Promotion Of Conspiracy Theories
Before and throughout his presidency, Trump has promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including Obama birtherism, the Clinton Body Count theory, QAnon, the Global warming hoax theory, Trump Tower wiretapping allegations, a John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory involving Rafael Cruz, linking talk show host Joe Scarborough to the death of a staffer, alleged foul-play in the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, alleged Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections, and that Osama bin Laden was alive and Obama and Biden had members of Navy SEAL Team 6 killed. In at least two instances, Trump clarified to press that he also believed the conspiracy theory in question.
During and since the 2020 presidential election, Trump has promoted various conspiracy theories for his defeat including dead people voting, voting machines changing or deleting Trump votes, fraudulent mail-in voting, throwing out Trump votes, and “finding” suitcases full of Biden votes.
Election: Efforts To Overturn Georgia Results
Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is overseeing a special grand jury investigating what Trump or his allies may have done in their efforts to overturn President Joe Bidens victory in Georgia.
Willis, a Democrat, has informed all 16 of the individuals who signed an unofficial electoral certificate, which was ultimately sent to the National Archives in late 2020, that they may be indicted in the probe.
The investigation may be drawing closer to Trump as well. Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to appear before the grand jury on August 17.
The probe was launched last year following Trumps call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he pushed the Republican to find votes to overturn the election results.
Willis has also been digging into Trumps calls with Raffensperger and another official in the Secretary of States office presentations Giuliani made before state lawmakers that were riddled with election falsehoods a phone call between South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger and the sudden resignation of Byung BJay Pak, the US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, is looking at an aspect of a plot to put forward fake GOP electors from seven states.
Will Trump Pony Up
There are early indications that Republican candidates and campaign committees are languishing in the fundraising department, which could put a damper on their prospects in November. But Donald Trump isnt. Will he make up the difference and support the candidates hes endorsed? Also, will we get a reckoning with what we did during the pandemic in 2023?
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Strip Job Protections For Federal Workers
In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of federal workers to remove their employment protections and make them easier to fire. The National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the change, and before a court could rule on the challenge, Biden took office and revoked the order.
Lately, Trump has declared his intent to restore the change and put it to greater use. Hes gone further by calling on Congress to overhaul the civil service through a statute, which could be more sweeping and harder to reverse than an executive order.
Congress should pass historic reforms, empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told did you ever hear this? Youre fired, Trump said at the July speech in Washington. Get out. Youre fired. Have to do it.
Though overhauling the civil service by reclassifying employees under a new category called Schedule F may sound geeky, its become a consistent applause line in Trumps speeches and even the basis for fundraising appeals.
I told you I would DRAIN THE SWAMP and purge Washington of woke bureaucrats, and thats exactly what Schedule F accomplishes, an Aug. 9 email to supporters said.
What Does This Mean For Trumps Legal Exposure
To take the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant on a former presidents home suggests investigators are looking at more than what the National Archives had previously recovered from Mar-a-Lago, according to legal experts.
In January, the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago, including materials that had been identified as classified, but activity around those boxes have been quiet since the spring.
I really dont believe that the department would have taken such a significant step as pursuing a search warrant for the presidents residence about information they already had back, Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director and CNN contributor, said on CNN Newsroom. There had to be a suspicion, a concern and indeed specific information that led them to believe that there were additional materials that were not turned over.
Before the news of Mondays search, a law known as the Presidential Records Act had been forefront of public speculation about Trumps legal jeopardy as other investigatory steps were taken related to the handling of documents from Trumps White House. That law passed after Watergate to make clear that certain records from a presidency belong to the public and not the former office holder is not a criminal statute and has been seen as relatively toothless law.
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Deploy Federal Force Against Crime Unrest And Protests
During the social justice protests that followed George Floyds murderin 2020, Trump pressured governors to respond more forcefully to demonstrations that were largely peaceful but at times erupted into clashes with police or resulted in property damage. Trump threatened to deploy the military unless state and local officials cracked down harder on the protests.
In recent speeches, Trump has said he showed too much deference to local leaders and wished hed ordered more federal intervention. Trump indicated he wouldnt hesitate in the future.
I was mandated, Wait for the governors, but sometimes I couldnt do that, he said in the Washington speech. The federal government can and should send the National Guard to restore order and secure the peace without having to wait for the approval of some governor that thinks its politically incorrect to call them in.
