August 15, 2022

The complete guide to every excuse Republicans have made for Trump's theft of classified documents

https://twitter.com/davidnir/status/1558640297122439168


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/13/2116280/-The-complete-guide-to-every-excuse-Republicans-have-made-for-Trump-s-theft-of-classified-documents

My oh my. It’s been less than a week since federal agents raided Donald Trump’s Florida beachhouse in search of classified documents that Trump stole from the White House, but Republicans have come up with a truly dizzying number of excuses and smokescreens trying to cover up his wrongdoing—often several each day. Honestly, it’s been somewhat hard to keep track of them all, especially as many contradict one another, but we’re here to help. Below, please find our day-by-day catalog of every b.s. pretext Trump’s defenders have tossed out there.

MONDAY
Excuse: Everyone is corrupt except Trump—says Trump himself.

In fairness, if anyone can recognize vintage caudillo behavior, it would be Donald Trump.

Excuse: This warrant and raid business was uncalled for. Trump would have turned over everything had the government simply asked politely.

Oh, wait, they did subpoena him? Nevermind!

TUESDAY
Excuse: It’s totally fine that Trump took all of those documents. The only issue is that he racked up some library fines for failing to return overdue government secrets.

*snip*

August 10, 2022

Trump Allies Are Attacking Biden For a Plan to Hire 87,000 New IRS Agents That Doesn't Exist

https://twitter.com/jamespmanley/status/1557181370346110977


https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/


Since news broke on Monday that the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s South Florida home, Republican members of Congress and right-wing media figures have launched a new line of attack against Democrats: that the Internal Revenue Service intends to use nearly $80 billion in new funding to pursue similar intrusions on average Americans. Those dollars, Trump allies are saying, will go toward the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.

“Do you make $75,000 or less?” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you—with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k.” Richard Grenell, Trump’s former Acting Director of National Intelligence, wrote on the social media platform: “The FBI raids Trump’s house and the Democrats vote to add 87,000 new IRS agents to go after Americans. Wake up, America.”

Other high-profile conservatives have insinuated that the Biden administration intends to direct those additional auditors to dig up dirt on the President’s political opponents. “After todays raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio.

It’s a notion that has taken off like wildfire, signaling what is likely to be a prominent broadside from Republicans against Democrats in the midterm elections.

There’s only one problem. It’s not true.

*snip*

July 15, 2022

*The Shirley Exception*

(This thread was too old for threadreader. I could have posted each of these tweets and then copied and pasted the text, but.....laziness is the real mother of invention so I did it in picture form!)

June 7, 2022

The BIG Guide: Who's who in the January 6 committee's investigation

https://twitter.com/brandi_buchman/status/1533991476270706694


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/22/2067807/-A-field-guide-to-the-figures-at-the-center-of-the-Jan-6-probe?_=2022-06-06T18:46:09.000-07:00

The January 6 Committee’s has obtained huge amounts of information from sources high and low to piece together a clearer understanding of what happened when the U.S. Capitol came under siege by a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters and members of neofascist extremist groups.

This week when the committee resumes its public hearings—the debut hearing was held in July 2021—investigators are expected to unveil their findings and argue that the evidence obtained through more than 1,000 interviews and sourced from more than 125,000 pages of records, indicates that the twice-impeached former president possibly broke the law when he deployed a scheme aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election.

During the 11-month investigation, subpoenas from the probe have flowed steadily. The public hearings will lay out the story and the key individuals at focus. The committee will issue its final report in September. In the meantime, to guide those following the probe, the following is a comprehensive guide to who’s who at the center of the Jan. 6 investigation.

The following guide includes a variety of Trump White House and administration officials, strategists, advisers and lawyers and others, including those in Vice President Mike Pence’s office. They orbited Trump or figured prominently in the select committe’s investigation. Each section provides some context behind subpoenas and requests. Links embedded throughout will take you to related reporting here at Daily Kos and elsewhere.

*snip*

June 2, 2022

Some politicians insist migrants bring drugs across the border. Data tells a different story.

https://twitter.com/fronterasdesk/status/1532212158301212672


https://fronterasdesk.org/content/1784529/some-politicians-insist-migrants-bring-drugs-across-border-data-tells-different

Earlier this year, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and 11 country sheriffs in the state were part of an effort urging Arizona Congressional representatives to fight fentanyl trafficking and cross-border migration by increasing immigration judges and building more border wall.

It was one of many instances where elected officials in Arizona and around the country have linked the increased number of migrants at the the border to the rise in fentanyl seizures. Many have insisted lifting pandemic-era restrictions on asylum like Title 42 will make it worse.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is with the American Immigration Council says data tells a different story.

"The overwhelming majority of fentanyl that is coming across the border is coming into the United States at ports of entry in passenger vehicles and usually smuggled by U.S. citizens," he said.

Reichlin-Melnick said that's consistent with data the Department of Homeland Security has long reported. For his report, which appears on social media, he compiled Customs and Border Protection press releases and Twitter posts over the last six months. He found out of a total 89 fentanyl seizure events, just three involved undocumented people.

CBP data shows 411 fentanyl seizures along the southwest border over the last six months, but that only breaks data down by drug type, weight and location, rather than by nationality or mode of transport. Reichlin-Melnick says his report doesn’t show the full picture because CBP doesn’t post about every seizure, and reporting can differ from place to place.

