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Kingmaker-38 - Big IF! (True)

@KingMakerFT

Mar 19

JFK Assassination THREAD 🧵#6
Let’s Discuss the CIA, FBI, The Soviets, and the White House

Now that the JFK files are out, and folks on X seem to be leaping to conclusions already, I’m going to abandon my planned sequence and jump ahead a little to put into context some things I see being posted. Specifically I’m talking about perceived links b/w Oswald and the KGB’s head assassin, Kostikov.

The actual facts are murky, but it’s been commonly known and reported on for some time that in late September, early October 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald traveled by bus from Louisiana through south Texas, then down to Mexico City. He stayed there about a week and then took a bus to Dallas. In those days Mexico City resembled Casablanca in the World War II Humphrey Bogart movie of that name. The city was a haven for spies of all stripes. Most hung out together in the same small set of hotels. The Soviet Union and its relatively brand new satellite, Cuba, had embassies there. And our CIA was ahead of the game. The
CIA had tapped all the phone lines and had constant photographic surveillance at both embassies. It’s not clear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the CIA had both embassies totally bugged.

On October 9, 1963, CIA headquarters received a cable from Mexico City Station, reporting that Oswald called the Soviet embassy and, speaking in broken Russian, stated he had been in the embassy on September 25 and talked to Kostikov, who was reputed in the CIA and the FBI to head up the KGB’s assassination section. Oswald asked whether there was any follow up regarding a telegram to Washington. According to Sylvia Duran, a receptionist (spy? Who knows) at the Cuban embassy with whom Oswald allegedly was having an affair, Oswald was seeking a transit visa (memories of “Casablanca” are coming to mind) from Cuba to Moscow, where he again wanted to defect to.

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Kingmaker-38 - Big IF! (True)

@KingMakerFT

Mar 18

We’re about to get about 80,000 previously classified pages of documents relating to the JFK assassination. This is a THREAD 🧵containing a trial lawyer’s perspective on a small, but highly significant part of the evidence that in my opinion establishes that President Kennedy was the victim of a coup. This was far more than a simple, more-than-one-shooter conspiracy. JFK’s murder was accompanied by practically an all-of-government conspiracy, reaching to the highest levels of our military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to cover up what happened and who was involved in the planning and execution of the murder of our president. Let’s begin.

I’ll begin with Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where JFK was taken after being shot on November 22, 1963. As an aside, everyone in my generation knows where they were when they heard the news the president had been shot and killed. I was in 10th grade English class when our principal came on the loud speaker and told us to pray, as the president had been shot and had been taken to a hospital in Dallas. Not long later we were told JFK had died. I remember those minutes like they happened yesterday.

Parkland Hospital was a teaching hospital, part of the University of Texas system. It served all segments of the Dallas community and was home to a team of doctors and medical staff well qualified and experienced in handling all kinds of trauma, including gunshot wounds. Dr Kemp Clark, the hospital’s director of neurosurgery, signed the death certificate and a formal statement describing the wound to the back of JFK’s head that caused his death:

“There was a large wound in the occipito-parietal region from which profuse bleeding was occurring….There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound.”

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Kingmaker-38 - Big IF! (True)

@KingMakerFT

Jan 28

This is a thread about the Justice Dept lawyers on Jack Smith’s team who were fired yesterday for their involvement in Smith’s lawfare against Trump. Trump’s reason for firing these lawyers was that they could not be trusted to carry out the president’s agenda. In this thread I will explain another equally strong reason: Smith’s team allowed political bias to overcome the skills and objectivity that litigators of all stripes are expected to have. In simple terms, Smith’s final report establishes that the lawyers working on the DC case against Trump were not very good, professional lawyers.

Examples of poor lawyering abound in Smith’s final report. Here I’ll mention a few. These examples are in addition to the basic violations of due process rights belonging to Trump and to the defendants in state court prosecutions arising out of the same set of facts- the so-called attempt to “overturn the election.” I’ve written and talked on Spaces at length about the constitutional problems with making that report public while prosecutions were ongoing, so I won’t go over those issues here. My criticism here will assume the report was designed to be an honest, objective report to AG Garland and not designed to be made public when Garland released it. Even as a strictly in-house report, it fails even minimal standards trial lawyers must meet.

