well as two of their aides. Not long after, Ms. Catz called Donald F. McGahn II, then the White House counsel, to complain about Mr. McMaster’s behavior, according to two people familiar with the call.

White House officials investigated and could not substantiate her claims, people familiar with their inquiry said. Ms. Catz declined to comment, and there is no evidence that she played any role in the plot against Mr. McMaster.

Soon after the BuzzFeed article, however, the scheme developed to try to entrap Mr. McMaster: Recruit a woman to stake out the same restaurant, Tosca, with a hidden camera. According to the plan, whenever Mr. McMaster returned by himself, the woman would strike up a conversation with him and, over drinks, try to get him to make comments that could be used to either force him to resign or get him fired.

Who initially ordered the operation is unclear. In an interview, Ms. Ledeen said “someone she trusted” contacted her to help with the plan. She said she could not remember who.

“Somebody who had his calendar conveyed to me that he goes to Tosca all the time,” she said of Mr. McMaster.

According to Ms. Ledeen, she passed the message to a man she believed to be a Project Veritas operative during a meeting at the University Club in Washington. Ms. Ledeen said she believed the man provided her with a fake name.

By then, Mr. McMaster already had a raft of enemies among Trump loyalists, who viewed him as a “globalist” creature of the so-called deep state who was committed to policies they vehemently opposed, like remaining committed to a nuclear deal with Iran and keeping American troops in Afghanistan.

The president often stoked the fire, railing against national security officials at the C.I.A., F.B.I., State Department and elsewhere who he was convinced were trying to undermine him. These “unelected deep-state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas,” he said in 2018, “are truly a threat to democracy itself.”

Mr. Seddon recruited Tarah Price, who at one point was a Project Veritas operative, and offered to pay her thousands of dollars to participate in the operation, according to interviews and an email written by a former boyfriend of Ms. Price and sent to Project Veritas Exposed, a group that tries to identify the group’s undercover operatives.

The May 2018 email, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, said that Ms. Price was “going to get paid $10,000 to go undercover and set up some big-name political figure in Washington.” It was unclear who was funding the operation. Ms. Price’s former boyfriend was apparently unaware of the target of the operation, or that Mr. McMaster had been forced to step down in March.

Two people identified the political figure as Mr. McMaster. Ms. Price did not respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Ledeen was a longtime staff member for the Judiciary Committee who had been part of past operations in support of Mr. Trump. In 2016, she was involved in a secret effort with Michael T. Flynn — who went on to become Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser — to hunt down thousands of emails that had been deleted from Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

According to the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, Ms. Ledeen had prepared a 25-page proposal about how to obtain what she believed were “classified emails” that had already been “purloined by our enemies.” The exchange was included in emails the special counsel obtained during the investigation.

Ms. Ledeen later claimed to have obtained the deleted Clinton emails from the dark web and sought Mr. Prince’s assistance to authenticate them. “Erik Prince provided funding to hire a tech adviser to ascertain the authenticity of the emails. According to Prince, the tech adviser determined that the emails were not authentic,” the special counsel’s report said.

She is part of a network of conservative activists who had particular influence in the Trump White House. She is a member of one group, Groundswell, that pushed to purge the White House and other government agencies of “deep state” enemies of Mr. Trump.

Last year, Axios reported that a memo written by Ms. Ledeen — laying out a case against a nominee for a top job in the Treasury Department — was instrumental in Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the nomination.

Ms. Ledeen is married to Michael Ledeen, who wrote the 2016 book “The Field of Fight” with Mr. Flynn. She said she retired from the Senate earlier this year.

After Mr. Flynn resigned under pressure as national security adviser, Mr. Trump gave the job to Mr. McMaster — inciting the ire of loyalists to Mr. Flynn.

Ms. Ledeen posted numerous negative articles about Mr. McMaster on her Facebook page. After The Times published its article about Mr. Prince’s work with Project Veritas, she wrote on Facebook, “We owe a lot to Erik Prince.”


A Former Spy’s Role

Mr. Seddon first came to know Mr. Prince in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when he was stationed at the British Embassy in Washington and Mr. Prince’s company, Blackwater, was winning large American government contracts for work in Afghanistan and Iraq. Former colleagues of Mr. Seddon said he nurtured a love of the American West, and of the country’s gun culture.

He is married to a longtime State Department officer, Alice Seddon, who retired last year.

After Mr. Seddon joined Project Veritas, he set out to professionalize what was once a small operation with a limited budget. He hired former soldiers, a former F.B.I. agent and a British former commando.

