McCarthy Threatens FBI Director with Contempt for Not Aiding His Petty Persecution of Biden

Posted by Mark NC on May 31, 2023 at 11:57 am. 2 Comments :

The Republican controlled House of Representatives has rapidly proven that it has no real interest in governing and is utterly unfit to do so. Since assuming the barest of majorities, its concerted efforts to smear Democrats have fallen flat as they held hearings that produced little more than rancid allegations with no basis in reality.

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Nevertheless, the Republican crusaders continue to pursue their political theatrics with casts of dubious characters as witnesses and fantastical stories as testimony. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, leads the GOP’s Bogus Scandal Caucus with ludicrous hearings aimed solely at maligning President Biden and other Democrats.

SEE THIS: HOW CONVENIENT: GOP Oversight Committee Chair Says He Can’t Find His Star Witness Against Biden

On Tuesday House Squeaker Kevin McCarthy visited with his propaganda cohorts on Fox News to complain that FBI Director, Chris Wray, has declined to turn over a document that Comer seeks as part of his Biden persecution. McCarthy falsely insisted that he has jurisdiction over the FBI and demanded that they obey his dictate…

“I personally called Director Wray and told him he needs to send that document. Today is the deadline. So let me not tell just you, let me tell Director Christopher Wray right here, right now. If he misses the deadline today, I am prepared to move contempt charges against him.”

I have a message for FBI Director Christopher Wray: If he misses today's deadline to turn over subpoenaed documents to Congress, I am prepared to move contempt charges against him. pic.twitter.com/D3hyW3VIpX

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) May 30, 2023

McCarthy threatened Wray and the FBI with contempt of Congress if they don’t comply with his petulant demand, saying that “they are not above the law.” Which is particularly ironic considering that McCarthy himself failed to comply with a congressional subpoena last year that was issued by the Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection that Donald Trump incited.

To no one’s surprise, the FBI told Comer and McCarthy that they would not be providing the document in question. Consequently, Comer announced that his Committee “will now be taking steps to hold FBI Director Wray in contempt of Congress.” And you can bet that Wray is shaking in his boots. His boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, is not likely to proceed with any legal action against Wray. And that’s not because of politics, but because there is no legal justification for it. For the record, the FBI rejected Comer’s original request weeks ago saying that…

“It is critical to the integrity of the entire criminal justice process and to the fulfillment of our law enforcement duties that FBI avoid revealing information — including unverified or incomplete information — that could harm investigations, prejudice prosecutions or judicial proceedings, unfairly violate privacy or reputational interests, or create misimpressions in the public.”

Wray also previously advised the Committee of “the importance of us protecting sources and methods and ongoing investigations.” And an FBI spokesperson told the Committee that “there are strict Justice Department guidelines about when that information can be provided outside of the FBI.” He further educated the GOP inquisitors that the document they seek (an FD-1023 form) is “used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting from a confidential human source.” He elaborated saying that…

“An FD-1023 form documents information as told to a line FBI agent. Recording the information does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI. The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it. Indeed, the FBI regularly receives information from sources with significant potential biases, motivations, and knowledge, including drug traffickers, members of organized crime, or even terrorists.”

In other words, the GOP’s desired document might just be the dishonest ravings of a partisan player with a political axe to grind. It would be irresponsible to disseminate that information as it could defame others and irreparably damage reputations. Which is precisely why Republicans want it. It is their mission to defame and damage their political foes.

Wray knows that McCarthy and Comer cannot be trusted with unverified reports. They would just exploit them for political purposes. And their whining about not getting the information is brazenly hypocritical. During the course of their congressional hearings they have refused to provide information that would validate their accusations. They won’t even give that information to Democrats on the Committee, in violation of committee rules. Their sole objective is to attack Democrats in order to advance their own electoral prospects in the future. They have even said so explicitly…

SEE THIS: New GOP Subcommittee Chair Openly Admits His Only Purpose is to ‘Make Life Hell’ for Democrats

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Trump (and Fox News) FREAK OUT After Durham Report Turns Out to Be Another GOP Nothingburger

Posted by Mark NC on May 16, 2023 at 11:33 am. 0 Comments :

Prior to losing his job as Attorney General due to Donald Trump losing his reelection bid to President Biden, Bill Barr appointed a fellow right-wing shill, John Durham, to conduct a contrived investigation of the investigators who proved that Trump had numerous unsavory associations with Russians trying to interfere with the U.S. election. Unlike Durham’s fakery, Trump’s Russian connections are actually very well documented.

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Now, after four years, and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars, Durham has finally issued his conclusions in a 300 page report that is little more than the sort of ultra-conservative opinions posted by the partisan Republican press. It is more clear than ever that Durham’s mission was to manufacture fake scandals in order to discredit the legitimate investigations into Trump’s myriad criminal activities.

