Author Topic: Citizen Trump  (Read 23580 times)

Crafty_Dog

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Citizen Trump
« on: February 01, 2021, 11:25:37 AM »
WSJ

By Chad Day and Rebecca Ballhaus
Feb. 1, 2021 12:25 am ET

Former President Donald Trump started the year with at least $31 million in cash to wield through his new political-action committee as he seeks to remain the leader of the Republican Party.

The money is in the coffers of Mr. Trump’s newly formed leadership PAC called Save America, which in the weeks after the Nov. 3 election began receiving donations in response to fundraising messages asking for money to overturn his election loss.

The PAC has raised $31.5 million since its formation on Nov. 9, according to filings made Sunday with the Federal Election Commission that cover the period through the end of last year. The PAC’s only expenditures since the election have been a little more than $340,000 in fundraising costs.

The Save America funds will be key to Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain his grip on the Republican Party as he considers running for president again in 2024.

Mr. Trump could use the money to support his preferred candidates or back primary rivals to Republicans he is unhappy with. He has privately expressed interest in unseating the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him alleging he incited the mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 and prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory.

One of the 10, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) on Sunday launched his own initiative, called Country First, that seeks to rally Republicans who are opposed to Mr. Trump’s brand of politics.

A representative for Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump’s PAC, which has wide legal latitude in its spending, could also finance travel for Mr. Trump and his allies, pay for advertising and be used to keep certain advisers on payroll. Since his presidency ended, he kept a handful of former White House and campaign aides, including press aide Margo Martin and adviser Jason Miller.

Save America is emerging as the former president winds down the various arms of his 2020 reelection effort, which include his campaign and two committees that jointly raise funds with the Republican National Committee.


Separately, the campaign and joint-fundraising committees combined had about $74 million in cash on hand, filings show. About $60 million of that is sitting in an account for one of the joint-fundraising committees that could transfer money to Save America.

The remaining campaign funds have more restricted uses under FEC rules and could be used in the event that Mr. Trump runs for president again or to pay down the 2020 campaign’s $2.7 million in outstanding debts.

After his defeat, Mr. Trump remained a formidable fundraiser, bolstered by dozens of text and email appeals to raise money for his efforts to overturn the election. All told, Mr. Trump and the RNC raised more than $255 million online between Election Day and the end of the year, according to an FEC filing from Republican online donation platform WinRed.

Trump Victory, one of the joint-fundraising committees with the RNC, raked in some major donations in that period. Fresno developer Richard Spencer gave $11,200 on Dec. 2; Utah attorney Douglas Nielson gave $25,000 on Dec. 16; and investor Lee Beaman gave $28,800 on Dec. 2.

The committee also received $25,000 from the National Fraternal Order of Police PAC on Dec. 2.

The campaign’s primary expenses between Nov. 24 and the end of last year, the period covered by the latest FEC filings, were $11.1 million in contribution refunds; $6.5 million in online and text message advertising; another $5.1 million in advertising specifically related to election recounts and $3.4 million in legal fees related to those efforts, according to the records. Among the legal payments was $1 million to Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, the law firm founded by Mr. Trump’s former longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz.

The campaign also paid $63,000 to a firm owned by Rudy Giuliani, who spearheaded Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Representatives of Mr. Giuliani at one point sought for the campaign to pay him up to $20,000 a day. The campaign shows no other payments to Mr. Giuliani.


Trump Victory gave refunds to some major donors, the records show, including $210,000 to longtime donor and real-estate developer Geoff Palmer; $180,000 to venture capitalist Walter Buckley; and $94,000 to former Facebook executive and virtual-reality pioneer Palmer Luckey.


Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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DJT bend over here it comes
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2021, 07:49:33 AM »
https://www.dailynews.com/2021/02/22/supreme-court-allows-release-of-trump-tax-returns-to-ny-prosecutor-2/

How fast do we think before it is leaked?

A month ,  a week ,  a day, an hr,  15 seconds?

Does anyone think CNN NYT or WP would not pay big money for this ?

