Today's "assault" on Trump

Robert Reich

Aug 9

“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Donald Trump raged today after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida and broke open a safe, apparently looking for documents that Trump illegally took from the White House.  

To set the record straight. Trump is no longer president of the United States. He’s a normal citizen. He may believe he’s still president because he never conceded the 2020 election, but he lost that election. As a result, he is subject to the same search-and-seizure provisions, under court supervision, as is anyone else.

Trump may be correct that no former president has ever before been subject to an FBI search, but, then again, nothing like Trump has ever before happened to the United States. No former president has ever attempted a coup to remain in office.

Trump claims that the search of Mar-a-Lago was intended to stop him from running for president in 2024.

There is no way the search could stop him from running, unless, perhaps, the search turns up even more evidence that he participated in an “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States – in which case, pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress might move to disqualify him from running. But it’s far from clear that even such a congressional resolution would trigger Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

On the other hand, if a grand jury determines that Trump broke the law and decides to indict him, the Justice Department could take him to court, where a jury could decide he is guilty. The court conceivably could send him to prison. This would make it difficult, although not impossible, for him to run for or be re-elected president.

We don’t know yet what the FBI agents who searched Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago today were looking for, but in January, the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago that National Archives officials said should have been turned over when Trump left the White House. Evidently, more boxes were missing.

We also know that a federal grand jury in Washington has been gathering information about efforts by Trump, along with his lawyers and enablers, to try to use fake electors to block Joe Biden from formally becoming president after the 2020 election. As part of that investigation, authorities have begun examining Trump’s actions, seeking to discover what instructions he gave to subordinates, according to people familiar with the investigation.

In today’s statement, Trump claimed that “such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.” If he was referring to the assault he instigated on January 6, 2021, against the United States Capitol, he is partly correct. Had that assault been successful, the United States could indeed have become a broken, Third-World country.

Today’s search of his home, however, was done with a warrant and approved by a court. It occurred under the law.

But America might still become a broken, Third-World country, due to Trump’s and other Republicans’ continuing efforts to sow doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election. During a speech on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Trump reiterated his claim that the 2020 election “was rigged and stolen and now our country is being systematically destroyed,” despite the fact that sixty federal judges, some appointed by Trump, concluded that the election was not rigged and stolen and that Trump’s own Department of Justice came to the same conclusion. Trump, however, has systematically tried to destroy our country.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke at that same conference last Saturday. Orban has turned Hungary into a Third-World autocracy. This is what Trump wants for the United States. He and his Republican enablers are still at it.

We have only one bulwark against this menace. It is called the rule of law. Finally, it seems, on the basis of today’s search of Mar-a-Lago, that bulwark is being utilized.

The power of $3

 

It's true — running a campaign is expensive. That's why so many other politicians turn to big special interest donors to fund their campaigns. Our team is different. I came to Congress to serve the people of my community, and I believe our campaign should be accountable to you, too. We don't take your support for granted. You deserve to know the tremendous difference your small-dollar donations make for our campaign. Just take a look at this photo from my campaign office. All of this was made possible by hundreds of working people chipping in $3 at a time: ✅ That pink postcard goes to new voters to remind them when it's time to vote. ✅ The T-shirt and mask are given to volunteers who spend hours knocking on doors and talking to voters. ✅ Our voter hotline card helps answer voter questions 365 days a year in English and Spanish. ✅ Those vote-by-mail ballot requests are mailed to tens of thousands of local seniors. ✅ The voter registration forms on the right have helped us register 2,500 new El Pasoans to vote. ✅ The door hangers in the center give crucial voting and contact info. ✅ And the mailer on the far left tells El Pasoans what's at stake in this election. This is what a people-powered campaign looks like. Without our grassroots supporters -- without YOU -- none of this is possible. So, if you're wondering what the power of one, single $3 donation could be -- it's a direct impact on voter turnout in your community. It's protecting our democracy and electing strong leaders. It's reminding your neighbors about the urgency of voting this year. It's putting that money right back into our community to make a difference. if these things are important to you and you can spare just $3, please chip in to help fund our work → Thank you so much. — Veronica Veronica Escobar made history as one of the first Texas Latinas elected to serve in Congress. She's an outspoken advocate for El Paso's progressive values in Washington. That's put a target on her back from Trump supporters who are preparing to spend millions to end her leadership. Can we count on you to stand with Veronica? CONTRIBUTE NOW → VOLUNTEER → PAID FOR BY VERONICA ESCOBAR FOR CONGRESS Veronica Escobar for Congress P. O. Box 3961 El Paso, TX 79923 United States

