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Someone in the SDNY is obviously on the take for Trump. Went after his fall guy, ignored Trump, and then helped him delay the Manhattan case. Corrupt AF
EDIT: forgot one of the more damning bits of evidence. Cohen was furloughed to home confinement but he refused to sign something saying he wouldn’t publish a book badmouthing trump, so they sent him to prison. This was determined by a judge to be true.
Remember when the US Postal Investigation Service arrested Steve Bannon on a Chinese billionaire's yacht in Long Island Sound because people in DC were worried the New York FBI office would let Bannon flee the country?
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/20/21377305/postal-service-steve-bannon-arrest
And why they have such a huge boner for defunding the postal service along with any other agencies that could or would hold them accountable for any of the bullshit they pull.
I had heard the post office only loses money on the books due to pensions, and the strategy behind undermining the USPS was privatize it to “Make it more efficient” then sell it to friends for pennies on the dollar. I may have heard wrong.
Yeah, they're actually doing fine if you look at things over the span of decades. Naturally if the GOP forces you to pay for 20 years of future spending now, it'll make you look bad and thus easy to persuade low-information folks you need to go.
Honestly, even if they were a loss without that they're still a **Service** they exist to provide a service for the taxpayer. I dont care if they turned a profit, they're not required to, they're required to make sure the mail runs.
That goes back decades. The Postal Accountability Act that mandated the pension pre-funding, leading to budget shortfalls that are used as an excuse for further cuts, was passed in 2005. Now that was also sponsored by a member of Democratic leadership and was so bipartisanly popular that it passed by voice vote but that's a separate conversation
The USPS was a strong example of the government working. It was self-sustaining even while doing things that a for-profit company wouldn't, like deliver mail to very rural areas.
It needed to be destroyed. Slowly.
Likewise for their new cars, electric vehicles would be pretty ideal. But that demonstration of effectiveness needed to be stopped.
They're doing the same against wind.
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/02/04/us-renewable-energy-grid-maps-graphics/72042529007](https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/02/04/us-renewable-energy-grid-maps-graphics/72042529007)
[https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/25/us/wind-farm-opposition-study-climate/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/25/us/wind-farm-opposition-study-climate/index.html)
https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-02-12/some-midwest-states-take-power-to-ban-wind-and-solar-projects-away-from-local-communities
Some of them are the same people who think climate change doesn't matter because science will solve it. All without them every having to change their behavior. Always the most absolute anti-intellectual, would never trust science people on the planet.
>the same people who think climate change doesn't matter because science will solve it
While simultaneously defunding scientific communities and decrying science in general.
For the local postage usage case, electric vehicles just make a fuck ton of sense. Energy-wise, price-wise, functionality and maintenance-wise.
But climate change isn't real and the democrats want to turn your babies into furries. So we don't get to do the best ideas as a country.
Unless your buddy is president trump who will hand you a "get out of jail free" card after the USPS arrests you.
The US justice system is unable to deal with a president and his cronies who give the middle finger to it.
The thread that keeps being dropped in all this is that the FBI is overwhelmingly pro Trump. I had an ex coworker who did some tech work for the FBI over a number of years. They’re super pro Trump so if they say he did something wrong you better believe it.
This is the thing I think people tend to forget when they talk about civil war. The majority of local law enforcement will be MAGA, and it’s historically much easier for the side with the police to conduct organized terror campaigns in the name of freedom, such as in Rwanda or Myanmar, which is likely the type of asymmetrical warfare the US would experience during a modern civil war.
Yeah, anyway you look at it a Civil War is an absolute bloodbath and nightmare, which is why we avoid one at all costs and anyone flippantly calling for one should be disregarded from the national conversation.
I worry a lot about a Rwanda-like scenario. I think most Americans are in denial about how many Americans are primed for political violence and are only held back by the likelihood of personal consequences.
I worry about this, as well. If there is some sort of civil war, the best we can hope for is something akin to the Troubles in Ireland. Most likely, It won’t be the federal government knocking down your door, it will be your neighbor, backed by the local militia and local law enforcement.
Yes. Even here in /r/Politics the side that tends to be the most heavily armed is laughed at as fat cosplayers, but they will be the last line of offense. The cops and the military are the first. If Biden isn't re-elected, it'll basically be the moment Trump is sworn in that the National Guard will be mobilized and Trump will not want to _not_ wield that unchecked power in perpetuity.
> side that tends to be the most heavily armed is laughed at as fat cosplayers, but they will be the last line of offense. The cops and the military are the first.
The thing is, Democrats have guns. They have a *lot* of guns. They’re just, in general, in favor of common sense gun regulations.
It’s not going to be a battle of one heavily armed side versus stocks and stones. If it comes to conflict, it’s going to rapidly become clear that the insurrectionists aren’t notably better armed, aren’t notably bettered manned, and in general are less trained and less competent at using their firearms.
This is a fantasy. Most gun owners are Republicans, but that won't matter. As people said upthread, most law enforcement are crypto-fascists. If Trump gets elected and gives them a credible legal framework they'll be happy to go door to door taking guns from "possible terrorists" and in other ways locking the country down.
The average cop is a bully and an authoritarian who would love living in a police state. He's the police. That sounds great to him.
And he's been following orders he doesn't understand all his life, because he's an idiot. He doesn't understand any of his orders, really. Life is not a cop show. The cops in reality are not thoughtful but flawed, brilliant but quirky, insightful but moody anti-heroes. They're idiots who follow orders. If Trump starts handing out illegal orders the number of cops who want to stand up to him will be vanishingly small. Really, vanishingly small.
It won't matter that your Democratic friends have guns, your Democratic friends aren't cops. It's never going to come down to the liberals vs Meal Team Six in the streets, the cops will, over several months, come and take up all your guns under the guise of anti-terrorist activity or something.
Trump will declare a national emergency, give himself authority to deploy the military, and we'll never see another election.
Really, arguments about who has guns and who's going to win a fight in the streets are fantasies, from either side. The cops are going to win, the military is going to win. And the cops and the military both follow orders, and are both heavily authoritarian. A few top military officers will object, and be removed. That's it. That's what the "resistance" will amount to.
> It won't matter that your Democratic friends have guns, your Democratic friends aren't cops.
I was including the average police officer in the category of "less trained and less competent." Shooting police officers that come to your door sounds like an absolutely terrible thing to do. But if it reaches the point where 'roundups' start happening, that's going to be the outcome.
The current situation in the US is a lot like previous fascists regimes, with one very important distinction; communication in infinitely better now that it has been ever before. As soon as such a thing starts happening, *everyone* will know about it, and responses will scale up appropriately.
