Trump's lawyers should be held accountable for promoting his Big Lie in court: expert – Raw Story
Sarah Burris is a long-time veteran of political campaigns, having worked as a fundraiser and media director across the United States. She transitioned into reporting while working for Rock the Vote, Future Majority and Wiretap Magazine, covering the Millennial Generation's perspective during the presidential elections. As a political writer, Burris has had bylines at CNN, Salon.com, BNR, and AlterNet and serves as a senior digital editor for RawStory.com.
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Legal expert Kim Wehle highlighted Thursday Donald Trump's recent court filing about his actions around 2020 and Jan. 6 in a desperate effort to prove that intervening in the election was part of his role as president.
What's disturbing, she said, is that legitimate lawyers from prominent firms are willing to hang their reputations — and careers —on something like that.
Trump's team produced an anonymous report this week claiming to outline evidence that shows he won the election. It relies heavily on Trump's own people and many of those who lead far-right organizations promoting his policies or ideals.
The final brief to the Supreme Court isn't the same as his conspiracy report, however, and it's unclear if the Trump lawyers would be willing to cite something like that as evidence.
"Before digging into the heap of falsehoods, let’s get this out of the way: Trump’s 'I-was-a-king' immunity argument is utterly unconvincing," explained Wehle, a professor at Baltimore School of Law, in a column for The Bulwark.
"The Constitution says nothing about presidential immunity (unlike immunity for members of Congress), but the Supreme Court has reasonably held that presidents cannot be routinely sued or prosecuted for good-faith decisions made in office, so it has erected a balancing test to protect official presidential acts."
Special counsel Jack Smith's case walks through Trump's tweets about 2020, "contending that the election was tainted by fraud and irregularities;" all communications with the acting attorney general and those at the Justice Department about a plot to declare the election either corrupt or somehow invalid.
There's also the matter of communications with state election officials and others he pressured, as well as the efforts to force then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the count as the president of the Senate. Smith goes on to walk through the slates of fake electors used in some cases to try and trick Pence from entering the legitimate electors.
"Translation: Trump’s view of the Constitution and the law was the law, regardless of the truth," said Wehle.
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Wehle remarked that it has been proven over and over that Trump knew he hadn't won the election but continued to press forward with lying.
She went on to call it "stunning" that after three years, Trump's lawyers are still using the "Big Lie" to justify the ex-president's behavior. Seven licensed attorneys from three law firms are the ones defending the claim.
In the end, Wehle argued that these lawyers should suffer consequences for continuing to perpetuate the "Big Lie."
"It’s time for more lawyers — and not just their disturbed client — to be held accountable by the rule of law for continuing this damaging ruse," she closed.
Failed Arizona candidate Kari Lake suggested she could meet the same fate as Rudy Giuliani after he was ordered to pay two election workers $148 million for defamation.
Lake is being sued by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who claimed he received death threats after Lake said he "sabotaged" her election.
"And you know, they just sued Rudy Giuliani, the judgment was like $148 million, something astronomically ridiculous for defamation, for calling out our elected officials," Lake said in an interview with Steve Bannon on Thursday. "This is what they're going after me for, calling out our elected officials."
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Lake doubled down on her criticism of Richer despite the lawsuit.
"The person behind it is Stephen Richer, he is a guy who runs our elections, and obviously we had rigged elections here in Arizona," she opined, "and I pointed out everything he did wrong, and I stand by every word I said about Stephen Richer, and if they think I'm going to stop using my First Amendment rights, they're crazy."
"I'm not going to," she added. "I can prove everything I said was true."
Last month, a judge ruled that Richer's case could move forward because the First Amendment did not protect Lake's statements.
Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee, under Rep. James Comer's (R-KY) leadership, has searched through the finances of President Joe Biden and the rest of his family looking for incriminating links to foreign entities.
Now it turns out it was Donald Trump who had international business dealings while sitting in the White House, according to a report released by Democrats on the committee.
Speaking to MSNBC from the Capitol, correspondent Ryan Nobles explained that the new Oversight Committee report Democrats began work on two years ago unveiled at least $8 million in funds from foreign governments and bodies funneled to Trump while he was president.
"It's a 156-page exhaustive report that details only two years of the Donald Trump presidency, in which they outline millions of dollars in payments that flowed directly from foreign governments into the various businesses that were controlled by Donald Trump and his associates," said Nobles.
He went on to recall that while campaigning in 2016, Trump said that he would divest his business interests into a "blind trust," but that never happened.
"And even though his [adult] children did run these businesses, he was still directly involved or had knowledge of the day-to-day business activity that many of these different associated entities were doing while he was in office," the reporter explained.
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"And what this report outlines, with a great deal of specificity, are the types of payments that many of these foreign governments were making to his various businesses. The number one country over this two-year period that had participated in or had patronized Trump-associated businesses was China, which of course Donald Trump has been a fierce critic of, particularly as it relates to Hunter Biden, the current president's son."
Trump claimed during the 2020 campaign that Biden scored $1.5 billion from China.
Trump conflated the accusations by saying that Biden "goes on and he allows China to rip us off." He also said, "So the Bidens got rich while America got robbed."
The Republicans in the Oversight Committee have been unable to find such a payment. The amount that they've alleged Biden took from foreign entities through his son has shrunk to about $4,000, which Biden loaned his son so he could buy a 2018 truck. Hunter Biden paid his father back in monthly installments.
The report released Thursday also includes funds from Saudi Arabia, which already has connection to his son-in-law. After Trump left office, Jared Kushner got a $2 billion investment from the country for his hedge fund.
"They were only able to collect that two-year period worth of time because the accounting firm that was working with Donald Trump during that window of time separated from him and no longer was willing to do business with him," said Nobels.
"They felt compelled to hand the information over because they were requested to do so by Congress. The rest of that period of time, House Republicans have not joined with House Democrats in compelling that information to be brought forward. And that was one of the things that we heard members of the House Democratic Oversight Committee be very critical of the chairman of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, for not allowing them to ask for these additional documents to get the full four years of the Trump presidency."
Meanwhile, Nobles said, the House has moved for an impeachment "inquiry" for Biden, claiming that his son was engaged in foreign business activities that benefitted Biden while he was vice president.
"They have not shown vast amounts of millions of dollars worth of payments that were directly given to Joe Biden as a result of his son's business dealings, nor have they shown any evidence that Joe Biden's role as a public official benefitted any of these foreign entities," said Nobles. "This report at least attempts to do that as it relates to Donald Trump."
See the full update in the video below or at the link here.
James Comer searched for China influence over Biden — but Oversight found Trump insteadwww.youtube.com
A majority of Senate Republicans voted to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial despite the fact that he had incited a violent riot just weeks earlier that sent then running for their lives.
According to the New Yorker's Susan Glasser, the calculus behind this for many was that Trump would simply fade away after having left office in such a historically disgraceful manner.
While speaking with The Bulwark podcast this week, Glasser outlined how Trump has kept his base completely loyal to him even after he left office under the cloud of an unprecedented second impeachment that saw seven Senate Republicans cross the aisle to vote for his conviction.
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"He is communicating with his part in the American electorate, with his Red America," Glasser explained. "And he correctly understood, in a way that so many people here in Washington, Republicans especially, got wrong, got catastrophically wrong: The idea that he wasn't going to be exiled and disgraced after January 6th, he was going to come back."
Three years after leaving office, Glasser continued, Trump now appears poised to "reconsolidate power over his party" and once again secure the Republican nomination for the presidency.
Watch Glasser on the video below or at this link.
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