When Trump tries to claim he’s the “law and order” president, you really have to wonder — has he read the news about the people involved with his 2016 campaign?
First, there was Michael Flynn, a top aide to Trump's campaign, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. Trump hired him as national security advisor. nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/…
Then there was Trump’s first campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was sentenced to 47 months in prison for hiding millions of dollars he earned for political consulting in Ukraine. bbc.com/news/world-us-…
Then Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison for campaign finances crimes. Remember those hush money payments? washingtonpost.com/world/national…
The first two Congressmen to endorse Trump, Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, were sentenced for campaign finance crimes and insider trading, respectively. politico.com/story/2019/02/…
Trump’s advisor, Roger Stone, was supposed to serve 40 months in prison for charges including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction, that is...until Trump lifted his sentence. cnn.com/2020/07/10/pol…
Today, Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief executive, was indicted and taken into federal custody for defrauding donors to a private border wall.
Trump likely cannot be indicted during his presidency. But even beyond what he was impeached for, he has plenty of criminal liabilities, from campaign finance crimes, to obstruction of justice.
One year ago on Saturday, @propublica published a damning report revealing that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury vacations for 20 years from billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow.
Here’s what we’ve learned since: 🧵
Clarence Thomas did not disclose that he accepted Crow's payments for his grandnephew's private boarding school tuition .propublica.org/article/claren…
We read the SEC filing for Trump’s new public company, Trump Media & Technology Group, so you don’t have to.
Here are some things that stood out. THREAD:
The value of the stock is widely understood to be massively inflated, with the true draw being the chance to invest in Trump himself, not Truth Social’s technology or user base.
There’s a real risk inherent in a stock if its value is all tied to an individual who is under several indictments.
A week from today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in our case barring Donald Trump from the ballot.
It’s been a long road to SCOTUS, with an insurrection, a precedent setting win in New Mexico, and a five day trial in Colorado along the way. 🧵
It all started on January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
(It’s the fact that he swore the oath to support the Constitution before inciting insurrection that disqualifies him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.)
Nearly 4 years later, on December 19, 2020, after it was clear that he lost the election, Trump tweeted “Big Protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
Then, on January 6, 2021, insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol while Trump refused to call them off for hours.
In the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on Trump’s disqualification from the ballot in Colorado, established legal scholars and advocacy groups have submitted amicus curiae briefs to the Court to shed light on the case and the weight of the decision.🧵
According to several groups who submitted to the Court in support of neither party, Section Three is self-executing and functions precisely to bar insurrectionists like Trump from office. Here are a few key highlights:
Election law experts Edward B Foley, Richard L. Hasen, and Benjamin L. Ginsberg—a leading Republican election lawyer—wrote in their joint brief that Section 3’s language “constitutes an independently operative legal bar.”
"Don't bar Donald Trump from the ballot, just let the voters decide"
That gets it wrong on several levels. We can't pick and choose what parts of the Constitution should be enforced. And we can't depend on Trump to accept the choice of the voters. 🧵
Trump was defeated at the ballot box once before. We saw what happened: he refused to concede and incited a violent insurrection.
He’s only escalated his claims of voter fraud and authoritarian rhetoric since. Why should we believe he’ll accept the results if he loses again?
The Constitution has a protective measure in the form of Section 3, which ensures that insurrectionists who took an oath aren’t given a second chance to be a part of--or run--the government they tried to overthrow.