Trial lawyers are taught to analyze facts and law objectively and thoroughly, always keeping in mind there are usually two sides to every argument. The ability to anticipate the opposing side’s evidence and arguments as to what the evidence proves is an essential attribute for any trial lawyer. Fundamentally, Jack Smith’s final report lacks any hint that the lawyers on his team ever considered, let alone tried to deal with, any evidence and theory of the case that tended to contradict, the theory of the case adopted by the prosecution.

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Kingmaker-38 - Big IF! (True)

@KingMakerFT

Oct 3, 2024

Now that Special Counsel Smith’s magnum opus, election interference filing is in the public record, I can provide more detail on how the 165 page filing violated Trump’s constitutional rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. In this thread I’ll focus on the hundreds of references to opinion testimony that at trial would likely be inadmissible for lack of foundation, based on what little Smith has provided to prove up the opinion testimony. Yet Smith asks the judge- and the voting public, including prospective jurors- to accept such inadmissible opinion testimony as the gospel truth. That is not how the 5th Amendment requirement of due process and the 6th Amendment right to confront and cross examine witnesses against you, and the 6th Amendment right to a jury trial before a fair and impartial jury, are designed to work.

Throughout Smith’s filing, he refers to evidence in the form of opinions by various witnesses who claim to have reported to Trump and/or people working for him or conspiring with him, that there was no fraud or illegality in the election sufficient to change the result. In very general terms, there were descriptions of witnesses telling Trump, in sum and substance, “There was no fraud.”

In legal terms, that type of testimony would be characterized as opinion testimony, since no one person could personally attest , by first hand knowledge, to the absence of fraud or illegality with respect to every vote, out of tens of millions cast, and that all such votes were lawfully counted. To be admissible, opinion testimony must be based upon an adequate foundation. The burden is on the party trying to introduce the opinion into evidence to establish a proper legal foundation for its admissibility.

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Kingmaker-38 - Big IF! (True)

@KingMakerFT

Sep 7, 2024

@JeffClarkUS is spot on here in identifying serious 5th Amendment due process issues with Jack Smith’s upside down proposal, adopted by Judge Chutkan, that the prosecution be allowed to file a comprehensive public “brief” as to Trump’s guilt and the absence of immunity in the height of election season.

In addition to the blatant political purpose of Smith’s proposed “brief,” there are serious 5th Amendment due process problems as well as denial of the 6th Amendment right to confront witnesses in a criminal case. Smith proposes to recast the indictment by laying out in the public record 1) the details of his office’s plan as to what evidence to present at trial to prove Trump’s guilt, 2) his evidence showing there is no immunity because the conduct involved private and not official acts of the former president; and 3) as to any official acts, Smith’s evidence to rebut the presumption of immunity.

This “brief” of the special counsel will not be the standard legal brief. Rather, it will include Smith’s evidence. Smith’s office has told the court that to support the prosecution’s narrative, they plan to file in the public record documentary evidence, grand jury testimony, and FBI 302 forms summarizing witness interviews.

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Kingmaker-38 - Big IF! (True)

@KingMakerFT

May 20, 2024

https://twitter.com/jonathanturley/status/1792541153339818261

Judge Merchan is severely limiting the defense expert’s discussion of how the FEC works, including definitions of terms like “campaign contributions,” and such concepts as dual use expenses exempted from the law. Right now the jury has heard enough to assume the worst for Trump:

https://twitter.com/jonathanturley/status/1792541153339818261

The judge refuses to say how he will instruct the jury on the FEC. As it stands now the jury probably assumes the FEC was violated and that Trump has no defense, because it’s obvious sex with a porn star might affect the number of Trump’s votes. But that’s not the law.

And this issue of whether the FEC was violated is beyond the court’s jurisdiction altogether. The FEC supersedes and preempts all state laws. So a NY state court jury cannot decide whether there has been a criminal violation of the FEC.

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