In the hours since the Durham report was released, Trump has been desperately trying to shape a wholly false narrative that Durham actually exonerated him. Trump was up until after 2:00am frantically posting 27 hysterical comments on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, claiming vindication. Then he was up at 6:00am to post 24 more.

That’s 51 posts, mostly of links to congressional and media Trump-fluffers. Among them were five videos from Fox News (which he said “sucks” earlier the same day), alleging totally unsupported assertions that the Justice Department and the FBI engaged in “domestic terrorism” and “election fraud,” and should be defunded. So much for the GOP backing law enforcement.

Among Trump’s frenzied outbursts in response to the Durham Nothingburger were these classic commentaries that are emblematic of his derangement…

“WOW! After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia Probe! In other words, the American Public was scammed, just as it is being scammed right now by those who don’t want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA! “

“The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people. This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so. This totally illegal act had a huge impact on the Election. With an honest Media, we are looking at the Crime of the Century!”

“JACK SMITH AND THE SPECIAL PERSECUTORS OFFICE ARE PLAYING THE SAME GAMES WITH ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND FAKE PROSECUTIONS AS JAMES COMEY, ONLY FAR MORE OBVIOUS. THE DOJ MUST END THIS CHARADE RIGHT NOW, AND THAT GOES TO THEIR USE OF D.A.’s & A.G’s IN ATLANTA & NEW YORK. MAGA!!!”

“THEY ARE SCUM, LIKE COCKROACHES ALL OVER WASHINGTON, D.C. Congratulations to John Durham on a Report that is being praised for its quality, importance, and professionalism, by friend and foe alike!”

Trump’s feeble attempt to connect the Durham report to the special counsel probe by Jack Smith, and the ongoing investigations of his criminal activities by prosecutors in Atlanta and New York, is particularly comical. Those investigations – that are examining Trump’s financial fraud, his election interference, the January 6th insurrection, and his theft and hoarding of classified documents – are getting closer to producing indictments than Durham ever dreamed. And they are driving him crazy(er).

SEE THIS: Trump Warns of ‘Death and Destruction’ if He is Indicted for Crimes that He Actually Committed

FOR THE RECORD: Donald Trump and his Republican Party cult claimed for years that Durham would expose the “Crime of the Century” and finally prove that the investigations of Trump were a “hoax.” They insisted that Durham would secure convictions of everyone from Hillary Clinton, to Barack Obama, to James Comey, and the rest of the evil Democratic cabal that they imagined were conspiring against Dear Leader Trump.

The crux of the conclusions by Durham state simply that “the [Justice] Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law.” But Durham also noted that his own report, “does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out.” So what exactly was the point?

The only two cases that Durham brought to trial were low-level politicos, and resulted in acquittals for both. Contrast that with the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller that took only 22 months and resulted in 34 indictments and eight convictions, including some MAGA big shots like Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen, along with numerous Russian confederates.

What’s more, in 2019, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which at the time had a Republican chairman, produced a bipartisan report that came to very different conclusion than Durham, saying that…

“The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat […] it detailed how associates of Donald Trump had regular contact with Russians and expected to benefit from the Kremlin’s help.”

Of course, nothing in Trump’s tantrums bear any resemblance to reality. Durham couldn’t even support his own conclusions with facts that would warrant indictments or corrective actions. No one but Trump’s sycophantic cultists praise the report for its quality. But that won’t stop Trump, Fox News, and other propaganda peddlers from pushing their factless views and outright lies.

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Trump Jr Conjures Up Crazy Conspiracy Theory that Democrats Planted Pipe Bombs on January 6th

Posted by Mark NC on March 13, 2023 at 12:06 pm. 2 Comments :

Proving the old mixed metaphor of the bad apple that doesn’t fall far from the crime family tree, the namesake spawn of Donald Trump, Donnie Jr, posted a video that promulgated some of the most preposterous crackpottery available on these here Internets.

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Little Don seemed proud of himself for having made an observation about the January 6th insurrection that his father incited, that others must have missed. He recalled that there were news reports at the time that pipe bombs were found the same day at the offices of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. And what intrigued Little Don was that those stories were not still at the top of the news. So he fired up his webcam, and his constantly air-quoting fingers (a notoriously fidgety feature of his video persona), and commenced reporting his “bombshell” story.

“They had the insurrection narrative. You notice how the the bombers at the DNC and at the RNC, the guy that left pipe bombs there, just sort of disappeared from the news. It’s like, you know what? In case there wasn’t an insurrection or there wasn’t something bad at the Capitol, they had that to fall back on to continue and perpetuate the evil narrative of what was going on that day.