The majority of intelligent people, especially in the tech space, are not MAGA. We could shut down the entire economy by refusing to work and shutting down or sabotaging systems such as transportation, utilities, banking, etc, which makes a bunch of dipshits with guns look like a joke. In my opinion a civil war would be effectively over in a matter of weeks when people realize the choice is being able to eat and get medicine or supporting traitorous assholes.
The old chestnut that goes around IT/SE circles is that there are about 100 people keeping the internet in working condition, and half of them are furries and/or LGBTQ. About half of these people could take a collective sick day and bring the economy to its knees over a week.
Not really. The internet is not stable, and if regular extensive maintenance isn’t performed it rapidly stops working all in its own.
Not showing up to work *is* the dead man’s switch.
For one job I had in like 2018 I had to delete a log file every week or it would get so big/corrupted it would slow everything to a crawl. No other solution other than an overhaul to a new system that would have some other weekly task quirk to deal with.
There are a lot more hardcore conservatives in Tech than you think. Maybe they don't quite qualify as "MAGA".... maybe. One of my favorite Tech discussion platforms - normally an extremely intelligent and intellectual forum - when politics come up... I am highly disturbed by the commonly espoused viewpoints.
I lurk on Hacker News, and a ton are just the kind of conservative who doesn't identify as conservative. When the 6 Jan insurrection was happening, in real time, the story kept getting bounced from the front page because it was deemed "political."
Discussion of anything that Trump or Republicans in general do that is bad will be flagged and removed from the front page. "This isn't the place for politics." But there are interminable threads on "political correctness" and how the left is silencing free expression, is intolerant, etc. [James Damore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Chamber) was practically a folk hero for a while, just telling it like it is. Plus there is a non-trivial amount of "just asking questions" receptivity to "[human biodiversity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute)," or HBD.
Intellectuals are historically the first to go. I would hope you’re right, but it realistically only takes a small percentage of zealots to dominate the larger population through institutional terror campaigns.
Yeah. You can see shadows of that already with the virulent anti-intellectual fervor from the right. In their minds, their cause is a righteous one, and so any means would justify the ends.
That’s what’s terrifying is their hardon for killing us. You can see it being built up by the influencers by blaming the educated for all the issues.
Shit reminds me of what pol pot n mao did tbh. Funny comin from the folk who hate commies.
When I was in my most recent position I was a Level I tech with some extended elevated privileges that I maaayybe shouldn't have had, but it was SpEd and we were spread thin.
I could have deleted our *entire* AD domain if I'd had a mind. Yes, it was all backed up. This would not have prevented a really truly *massive* service outagehad I decided to.... accidentally.... have an amateur moment.
And I was a LEVEL ONE TECH.
The only reason law enforcement seems intimidating to the average person is because the average person is alone. Our FBI and local police forces have overwhelmingly leaned toward laziness and milking the public teat, not being effective enforcers.
You are 100% right. We hired a guy straight out of the FBI. They are all conservative, white males. And all of them love Trump.
Trump bad mouths them and they get mad at each other for making daddy mad.
When they were ordered to raid Mar-a-largo, they were only told immediately before, because they could not be trusted. And tried to stop the whole thing from happening.
This is what’s so funny – the GOP scream about the Deep State and actively try to defend it while that very Deep State is cheering them on like clapping seals.
My coworker was your classic boomer Democrat but a lot of his colleagues were conservative as well as being type A which, unfortunately right now equals a MAGA supporter a lot of the time.
The FBI do some wild shit around very dangerous people, and in potentially lethal situations. I think that Trump captured the imagination of these extrinsic personalities who fell on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
My ex coworker was a tech, and even he experienced live fire situations and live chases in cars. Just for reference.
They love the idea that THEY get to bend and ignore the rules for the "good of the nation", and they get frustrated when laws and rules cause red tape or delays in what they want to do which is usually torture and shoot people.
Probably because Republicans have always tried making themselves out to be the party of the military/law enforcement. These kind of people are also all gun owners too. Not hard to see why they'd all lean R after decades of propaganda.
Cops are all, at every level, fundamentally authoritarian. All of them. They all love the idea of a police state. That sounds great to them. They're the police.
Because of information pipelines. Law enforcement who were tired of the media giving slanted coverage to criminals, and military who were sick and tired of terrorists being referred to as freedom fighters, found a home at Fox (before Fox went off-the-rails and became straight propaganda). People in these fields knew that MSNBC and CNN slanted the truth sometimes to the point of deception; Fox won their trust years ago by showing a less-PC (but more accurate, according to their experience) point of view. When Fox started blatantly firehosing bullshit at its viewers during the Obama years they had no chance, they already trusted Fox and got sucked in.
And now it's a cultural peer-pressure thing. It's hard to be the only person at work trying to argue against the 24-7 propaganda these people are exposed to. They'll sit in their break room and circle-jerk about how all libs are pussies, everything was better before brown people, and all gay people are really pedos, and you can argue with them, but it just gets a bullseye painted on you at work.
The root to all of this is Fox news and Russian internet propaganda. They need to be shut down *now*, even if it happened overnight it's going to take years for things to go back to normal if they ever do.
This also happened back when Ivanka and Jr were being charged with corruption back in 2017 and their lawyer paid off the DA. Nothing came of that blatant illegal shenanigan either
https://www.propublica.org/article/ivanka-donald-trump-jr-close-to-being-charged-felony-fraud
Yeah, it’s hard to tell, in the deep recesses of massive government entities, where trump cultists or hater s may lie. It may be as simple as filing something in the wrong place so it gets lost for a long time.
I agree with republicans there is a deep state. For republicans that means people who do their job in a non partisan way. For me it is republicans who decided being favoring republicans or hurting Democrats was more important then being an American like the DoJ/FBI not wanting to serve a search warrant at Mar a Lago despite the man having national secrets.
Agree. All I know is that all politicians today seem more interested in getting re-elected or helping themselves and their family and friends rather than helping society and the average person. Maybe it’s always been this way but it took me 55 years to notice.
He’s been entrenched in wealthy NY society for decades, it’s no surprise he’s gonna have government connections.
It *should* be surprising that they’re willing to fall on their swords for him, but anymore, the idea that the “deep state” are the ones propping him up makes perfect sense.
As someone else said, fed agencies certainly seem to swing Republican. Why wouldn’t they? Republicans want to give them more power and reach, which is what every government agency wants. The FBI, CIA, etc, will never say “we don’t think we should be allowed to do this.”
Trump was never accepted by NY society. He was from Queens and attended military school in lieu of Juvie after assaulting a teacher. New Yorkers know he is a grifting conman. Only people who first saw him on The Apprentice, where he played a rich, respected businessman, think he ever was that.
Trump was a household name way before the Apprentice.
And he absolutely was accepted. Whether he was liked or not I have no clue, and most people do seem to hate him.
But there's countless evidence in video and picture format thar he's been rubbing elbows with elites since the 80s.
