A handful of documents found by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago were so sensitive that even a senior Justice Department official didn’t have authorization to see them.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    3 hours ago

    This is a fucking lie.

    Grab a fist full of Congresscritters and you’ll find the same in microcosm. Governors are even worse. Nobody is coming for Jim Justice or Kristen Gillibrand or Ken Paxton. Eric Adams got his case dropped ffs.

    Nobody is getting prosecuted for corruption.

  • rockettaco37@feddit.nu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    55
    ·
    16 hours ago

    Fascists don’t play by the rules.

    I seriously hope Trump gets taken out full on Mussolini style…

    • BotsRuinedEverything@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 hours ago

      Be very very careful how you word sentiments like this. He hasn’t gone full dictator yet, but when he does and declares martial law we will have labor camps filled with people who said things online he doesn’t like. Every dictator rounds up dissenters.

      I realize that The only power a dictator can take is what we give with our silence, but personally, I’m not a freedom fighter. Germany wasn’t rebuilt by the heros. It was rebuilt by the survivors.

  • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    114
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    20 hours ago

    This, I blame Biden for. He knew Trump was a traitor, and did absolutely nothing about it, while telling the public every day how big of a threat Trump will be. Biden willfully allowed this to happen.

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      42
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Biden’s idea was that ordering the DoJ to go after his political opponent, justified or not, would be something that would never be undone and the American people would never forgive.

      He also had faith that the American people, when presented with a choice between a bumbling fascist idiot and anyone else, they would make the right choice. If he’s right, not putting any pressure on the judicial branch should do the least damage.

      He gambled for what he thought was the overall best outcome and lost. It’s no coincidence that was also the path that required him to do nothing extreme.

      America had forgotten how to do bold things. The Dems realized they couldn’t campaign on status quo even though that was pretty decent and improving. And when they needed to come up with something more, their best answer was, “idk, $50k towards your first house, if the Republicans let us?”

      I don’t know which is worse, Obama for not forcing his Supreme Court justice through or Robert fucking Mueller, who was too fucking scared to actually outright say he’s guilty af, even if he did line everything up for Congress to draw that conclusion.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        3 hours ago

        Biden’s idea was that ordering the DoJ to go after his political opponent, justified or not, would be something that would never be undone and the American people would never forgive.

        He also had faith that the American people, when presented with a choice between a bumbling fascist idiot and anyone else, they would make the right choice

        How do you have faith in a system that you operate and openly admit cannot function as advertised?

        Republicans are getting what they asked for - massive pogroms of brown people and high profile liberal dissidents.

        Democrats are wringing their hands and shaking their heads, insisting the only thing they can deliver is… checking my notes here… Ah! Smaller pogroms against brown people and handfuls of minor right wing dissidents.

        If the DoJ only catches the small fish under the Party of Rules Based Intentional Order, what do they expect happens when the big fish come to eat them?

        Biden spent more time fighting with TikTok over pro-Palestine memes than Elon Musk and Peter Theil over trillion dollar securities fraud.

      • frustrated@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        3 hours ago

        There is a long list of people complicit in the current spiral towards dictatorship. Mueller, Comey, Roberts, Biden, Obama, Cheney (rest in piss)… Our current situation is the consequence of a rotten society. Trump is just a symptom.

      • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 hours ago

        I don’t fucking care. He’s a domestic terrorist and now even worse than what I’m sure they thought were hyperbolic warnings. He should objectively be in the Hague, so I don’t give a fuck if he’s also a ‘political oponent’. Biden and Garland failed in a spectacular fashion.

      • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        14 hours ago

        When history looks back at this time, i think Biden’s largest failure, (in regards this matter), will have been breaking his promise to be a one term President. So many screw-ups happened off the back of that, his catastrophic debate; the funding making it difficult for any other nominee but Kamala Harris to run; the undemocratic way Kamala was elevated to the nominee position; the late in the day change itself.

        I suppose it was his own self importance, but democracy is never about one person. Each person plays a part, it needs to be recognised and acted upon when that part has finished.

        • arrow74@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          13 hours ago

          It’s true, I do believe if the dems had an open primary they would have done better. I know many swing voters that abstained or voted for Trump because they hated that Harris was “appointed” and thought it was undemocratic.

          I do believe at least some of them truly did get hung up on this issue. Others I believe were juat using that as an excuse though

    • dondelelcaro@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      62
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Biden could have done more, but Trump was charged and was in the process of being tried when Aileen Cannon blocked it. The appeal was abandoned when Trump was reelected. If the case was in front of an actual unbiased jurist, it would have gone much farther, but Cannon is pretty infamous for being a biased and inadequate jurist

      • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        edit-2
        16 hours ago

        It was a solid two years before charges were filed. He should have been arrested the second he left the Whitehouse, and thrown in some cell deep underground. If Biden had wanted the man thrown in prison, he’d be in prison.

        And he literally weaponized a pandemic. He should have been tried by the military for war crimes and domestic terrorism.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        17 hours ago

        The system failed as it so often does. This failure was perhaps novel for the sheer amount of corruption it took, but hardly unprecedented.

        • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          16 hours ago

          No. What is unprecedented is the willful mismanagement of an epidemic that you allow to spiral into a pandemic so you can ineptly weaponize it against your own citizens like the special Ed kid at super villain school. And then throwing a temper tantrum that results in a capitol riot.