“But since they were able to ‘coreate’ and apparently manipulate footage over that day, as well as just have enough, you know, outrage, cycle and run with it. We can forget about the bomber. We don’t really need that anymore. That was just sort of the backup plan if there wasn’t enough insurrection created in my mind. That seems to be what has to have been done here.”

Junior has a bizarre new theory that the J6 pipe bomber was a plant by Democrats: “That was just the backup plan if there wasn’t enough insurrection created.” pic.twitter.com/SRO2udz9kR

— Ron Filipkowski ?? (@RonFilipkowski) March 12, 2023

Trump is shocked that a story about a tangential detail from an event that occurred over two years ago doesn’t still lead every news broadcast. And, in his mind, that is evidence of a nefarious conspiracy of some sort, by a mysterious cabal identified only as “they.” For the record, the story was recently revisited in January of this year when the FBI increased the reward being offered for the perpetrator. Which debunks the allegations by Trump and Fox News fabulists like Tucker Carlson that it was the FBI that orchestrated the Capitol riots.

Little Don replaces what he calls the “insurrection narrative” with his own narrative that is based on figments of his warped imagination. He posits a plot wherein “they” “had that to fall back on […] in case there wasn’t an insurrection” So he’s also asserting that deadly violence at the Capitol was part of the dastardly plan. Then he concludes that the harm done by the “manufactured” insurrection was sufficient that “they” were able to “coreate” (whatever that means) just enough outrage that they no longer needed the pipe bomber story.

What a brilliantly evil plan. And one that requires no proof whatsoever for Trump or the glassy-eyed cultists who subscribe to his video channel. It even connects to daddy Trump’s wild claims from last year when he told MAGA-naut Candace Owens that…

“A lot of people are being treated very unfairly. This should never happen in our country or any country, what happened to them. Especially when you look at the way the so-called other side is treated. But this pipe bomber or bombers – who knows if it was a pipe? Who knows what it was? They never found him? I’ve seen pictures of him and very clear pictures.”

MORE ON THAT HERE: Trump Embraces Tucker Carlson’s Crackpot Theory that the FBI Staged the January 6th Insurrection

See? It must have been the FBI. Never mind that the FBI wouldn’t be offering half a million dollars to capture their own agent. Or that blurry photos of a masked man were the only ones that the FBI released. So who knows what Trump was looking at? Fortunately for the Trumps, evidence – or even a marginal attachment to reality – is not required to convince the MAGA cult.

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AMERICA FIRST? Trump Reiterates His Enduring Trust for Putin Over American Intelligence Pros

Posted by Mark NC on January 30, 2023 at 12:58 pm. 3 Comments :

It’s another Monday morning, and another day for Donald Trump to babble incoherently about whatever mind worm burrowed into his melon-head upon awakening in his Mar-a-Lago bunker. On this particular morning Trump awoke with memories of one of his most despicably anti-American episodes.

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In July of 2018, Trump held a press conference following a summit with his idol and mentor, Vladimir Putin. At one point a reporter asked Trump if he believed Putin’s denials that he had engaged in election interference during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump replied that his own national security team told that “they think it’s Russia,” but agreeing with Putin said that “I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

For some unexplained reason, Trump brought up that press conference in a new post on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. Trump whined…

“Remember in Helsinki when a 3rd rate reporter asked me, essentially, who I trusted more, President Putin of Russia, or our ‘Intelligence’ lowlifes. My instinct at the time was that we had really bad people in the form of James Comey, McCabe (whose wife was being helped out by Crooked Hillary while Crooked was under investigation!), Brennan, Peter Strzok (whose wife is at the SEC) & his lover, Lisa Page. Now add McGonigal & other slime to the list. Who would you choose, Putin or these Misfits?”

Yes, Don, we remember. How could we forget when a president of the United States took the side of a dictatorial leader of a hostile foreign nation against our own intelligence professionals?

Trump’s posting was nothing more than another one of his tedious grievances aimed a bunch of people that he perceives as enemies. He still has no evidence that any of them acted in any way to harm him or his campaign. In fact, former FBI director James Comey may have been the single person most to blame for Trump winning the election due to his irresponsible release of derogatory and false allegations against Hillary Clinton. And [Charles] McGonigal was an associate of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman and convicted felon who Trump pardoned.

Without any obvious trigger for this outburst, it is likely that Trump is just lashing out at the FBI because he’s scared witless about the investigations that are currently in progress. He is subject to probes related to his criminal actions prior to, during, and after the January 6th insurrection. He’s also being invested for his theft and hoarding of classified documents. And then there is the probe looking into his election interference and obstruction of justice, related to his intimidation of Georgia officials. And there is also a New York Grand Jury that has already indicted him for financial and tax fraud.