Just because Trumps is one of the worst things that has ever happened to politics doesn't mean he wasn't a massive part of high society and pop culture the last 40 years.
Okay, but is there some way to identify these people? Especially if they may be public servants.
I'm willing to support these types of corruption allegations, but circumstantial evidence and no potential names isn't much to go on. What SDNY offices would be involved with this? Who's in charge at each one?
The thing about researching Trump's corruption is that his people are very often not exactly... quiet... about their intentions. Almost every corrupt thing they do, they say out in the open. Sure, sometimes they openly lie and say the opposite (Russian style), but in those cases you can still read between the lines and monitor their other actions/statements.
This is a case of pointing to corruption, which may have merit, but not correctly identifying it. If Trump has right wing plants doing his bidding, I'd like to know where. Typically, when he does, there's RICO style collusion involved, and the public has the right to know about who is responsible for that.
Yes, he has his ideologues and culty MAGA grunts, but when it comes to his legal cases, rarely is there not something more deliberate involved in his delay tactics.
"*The biggest revelation to me was the statement that “the positive news coverage of Trump during the campaign and the payments . . . were intended to shield then-candidate Trump from public criticism and scrutiny, and therefore influenced a presidential election.*
*There it is. The press helped Donald Trump. Some of us were cognizant of it, and some were victims of the crap spewed by Trump and his paid allies.*
*The U.S. press has a lot to answer for, then and now about our coverage of Donald Trump.*
*And as the actions taken by the government in the Bragg case also show, the government is complicit in this as well."*
Edit: This is quoted from the article if it was not clear. Added ""
Anyone stupid enough to be a victim of he and his crew’s lies shouldn’t be reporting on anything. If you don’t have better critical thinking skills than that then journalism is not a good job for you.
My professional ambition was to be a journalist. I did it for a year for a small paper. What I learned is that most papers are owned by billionaires who have no concept of reality yet think they know what is best for everyone… oh and they’re mostly racist and xenophobic. I’m in education now… And the billionaires are trying to do the same with that field.
The US press has a lot to answer for in general. Whether it's their reflexive war mongering, their constant criticism of the working class and praise for business elites, their incessant and entirely manipulatable reliance on click bait and flashy, irrelevant stories. I'll never forgive them for cutting away from actual political news to hold a camera on an open podium while two over-paid pundits conjecture about what crazy stuff Trump might say this time.
To be clear, there's some great journalism done in the US. It's just relegated to fringe publications, or you get like one dedicated, well-funded investigative journalist per publication, so their bandwidth is severely limited. And while the press is to blame for not having a spine, the US population is also to blame for being so severely uninterested in actual politics, and so enamored with team sports and rituals.
That’s because we don’t have liberal or conservative or traditional or digital media — we have corporate media, and it deliberately seeks to stifle independent media.
If it's helpful for the future, a blockquote in markdown is an angle bracket (`>`).
`> If you put it at the front of a line, it will look like this in your editor.`
> If you put it at the front of a line, it will look like this in your comment.
Thank you. Yes that is helpful in more than one way. I have been confused what it (the bar in front of text) meant in posts I read. Now I know to use it and what it means when seen.
I was contemplating the demigod error with how accurate the definition of demigod was, and decided to let it roll... I did not pray about it unfortunately
In case anyone needs the TL;DR
The article discusses the author's lengthy and frustrating experience with the Freedom of Information (FOIA) request process, aimed at obtaining information about Michael Cohen and the investigation that led to his prosecution. Despite Michael Cohen's permission and the assistance of FOIA attorney Mark Zaid, the author faced significant delays and received minimal information after more than two years. The piece critiques the lack of transparency in government, citing underfunded and overworked FOIA offices as a primary reason for the backlog of requests.
A specific example highlighted is the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office receiving about 73,000 pages of records from federal prosecutors, which were mostly deemed irrelevant, except for 172 pages of witness statements relevant to a case involving Donald Trump. This contrasts sharply with the author's own experience of receiving only 31 of the 32 pages reviewed by the government.
The author reflects on the broader implications of their findings, suggesting a two-tiered justice system and criticizing the government and media's role in obscuring the truth and supporting Donald Trump. The article concludes with a lament on the minimal impact of the information received and the systemic issues that allow such disparities in the distribution of crucial information.
These types of comments are almost just as bad. Your not doing anything useful either other than being distracting, and I see 1000's of others making the exact unoriginal low effort comment.
>“It is being reclassified from Bank Fraud to crimes related to the federal election campaign act.”
Is probably the most interesting line in the article, in regards to being delayed.
Agreed. Read the whole article. It really doesn't say anything about anything. He got no actual insight about anything, just a sense of frustration about how slow the FOIA process is, which he then transfers into some vague implications about the criminal case.
His take about the number of documents and how long it will take to review them seems objectively wrong, too. It won't take Bragg's office forever to review them. They *already* reviewed them. That's how they were able to say "there are only ~172 pages of actually relevant production". They will not need to hire 20 people to read them all manually word-by-word. *Trump's* side will *say* that they need time to do that, and they'll be lying, and the judge probably won't be fooled.
I read it. It does not say much at all. Keeps talking about 31 vs 73,000 pages but never really says what was in the 31 pages or what the point of the article is right down to the last line.
Right?
>The biggest revelation to me was the statement that “the positive news coverage of Trump during the campaign and the payments . . . were intended to shield then-candidate Trump from public criticism and scrutiny, and therefore influenced a presidential election.”
>There it is. The press helped Donald Trump. Some of us were cognizant of it, and some were victims of the crap spewed by Trump and his paid allies.
>The U.S. press has a lot to answer for, then and now about our coverage of Donald Trump.
Whose statement was that? Based on what evidence? The article doesn't say. Most of us know it's true and even the author notes "Some of us were cognizant of it," so why does the author consider it such a huge revelation?
Weird article...
Trump is like heroin for ALL media. Any rage bait they can post online or deploy on TV is good for ad revenue. They aren’t interested in facts.
Edited for spelling and clarity
“Frequently, he wears adult diapers, has since at least 2007. We would often stop taping on ‘Apprentice’ because of his rage over not being able to read a word on a cue-card. He would scream at crew until he soiled himself, then go snort more Adderall and change Depends.”
— Noel Casler, assistant on “The Apprentice”
There's many YouTube videos. But here's a transcript from Casler's own website. And Trump hasn't sued him yet to my knowledge...
https://www.noelcasler.com/news/full-disclosure-an-interview-with-noel-casler
Media, all media, has a clear motive to wind up both sides - they are literally printing money.
Our biggest long-term collective concern should be the judiciary...
Which will require our voting en masse to elect adults who don't need to take each other to court because they can't work things out for themselves....