America's 30-year recession The have-lesses of America are already being hit hard Robert Reich Aug 9 The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July, more than twice the number analysts had expected. And the rate of unemployment dipped to just 3.5 percent. Undeniably good news. But this good news also means the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep raising interest rates, believing the job market is now too “tight.”  This is not good news. The Fed is wrong: The job market is not too tight. In fact, the share of Americans working or actively looking for work fell in July to its lowest level of the year — presumably because fewer people believe it worthwhile to work. This is because of (1) the rising costs (and hassles) of childcare and eldercare, and (2) the continuing drop in inflation-adjusted wages. Wages are rising at an annual rate of 5.2 percent but inflation is rising at over 9 percent. Which means that, in terms of real purchasing power, the pay of most workers continues to plummet. You’d think that the stall in the size of the workforce and the decline in inflation-adjusted wages might cause the Fed to hit the pause button on further interest-rate increases. But the Fed is still wedded to the anachronistic view that a “tight” jobs market is pushing prices upward. Rubbish. The real inflationary culprits are global supply constraints and big corporations with the power to raise prices. So beware. The Fed is likely to continue to raise interest rates when it meets in September. This means middle and lower-income Americans will be hit with two simultaneous shocks: not just shrinking paychecks they’re now enduring, but also a slowing economy in which they are the first to lose hours and jobs. Lower-income workers have little room reduce their spending because a large portion of their family budgets already goes to the necessities of food and housing — both of whose prices are soaring. Many are coping by taking on more credit card debt, which is also becoming more expensive as the Fed raises interest rates. So don’t be misled by the headlines. Yes, overall consumer spending is still going gangbusters. But most of it is coming from the upper middle class. The top 40 percent of the income distribution now accounts for around 60 percent of spending; the bottom 40 percent, about 22 percent. As the Fed slows the economy, the bottom 40 percent are getting squeezed even more. Yes, job growth is booming as well. But the sheer number of jobs is not a sufficient measure of the strength of the economy, especially when the real wages attached to so many of them are dropping. It is no great feat to create an abundance of low-wage jobs. The Fed is poised to make all this worse for lower-income Americans. Inequality in America is already horrific. Why worsen it? In the first three decades after World War II, America produced the largest middle class the world had ever seen. Most jobs continued to pay more and more. Almost all Americans were on an upward escalator. But for the last three decades, the middle class has been shrinking, and only the classes surrounding them have been growing — the “have-mores” and the “have-lesses.” The have-lesses — most of whom don’t have college degrees and are paid in hourly wages and — have been in a slow-motion recession. If they’re white and without college degrees, they’ve been losing ground fastest of all. Adjusted for inflation, their pay and benefits today are lower than they were in 1990. They also have less job security. In 2016, they formed the core of Trump’s base, and are still among his most ardent supporters. The biggest threat to our economy and society is no longer inflation or recession, per se. The biggest threat is a large and growing class of have-lesses — slammed by the double-whammy of a slowing economy and declining real wages. The Fed must not harm them further by taming inflation on their backs.

Sheriff's boat at star-studded Cape Cod wedding raises questions. What to know

Sarah Carlon Cape Cod Times

Published Aug 9, 2022 

EDITOR'S NOTE: A correction was made in this story on Aug. 9, 2022, to the spelling of Rep. Timothy Whelan's name. 

OSTERVILLE— On July 30, the Barnstable County Sheriff's Department boat escorted a bride to the altar at the Nauticus Marina, leaving one candidate in the race for sheriff questioning the boat's role in the mission of the department.