And get the "scoop" and "dirt"

And after it happens does anyone think anyone will go to jail for the leak ?




DougMacG

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Re: Pompeo at CPAC
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2021, 09:40:23 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2021, 10:01:53 AM »
I think he would make an outstanding president, but not a candidate likely to win.






Crafty_Dog

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #14 on: March 27, 2021, 07:38:40 AM »
Sounded good in an audio interview with Laura Ingraham the other night.  Respect to Laura for politely cutting off the beginning of an election rehash with a reminder that he should have had a strong legal team ready.  That said, overall he sounded good and centered.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-sat-down-with-4-ohio-us-senate-hopefuls-during-fundraiser_3751178.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-27

https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/27/trump-considering-visit-us-border/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2360&pnespid=0LZg_PlEXQKNfLaTqaDfPGweoRMUnKwZM_QYeuqm
« Last Edit: March 27, 2021, 07:45:06 AM by Crafty_Dog »




ccp

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arrest of Trump coming
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2021, 08:01:37 AM »
https://populist.press/palm-beach-preparing-for-possible-trump-arrest/



with the  blowhards screaming thru their blowhorns
  "NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW"

they are not even honest enough to include in the sub microscopic print
   (unless you are a Democrat, hahahahha)

DougMacG

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Re: arrest of Trump coming
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2021, 09:10:34 AM »
https://populist.press/palm-beach-preparing-for-possible-trump-arrest/

with the  blowhards screaming thru their blowhorns
  "NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW"

they are not even honest enough to include in the sub microscopic print
   (unless you are a Democrat, hahahahha)

Reminds me of the arrest of Bill Clinton, the arrest of Hillary Clinton, the arrest of Barack Obama and the arrest of Joe Biden, even the arrest of Hunter Biden.  Never happened.  But there is one difference ...


ccp

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wonder what a judge would think of this
« Reply #21 on: May 20, 2021, 03:34:21 PM »
https://populist.press/ag-investigating-trump-criminally-busted-on-camera/

she actually ran a campaign for a DOJ position to look for a crime on a sitting president and now private citizen

I could only imagine Dershowitz's take as a defense attorney
How bout Andrew McCarthy's opinion from a prosecutor

when does a prosecutor's conduct cross the line?


ccp

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ccp on 5/20/21:

https://populist.press/ag-investigating-trump-criminally-busted-on-camera/

she actually ran a campaign for a DOJ position to look for a crime on a sitting president and now private citizen

I could only imagine Dershowitz's take as a defense attorney
How bout Andrew McCarthy's opinion from a prosecutor

when does a prosecutor's conduct cross the line?
https://populist.press/ag-investigating-trump-criminally-busted-on-camera/

she actually ran a campaign for a DOJ position to look for a crime on a sitting president and now private citizen

I could only imagine Dershowitz's take as a defense attorney
How bout Andrew McCarthy's opinion from a prosecutor

when does a prosecutor's conduct cross the line?

Prof Dershowitz responds  :-D :wink:

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/dershowitz-newsmax-trump-newyork/2021/05/29/id/1023195/

waiting for Andrew McCarthy's opinion as a prosecutor now we have defense lawyers opinion.


G M

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #23 on: May 29, 2021, 07:17:54 PM »
Andy McCarthy is a deep state shill. Zero credibility in my book.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #24 on: May 29, 2021, 08:04:51 PM »
Don't know why you are so hard on him.  He wrote a lot of high quality legal analysis during the Russia fraud against Trump and much more.

G M

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #25 on: May 29, 2021, 09:20:11 PM »


G M

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Barr ignored Trump’s orders, protected Antifa
« Reply #27 on: June 03, 2021, 10:35:33 AM »
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/06/revealed-bill-barr-chris-wray-worked-block-trumps-efforts-go-antifa-video/

I can’t wait for Andy McCarthy’s National Review article defending this....



Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Citizen Trump can win his suit against the Goolag
« Reply #34 on: July 12, 2021, 08:25:37 AM »
The media has panned Donald Trump’s First Amendment lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: “sure to fail,” “as stupid as you’d think,” “ridiculous.” Mr. Trump’s complaint omits important precedents, facts and claims for relief, but there’s a strong case to be made that social-media censorship violates the Constitution. If his lawyers do better in court than in their initial filing, Mr. Trump can win.

It’s true that the First Amendment ordinarily applies to the government rather than private companies. But the central claim in Mr. Trump’s class-action lawsuit—that the defendants should be treated as state actors and are bound by the First Amendment when they engage in selective political censorship—has precedent to back it up. Their censorship constitutes state action because the government granted them immunity from legal liability, threatened to punish them if they allow disfavored speech, and colluded with them in choosing targets for censorship.

The Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973) that the government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” As Jed Rubenfeld and I argued in these pages in January, that’s what Congress did by passing Section 230(c)(2) of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech and immunizes them from state liability if they do so.

The high court has repeatedly held that federal immunity pre-empting state law can transform a private party’s conduct into state action subject to constitutional scrutiny. In Railway Employees’ Department v. Hanson (1956), the justices found state action in union-employer agreements because Congress had passed a statute immunizing such agreements from liability under state law. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association (1989), the court again found state action in a private company’s conduct because federal laws immunized companies from liability if they tested employees for drugs.

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Prominent congressional Democrats have also issued severe, explicit and repeated threats to retaliate against social-media giants if they fail to remove “hate speech” and “misinformation” that the government can’t directly censor under the Constitution. These threats have worked.

In an October 2020 hearing, as Mr. Trump’s lawsuits note, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CEOs Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook: “The president has used this microphone to spread vicious falsehoods and apparent attempt to overturn the will of the voters.” In the same hearing, he threatened “a breakup of the tech giants” and “Section 230 reform,” including “possible repeal.” Mr. Zuckerberg has called such regulations an “existential threat” to Facebook. In January both sites banned Mr. Trump.

The Supreme Court held in Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963) that the First Amendment was violated when a private bookstore stopped selling works after officials deemed them “objectionable” and threatened prosecution. In Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that a telephone company was acting as a state agent when it acceded to government threats to stop carrying offensive content on paid dial-in lines.


Even if Messrs. Zuckerberg and Dorsey didn’t fear these government threats, the Second Circuit held in Hammerhead Enterprises v. Brezenoff (1983) that if government officials’ comments “can be reasonably interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request,” that’s enough to constitute state action. The Ninth Circuit has held that it doesn’t matter if the threats were the “real motivating force” behind the private party’s conduct.

A growing body of evidence suggests that social media companies have voluntarily worked with Democratic officials to censor content the latter disfavor. In Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (2001), the high court held that state action exists if the private party’s conduct results from “significant encouragement, either overt or covert,” or if the private party is a “willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents.”

According to allegations in other pending lawsuits, Twitter formed “trusted partner” relationships with state officials to remove content identified by the officials as election misinformation—when in reality the content was simply critical of state policies.

In September 2020 Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook “works with” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove Covid-related content. The company’s official policy states that it is “advised” by public-health authorities about what Covid content should be blocked. For months, while officials including Anthony Fauci proclaimed that the Wuhan lab-leak theory was “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory,” Facebook blocked any mention of that theory as “misinformation.”

But after Dr. Fauci and the administration retreated from this position, Facebook almost immediately lifted its ban. Recently published email exchanges between Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Fauci reveal no evidence of direct instruction from the government on this point but make a case for Facebook’s willful participation in a joint activity with the government.

Mr. Trump’s lawsuits don’t go as far as they could have in establishing a pattern of willful participation, but their discovery phase will almost surely reveal additional examples. Social-media companies are privately owned, but when they collude with officials to block disfavored content, they are serving as the government’s censorship bureau and must answer to the First Amendment.