All in all, this – or any – morning can’t be too pleasant for the twice-impeached former reality TV game show host. And he isn’t even pretending to hide his anxieties. In the rabid flurry of 27 posts Monday morning – including 9 by a proud QAnon crackpot – one of them complained about his being held legally accountable for his crimes. And in that comment he favorably likened himself to mob boss, Al Capone:

“I believe that I have more lawyers working for me on this Corrupt Law Enforcement induced Bull…. than any human being in the history of our Country, including even the late great gangster, Alphonse Capone!”

At least Trump is now owning the community in which he chooses to live, and the comrades that he admires. You just have to wonder where on his list of Deplorables he ranks Capone, as compared to Putin.

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Trump and His GOP Toadies Furiously Spin Bogus Nothingburger Story About Biden Documents

Posted by Mark NC on January 10, 2023 at 10:30 am. 12 Comments :

The latest outrage by Donald Trump has taken off with the news that a handful of classified documents were found at an office that President Biden used prior to running for president. Of course, all classified documents should be handled properly and not doing so is cause for concern. However, Trump is in a veritable frenzy, mistakenly thinking he has caught Biden in a juicy and hypocritical something-or-other-gate.

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Throughout the day on Monday Trump dropped a dozen posts on the subject of the Biden documents on his pitifully floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. They were incrementally more preposterous as he proceeded. Which is hard to believe considering the way this all started when the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bunker.

Trump began his Monday mania with a comment that alleged as fact a bunch of pure bullpucky. He wrote…

“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified.”

That was followed by several affirmations from his flunkies in Congress who were typically aligned with Trump’s deliberate deceit. They included Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronny Jackson, and Andy Biggs, who all claimed, without evidence, that Biden “stole classified documents” and had no power to declassify them. Greene went even further to malign the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as “communists” who must be held accountable.

Greene: Joe Biden conceivably stole those documents. What people need to understand the president is the only one that can declassify documents and not the vice-president. For Joe Biden to steal documents and have possession of them.. pic.twitter.com/QboB2divRk

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 10, 2023

But this doesn’t stop there. Trump went on to dispense crackpot conspiracy theories about China financing the Biden office and subsequently gaining access to the documents. He ranted that…

“Wow! The Biden Think Tank is funded by CHINA!!! Also, a V.P. cannot Declassify documents, which are covered by the Federal Records Act, which is Criminal and MUCH TOUGHER than the Presidential Records Act, which is NOT Criminal. A President, me, can Declassify. ?How much more information has China been given?”

And that…

“The amount was 54 Million Dollars that the Biden Think Tank received from China. That’s a lot of money. They saw the Classified Documents!”

Trump linked to an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post as supposed proof of these churlish charges. While the article did note that the the University of Pennsylvania had received millions of dollars, it never linked those donations to the Biden office. It is common for universities to receive donations from many sources, including corporate sponsors an alumni. However, even in the Post’s article it was revealed that…

“A University of Pennsylvania spokesman denied any anonymous Chinese money had gone to the center. ‘The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center,’ [University spokesman] Stephen MacCarthy said.”

BACKGROUND:

According to reports, the half dozen or so documents in question were found in a private, secure office at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center. Biden didn’t know that the documents were there and they were likely taken inadvertently. They were discovered by Biden’s legal team who, unlike Trump, did the right thing. They immediately notified the National Archives who took custody of them. Then Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney to investigate further and, instead of whining and accusing the FBI of conducting a “witch hunt” like Trump, Biden and his staff cooperated fully.

Compare that to the hundreds of classified documents deliberately taken and hoarded by Trump at his publicly accessible Mar-a-Lago hotel/home. His response to inquiries were flagrant lies, telling the FBI that he had no such documents. Then, after the FBI discovered that there were more documents, Trump defied a subpoena to return them. He refused to cooperate with NARA and the DoJ, obstructing justice and falsely insisting that the documents were declassified with his mind and that they belonged to him.

Trump and his Republican spinmeisters are now outraged that there haven’t been raids on all of Biden’s properties, including the White House. But that’s only because the Biden team has been cooperative, so there has been no need for subpoenas or subsequent FBI search warrants. Also, how do they know that President Obama hadn’t previously declassified the documents with his mind? And what exactly do they think they would find if they raided the White House? Classified documents are permitted there.

Trump and the GOP are only exploiting this news because they think that it will vindicate him for his own legal dilemmas. But if Trump now claims that the presence of these documents at a Biden office is a criminal act, isn’t he confessing that he is a criminal? And since the charges against Trump are valid, but those he’s making against Biden are bogus, it’s clear that he should be held accountable. And the sooner the better.

UPDATE: Trump v Biden: Their Reactions to Special Counsels Reveals Who’s Innocent and Who’s Scared

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Is Trump’s Rabid Rant Accusing the FBI of ‘Changing the Election Results’ Proof He’s Nuts?