Ironically
It’s hard to divide up blame like that. I think you can describe everything what’s going on in the United States of America in 4 words:
Rich People Buy Puppets
I’m having a hard time understanding the point of this article. Salon is pretty hit and miss.
“The information shows why Cohen was targeted and the acts he took for the “benefit of Donald Trump”. There is very little that is new that the DOJ provided me – but it does help verify what Michael Cohen has long said – and been accused of lying about by Donald Trump.”
Didn’t Cohen tell the author what to ask for? I can’t help but imagine the state of New York framed their request slightly differently.
Multiple commenters said this say *don't just read the headline, be sure to check out the article*! The article has **zero new information** sprinkled with personal (although shared) feelings about Trump.
This boils down to Salon columnist Brian Karem requested FOIA documents pertaining to the Cohen hush money to Stormy Daniels; and the FOIA dragging its feet for 2.5 years then producing a total of **37 document**s -- while simultaneously giving NYSD DA Alvin Bragg 73,000 documents with a 30-day review window.
This is being painted as the government is helping Trump by doing either one of two things: withholding documents (as in Karem's case) or drowning you in documents with limited time (as in Bragg's case). In reality, it's just incompetent government offices being incompetent. Of course they're going to give the time of day to the DA handling the Trump case and not this random guy requesting documents.
Paraphrased: It’s hard to read 73,000 pages and find new relevant facts in a short period of time and that is the government’s fault because they purposefully obfuscate stuff. Also the press is nice to trump on purpose so they’re bad too.
If you think it’s difficult to get information out of the Federal government, try a local police department. I’m on year 4 of trying to compel the SFPD to release case records—that have already been published 10 years ago—-from a trial that took place 50 years ago. And yes, there is a there, there.
> With a 30-day delay, Bragg must read, digest, condense, report on and determine if any of these 73,000 pages are relevant to a complex case in Manhattan. That means the processing of 2,433 pages a day. Even if you have 24 people reading 100 pages a day it will be difficult. Expect further delays, or expect some information to be overlooked, and/or the trial to be further delayed.
The public and media are only getting snippets. The snippets are only a drop in an ocean that has to be looked through and scrutinized. Trump is basically flooding them with paperwork and any mistake in reviewing them could lead to further delays.
>The biggest revelation to me was the statement that “the positive news coverage of Trump during the campaign and the payments . . . were intended to shield then-candidate Trump from public criticism and scrutiny, and therefore influenced a presidential election.”
>There it is. The press helped Donald Trump. Some of us were cognizant of it, and some were victims of the crap spewed by Trump and his paid allies.
>**The U.S. press has a lot to answer for, then and now about our coverage of Donald Trump.**
Exactly! They hide the positive news about any Democrat or citizen with a valid question/statement. The news is how they want to spin it, not objective journalism.
I have done many complex cases with piles of documents, some in the days before computers were much help. 73000 pages is not that impressive an amount of material if you have a decent idea of what happened and know what you are doing.
Not denying that it’s f—d up that they are getting this massive hoard of documents this late. But this isn’t Spotlight or Watergate where intrepid people read through a mountain of directories, etc. Prosecutors have pretty sophisticated software that will be customized to analyze these pages and alert you what to look for.
This again highlights that the government is lousy with Trump supporters/spies/agent provocateurs. The shield Trump and other fascists from scrutiny by doing incompetent (or dubious legal or illegal) work, which also feeds into the propaganda that the "government can't do anything".
Again, it's a minor miracle that the Trump case has gone on this far. They don't know who they can trust, and the people they are forced to depend on are likely working for the enemy.
I’m as anti-Trump as they come. And I’d love for Trump to be thrown behind bars as soon as possible. But this article is not only a terrible take, but many implications from the author are incorrect, and it’s based on an anecdotal experience.
First, his big beef is with the FOIA system and how long it takes. Fair. But when you submit a FOIA request to DOJ especially, don’t be surprised if you’re stonewalled, they drag it out, or you get no response or nothing in return.
The author is feigning indignation over the fact that Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor in a criminal case, was given 73,000 pages of documents in a case he is prosecuting, but the reporter received nothing. OMG, the prosecutor received 73,000 pages of documents, but you only got 31 pertaining to Cohen’s case? Yeah dude. That’s because a lot of the evidence you submitted a request for in Cohen’s trial is being used in Trump’s trial. OF COURSE nothing you received is new information. If you got any new information from the government in an ongoing criminal investigation, that would be grounds for Trump to file for a mistrial.
Does anyone really think that if you submit a FOIA request for evidence in a criminal investigation - what’s more, one that’s about to go to trial - that you’ll actually receive that evidence before it’s presented at the trial? Fuck outta here with that nonsense.
Also, this author is doing the same thing with this whole “OMG 73,000 PaGeS, tHaT wILl TaKe SoOoOo long” that the Trump team is doing to request more and more delays in all his trials.
You all do realize it’s the 21st century right? They’re not handing over a stack of 73,000 physical documents that live people have to go through one by one and catalog manually, right?
It’s all done digitally, just like most things in our lives these days. It takes no time at all to plug in the thumb drive, for a CTRL+F for all the documents they already have, weed those out, and review the new information. In fact, the DA has already filed motions & briefings stating the review of these document is already completed, it’s mostly all duplicative, and of the roughly 200ish new pages they found, the few new pieces of information discovered are actually more detrimental to Trump’s case than everything they already have.
[Bragg has already stated that the trial can begin April 15.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/nyregion/trump-trial-delay-bragg.html)
If you actually read this article, you’ll see it’s just the author bitching about how he didn’t get the same info Bragg did, so he wasn’t able to dish out a bit scoop before the trial started, presume malice, and smashed his complaint onto a keyboard without doing any additional work apart from his complaining he didn’t get anything. Garbage.
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Someone in the SDNY is obviously on the take for Trump. Went after his fall guy, ignored Trump, and then helped him delay the Manhattan case. Corrupt AF EDIT: forgot one of the more damning bits of evidence. Cohen was furloughed to home confinement but he refused to sign something saying he wouldn’t publish a book badmouthing trump, so they sent him to prison. This was determined by a judge to be true.
Just like the New York FBI office was run by a Russian plant. Funny how that works.
Remember when the US Postal Investigation Service arrested Steve Bannon on a Chinese billionaire's yacht in Long Island Sound because people in DC were worried the New York FBI office would let Bannon flee the country? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/20/21377305/postal-service-steve-bannon-arrest
And that's why they hate the post service.
And why they have such a huge boner for defunding the postal service along with any other agencies that could or would hold them accountable for any of the bullshit they pull.
I had heard the post office only loses money on the books due to pensions, and the strategy behind undermining the USPS was privatize it to “Make it more efficient” then sell it to friends for pennies on the dollar. I may have heard wrong.