Mr. Trump has another path to legal victory even if he loses on the state-action claim. State legislatures, most recently in Florida, have begun to impose nondiscrimination and common-carrier requirements on Big Tech platforms. Opponents say these laws violate the companies’ First Amendment rights. But if so, how could similar nondiscrimination laws have been imposed for decades on telephone companies? Opponents also say these laws are pre-empted by Section 230. But as Justice Clarence Thomas observed in his concurrence in Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute, Section 230 is arguably unconstitutional if interpreted to pre-empt state laws against viewpoint discrimination. Mr. Trump failed to assert this claim under Florida law, though he could amend his complaint before trial to do so.

Mr. Trump’s critics are mistaken to think the claims he raises are completely novel. But the case is unprecedented in another way—the staggering scale of Big Tech’s power to restrict speech. No company in U.S. history has so comprehensively silenced elected officials or prevented them from communicating with citizens. Worse, they did so at the behest of, and in careful coordination with, government leaders in the ascendant opposition party as it gained power.

In 1924 Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover warned against the concentration of corporate power in the radio industry: “We cannot allow any single person or group to place themselves in a position where they can censor the material which shall be broadcasted to the public.” Almost a century later, the danger he foretold has been realized. Mr. Trump’s case provides an opportunity to address it.

Mr. Ramaswamy is author of “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”






Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Re: If true, not a stupid idea
« Reply #40 on: August 19, 2021, 08:07:25 AM »
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/08/trumps-pledge-exit-afghanistan-was-ruse-his-final-secdef-says/184660/

Public statements are how you talk to your enemy, Putin, China, Mullahs of Iran, Kim Jung Un and Taliban, not where you divulge your actual plans.  To not know that, especially about Donald Trump, is beyond belief. 

Blaming this on Obama, on Trump, on the Afghans while 'taking responsibility' is the blathering of a failed man and failed administration.

The 'meme' about Taiwan is eerily true and China and every adversary knows it.

The Leftist media helped Reagan, Bush Cheney, Trump win peace by calling Republican Presidents into warmongers.  Peace through the deterrence of tyrants is the only real peace.  Truman couldn't buy that kind of fear bombing a city.

From an adversary point of view, the people here who 'know' Trump for example, the American press, think he can't be trusted with the nuclear codes because he might bomb an enemy over a misunderstanding.  That keeps misunderstandings to a minimum.  One or two acts of strength validate the perception, firing air traffic controllers, invading Grenada, killing Soleimani.  Trump's first call during transition was to Taiwan.  A gaffe?  Those things are noticed by (Brezhnev), Putin, Kim, Xi and Khairullah Khairkhwa and reinforce the perception of strength.  With Biden they see nothing but weakness, the masks, hiding in basements, couldn't even pick his own VP, and retreat policy overseas - right in the middle of the 'fighting season'.  Only question remaining, what will go wrong next.

ccp

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trump's announced pull out a ruse
« Reply #41 on: August 19, 2021, 09:12:57 AM »
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/08/trumps-pledge-exit-afghanistan-was-ruse-his-final-secdef-says/184660/

"if true"

frankly I do not believe it
Trump wanted to pull all us forces out of Syria against all military advise
as a known example to the contrary



Crafty_Dog

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #42 on: August 19, 2021, 01:51:29 PM »
Don't we still have troops there?

ccp

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #43 on: August 19, 2021, 02:38:53 PM »
  I think so

 I recall Trump wanted *all of them* out against all military advice.
  Did not one general later admit he jockeyed things around so some would be there?

I don't have time to look up now.


ccp

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #44 on: August 19, 2021, 03:30:38 PM »
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/us/politics/mark-esper-syria-kurds-turkey.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/04/the-realists-are-wrong-about-syria/

I frankly do not buy Trump was fainting to get the Afghan leadership
out when he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan

Trump is blunt
does not play games like that in MHO

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #45 on: August 19, 2021, 06:32:35 PM »
I'm thinking he is one seriously devious fk in strategy and negotiations.  He is very Boydian, he gets inside people's OODA loops.

DougMacG

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: Citizen Trump
« Reply #47 on: August 24, 2021, 04:51:34 PM »

Crafty_Dog

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