Posted by Mark NC on December 24, 2022 at 11:31 am. 5 Comments :

The mental state of Donald Trump has been questionable for decades. He has been diagnosed by professionals as a malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. He is a pathological liar. He has delusions of grandeur so extreme that he views himself as the sole savior of America and the world.

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This messianic psychosis is evident in everything Trump does and says, particularly when referring to himself. That is hardly the behavior of a “very stable genius.” It is a neurosis that poses great risks to America’s future should he be elevated again to any position of power. And the sanity and patriotism of anyone who would vote for him should be similarly regarded as deranged. Especially after Trump recently dined with a couple of unabashed Hitler lovers and called for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s deteriorating psychological sickness continues to be displayed in a disturbingly public manner on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, where he posts daily evidence of his mania. More often than not, Trump is in a rage over his having lost the 2020 presidential election, and is consumed by wholly unfounded fantasies that the the election was “rigged and stolen” from him.

That was the topic once again on Friday as Trump unleashed a barrage of pseudo-tweets lamenting what he said was a “massive campaign fraud in the 2020 Election.” And true to form, his tirade was littered with lies. He began…

“The FBI has just confirmed that it has paid MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to Twitter, … but what they didn’t say was that it was for the purpose of changing the Election results, pushing Biden over ‘Trump.’ Wow!”

The reason that the FBI didn’t say anything about purposefully “changing the Election results” to hurt “Trump” (which for some inexplicable reason he puts in quotes) might have been because that never happened. What Trump is referring to in his badly deviated perception of reality is a disclosure in some recently revealed emails between Twitter staffers that acknowledged receipt of payment by the FBI for work they did to supply the agency with information that it requested. It was a routine and legally mandated payment that Trump, Elon Musk, and Fox News distorted as a political stunt to discredit the FBI.

Notice that Trump has wildly elaborated on the lies exhorted by Musk and Fox News. What began as false allegations that the FBI paid to suppress a bogus story that was tied to a Russian disinformation campaign, Trump turned into a plot to change the election results. That was Trump’s invention and was never even asserted in the “Twitter Files” document dump. But Trump was just getting started. He went on to whine that…

“The FBI used Twitter and Facebook to bludgeon the 2020 Election to Biden. Nothing Negative could be said about him, especially as it related to Hunter’s Laptop From Hell, and ONLY Negative could be said about me. They were illegally after ‘Trump’ at a level of ferocity, hate and yes, desperation, that has never been seen in our Country before. Other Media companies were involved also. The change in the Election was Complete & Total, with Millions of votes switched, at least 17%. TRUMP WON, BIG!”

As usual Trump, in his hyperbolic hysteria, characterizes all of his bizarre claims as atrocities that have “never been seen in our Country before.” And he is, as always, the whining target of unending paranoid “ferocity [and] hate.” Here he escalates his baseless accusation to assert that “Millions of votes switched,” and comes up with a figure of 17% that he pulled straight of his asinine imagination. From there Trump launches into an all-caps harangue saying that…

“SO, WE CAUGHT THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, THROUGH THE USE OF THE FBI & OTHER AGENCIES, CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY CHEATING ON THE 2020 Presidential Election, AND COMPLETELY & ILLEGALLY CHANGING ITS RESULT.”

Needless to say, no one was “CAUGHT” and no “CHEATING” was proved “CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY.” Trump has had more than two years and sixty court cases to provide such proof, but neither he nor his legal toadies have ever managed to produce a shred of it. Trump closed this Trumper Tantrum reiterating the lie that…

“The Government of the United States changed our Election Result, and it just doesn’t get any worse than that. Just look at the damage that’s been done to our Country, and the World, in the last two years — It’s incalculable. TRUMP WON!!!”

It’s worth remembering that the FBI that Trump is accusing of switching votes was run by his hand-picked director, Chris Wray, who reported to his hand-picked Attorney General, Bill Barr. And if we are to believe Trump’s crackpot conspiracy theorizing, we also need to acknowledge that all of it happened while he was occupying the White House, but was either ignorant of the corruption in his administration, or incapable of handling it. Why would even Republicans want that kind of incompetent in charge of anything again?

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Fox News Spreads Blatant Lie that the ‘FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story’

Posted by Mark NC on December 21, 2022 at 1:51 pm. 1 Comments :

For the past couple of weeks Elon Musk has been dispatching his flagrantly biased and incurious yellow journalists to propagate obvious falsehoods about Twitter’s previous management. His intent has been to discredit them as disreputable Trump haters and submissive servants of clandestine FBI handlers.