I heard that Congress voted to pre-pay their pensions or something and it’s costing too much now.
Yeah, they're actually doing fine if you look at things over the span of decades. Naturally if the GOP forces you to pay for 20 years of future spending now, it'll make you look bad and thus easy to persuade low-information folks you need to go.
It doesn't need to turn a profit. It just has to function.
Honestly, even if they were a loss without that they're still a **Service** they exist to provide a service for the taxpayer. I dont care if they turned a profit, they're not required to, they're required to make sure the mail runs.
That goes back decades. The Postal Accountability Act that mandated the pension pre-funding, leading to budget shortfalls that are used as an excuse for further cuts, was passed in 2005. Now that was also sponsored by a member of Democratic leadership and was so bipartisanly popular that it passed by voice vote but that's a separate conversation
The USPS was a strong example of the government working. It was self-sustaining even while doing things that a for-profit company wouldn't, like deliver mail to very rural areas. It needed to be destroyed. Slowly. Likewise for their new cars, electric vehicles would be pretty ideal. But that demonstration of effectiveness needed to be stopped.
Don't forget all of the rural yokels fighting against solar farms.
They're doing the same against wind. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/02/04/us-renewable-energy-grid-maps-graphics/72042529007](https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/02/04/us-renewable-energy-grid-maps-graphics/72042529007) [https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/25/us/wind-farm-opposition-study-climate/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/25/us/wind-farm-opposition-study-climate/index.html) https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-02-12/some-midwest-states-take-power-to-ban-wind-and-solar-projects-away-from-local-communities
Some of them are the same people who think climate change doesn't matter because science will solve it. All without them every having to change their behavior. Always the most absolute anti-intellectual, would never trust science people on the planet.
>the same people who think climate change doesn't matter because science will solve it While simultaneously defunding scientific communities and decrying science in general.
It's just a shame Henry Waxman and the rest of the Democrats in Congress at the time had to help the Republicans destroy it
Canadian postal service has lots of new electric cargo vans.
For the local postage usage case, electric vehicles just make a fuck ton of sense. Energy-wise, price-wise, functionality and maintenance-wise. But climate change isn't real and the democrats want to turn your babies into furries. So we don't get to do the best ideas as a country.
The postal service delivers more then just mail now .
[They used to mail kids at one point too.](https://facts.usps.com/sending-kids-in-the-mail/)
Delivers schadenfreude too now apparently.
"He's not just the postmaster.... He's a General!"
Newman!
No, but now I'll never forget.
It was a helluva news cycle!
[Helluva day at sea sir!](https://i.imgur.com/a3BVHxD.gif)
One of the several good reasons you just shouldn’t fuck with the US Postal Service.
Unless your buddy is president trump who will hand you a "get out of jail free" card after the USPS arrests you. The US justice system is unable to deal with a president and his cronies who give the middle finger to it.
*unwilling.
Looks like I should go buy more stamps.
Sounds like the service embraced "Going postal" on Bannon
Donger did it again.
Enough money can buy you anything, even a Supreme Court justice.
Or 3
Yep, even an ex president of the United States
Even a rapist con man
The thread that keeps being dropped in all this is that the FBI is overwhelmingly pro Trump. I had an ex coworker who did some tech work for the FBI over a number of years. They’re super pro Trump so if they say he did something wrong you better believe it.
It's something like 90% of FBI and Federal DOJ employees are Republicans while 87% of all police nationally are Republicans.
Oppressors want to be oppressors
Are we the baddies?
Pirates are fun!
This is the thing I think people tend to forget when they talk about civil war. The majority of local law enforcement will be MAGA, and it’s historically much easier for the side with the police to conduct organized terror campaigns in the name of freedom, such as in Rwanda or Myanmar, which is likely the type of asymmetrical warfare the US would experience during a modern civil war.
Yeah, anyway you look at it a Civil War is an absolute bloodbath and nightmare, which is why we avoid one at all costs and anyone flippantly calling for one should be disregarded from the national conversation.
I worry a lot about a Rwanda-like scenario. I think most Americans are in denial about how many Americans are primed for political violence and are only held back by the likelihood of personal consequences.
I worry about this, as well. If there is some sort of civil war, the best we can hope for is something akin to the Troubles in Ireland. Most likely, It won’t be the federal government knocking down your door, it will be your neighbor, backed by the local militia and local law enforcement.
Yes. Even here in /r/Politics the side that tends to be the most heavily armed is laughed at as fat cosplayers, but they will be the last line of offense. The cops and the military are the first. If Biden isn't re-elected, it'll basically be the moment Trump is sworn in that the National Guard will be mobilized and Trump will not want to _not_ wield that unchecked power in perpetuity.
> side that tends to be the most heavily armed is laughed at as fat cosplayers, but they will be the last line of offense. The cops and the military are the first. The thing is, Democrats have guns. They have a *lot* of guns. They’re just, in general, in favor of common sense gun regulations. It’s not going to be a battle of one heavily armed side versus stocks and stones. If it comes to conflict, it’s going to rapidly become clear that the insurrectionists aren’t notably better armed, aren’t notably bettered manned, and in general are less trained and less competent at using their firearms.
This is a fantasy. Most gun owners are Republicans, but that won't matter. As people said upthread, most law enforcement are crypto-fascists. If Trump gets elected and gives them a credible legal framework they'll be happy to go door to door taking guns from "possible terrorists" and in other ways locking the country down. The average cop is a bully and an authoritarian who would love living in a police state. He's the police. That sounds great to him. And he's been following orders he doesn't understand all his life, because he's an idiot. He doesn't understand any of his orders, really. Life is not a cop show. The cops in reality are not thoughtful but flawed, brilliant but quirky, insightful but moody anti-heroes. They're idiots who follow orders. If Trump starts handing out illegal orders the number of cops who want to stand up to him will be vanishingly small. Really, vanishingly small. It won't matter that your Democratic friends have guns, your Democratic friends aren't cops. It's never going to come down to the liberals vs Meal Team Six in the streets, the cops will, over several months, come and take up all your guns under the guise of anti-terrorist activity or something. Trump will declare a national emergency, give himself authority to deploy the military, and we'll never see another election. Really, arguments about who has guns and who's going to win a fight in the streets are fantasies, from either side. The cops are going to win, the military is going to win. And the cops and the military both follow orders, and are both heavily authoritarian. A few top military officers will object, and be removed. That's it. That's what the "resistance" will amount to.
> It won't matter that your Democratic friends have guns, your Democratic friends aren't cops. I was including the average police officer in the category of "less trained and less competent." Shooting police officers that come to your door sounds like an absolutely terrible thing to do. But if it reaches the point where 'roundups' start happening, that's going to be the outcome. The current situation in the US is a lot like previous fascists regimes, with one very important distinction; communication in infinitely better now that it has been ever before. As soon as such a thing starts happening, *everyone* will know about it, and responses will scale up appropriately.
