Does Trump ever do any jail time? (12 Viewers)

[Optimus Prime]

Everything I've seen and heard says that the split second Donald Trump is no longer president there will be flood of charges waiting for him

And if he resigns and Pence pardons him there are a ton of state charges as an understudy waiting in the wings if the fed charges can't perform

What do you think the likelihood of there being a jail sentence?

In every movie and TV show I've ever seen, in every political thriller I've ever read about a criminal and corrupt president there is ALWAYS some version of;

"We can't do that to the country",

"A trial would tear the country apart",

"For the nation to heal we need to move on" etc.

Would life imitate art?

Even with the charges, even with the proof the charges are true will the powers that be decide, "we can't do that to the country"?

 

[Optimus Prime]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man armed with an AR-15 dies in a shootout after trying to breach FBI offices in Cincinnati. A Pennsylvania man is arrested after he posts death threats against agents on social media. In cyberspace, calls for armed uprisings and civil war grow stronger.

This could be just the beginning, federal authorities and private extremism monitors warn. A growing number of ardent Donald Trump supporters seem ready to strike back against the FBI or others who they believe go too far in investigating the former president.

Law enforcement officials across the country are warning and being warned about an increase in threats and the potential for violent attacks on federal agents or buildings in the wake of the FBI’s search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

Experts who study radicalization and online disinformation — such as Trump's aggressive false claims about a stolen election — note that the recent increase was sparked by a legal search of Trump's Florida home. What might happen in the event of arrests or indictments?

“When messaging reaches a certain pitch, things start to happen in the real world,” said former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer, a onetime federal prosecutor who now directs the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. “And when people in positions of power and public trust start to echo extremist rhetoric, it’s even more likely that we’re going to see real-world consequences.”

Amplified by right-wing media, angry claims by Trump and his allies about the search are fanning the flames of his supporters' distrust of the FBI — though it's led by a Trump appointee — and the federal government in general. And at least a few of Trump's supporters now appear to be acting on his anger............

Trump's angry words spur warnings of real violence

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

The funny thing about all of this is Trump probably had no nefarious plans for these documents -- and possibly didn't even know/care what was in them -- it's just that his petulant child ego was all: "I CAN TAKE WHATEVER I WANT, BAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!"

 

[Optimus Prime]

The funny thing about all of this is Trump probably had no nefarious plans for these documents -- and possibly didn't even know/care what was in them -- it's just that his petulant child ego was all: "I CAN TAKE WHATEVER I WANT, BAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!"

 

[SFIDC3]

I suppose - but I can't blame her for taking the gig, she clearly has confidence.

I just hope she has the judgment to avoid getting disbarred or committing a crime, because those are basically the stakes when you take Trump as your client (along with maybe not being paid).

Though she probably doesn't:

Trump Lawyer Alina Habba Sued For Being Gross Racist Hell Boss - Above the Law

Well, knock us over with a feather!

abovethelaw.com

Wow….sadly not surprising….hopefully she is able to stay on as his chief counsel and do as much damage to him and his family as possible….

 

[Optimus Prime]

lol

Is part of the reason Trump is going through law firms so fast is that he refuses to pay them?

 

[SFIDC3]

Is part of the reason is going through law firms so fast is that Trump refuses to pay them?

I think that could be a factor, I also think the ones that don’t need the money/exposure as much simply don’t want to be put in an untenable/unwinnable situation….and possibly face legal consequences as a result….

 

[Optimus Prime]

Senior intelligence officials realized early on that President Donald Trump wasn’t going to read even short written summaries of his regular intelligence briefings. So the CIA officers who prepared the briefings made sure they came to the Oval Office laden with striking images, pared-down charts and slick graphics designed to grab the president’s fleeting interest, several officials familiar with the briefings told NBC News.

“To secure his attention, you had to use images and catchy headlines, even better if they had his name in them,” said Doug London, a former CIA officer who helped assemble the briefing material.

On Aug. 30, 2019, top spies learned the dangers of that approach. What unfolded that day became an infamous moment in the Trump presidency — one that former intelligence officials say perfectly illustrated his approach to dealing with state secrets.

A former senior intelligence official with firsthand knowledge told NBC News that Trump did indeed tweet a highly classified image taken by a secret spy satellite, as many experts suspected at the time. And in doing so, the official and others said, Trump gave U.S. adversaries keen insights into the U.S. capabilities to spy from above.