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After seven tediously long document dumps of what were private, internal communications, Musk and Company pitifully failed to prove their predetermined conclusions, or whatever they imagined was their point. To the contrary, these much ballyhooed excretions of mostly random and irrelevant emails actually proved that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team acted responsibly to protect the website – and the nation – from documented propaganda and disinformation by Russia and other hostile foreign actors.

Musk’s minions only succeeded in showing that Twitter’s staff was not biased against Trump. In fact, they were decidedly fair in their analysis and decisions. But that didn’t stop the right-wingnut echo chamber from latching onto Musk’s muckrakers, especially Donald Trump…

The latest batch from the “Twitter Files” trash heap (Part 7) continued in the tradition of the previous six. This episode’s author, Michael Shellenberger, promised that he would “present evidence” that the FBI sought to “discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden.” Not only did he present no such evidence, he actually presented evidence of the opposite. Such as one email wherein “Twitter debunked false claims” of foreign influence. And another wherein “Twitter’s [Yoel] Roth has pushed back against the FBI.”

Despite that demonstration of fairness and good judgement, Fox News ran with a particularly deviated narrative. The headline for their “reporting” said that the “FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story.”

You have to go through a LOT of hoops to conclude that the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The email in question says Twitter collected $3,415,323 since Oct. 2019 to process legal requests made by the FBI. pic.twitter.com/i0yTCEDcCD

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 21, 2022

To the surprise of no one who has watched Fox News for more than a few minutes, that headline – and the accompanying story – was just plain untrue. What Fox News used to craft their false framing was one of Shellenberger’s points where he claimed that “The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.” He elaborated with a quote from an unnamed Twitter staffer who reported that “we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019.”

Fox News is deliberately misinterpreting that as the FBI paying Twitter to get them to suppress a story about Hunter Biden. In reality, the FBI is reimbursing Twitter for the time they spent working on requests for information by the FBI. That is a legally mandated payment that requires that “a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information … shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary.”

As if that weren’t enough, there isn’t even any connection in the emails that were released between the FBI reimbursements and any story about Hunter Biden. Musk and Fox News just totally manufactured that.

Furthermore, the reports that the FBI “demanded” certain actions be taken by Twitter, and that Twitter obediently complied, are also untrue. And, once again, the facts were tucked away in Musk’s own document dump that disclosed that the FBI’s requests could not be remotely characterized as demands. They were merely notices about “accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms and Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.” (emphasis added)

This is the sort of manipulation that Fox News engages in on a daily (hourly) basis. They have no regard for the truth. They are only interested in disseminating distortions that advance their ultra-conservative agenda. It’s how they can take mundane irrelevancies and magnify them into explosive pseudo-scandals.

FOR INSTANCE: Fox News Lies: Falsely Accuses Michele Obama of ‘Pressuring’ Twitter to Ban Trump

UPDATE: The FBI responds: “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements. […] As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. […] It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

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Trump Renews Whining that Mike Pence is a Deep State Traitor for Not Overturning the Election

Posted by Mark NC on December 20, 2022 at 2:29 pm. 8 Comments :

It’s only Tuesday, and yet this has already been been a terrible week for Donald Trump. It’s week that follows several wherein he has been brutally and deservedly chastised for having dined with racists and anti-Semites, and for calling for the “termination” fo the Constitution, and for hawking his ridiculous NFT trading cards.

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As if that weren’t enough, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection that Trump incited has issued criminal referrals to the Justice Department citing at least four charges that they recommend be brought against him. Needless to say, he didn’t take that well.

True to form, Trump is lashing out wildly in every direction. He is attacking every perceived foe in his twisted mind, including the January 6th Committee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, the FBI (that was headed by his appointees), Hunter Biden, and the ever present and nefarious “Deep State,” that is supposedly populated by Democrats and Republicans conspiring to destroy Trump.

In a typically unhinged harangue Tuesday morning, Trump unleashed his rage at those responsible for what he still calls the “rigged and stolen” presidential election of 2020. Although now that Congress is about to pass the Electoral Count Reform Act, he is now focusing on that aspect, and the role that he believes his former vice-president, Mike Pence, had in betraying him and his tyrannical aspirations.

In a series of posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump laid out his laments over Pence choosing not to violate the Constitution by failing to certify the election results. Trump whined that…

“They said the Vice President has ‘absolutely no choice,’ it was carved in ‘steel,’ but if he has no choice, why are they changing the law saying he has no choice?”

And that…

“it is because the Vice President did have a choice, and looking back at it now, the 2020 Voting Fraud was far greater than anyone thought possible, with even our Government, through the FBI, changing the results of the Election by millions and millions of votes.”

And that…

“John Eastman and others were correct in stating that the Vice President of the United States had the right to do what should have been done. […] The whole thing is one big Scam!”