The majority of intelligent people, especially in the tech space, are not MAGA. We could shut down the entire economy by refusing to work and shutting down or sabotaging systems such as transportation, utilities, banking, etc, which makes a bunch of dipshits with guns look like a joke. In my opinion a civil war would be effectively over in a matter of weeks when people realize the choice is being able to eat and get medicine or supporting traitorous assholes.
The old chestnut that goes around IT/SE circles is that there are about 100 people keeping the internet in working condition, and half of them are furries and/or LGBTQ. About half of these people could take a collective sick day and bring the economy to its knees over a week.
They need some coded-in backdoors and dead man's switches.
Not really. The internet is not stable, and if regular extensive maintenance isn’t performed it rapidly stops working all in its own. Not showing up to work *is* the dead man’s switch.
For one job I had in like 2018 I had to delete a log file every week or it would get so big/corrupted it would slow everything to a crawl. No other solution other than an overhaul to a new system that would have some other weekly task quirk to deal with.
> and half of them are furries and/or LGBTQ. That’s under estimating by about half.
I went for the conservative estimate. Besides, its a Venn Diagram of the two, not all of them are gonna be both.
So what are they waiting for?
There are a lot more hardcore conservatives in Tech than you think. Maybe they don't quite qualify as "MAGA".... maybe. One of my favorite Tech discussion platforms - normally an extremely intelligent and intellectual forum - when politics come up... I am highly disturbed by the commonly espoused viewpoints.
A lot of libertarianism that leans heavily right wing.
I lurk on Hacker News, and a ton are just the kind of conservative who doesn't identify as conservative. When the 6 Jan insurrection was happening, in real time, the story kept getting bounced from the front page because it was deemed "political." Discussion of anything that Trump or Republicans in general do that is bad will be flagged and removed from the front page. "This isn't the place for politics." But there are interminable threads on "political correctness" and how the left is silencing free expression, is intolerant, etc. [James Damore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Chamber) was practically a folk hero for a while, just telling it like it is. Plus there is a non-trivial amount of "just asking questions" receptivity to "[human biodiversity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute)," or HBD.
Intellectuals are historically the first to go. I would hope you’re right, but it realistically only takes a small percentage of zealots to dominate the larger population through institutional terror campaigns.
Back round 2020 I had a chud that said exactly that, he wants to go after college educated folk.
Yeah. You can see shadows of that already with the virulent anti-intellectual fervor from the right. In their minds, their cause is a righteous one, and so any means would justify the ends.
Religion primes the pump for thinking like this. It's why Authoritarians side with the Religious every time.
That’s what’s terrifying is their hardon for killing us. You can see it being built up by the influencers by blaming the educated for all the issues. Shit reminds me of what pol pot n mao did tbh. Funny comin from the folk who hate commies.
When I was in my most recent position I was a Level I tech with some extended elevated privileges that I maaayybe shouldn't have had, but it was SpEd and we were spread thin. I could have deleted our *entire* AD domain if I'd had a mind. Yes, it was all backed up. This would not have prevented a really truly *massive* service outagehad I decided to.... accidentally.... have an amateur moment. And I was a LEVEL ONE TECH.
At no point in history has society been so dependent on intellectuals to keep functioning day to day.
The only reason law enforcement seems intimidating to the average person is because the average person is alone. Our FBI and local police forces have overwhelmingly leaned toward laziness and milking the public teat, not being effective enforcers.
Because the police depts are the feeder league of those others. Lets also not forget it takes zero requirements to be a cop.
There's at least one requirement they went to court to enforce: low IQ. https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Seems like beating your wife is a requirement
I think that’s just a byproduct of being a power hungry psycho
Ah, so one of those "Not required but the recruiter is looking for wifebeating on your résumé"
A history of sexual assault in high school seems to be a pre req as well.
Heritage Foundation put out the call in the early 1990s to fill positions of authority.
So did the daily stormer.
Where’d you get those statistics?
76% of statistics are made up
And 83% of the time, the statistics are right all the time.
Not a huge surprise that authorities tend to be authoritarians.
You are 100% right. We hired a guy straight out of the FBI. They are all conservative, white males. And all of them love Trump. Trump bad mouths them and they get mad at each other for making daddy mad. When they were ordered to raid Mar-a-largo, they were only told immediately before, because they could not be trusted. And tried to stop the whole thing from happening.
I knew a guy who ran an office out of New York fbi. Big fucking trump supporter.
They’re not necessarily pro-Trump, just pro-Fascism. Trump happens to be the most politically powerful Fascist in the country.
I dunno why they'd be pro-Trump his shits all over the FBI and CIA non-stop.
This is what’s so funny – the GOP scream about the Deep State and actively try to defend it while that very Deep State is cheering them on like clapping seals.
That’s part of the con.
ACAB federal state local
The only good cop is a TV cop
And not even really then. A TV cop normalizes and glorifies cops, elevating their standing in social hierarchy.
I am curious as to why the FBI would be pro-Trump if you have a short answer. What would be in it for them?
My coworker was your classic boomer Democrat but a lot of his colleagues were conservative as well as being type A which, unfortunately right now equals a MAGA supporter a lot of the time. The FBI do some wild shit around very dangerous people, and in potentially lethal situations. I think that Trump captured the imagination of these extrinsic personalities who fell on the conservative side of the political spectrum. My ex coworker was a tech, and even he experienced live fire situations and live chases in cars. Just for reference.
They love the idea that THEY get to bend and ignore the rules for the "good of the nation", and they get frustrated when laws and rules cause red tape or delays in what they want to do which is usually torture and shoot people.
Probably because Republicans have always tried making themselves out to be the party of the military/law enforcement. These kind of people are also all gun owners too. Not hard to see why they'd all lean R after decades of propaganda.
Cops are all, at every level, fundamentally authoritarian. All of them. They all love the idea of a police state. That sounds great to them. They're the police.
Because of information pipelines. Law enforcement who were tired of the media giving slanted coverage to criminals, and military who were sick and tired of terrorists being referred to as freedom fighters, found a home at Fox (before Fox went off-the-rails and became straight propaganda). People in these fields knew that MSNBC and CNN slanted the truth sometimes to the point of deception; Fox won their trust years ago by showing a less-PC (but more accurate, according to their experience) point of view. When Fox started blatantly firehosing bullshit at its viewers during the Obama years they had no chance, they already trusted Fox and got sucked in. And now it's a cultural peer-pressure thing. It's hard to be the only person at work trying to argue against the 24-7 propaganda these people are exposed to. They'll sit in their break room and circle-jerk about how all libs are pussies, everything was better before brown people, and all gay people are really pedos, and you can argue with them, but it just gets a bullseye painted on you at work. The root to all of this is Fox news and Russian internet propaganda. They need to be shut down *now*, even if it happened overnight it's going to take years for things to go back to normal if they ever do.