National Guard troops are under state control, but the president has the them in an emergency. Trump did deploy heavily armed federal law enforcement agents in D.C., where he could exercise more direct authority than in states.
Trump has had support for this idea from allies in the past. Sen. Tom Cotton urged Trump in a controversial op-ed in June 2020 to deploy the active-duty military. But Trumps defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, publicly objected to deploying the military against domestic civil unrest.
Move Homeless People To Outlying Tent Cities
As Trump has honed a law-and-order message, packing his speeches with graphic accounts of violent offenses and bleak appraisals of Americas cities, he has particularly focused on images of people living on the streets. Trumps solution is to move homeless people to tent cities on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, staffed with medical professionals and built to house hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
The only way youre going to remove the homeless encampments and reclaim our downtowns is to open up large parcels, large tracts, of relatively inexpensive land on the outer skirts of the various cities and bring in medical professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists and drug rehab specialists and create tent cities, Trump said on Aug. 6 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. You dont have time to build buildings, you can do that later, but you have to get the people off the street. We have to bring back, we have to reclaim our cities.
In a July speech in Washington, Trump acknowledged that the idea would be controversial but argued it would be an improvement. Now, some people say, Oh, thats so horrible no, whats horrible is whats happening now, he said.
Trumps Washington speech happened to coincide with the alliances conference, setting off a ripple of concern among the 1,300 attendees and leading the groups chief executive, Ann Oliva, to address it from the stage.
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Read A Brief Summary Of This Topic
Donald Trump, in full Donald John Trump, , 45th president of the United States . Trump was a real-estate developer and businessman who owned, managed, or licensed his name to several hotels, casinos, golf courses, resorts, and residential properties in the New York City area and around the world. From the 1980s Trump also lent his name to scores of retail venturesincluding branded lines of clothing, cologne, food, and furnitureand to Trump University, which offered seminars in real-estate education from 2005 to 2010. In the early 21st century his private conglomerate, the Trump Organization, comprised some 500 companies involved in a wide range of businesses, including hotels and resorts, residential properties, merchandise, and entertainment and television. Trump was the third president in U.S. history to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives and the only president to be impeached twiceonce for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in connection with the Ukraine scandal and once for incitement of insurrection in connection with the storming of the United States Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters as Congress met in joint session to ceremonially count electoral college votes from the 2020 presidential election. Both of Trumps impeachments ended in his acquittal by the U.S. Senate. Trump lost the 2020 election to former vice president Joe Biden by 306 electoral votes to 232 he lost the popular vote by more than seven million votes.
Misogyny And Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct
Trump has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to media and on social media. He made lewd comments, demeaned women’s looks, and called them names, such as ‘dog’, ‘crazed, ‘crying lowlife’, ‘face of a pig’, or ‘horseface’.
In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate, a 2005 “hot mic” recording surfaced in which Trump is heard bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy.” The incident’s widespread media exposure led to Trump’s first public apology during the campaign and caused outrage across the political spectrum.
At least 26 women, including his first wife, have publicly accused Trump of rape, kissing and groping without consent, looking under women’s skirts, or walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. In 2016, he denied all accusations, calling them “false smears” and alleging a conspiracy against him and the American people.
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Approval Ratings And Scholar Surveys
Trump was the only president to never reach a 50% approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938. The approval ratings showed a record partisan gap: 88 percent among Republicans, 7 percent among Democrats. Until September 2020, the ratings were unusually stable, reaching a high of 49 percent and a low of 35 percent. Trump finished his term with a record-low approval rating of between 29 percent and 34 percent and a record-low average of 41 percent throughout his presidency.
In Gallup’s annual poll asking Americans to name the man they admire the most, Trump placed second to Obama in 2017 and 2018, tied with Obama for most admired man in 2019, and was named most admired in 2020. Since Gallup started conducting the poll in 1948, Trump is the first elected president not to be named most admired in his first year in office.
What Is Donald Trump Doing Now
The former president is readjusting to his life as a normal citizen since his presidency ended in January, 2021.
Since then, Trump has made several statements through his office in Florida, The Office of Donald J. Trump.
Trump slammed the “radical left CRAZIES” in an Easter 2021 message as he was spotted getting a standing ovation alongside Melania and Barron.
The full damning statement reads: “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.