And that there was a…

“highly successful effort made by the FBI in illegally changing the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Trump’s infamously ignorant grasp of government and laws is evident here as he demonstrates his failure to understand the Constitution’s directive regarding the vice-president’s largely ceremonial role in certifying the Electoral College count. Trump thinks that because a bipartisan majority of members of Congress seek to clarify some of the archaic language in the original Electoral Count Act of 1887, that the old law permits the vice-president to unilaterally discard any of those votes that he chooses.

That, of course, is absurd. And cleaning up the language is just being done in order to prevent future corrupt leaders like Trump from trying to misinterpret the law in order to assume dictatorial control of the government.

What’s more, Trump is alleging – without any factual basis – that the FBI played some sort of role in “changing the results of the Election by millions and millions of votes.” As usual, Trump doesn’t provide a shred of evidence to support his allegations. However he does manage to get his toadies in Congress to go along with him. James Comer, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee said this on the subject…

“We need to halt everything with the FBI. All funding. Until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who gave them the authority to do it.”

Rep. James Comer calls for defunding the FBI pic.twitter.com/oacTjjUQnl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 20, 2022

So now Republicans are openly advocating to defund the police. Someone needs to ask them how an unfunded FBI will investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or the election “fraud” that put Joe Biden in the White House. How will the FBI probe the FBI’s corruption on behalf of the “Deep State” cabal in the FBI? It’s all so very peculiar. Which, in the MAGA mind, is proof that it must all be true. And now according to Trump, it’s all Mike Pence’s fault.

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OH-MY: Trump Unleashes Vile Threats in Tantrum Over Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce (Part 6)

Posted by Mark NC on December 17, 2022 at 11:04 am. 10 Comments :

For the past couple of weeks Elon Musk has been hyping a series of pathetically shallow “Twitter Files” document dumps. He has characterized it as an “exposé” of Twitter’s prior management’s alleged cabal against aspiring tyrant and insurrection inciter, Donald Trump. Now episode 6 continues to expose only Musk’s own craven biases and dishonesty.

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Consistent with the previous episodes, the latest installment only manages to prove that prior content moderation decisions were actually responsible and that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team (who Musk recently fired) acted in good faith to protect their platform – and the nation – from the deliberate incitements to violence of Donald Trump and his “Big Lie” confederates.

Teasing the release of the sixth batch of what were private internal communications, Musk tweeted “And soon, ladies & gentlemen, the coup de grâce,” followed the single word “KABOOM,” which ironically is an accurate descriptor of his latest bomb. It is hardly the “coup de grâce” that he is bragging about.

In the 45 tweets of Episode 6 Musk’s “correspondent” (aka puppet), Matt Taibbi, began by making a couple of wholly unsupported conclusions that were supposedly based on the messages he posted. However, there was nothing in those messages that affirmed his predetermined conclusions. He began…

3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
5. Some are mundane […]
6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation.

What Taibbi is portraying as “constant and pervasive” is 150 emails sent in a period of three years. And many of those were, by Taibbi’s own account, “mundane.” So, doing the math, there were likely only one or two a month that were relevant. That’s a rather tortured definition of “pervasive.” Particularly when considering the fact that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were rightfully concerned about disinformation being spread by hostile foreign entities. Consequently, they stayed in touch with the social media platforms that those entities were exploiting to keep them apprised of the situation. That is, in fact, their job.

Taibbi later grossly misrepresented an email from the FBI to Twitter, saying…

[13] “HELLO TWITTER CONTACTS”: The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which “FBI San Francisco is notifying you” it wants action on four accounts:

Taibbi’s characterization of the FBI being the “master” of the “canine” Twitter staff was invented by Taibbi and not reflected in any actual message. What’s worse is how Taibbi deceitfully edited the FBI’s email to imply that they were demanding “action.” The unedited email actually reads…

“FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms and of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”

So the FBI explicitly stated that the accounts they referred to Twitter only “potentially” violated Twitter’s rules, and then merely asked Twitter to take appropriate action, or none at all, as per Twitter’s policy. How is that by any stretch of the imagination a demand or reflective of a “master-canine” relationship? That is only reflective of Taibbi’s intent to deceive.

Taibbi closed his tweet storm with a Trumpian reference to the “deep state” as a “tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors.” Which is just another biased conclusion that is unsupported by his own “evidence.”

For his part, Trump went bonkers over the latest episode of the “Twitter Files” nothingburger. He posted on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, that…

“This (the FBI’s wild and crazy relationship with Twitter) is absolutely a coordinated effort to change Election Results! Rachel Campos-Duffy…and it worked, but they got caught. This is why people protested in Washington. Our 2020 Presidential Election was Crooked, Rigged, and Stolen, and yet the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks & Thugs didn’t spend any time investigating this outrage!”