"The decision of the Sheriff's Office to allow its boat to be used as part of a 'star-studded' exclusive private wedding demonstrates a profound lapse in judgment and calls into the forefront the true role of the Sheriff," Donna Buckley, who is running for Barnstable County Sheriff, wrote in a letter to the Cape Cod Times. "The Sheriff's boat is owned by the taxpayers and operated with our tax dollars. It has no business being used for a private function."

The boat in question, a S300 SAFE Boat Patrol Boat part of the department's marine unit, was purchased through a grant from the Department of Homeland Security through their small boat security program, current Sheriff James Cummings said.

Letter from Donna Buckley:Does the Barnstable County Sheriff offer boat escorts to everyone?

The wedding party approached the department and asked for an escort for the bride's arrival on a small tugboat, Cummings said. They were concerned about boat traffic at the busy marina.

During the ceremony, Gov. Charlie Baker presided over the wedding of Boston public relations exec George Regan and Elizabeth Akeley. The wedding drew many from the world of politics, sports and entertainment.

The boat, manned by two officers, was on-duty from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. that day and the department agreed to the escort, which lasted only about 10 minutes, the sheriff said.

Salary Database:Barnstable County Sheriff's Department 2021 payroll

The escort took place at about 2 p.m., Cummings added, and the party was advised if they needed anything outside of working hours they would need to pay for a security detail.

Because the escort was within working hours, the wedding party did not pay the department for the boat's use.

If an emergency happened during the escort that required the use of the boat, Cummings said the wedding party was aware the two officers manning the vessel would have to leave.

More:Know Your Sheriff ACLU workshop for Barnstable County intends to empower voter

Although rarely done, Cummings said the department might allow similar escorts on a case-by-case basis.

"It would depend on the circumstances and location," Cummings said. "If they were already on patrol or in the area we could do something similar. I would make it available, but it might get out of hand if we were just doing wedding escorts, we would have to stop."

For example, local yacht clubs have requested the presence of the boat in the past at events to help with security and boat traffic, although the boat was not at the wedding in any security capacity, Cummings said.

Why does a sheriff's department have a boat?

According to its mission statement, the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office, located at Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne, operates the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, assists local agencies through specialized services and enforces the laws of Massachusetts and the United States.

Alongside the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, the sheriff's department operates a Bureau of Criminal Investigations, a Technical Division, an Emergency Communications Center and a Civil Process Division.

Cape Cod businesses:Wellfleet shellfish farmers provide oysters for your table. Here's how.

Cummings said the boat, harbored in Falmouth, is monitored by the Coast Guard in Woods Hole which can see its location at all times.

"If the Coast Guard gets a call about a boat in distress and we're the closest to it, we'll get dispatched there to handle that," he said.

The boat is also sometimes used at local events for general security, like an annual triathlon at Old Silver Beach in Falmouth.

Sheriff candidates weigh in

State Rep. Timothy Whelan, R-Brewster, who is running against Buckley for sheriff after Cummings' retirement this year, said while he didn't know much about the specific situation of the recent wedding escort, he said it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a vessel like this to be used in certain circumstances for safety reasons.

Whelan, 1st Barnstable state representative since 2014 and previously a Massachusetts State Police sergeant, said when President Barack Obama visited Martha's Vineyard, he was a shift commander for his security detail, and local law enforcement boats were used to ensure the president's safety.

"One thing that a lot of people don't know is when the president was over on the Vineyard, 24 hours a day there was a Coast Guard cutter offshore, right near the president's rented residence for security," he said. 

Politics in 2022:When businesses speak out: Bread and Roses latest shop to venture into activism

While Whelan said he hadn't talked to the sheriff about the recent wedding escort, the presence of Gov. Baker and other politicians including Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., might have increased the need for security.

"If that was the case then I don't have a problem at all," he said.

In her letter, Buckley called for decommissioning the sheriff's boat.