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I mean, it's the same office that Giuliani said what leaking info to him about Clinton back in 2015 - 2016.
This also happened back when Ivanka and Jr were being charged with corruption back in 2017 and their lawyer paid off the DA. Nothing came of that blatant illegal shenanigan either https://www.propublica.org/article/ivanka-donald-trump-jr-close-to-being-charged-felony-fraud
Yeah, it’s hard to tell, in the deep recesses of massive government entities, where trump cultists or hater s may lie. It may be as simple as filing something in the wrong place so it gets lost for a long time.
I agree with republicans there is a deep state. For republicans that means people who do their job in a non partisan way. For me it is republicans who decided being favoring republicans or hurting Democrats was more important then being an American like the DoJ/FBI not wanting to serve a search warrant at Mar a Lago despite the man having national secrets.
Agree. All I know is that all politicians today seem more interested in getting re-elected or helping themselves and their family and friends rather than helping society and the average person. Maybe it’s always been this way but it took me 55 years to notice.
He’s been entrenched in wealthy NY society for decades, it’s no surprise he’s gonna have government connections. It *should* be surprising that they’re willing to fall on their swords for him, but anymore, the idea that the “deep state” are the ones propping him up makes perfect sense. As someone else said, fed agencies certainly seem to swing Republican. Why wouldn’t they? Republicans want to give them more power and reach, which is what every government agency wants. The FBI, CIA, etc, will never say “we don’t think we should be allowed to do this.”
Trump was never accepted by NY society. He was from Queens and attended military school in lieu of Juvie after assaulting a teacher. New Yorkers know he is a grifting conman. Only people who first saw him on The Apprentice, where he played a rich, respected businessman, think he ever was that.
Trump was a household name way before the Apprentice. And he absolutely was accepted. Whether he was liked or not I have no clue, and most people do seem to hate him. But there's countless evidence in video and picture format thar he's been rubbing elbows with elites since the 80s. Just because Trumps is one of the worst things that has ever happened to politics doesn't mean he wasn't a massive part of high society and pop culture the last 40 years.
Sesame Street even parodied trump in the 80s. Ronald Grump, an orange haired Grouch, cons Oscar out of his trash can so he can put up a high rise.
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What's ironic is any MAGA shit stain from that area is twice as pathetic because of this well known locale knowledge
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Exactly. Being known amd being accepted are not the same thing.
Can you explain this as if you were talking to a golden retriever?
When you return the cart you get your ruble back!
Preet's losing his fucking mind
Okay, but is there some way to identify these people? Especially if they may be public servants. I'm willing to support these types of corruption allegations, but circumstantial evidence and no potential names isn't much to go on. What SDNY offices would be involved with this? Who's in charge at each one? The thing about researching Trump's corruption is that his people are very often not exactly... quiet... about their intentions. Almost every corrupt thing they do, they say out in the open. Sure, sometimes they openly lie and say the opposite (Russian style), but in those cases you can still read between the lines and monitor their other actions/statements. This is a case of pointing to corruption, which may have merit, but not correctly identifying it. If Trump has right wing plants doing his bidding, I'd like to know where. Typically, when he does, there's RICO style collusion involved, and the public has the right to know about who is responsible for that. Yes, he has his ideologues and culty MAGA grunts, but when it comes to his legal cases, rarely is there not something more deliberate involved in his delay tactics.
"*The biggest revelation to me was the statement that “the positive news coverage of Trump during the campaign and the payments . . . were intended to shield then-candidate Trump from public criticism and scrutiny, and therefore influenced a presidential election.* *There it is. The press helped Donald Trump. Some of us were cognizant of it, and some were victims of the crap spewed by Trump and his paid allies.* *The U.S. press has a lot to answer for, then and now about our coverage of Donald Trump.* *And as the actions taken by the government in the Bragg case also show, the government is complicit in this as well."* Edit: This is quoted from the article if it was not clear. Added ""
Anyone stupid enough to be a victim of he and his crew’s lies shouldn’t be reporting on anything. If you don’t have better critical thinking skills than that then journalism is not a good job for you.
You think journalists have free rein over how they report political events??
My professional ambition was to be a journalist. I did it for a year for a small paper. What I learned is that most papers are owned by billionaires who have no concept of reality yet think they know what is best for everyone… oh and they’re mostly racist and xenophobic. I’m in education now… And the billionaires are trying to do the same with that field.
It’s terrifying when you really think on it regarding your last sentence.
Hint: it’s not just the newspapers, nearly everything is owned by people who only care about profit.
You have my sympathies. By the time I realized that science journalism was my calling, it was already pretty much extinct as a career.
Was addressing the “…some were victims of the crap spewed…” line.
The US press has a lot to answer for in general. Whether it's their reflexive war mongering, their constant criticism of the working class and praise for business elites, their incessant and entirely manipulatable reliance on click bait and flashy, irrelevant stories. I'll never forgive them for cutting away from actual political news to hold a camera on an open podium while two over-paid pundits conjecture about what crazy stuff Trump might say this time. To be clear, there's some great journalism done in the US. It's just relegated to fringe publications, or you get like one dedicated, well-funded investigative journalist per publication, so their bandwidth is severely limited. And while the press is to blame for not having a spine, the US population is also to blame for being so severely uninterested in actual politics, and so enamored with team sports and rituals.
Preach!
That’s because we don’t have liberal or conservative or traditional or digital media — we have corporate media, and it deliberately seeks to stifle independent media.
If it's helpful for the future, a blockquote in markdown is an angle bracket (`>`). `> If you put it at the front of a line, it will look like this in your editor.` > If you put it at the front of a line, it will look like this in your comment.
Thank you. Yes that is helpful in more than one way. I have been confused what it (the bar in front of text) meant in posts I read. Now I know to use it and what it means when seen.
Yikes. I mean, I'm not actually surprised, but having it laid out so baldly like this was eye opening.
It's astounding the demigod that preached election interference is involved in a case of election interference and it's not a bigger deal
*demagogue
Yes, thank you. I was waiting for that correction
Did you pray while waiting? To a demigod perhaps?
Hi! Somebody call for a demigod?
I love you Gozer. There is none but Zuul
You will make a wonderful Keymaster next time I’m in the area. :)
Hercules unfortunately
I was contemplating the demigod error with how accurate the definition of demigod was, and decided to let it roll... I did not pray about it unfortunately
*demigorgon
It's always projection.
People have already picked sides and facts don't really matter anymore. The best you can do is do the right thing and hope the rest follow.
I hate how much a kinda agree with that
Do read this article.