          • Doomsider@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            12
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            16 hours ago

            Yeah the weaponizing of COVID against our own citizens was beyond insane. I remember someone threatening to kill me on Facebook because I said use precautions and be safe.

            The fact that a bunch of people he pardoned went on to commit felonies kind of says everything.

  • arin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    14 hours ago

    Documents must be the Epstein files, Trump stole them to use as bed material.

  • zd9@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    177
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    22 hours ago

    History will go back and look at all of these enabling acts that brought about the fascist collapse of the American Empire. People in the future would be like, WHY WASN’T HE ARRESTED FOR THE BLATANT CRIMES??? in the same way we go “why wasn’t Hitler stopped after this or that event?”

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 hours ago

      Because America is the Greatest Country in the World. It can’t seriously address its problems because that would mean admitting it has them. Fascism and dictatorships are things that happen in Other Places, not America, so Americans must continue to deny the actions of their leaders or pretend that they’re not really that bad.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      17 hours ago

      You are absolutely hoping for a sane future.

      With Grok HomeTruth AI, kids will be tasked with tough questions like was the Holocaust even real?

      • dickalan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        17 hours ago

        Funny you should say that and I know that’s probably where it’s going to lead but I did use that fucking AI to fight back in some manner against a holocaust denial fuck bag who believed that the showers were just used for sanitation instead of gassing people

        • Doomsider@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          16 hours ago

          Not surprised, but sorry you had to deal with a person like that.

          You are correct that is where this is heading. They want kids to learn everything they know from AI.

          • dickalan@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 hours ago

            I chose to get on Twitter, I did it to myself, no apologies needed but thank you I appreciate the sentiment

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    95
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    19 hours ago

    Some of this information was available but read the entire article. It’s very good reporting on just how clear Trump’s intent to break the law was, the extreme sensitivity of the documents, and the clear lies Trump told in response to the raid and demands. Just an example excerpt:

    Olsen’s minders then told him about a fourth stack of documents, stored in a separate safe, explaining that only one agent in the field office was approved to handle them. Each of the documents in the safe bore a ticket with coding that described its unique handling instructions — above and beyond the strict approvals for highly sensitive top-secret and sensitive compartmented information.

    Olsen got on the phone with his counsel to read the codes aloud, one by one, to determine if he had permission to view them. Some of the documents were so restricted that top Justice Department security officials reacted with surprise to the code names: They had never heard of them before. Some involved special access programs that required the president or a cabinet member to grant approval to view.

    The documents that Trump did not turn over - after repeated requests were ignored, after turning over the initial boxes, the false “complete” folder of additional documents, showing the FBI the room with other boxes that was staged after they moved out other incriminating documents - were documents so sensitive that infosec policy required the acting president or cabinet member to personally authorize any request to view them.

    If Trump “authorizes” the DOJ to settle his frivolous lawsuit related to the FBI raid, it will be a criminal openly stealing public funds in retribution for catching him red-handed after he repeatedly lied to police, and for nearly but not even making him face consequences. It gives me a headache how corrupt, unethical, and immoral that would be.

    • HasturInYellow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      43
      ·
      20 hours ago

      The fact that every level of law enforcement has failed so utterly in this regard is the most damning reason for a wholesale restructuring and rewriting of our legal codes and governing system. It is unconscionable to be a part of such a broken society.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        17 hours ago

        Yes, you are totally right. I would like to add that the rule of law, when it comes to money, has been broken from the foundation of the US.

  • wuffah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    edit-2
    17 hours ago

    For anyone wondering why we keep top secret documentation in printed form, some of this stuff is so secret they don’t trust electronic devices to house it. To dump it in a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago is a sin that defies comprehension.

    In a transcript of a July 2021 meeting obtained for his indictment, this is a direct quote from Trump, speaking to a White House staffer:

    “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”

    It would be hilarious if only it were a Monty Python sketch.

    Only a senile malignant narcissist could lack the self-awareness to say such a thing. When I say Trump is clinically insane, this is what I mean. The fact that this man is president instills a dread approaching cosmic horror. My highest hope at this point is to survive the next three years without a nuclear holocaust.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        3 hours ago

        We actually know that documents were photocopied, because many of the documents he had were obviously photocopied. Classified documents have a colored border that goes all the way to the edge of the paper:

        But the vast majority of photocopiers can’t print to the edge of the paper, (it requires specialized printers which aren’t commercially viable except in specialized print shops), which means photocopies of classified documents don’t have that solid colored edge. Photocopies have a thin white edge where the non-printable area is. And many of his documents had that white edge, which meant they were photocopies and the originals were missing.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    edit-2
    22 hours ago

    If it had been anyone else, he would have been arrested - within hours of them realizing those things were missing.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      If it had been anyone else, they’d have been named a grave threat to national security and it’s pretty likely they’d never be seen or heard from again.

  • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    48
    ·
    21 hours ago

    This is an explicit admission that the law is powerless against at least the president, but also likely many many more people in power. Freedom cannot exist if some people have cart blanche to trample other peoples freedoms, so now by the US’s own word, they are no longer a free country.

  • santa@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    20 hours ago

    The problem is — it shouldn’t matter. A crime is a crime. Succession is built into our foundation.