"The statutory responsibility of the Barnstable County Sheriff — and all sheriffs throughout the Commonwealth — is the care and custody of inmates.  Although the Sheriff's office here on the Cape performs other important regional services, including operating a public safety answering point to answer 911 calls, the operation of a boat is not part of that core mission," she wrote. "One of my first actions as Barnstable County Sheriff will be to decommission the boat and immediately redirect the staff and resources to the sacred responsibility of the Sheriff — true public safety through correction, rehabilitation and treatment."

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August 8, 2022 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

August 8, 2022 Heather Cox Richardson Aug 9 It’s been quite a day. It began with Axios sharing photos of what purported to be White House toilets with torn up paper in them. The notes on that paper appear to have former president Trump’s distinctive handwriting on them. Axios got them from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has previously reported that Trump used to get rid of documents by flushing them. (By law, all presidential records must be retained.) I am skeptical of these photos, myself—they seem a bit too perfect—but I do find the timing significant. If the photos are real, someone has had them for a long time but now feels that it is worth sharing them. If they are fake, they nonetheless demonstrate that Trump is a significantly diminished figure. Next came news from the 2016 Trump campaign. Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, Paul Manafort, has written a book, and to sell it, he gave a long interview to Mattathias Schwartz of Insider. In the interview, Manafort admitted what the Senate Intelligence Committee said in their report about Russian interference in the 2016 election: he gave internal polling data from the Trump campaign to Konstantin Kilimnik, who, according to the Senate report, was a Russian intelligence agent. Manafort had previously denied this story. Manafort told Schwartz that he was not trying to swing the election but hoped to convince pro-Russian oligarchs to do business deals with him by showing that he had access to Trump and that Trump could beat Democratic presidential candidate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Manafort says he didn’t know Kilimnick worked for Russian intelligence. Reached for the story, Kilimnick says he is a victim of people’s dislike of Russia. Then, Trump’s presidency. In the New Yorker today, Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker revealed that Trump and the generals of the United States Army were fundamentally at odds about how they viewed the United States. Trump wanted the generals to be loyal to him, as he believed “the German generals in World War II” were loyal to Adolf Hitler. (In fact, they tried repeatedly to assassinate him.) Trump tried to pack the military with loyalists; military leaders insisted that the military must not be taken over by a single leader. After June 1, 2020, when Trump had nonviolent protesters cleared from Lafayette Square with tear gas and batons, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley drafted a resignation letter in which he told Trump, “It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country” with his actions over the past weeks. Milley explained that our Constitution means that “[a]ll men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans.” But Trump, he said, was siding with “tyrannies and dictatorships,” “fascism,” “Nazism,” and “extremism” and “ruining the international order” that the Greatest Generation defended in World War II. While Milley did not, in the end, resign, he did take a public stand against Trump’s use of the military against Americans. The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was also in the news today: CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported that two years of text messages to and from conspiracy theorist and January 5 rally speaker Alex Jones have been sent to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Jones’s lawyer had inadvertently sent the messages to opposing counsel during his recent trial. And then, although the Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t tip off anyone about this, even after it had begun, Trump tonight released a statement saying that the FBI was raiding Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, property. “They even broke into my safe!” he complained. He called it “an attack by Radical Left Democrats” and said it was a sign that America has become a third-world country. But Trump himself appointed the current director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, after firing former director James Comey for investigating the ties of his 2016 campaign to Russia. Wray is hardly a “Left Democrat”; he served in the George W. Bush administration and is a member of the Federalist Society. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance reminded people on Twitter: “We don't know yet what crimes the FBI had sufficient evidence of to convince a federal judge there was probable cause to search Trump's residence, but the execution of a search warrant isn't a raid. It's a judicially overseen process.” It appears that the search was about Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House. (I told you: no one with any brains at all ever messes with archivists.) As legal analyst Asha Rangappa noted, “a search warrant has to demonstrate probable cause that evidence of a crime will be found in the places and things searched.” And legal analyst Renato Mariotti adds that the Department of Justice doesn’t usually prosecute cases unless the material was deliberately transferred to a third party, and that it is unlikely DOJ would have obtained a search warrant if it did not expect to pursue a case. Tonight, chief White House correspondent for CNN Kaitlan Collins reported that in early June, investigators had gone to Mar-a-Lago to learn more about the materials Trump had taken when he left the White House. They asked to see where the documents were stored, and Trump’s lawyers took them to a basement room. The search warrant executed today included a safe in Trump’s office, and journalist Laura Rozen reported that agents suspected that Trump had taken and was holding other classified documents after he returned many of them. Political commentators noted that the law disqualifies from “holding any office under the United States” anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys…any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk of officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States.” Tonight, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is expressing outrage, the Fox News Channel is talking about Hunter Biden, and Trump’s base is calling for war, but Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is silent. For his part, Trump is fundraising off the executed search warrant. One final story from today illustrates a central principle of democracy: the principle of accountability. Today, U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced the men who stalked and murdered Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020 as he was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia. She sentenced Travis McMichael and his father Greg McMichael to an additional life sentence in prison on federal hate crime charges. Unlike the other two, their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan did not bring a gun to the scene, a fact the judge noted when she sentenced him to 35 years. They will serve their sentences in state prison, although they asked for federal custody, saying they feared for their lives in state prison. Accountability is not only about justice; it’s about deterrence. On this day in 1974, President Richard Nixon announced that he would resign the office of the presidency the next day at noon. He did not admit wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal, although the House Judiciary Committee had voted to impeach him, the full House was sure to follow, and Republican senators warned him the Senate would vote to convict. He never did admit wrongdoing, and he was never held accountable. Instead, the next president, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned him. And here we are, 48 years later, with a president and his followers outraged that he, like everyone else, must abide by the law. — Notes: https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-manafort-exclusive-interview-trump-2024-january-6-russian-oligarchs-2022-8 https://www.axios.com/2022/08/08/trump-toilet-photos-maggie-haberman https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/travis-mcmichael-sentenced-life-prison-federal-hate-crimes-killing-ahm-rcna41566 Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance We don't know yet what crimes the FBI had sufficient evidence of to convince a federal judge there was probable cause to search Trump's residence, but the execution of a search warrant isn't a raid. It's a judicially overseen process. Still unknown: the subject of the search. August 8th 2022 4,118 Retweets21,051 Likes Josh Marshall @joshtpm Interesting. None of the big news orgs seem to have anything on this. Trump released the news. Obviously something like this wasn't going to stay secret. But Feds appear to have run totally silent. No tips to news orgs even after it had started it seems. August 8th 2022 158 Retweets1,199 Likes https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals Asha Rangappa @AshaRangappa_ Given how early it seems in the DOJ’s investigation of the Eastman/fake elector scheme as it pertains to Trump, my guess is that this is about the WH removal of classified documents, which I suspect is a separate investigation and one that likely has been going on for a while August 8th 2022 678 Retweets4,205 Likes https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/alex-jones-january-6/index.html Marc E. Elias @marceelias The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.👇 August 9th 2022 19,035 Retweets60,484 Likes Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins Investigators asked to see where docs were stored. Trump's attorneys took them to a basement room and they looked around before leaving. Days later, Trump's attorneys got a letter asking them to further secure the room. Aides subsequently added a padlock, I am told. August 9th 2022 889 Retweets4,524 Likes Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti THREAD: What should we make of the search of Donald Trump's home at Mar-A-Lago? August 9th 2022 912 Retweets3,145 Likes Maggie Haberman @maggieNYT Trump has started fundraising off the FBI search August 9th 2022 780 Retweets2,238 Likes Aaron Rupar @atrupar Hunter Biden has been mentioned at least 46 times on Fox News in the few hours since news of the Mar-a-Lago raid broke August 9th 2022 934 Retweets7,724 Likes Laura Rozen @lrozen Federal agents were able to establish probable cause for the warrant because Trump and his lawyers had already turned over some classified documents.. Agents suspected that Trump was unlawfully holding other classified documents from his presidency in his private club & residence August 9th 2022 213 Retweets479 Likes https://www.vox.com/2021/6/11/22527796/ig-report-trump-bible-lafayette-square-protest