Documents obtained by The Times show the extent that Mr. Seddon built espionage tactics into training for the group’s operatives — teaching them to use deception to secure information from potential targets.

One role-playing exercise involved a trainee being interrogated by a law enforcement officer and having to “defend their cover” and “avoid exciting” the officer.

Another exercise instructs trainees in how to target a person in an elevator. The students were encouraged to think of their “targets as a possible future access agent, potential donor, support/facilities agent.”

“The student must create and maintain a fictional cover,” one document read.

The early training for the operations took place at the Prince family ranch near Cody, Wyo., and Mr. Seddon and his colleagues conducted hiring interviews inside an airport hangar at the Cody airport known locally as the Prince hangar, according to interviews and documents. Mr. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, who served as Mr. Trump’s education secretary.

During the interview process, candidates fielded questions meant to figure out their political leanings, including which famous people they might invite to a dinner party and which publications they get their news from.

After finishing the exercises, the operatives were told to burn the training materials, according to a former Project Veritas employee.

Project Veritas also experienced a windfall during the Trump administration, with millions in donations from private donors and conservative foundations. In 2019, the group received a $1 million contribution made through the law firm Alston & Bird, according to a financial document obtained by The Times. The firm has declined to say on whose behalf the contribution was made.

That same year, Project Veritas also received more than $4 million through DonorsTrust, a nonprofit used by conservative groups and individuals.


Targeting F.B.I. Employees

Around the time Mr. McMaster resigned, Mr. Seddon pushed for Project Veritas to establish a base of operations in Washington and found a six-bedroom estate near the Georgetown University campus, according to former Project Veritas employees. The house had a view of the Potomac River and was steps from a dark, narrow staircase made famous by the film “The Exorcist.”

The group used a shell company to rent it, according to Project Veritas documents and interviews.

The plan was simple: Use undercover operatives to entrap F.B.I. employees and other government officials who could be publicly exposed as opposing Mr. Trump.

The group has previously assigned female operatives to secretly record and discredit male targets — sometimes making first contact with them on dating apps. In 2017, a Project Veritas operative also approached a Washington Post reporter with a false claim that a Senate candidate had impregnated her.

During the Trump administration, the F.B.I. became an attractive target for the president’s allies. In late 2017, news reports revealed that a senior F.B.I. counterintelligence agent and a lawyer at the bureau who were working on the Russia investigation had exchanged text messages disparaging Mr. Trump.

The president’s supporters and allies in Congress said the texts were proof of bias at the F.B.I. and that the sprawling Russia inquiry was just a plot by the “deep state” to derail the Trump presidency.

Project Veritas operatives created fake profiles on dating apps to lure the F.B.I. employees, according to two former Project Veritas employees and a screenshot of one of the accounts. They arranged to meet and arrived with a hidden camera and microphone.

Women living at the house had Project Veritas code names, including “Brazil” and “Tiger,” according to three former Project Veritas employees with knowledge of the operations. People living at the house were told not to receive mail using their real names. If they took an Uber home, the driver had to stop before they reached the house to ensure nobody saw where they actually lived, one of the former Project Veritas employees said.

One woman living at the house, Anna Khait, was part of several operations against various targets, including a State Department employee. Project Veritas released a video of the operation in 2018, saying it was the first installment in “an undercover video investigation series unmasking the deep state.”

In the video, Mr. O’Keefe said Project Veritas had been investigating the deep state for more than a year. He did not mention efforts to target the F.B.I.

A former Project Veritas employee and another person identified the woman who targeted the State Department employee as Ms. Khait, who had appeared on the television show “Survivor.”

Ms. Khait did not respond to a request for comment.

By the time Project Veritas released its first “deep state” video, Mr. Seddon had left the group for other ventures — chafing at what he viewed as Mr. O’Keefe’s desire to produce quick media content rather than to run long-term infiltration operations, three former Project Veritas employees said.

He was replaced by Tom Williams, a longtime associate of Mr. Prince’s, two of the former Project Veritas employees said. Mr. Williams also eventually left the group.

Mr. O’Keefe has long defended his group’s methods. In his 2018 book, “American Pravda,” Mr. O’Keefe wrote that a “key distinction between the Project Veritas journalist and establishment reporters” is that “while we use deception to gain access, we never deceive our audience.”

Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting
Campaign Said to Have Targeted Trump '''Enemies''' in Government - The New York Times

^ Not surprising at all with that scummy Project Veritas involved.

Wow, what a feeding frenzy.

A special thanks to Klondyke for wetting down the flames.