And that…

“Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer. The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of ‘Justice,’ and ‘Intelligence,’ all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer. These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Country will die!!!”

Naturally, Trump is continuing to whine about having decisively lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. But in more than two years and 60 court cases he has failed to provide a shred of evidence that the election was “rigged” or “stolen” from him. He nevertheless maligns the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection in his typically infantile and patently dangerous manner.

More worrisome is what exactly Trump means by demanding that members of the justice and intelligence communities, as well as Democrats, “must be dealt with”? Especially when combined with the warning that if they are not “our once great and beautiful Country will die!!!” It comes off as an unambiguous threat and/or a command to his StormTrumpers to take action.

This is why Trump must be held accountable for his crimes as expeditiously as possible. He is still inciting violence and fomenting an insurrection against the United States, whose Constitution he recently said should be “terminated.” The longer that accountability is delayed, the greater the risk.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

Posted by Mark NC on December 3, 2022 at 11:59 am. 20 Comments :

The unsettling totalitarian tendencies of Donald Trump have long posed an imminent threat to American democracy and freedom. From the outset of his political pursuits he has demonstrated a sinister aspiration to tyrannical rule. It’s a symptom of his malignant narcissism that puts the nation – and world – at risk.

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Now, more than two years after he was unceremoniously evicted from his occupation of the White House by the American people, Trump continues to peddle his “Big Lie” that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. And although it’s a flagrantly false figment of his diseased imagination, he persists in pushing it out to his glassy-eyed cult disciples, despite his rapidly declining approval and influence.

However, if you thought that he had exhausted his store of preposterous allegations and infantile rage, you don’t know Trump. On Saturday morning he unleashed an avalanche of absurdity in service of his severely acute psychosis. This temper tantrum manifested in multiple posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. The tedious tirade culminated in the following hysteria…

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

REALLY? So Trump is now insisting that the Constitution be terminated in order to satisfy his election fraud fantasies and his voracious lust for power. It’s not especially surprising that Trump would hold that view. But it is unusual for him to so forthrightly express it.

The story that Trump regards as a “revelation,” and is so frantically flustered by, came from Fox News. It concerned a couple of Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana who are suing the Biden administration alleging censorship and suppression of speech by “Big Tech” and the FBI. Their complaint is wholly based on reports that the FBI held regular and normal meetings with the media to alert them to Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2020 election. But even Fox’s reporting doesn’t assert what Trump and the GOP AGs are twisting these facts to conclude…

“During the deposition, [FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis] Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office. […] According to a source, Chan testified that in those multiple, separate meetings, the FBI warned the social media companies that there could be potentially Russian ‘hack and dump’ or ‘hack and leak’ operations.”

So even according to Fox News there was no conspiracy between the government and “Big Tech” to censor or suppress free speech. It was all just an effort to keep the social media outlets apprised of the Russian disinformation campaign. Also, it’s interesting that Trump is readily accepting this reporting based on allegations by an unnamed source when he has previously dismissed them all as fake.

What Trump, and most of the right-wing echo chamber, is distorting into another pseudo-scandal is an already debunked story. It featured false claims that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, told podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI had ordered him to suppress news about – what else – Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Which is not what Zuckerberg said, or what the FBI was doing at all.

In reality, the FBI was doing their job to protect social media platforms, and thus the nation, from Russia’s election interference and fake news manipulation. Which is precisely what Russia was, in fact, doing. But that didn’t stop Trump from demanding that 2020 election be declared invalid, and that he be “declared the rightful winner.”

The Fox News story also reported that “the FBI regularly sends social media companies lists of internet URLs and social media accounts” that distribute “disinformation” from “malign foreign influence operations.” The story falsely implies that this amounts to censorship. Except that the evidence shows that the FBI never imposed any actions to be taken on the social media sites. They merely supplied the sites with information and let them determine for themselves what to do with it. In other words, free speech and the free markets prevailed. Not that Fox News or Trump would recognize it.

Ignoring the obvious facts in this affair, Trump ranted furiously in half a dozen successively incoherent posts that it represented “total corruption” and demanded that someone should “DO SOMETHING as our Country Melts!!!” He didn’t say who, or under what authority, this alleged melting should be halted. It was just more of his now familiar impotent whining and pathetic victimhood. And if the past is any indication, we should expect it to continue – and escalate – as he sinks farther into despair and desperation.

UPDATE I: Trump followed up his alt-tweet storm with another post saying that “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” He doesn’t specify what that “cure” is, but considering that a short while ago he called for terminating the Constitution, it’s hard not surmise that he’s now calling for another coup attempt or other violent upheaval on the part of his treasonous cult.

UPDATE II: Two days later Trump denied ever calling for the termination of the Constitution, despite his words calling for exactly that, verbatim.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

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