“Happy Easter to ALL, including the Radical Left CRAZIES who rigged our Presidential Election, and want to destroy our Country!”
It comes after the former President was spotted at Mar-a-Lago in the family’s first appearance together since he left office.
Trump and former First Lady Melania were given a warm welcome as they attended an Easter Sunday church service before heading to Mar-a-Lago for an egg roll.
The couple were issued a rousing round of applause as they stood in the front row of the Christ Fellowship Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, on Easter morning.
Onlookers appeared stunned to learn of the Trumps’ presence at the religious event.
In photographs from the service at Christ Fellowship Church, which has seating for about 1,500 people, none of the attendees appear to be wearing masks.
The Trumps also appeared to be freely mingling with other guests and not practising social distancing.
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Will Trump Do Time What It Would Take To Convict The Former President
Most legal and constitutional experts agree: Given the facts that have come to light about former President Donald Trump‘s role in the mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, it is now plausible that he will be charged with crimes, tried and convicted. “It’s no longer premature to say that Trump could end up in prison,” says Michael Conway, a longtime trial lawyer who started his career as counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment inquiry into Richard Nixon in 1974 , and who now teaches ethics and the law at Northwestern University. “It’s a winnable case.”
The same experts are quick to point out that no criminal case is a sure thing, and that’s triply true for the prospects of tagging Trump with a crime. For one thing, allegations of misdeeds, including fraud, sexual assault and treason, have dogged Trump from the 1970s through his presidency. He has yet to face a criminal trial, let alone conviction.
As Republicans look to take control of the House in this year’s elections, they are already plotting their revenge for the January 6 inquiry by targeting figures like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for investigation. If the Biden administration files criminal charges against Trump, those efforts will likely go nuclear.
He Doesnt Need To Ask Permission’: Trump Claims He Declassified Documents Seized At Mar
NBC News and other news organizations obtained the documents shortly before the judge authorized their public release.The Justice Department filed a notice Friday saying Trump did not oppose the unsealing.
Asked for comment on the unsealed warrant, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed to statements she made earlier in the week, including one in which she said, “The Justice Department conducts investigations independently, and we leave any law enforcement matters to them.
Trump and his lawyers have had the search warrant and documents in their possession since Monday but initially resisted calls to make them public. In a statement overnight on his social media platform, Trump said he did not oppose the Justice Department’s motion to disclose the documents to the public.
“Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me, much as they have done for the last 6 years,” Trump said. “Release the documents now!”
In a separate statement, Trump said everything he had “was all declassified.”
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What Did Trump Say About The Covid Vaccines
After President Joe Biden announced his administration would order another 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Trump responded seeking credit for the swift rollout.
The ex-president said in a statement released by his office on March 10: “I hope everyone remembers when theyre getting the COVID-19 Vaccine, that if I wasnt President, you wouldnt be getting that beautiful shot for 5 years, at best.
“And probably wouldnt be getting it at all.
I hope everyone remembers!”
Both Pfizer and Modernas two-dose coronavirus vaccines were developed and authorized for emergency use while Trump was in office.
Moderna received funding for design and testing under Trumps Operation Warp Speed, while Pfizer had an advance-purchase agreement.
J& J, which was authorized for use after Biden took office, also had a pre-existing federal production deal made under the Trump administration.
What’s Going On With Donald Trump And Fbi
On Monday, U.S. politics was upended when Donald Trump announced the FBI had raided Mar-a-Lago, his luxury private members club in Florida.
Acting on a warrant approved by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, agents removed around a dozen boxes of material, and broke into the former president’s safe.
The raid reportedly forms part of an ongoing investigation into claims Trump mishandled sensitive documents, including some marked classified by the National Archives and Records Administration .
Former presidents are required to turn over all White House materials to the Archives once they leave office, under the Presidential Records Act.
When he left the White House in January 2021, Trump allegedly took 15 boxes of documents with him, which the NARA demanded he return.
After becoming concerned the boxes included classified information, NARA reported the case to the Department of Justice who launched an investigation.
Earlier this year, Trump did return some documents to the NARA, but fears over his handling of confidential information remained.
Speaking to The Washington Post, people close to the investigation said the documents sought in the raid included classified papers concerning nuclear weapons. They did not say whether any such papers were recovered in the raid, or whether they related directly to the U.S. nuclear weapons program or those of another country.
Donald Trump and the Department of Justice have been contacted for comment.
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