Tag: Trump wanted to be a dictator

Inside Trump’s push to oust his own FBI chief

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The former president repeatedly asked his aides to fire Christopher Wray, including in an explosive encounter in April of last year.

Then-President Donald Trump sought to oust FBI Director Christopher Wray last spring and replace him with counterintelligence head William Evanina, according to three former Trump officials familiar with the episode.

Under the plan, the former officials said, Kash Patel — a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a fierce critic of the Russia probe — would have become the bureau’s deputy director.

Previously unreported details of the proposal reveal just how seriously the former president took his grievances against the intelligence and law enforcement establishment. It shows Trump at his mercurial peak, ordering up the removal of his own appointee in a fit of rage, only to back down when then-Attorney General William Barr threatened to resign if he followed through with the maneuver. (Aspects of this story were first reported by Business Insider.) Continue reading.

Trump officials used secret terrorism unit to question lawyers at the border: documents

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Taylor Levy couldn’t understand why she’d been held for hours by Customs and Border Protection officials when crossing back into El Paso, Texas, after getting dinner with friends in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in January 2019. And she didn’t know why she was being questioned by an agent who’d introduced himself as a counterterrorism specialist.

Levy was part of the legal team representing the father of a girl who’d died the previous month in the custody of the Border Patrol, which is part of CBP. “There was so much hate for immigration lawyers at that time,” she recalled. “I thought that somebody had put in an anonymous tip that I was a terrorist.”

The truth was more troubling. Newly released records show that Levy was swept up as part of a broader than previously known push by the administration of President Donald Trump to use the federal government’s expansive powers at the border to stop and question journalists, lawyers and activists. Continue reading.

Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government

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The campaign included planned operations against President Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and F.B.I. employees, according to documents and interviews.

WASHINGTON — A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump. Continue reading.

Capitol rioters make questionable claims about police

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PHOENIX — Joshua Matthew Black said in a YouTube video that he was protecting the officer at the U.S. Capitol who had been pepper sprayed and fallen to the ground as the crowd rushed the building entrance on Jan. 6. 

“Let him out, he’s done,” Black claimed to have told rioters. 

But federal prosecutors say surveillance footage doesn’t back up Black’s account. They said he acknowledged that he wanted to get the officer out of the way — because the cop was blocking his path inside.

Trump Jr whines on Fox News that Republicans did not do enough to overturn the election

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The namesake son of former President Donald Trump complained that Republicans did not do enough to overturn the 2020 presidential campaign.

The remarks were a continuation of the “Big Lie” that Trump won the election that resulted the January 6th insurrection and Trump’s second impeachment.

“The Republicans aren’t willing to do it,” Trump, Jr. argued. “They’ve shown that over the decades, they’d just rather lose gracefully I guess.” Continue reading.

GOP’s Thune says Trump allies engaging in ‘cancel culture’

PIERRE, S.D. — U.S. Sen. John Thune is criticizing Republican activists and party leaders for engaging in “cancel culture” by rushing to censure GOP senators who found former President Donald Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection.

In his first interview since he voted to acquit Trump, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican on Thursday defended fellow Republicans who sided with Democrats on the “vote of conscience” and warned against shutting out dissenting voices in the party.

“There was a strong case made,” Thune said of the Democrats’ impeachment presentation. “People could come to different conclusions. If we’re going to criticize the media and the left for cancel culture, we can’t be doing that ourselves.” Continue reading.

Nikki Haley’s defense of her nuanced Trump criticism, and the nuance it misses

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Last week, Nikki Haley was featured in an extensive Politico profile in which she seemed to take inordinate care to distance herself from former president Donald Trump. This was big news, because Haley is considered one of her Republican Party’s brightest rising stars and a 2024 presidential contender. She also was Trump’s United Nations ambassador. Given that, this was a significant entry in the GOP’s ongoing debate over how much it will remain defined by Trumpism.

But to hear Haley tell it, this has become something else entirely: an effort by the media to divide Republicans. In a new Wall Street Journal op-ed, she argues the media simply won’t let Republicans offer a nuanced review of the Trump era, instead demanding that they firmly land in the “Always Trump” or “Never Trump” camp.

This call for allowing nuance, though, itself glosses over lots of nuance. And Haley’s op-ed is a case in point when it comes to why the media is so critical of how she and other occasional Trump critics talk about his tenure. Continue reading.

Ex-FBI official explains why he thinks Capitol Police are staying silent on the riot: ‘I fear this story is ugly’

On MSNBC Wednesday, former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi offered a theory as to why the Capitol Police have not spoken out about their experience of the pro-Trump riot in January.

“We heard the House impeachment managers tell the most detailed version of their story that day, but we still have not heard from Capitol Police,” said anchor Nicolle Wallace.

“There’s an overriding historical reason why people don’t tell their story. Our institutions choose not to tell their story,” said Figliuzzi. “It’s because even they don’t like their story. I’m concerned that we’re not hearing from these agencies because the truth is too painful even for them, and I think it’s going to be the independent commission that finally gets to the bottom of this, if we can even assemble an effective commission.” Continue reading.

L. Brent Bozell IV, descendant of prominent conservative family, charged in Capitol breach

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The son of a prominent conservative activist who denounced the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol but has claimed that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election has been charged with participating in the riot.

Leo Brent Bozell IV, the son of L. Brent Bozell III, was charged with trespassing and obstruction of an official proceeding in the assault that left five dead, injured more than 100 police officers and delayed the electoral-vote confirmation of President Biden’s victory.

Charging papers made public Tuesday allege that the younger Bozell, 41, appeared on video on the Senate chamber floor during the event wearing a Hershey Christian Academy hooded sweatshirt. Online tipsters identified him as “Zeek” or “Zeeker Bozell” and traced his work as a girls’ basketball coach in Hershey, Pa., the FBI said. Continue reading.

‘A moment of truth’? After years of Trump’s lies, amplified by MAGA media, that proved impossible for most Republicans

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The words spoken on the Senate floor over the past few days were almost innumerable. But the ones that stayed with me through the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump were among the very first ones uttered.

“Democracy needs a ground to stand upon — and that ground is the truth,” lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin said in his opening statement, quoting his father, the political activist Marcus Raskin.

This Senate trial would not be a contest among lawyers, or between political parties, said the Maryland Democrat, who led the prosecuting team trying to make the case that the 45th president had incited the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Continue reading.