What it does show, he says, is a clear pattern that doesn’t include the migrants.

May 25, 2022

Joan Walsh: The GOP Is Lying About the "Great Replacement Theory"

https://twitter.com/dgolumbia/status/1529150757433491459


https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/replacement-theory-judis-teixeira/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/nTcrT


We know that the so-called “great replacement” theory, which has inspired white supremacist massacres from New Zealand to Buffalo, is a racist hoax. But after a few days professing sorrow over a white supremacist’s murdering 10 Black people at East Buffalo’s Tops Friendly Supermarket last Saturday, and after disavowing the theory, conservative pundits began to fight back. There is, in fact, a great replacement theory, they now argue—and it’s been peddled by Democrats. They’re claiming it emerged largely from a book by two friends of mine: The Emerging Democratic Majority, written by Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis roughly 20 years ago.

As Republicans flip from “We don’t believe in a great replacement theory” to “Hey, it’s real, but Democrats invented it!”—they routinely cite Judis and Teixeira.

Ann Coulter counted the two authors among the “nutcases who believe in ‘replacement’” in a column last week, claiming that their 2002 book held “that demographic changes, mostly by immigration, were putting Democrats on a glide path to an insuperable majority.” National Review editor Rich Lowry said the book made the case that Democrats are “the party of transition” as “white America is supplanted by multiracial, multiethnic America.” Boy genius (not) Ben Shapiro cribbed the exact same line Lowry did, claiming that Teixeira and Judis envisioned a world “in which white America is supplanted by multiracial, multiethnic America.” (Being Ben Shapiro, he got the book’s pub date wrong.)

In National Review last week, Charles C.W. Cooke slurred the writers for essentially arguing that “demographics will destroy the GOP, all we need to do is wait.” In The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson insisted “the notion that ‘demographics is destiny’ has been a long-running belief among Democrats, famously spelled out in John Judis and Ruy Teixeira’s widely acclaimed 2004 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Part of their argument rests on the assumption that immigration, legal and illegal, will swell the ranks of Democrat voters and hasten the inevitable emergence of a permanent Democratic majority.” (Again, guys, the book came out in 2002.)

*snip*

December 31, 2021

His spokesperson said he's on vacation

November 6, 2021

Fulton County, Georgia's Trump Investigation (Brookings report)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Fulton-County-Trump-Investigation_Brookings-Report_October2021.pdf

Executive Summary

On Saturday, January 2, 2021, at around 3:00 p.m., former President Donald J. Trump placed a call to Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Throughout the roughly hour-long call, the former president repeatedly insisted that he had won the state of Georgia “by hundreds of thousands of votes.”1 As purported evidence, Trump cited “rally size” and “political people” who he said assured him that “there’s no way they [the Biden campaign] beat me.”2 He cycled through a list of conspiracy theories to explain his loss, covering “3,000 pounds” of shredded ballots; drop boxes “being delivered and delivered late”; a particular “professional vote scammer and hustler” who Trump claimed destroyed no fewer than 18,000 of his votes; and “the other thing, dead people.”3 At one point, when Raffensperger responded to one of Trump’s false claims by cautioning him that “the problem you have with social media [is that]...people can say anything,” Trump answered: “Oh, this isn’t social media. This is Trump media.”4

But Trump did more than merely complain about the election and catalog disinformation. He urged, and ultimately threatened, Raffensperger to reverse the election outcome— culminating in a demand that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes” that could be deemed fraudulent and tossed out.5 That number mattered to Trump for a single reason: It was exactly one more vote than the margin of Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in the state.6 As Trump apparently saw it, if Raffensperger’s office complied with his request and identified 11,780 votes for
disqualification, Trump would be named the winner of the state’s presidential election (and presumably could use that development to seek a broader unraveling of the certified election results in other states confirming his defeat).

The transcript and audio file were reported by The Washington Post the following day, garnering widespread attention across a nation already aware of Trump’s refusal to accept the certified election results and assent to a peaceful transition of power. But this was no mere transgression of norms alone. Georgia law was also implicated. Trump’s entreaties to Raffensperger on the January 2 call, along with other steps he took to reverse his Georgia election loss, have exposed him and others involved to potential criminal liability in Georgia. On February 8, 2021, Raffensperger’s office opened a probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the state.7 Two days later, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced the launch of a criminal investigation into Trump’s conduct vis-à-vis the election.8 At issue was not just Trump’s January 2 call to Raffensperger. The former president had publicly pressured and personally contacted several other officials in Georgia—including the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state’s chief investigator—about the election and how they might assist him in flipping the state’s electoral votes over to him even after the results had been duly certified.9

In this report, we consider the relevant facts and context of Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. We analyze the extent to which these actions make the former president vulnerable to state criminal liability. We also assess how Trump’s attorneys may defend his conduct in pre- and (if any) post-indictment proceedings, as well as in the court of public opinion.

*snip*

April 7, 2021

Tucker Carlson defends zip tie guy

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1379587481360756739

April 6, 2021

Abbott: Do as I say, not as I do.

https://twitter.com/byjayroot/status/1379538765052575744