“The president tweeted a picture of an Iranian missile launch site that showed a failed ICBM test launch that everybody acknowledged was a highly classified picture taken from space,” former national security adviser John Bolton, who was in Poland when it happened, told NBC News Monday. “He tweeted it out, and that of course declassified it by definition, but also showed what could happen when such a picture, even on a Twitter attachment, was then able to be analyzed by foreign intelligence services.”

Bolton and others familiar with it say the episode is emblematic of a mindset in which Trump or people close to him thought it was permissible to bring and store what the FBI says are highly classified documents to his compound in Mar-a-Lago.

“He spent no time understanding what made something a secret and what we protected,” a second former senior intelligence official said.

The former senior official directly familiar with the matter explained to NBC News that the president’s intelligence briefing that day included a photo from one of the America’s premier spy satellites — an image with resolution far superior to anything on the commercial market. The photo showed the aftermath of a catastrophic failure of an Iranian rocket launch.

“We had this image of the Iranian missile blown up, and it was exquisite intelligence, and he didn’t even wait,” the former official said. “As soon as we showed him, he said, ‘Hey, I’m tweeting this.’”

The official said CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire tried to talk Trump out of doing it, noting that the U.S. spent billions of dollars developing capabilities to capture images from space, and told Trump, “You can’t do this. If you put this out, they’re going understand what our capability is.”

But the former official said Trump was unmoved...........

“The president had a habit of asking to retain sensitive documents and from time to time, he did that and we didn’t know what happened to them,” Bolton said. “And it was always a concern, because he didn’t really fully understand the risks to sources and methods and other dangers of revealing classified information that it might get out to the wrong people.”

London said, “If he decided he liked something he saw, you would have to wrestle it back.”

To counter that, London said, briefers would use images blown up to the size of posters so Trump could not take them.

Another former senior intelligence official said Trump “didn’t behave as if he felt an obligation to protect secrets. He didn’t seem to understand.”..........

A 2019 incident showed Trump's approach to state secrets, say ex officials

“He said, ‘Look, I’m the president, I can declassify anything,’” according to a former official.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[superchuck500]

Is part of the reason is going through law firms so fast is that Trump refuses to pay them?

I think it’s mostly two reasons: (1) he doesn’t listen to counsel and is very public with his handling of everything - lawyers hate those things and they translate to risk to the lawyer; and (2) the collateral impact to other clients and firm reputation when Trump demands to take untenable legal positions.

 

[MT15]

I think it’s mostly two reasons: (1) he doesn’t listen to counsel and is very public with his handling of everything - lawyers hate those things and they translate to risk to the lawyer; and (2) the collateral impact to other clients and firm reputation when Trump demands to take untenable legal positions.

And it’s been widely reported that he stiffs them.

 

[MT15]

 

[superchuck500]

And it’s been widely reported that he stiffs them.

Indeed.

Donald Trump's long history of getting sued by his own lawyers

"He's a deadbeat."

www.motherjones.com

 

[GrandAdmiral]

I guess this can go here. Kinda figured he wouldn't flip on Trump. I hope he gets the max under law.

Former CFO of Trump Organization expected to plead guilty in business probe, is willing to testify if case advances | CNN Politics

The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization is expected to plead guilty Thursday to a 15-year tax fraud scheme, and he is willing to testify in a possible future trial but will not enter into a cooperation agreement to aid New York prosecutors in their criminal investigation of...

www.cnn.com

 

[superchuck500]

I guess this can go here. Kinda figured he wouldn't flip on Trump. I hope he gets the max under law.

Former CFO of Trump Organization expected to plead guilty in business probe, is willing to testify if case advances | CNN Politics

The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization is expected to plead guilty Thursday to a 15-year tax fraud scheme, and he is willing to testify in a possible future trial but will not enter into a cooperation agreement to aid New York prosecutors in their criminal investigation of...

www.cnn.com

The deal is for five months of which 100 days is in prison. He will also testify at trial if there is one (and he can’t take the 5th if he faces no jeopardy).

 

[Optimus Prime]

Anyone agree with this take?
=======================
Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times in New York’s investigation into his business’s finances.

Of course, the defeated former president and alleged mishandler of classified material has every right to avoid self-incrimination, but that doesn’t mean he’s protected from adverse judgment, either from the jury in this civil suit or from voters.


Indeed, taking the Fifth — especially concerning his alleged misconduct related to the attempted coup — should disqualify him from the presidency.


Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School, explains that a president “has a constitutional as well as a moral duty to see to it that the laws are faithfully executed — not just a passive duty to avoid violating the law, a duty everyone of course shares, but an active duty to ensure that the law is fully enforced as well as complied with.

That active duty arguably includes an obligation to avoid invoking various otherwise available privileges — including the privilege to withhold criminally incriminating information.”

Tribe adds, “In that special sense, a president or a former president, more than any other public official or private citizen, arguably betrays his or her duty to the American people by taking the Fifth.”…….

Nor should the obligation to one’s oath be limited to the president. Tribe, in his 1978 book “American Constitutional Law,” discusses the importance of the oaths of office, which are required not only for presidents but also for Supreme Court justices, state legislators and every executive and judicial officer in the country.

Tribe notes that Article VI of the Constitution specifies that public officials must take an oath “not just to obey the Constitution and laws of the United States but ‘to support this Constitution.’

”
In other words, should members of Congress implicated in the plot to overturn the 2020 election choose to take the Fifth, they would be setting up a conflict between their self-interest and the interest in upholding and supporting the Constitution.

The same goes for Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) should he refuse to answer questions in the inquiry regarding the pressure campaign on election officials in Georgia……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/trump-taking-fifth-disqualify-office/

 

[FullMonte]

I think it’s mostly two reasons: (1) he doesn’t listen to counsel and is very public with his handling of everything - lawyers hate those things and they translate to risk to the lawyer; and (2) the collateral impact to other clients and firm reputation when Trump demands to take untenable legal positions.

And, don't forget the letter saying there was no classified information down there. You know that lawyer did not go through every box and every closet down there. They asked around, and were assured that there were no documents marked classified, and signed off on that letter. Any lawyer now would know that if they are approached with something like that, they would have to personally go through every nook and cranny of the building before signing it.

 

[superchuck500]

Anyone agree with this take?
=======================
Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times in New York’s investigation into his business’s finances.

Of course, the defeated former president and alleged mishandler of classified material has every right to avoid self-incrimination, but that doesn’t mean he’s protected from adverse judgment, either from the jury in this civil suit or from voters.


Indeed, taking the Fifth — especially concerning his alleged misconduct related to the attempted coup — should disqualify him from the presidency.


Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School, explains that a president “has a constitutional as well as a moral duty to see to it that the laws are faithfully executed — not just a passive duty to avoid violating the law, a duty everyone of course shares, but an active duty to ensure that the law is fully enforced as well as complied with.

That active duty arguably includes an obligation to avoid invoking various otherwise available privileges — including the privilege to withhold criminally incriminating information.”

Tribe adds, “In that special sense, a president or a former president, more than any other public official or private citizen, arguably betrays his or her duty to the American people by taking the Fifth.”…….

Nor should the obligation to one’s oath be limited to the president. Tribe, in his 1978 book “American Constitutional Law,” discusses the importance of the oaths of office, which are required not only for presidents but also for Supreme Court justices, state legislators and every executive and judicial officer in the country.

Tribe notes that Article VI of the Constitution specifies that public officials must take an oath “not just to obey the Constitution and laws of the United States but ‘to support this Constitution.’

”
In other words, should members of Congress implicated in the plot to overturn the 2020 election choose to take the Fifth, they would be setting up a conflict between their self-interest and the interest in upholding and supporting the Constitution.

The same goes for Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) should he refuse to answer questions in the inquiry regarding the pressure campaign on election officials in Georgia……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/trump-taking-fifth-disqualify-office/

He’s right in principle but I don’t agree that it formally disqualifies a person from office. It should effectively disqualify the person because they shouldn’t be re-elected by the constituency but that’s not the same thing.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Yeah... release the CCTV footage. Let the world see it.

Trump considering releasing surveillance footage of FBI Mar-a-Lago search

Some allies of former President Donald Trump are urging him to publicly release surveillance footage of FBI agents executing a search warrant on his Mar-a-Lago residence, a proposal that has drawn mixed reaction inside his orbit, CNN has learned.

www.cnn.com

 

[Bolo]

You know, I'm getting real tired of all of this dragging out. If Trump did these things, bring the charges already and lets move on as a country. I'm perfectly fine with holding anyone to account when the evidence is as such but the longer this drags out without the smoking gun that makes Trump dawn an orange suit the more power he's gonna get from his victimhood narrative.

Jan 6th committee has been ongoing for months now, they have to have something concrete by now, right? This is definitely getting to the point with me where its poop or get off the pot.