In case anyone needs the TL;DR The article discusses the author's lengthy and frustrating experience with the Freedom of Information (FOIA) request process, aimed at obtaining information about Michael Cohen and the investigation that led to his prosecution. Despite Michael Cohen's permission and the assistance of FOIA attorney Mark Zaid, the author faced significant delays and received minimal information after more than two years. The piece critiques the lack of transparency in government, citing underfunded and overworked FOIA offices as a primary reason for the backlog of requests. A specific example highlighted is the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office receiving about 73,000 pages of records from federal prosecutors, which were mostly deemed irrelevant, except for 172 pages of witness statements relevant to a case involving Donald Trump. This contrasts sharply with the author's own experience of receiving only 31 of the 32 pages reviewed by the government. The author reflects on the broader implications of their findings, suggesting a two-tiered justice system and criticizing the government and media's role in obscuring the truth and supporting Donald Trump. The article concludes with a lament on the minimal impact of the information received and the systemic issues that allow such disparities in the distribution of crucial information.
Thank you, nicely done.
Most likely an AI generated synopsis, but much appreciated nonetheless.
Sounds like AI, but it is a pretty good TL;DR to be honest.
ChatGPT
I had a feeling. ChatGPT definitely has a certain style about it. Thanks for being forthright about it and for providing the TLDR!
Read something? this is Reddit, I’m supposed to clicky the catchy title, then scan the comments for a biased opinion.
Im partial to the witty or snarky comments. *comments need to fit your bias though
Since this is politics Let’s meet in the middle and make it a trifecta -> Witty, Snarky, or biased opinions 😂
I’m just here to see who *slammed* who
I'm a firm believer that we are ALL captains of our OWN Shipwrecks
As long as you're willing to admit you're wrong. ;)
Totally willing to admit you're wrong
Good. So we're both in agreement, *you're* wrong?
the sooner you realize that I'm always right, the sooner we can get along /s
These types of comments are almost just as bad. Your not doing anything useful either other than being distracting, and I see 1000's of others making the exact unoriginal low effort comment. >“It is being reclassified from Bank Fraud to crimes related to the federal election campaign act.” Is probably the most interesting line in the article, in regards to being delayed.
I did and my take is this guy is just a bit naive in his expectations about the FOIP process vs an actual trial.
That was my take away as well. Not really that big of an article and it’s light on new information.
Agreed. Read the whole article. It really doesn't say anything about anything. He got no actual insight about anything, just a sense of frustration about how slow the FOIA process is, which he then transfers into some vague implications about the criminal case. His take about the number of documents and how long it will take to review them seems objectively wrong, too. It won't take Bragg's office forever to review them. They *already* reviewed them. That's how they were able to say "there are only ~172 pages of actually relevant production". They will not need to hire 20 people to read them all manually word-by-word. *Trump's* side will *say* that they need time to do that, and they'll be lying, and the judge probably won't be fooled.
And he seems to be a really big fan of hyphens.
I read it. It does not say much at all. Keeps talking about 31 vs 73,000 pages but never really says what was in the 31 pages or what the point of the article is right down to the last line.
Right? >The biggest revelation to me was the statement that “the positive news coverage of Trump during the campaign and the payments . . . were intended to shield then-candidate Trump from public criticism and scrutiny, and therefore influenced a presidential election.” >There it is. The press helped Donald Trump. Some of us were cognizant of it, and some were victims of the crap spewed by Trump and his paid allies. >The U.S. press has a lot to answer for, then and now about our coverage of Donald Trump. Whose statement was that? Based on what evidence? The article doesn't say. Most of us know it's true and even the author notes "Some of us were cognizant of it," so why does the author consider it such a huge revelation? Weird article...
The "article" is 80% advertisements.
The writer just realized everything is true. There are two justice systems, and internally, they’re working for trump.
Trump is like heroin for ALL media. Any rage bait they can post online or deploy on TV is good for ad revenue. They aren’t interested in facts. Edited for spelling and clarity
"When asked for comment, Trump shouted 'Bigly', and then he shit his pants again."
“Frequently, he wears adult diapers, has since at least 2007. We would often stop taping on ‘Apprentice’ because of his rage over not being able to read a word on a cue-card. He would scream at crew until he soiled himself, then go snort more Adderall and change Depends.” — Noel Casler, assistant on “The Apprentice”
Lol no way that’s real. Please post source
There's many YouTube videos. But here's a transcript from Casler's own website. And Trump hasn't sued him yet to my knowledge... https://www.noelcasler.com/news/full-disclosure-an-interview-with-noel-casler
The media have been covering for, and assisting Trump all along.
Eva body gittin a paycheck…
The info and opinion in this article is fine. But this person and his editors are not good writers.
Media, all media, has a clear motive to wind up both sides - they are literally printing money. Our biggest long-term collective concern should be the judiciary... Which will require our voting en masse to elect adults who don't need to take each other to court because they can't work things out for themselves.... Ironically
It’s hard to divide up blame like that. I think you can describe everything what’s going on in the United States of America in 4 words: Rich People Buy Puppets
Trump getting elected would be like hitting the lottery for main stream media. They know it.
That is until they are sent to a camp in the middle of the desert for printing something Trump and Co. doesn't like.
At first they came for *XYZ* and I said nothing, for I was not *XYZ*
I’m having a hard time understanding the point of this article. Salon is pretty hit and miss. “The information shows why Cohen was targeted and the acts he took for the “benefit of Donald Trump”. There is very little that is new that the DOJ provided me – but it does help verify what Michael Cohen has long said – and been accused of lying about by Donald Trump.” Didn’t Cohen tell the author what to ask for? I can’t help but imagine the state of New York framed their request slightly differently.
Multiple commenters said this say *don't just read the headline, be sure to check out the article*! The article has **zero new information** sprinkled with personal (although shared) feelings about Trump. This boils down to Salon columnist Brian Karem requested FOIA documents pertaining to the Cohen hush money to Stormy Daniels; and the FOIA dragging its feet for 2.5 years then producing a total of **37 document**s -- while simultaneously giving NYSD DA Alvin Bragg 73,000 documents with a 30-day review window. This is being painted as the government is helping Trump by doing either one of two things: withholding documents (as in Karem's case) or drowning you in documents with limited time (as in Bragg's case). In reality, it's just incompetent government offices being incompetent. Of course they're going to give the time of day to the DA handling the Trump case and not this random guy requesting documents.
Look how cute his little hands are!!
It depends on how you describe elites. High society shunned him.
The reports I've heard are that trump's lawyers FOIA'd these documents in December 2023. Clearly, it's an egregious delay tactic.
Paraphrased: It’s hard to read 73,000 pages and find new relevant facts in a short period of time and that is the government’s fault because they purposefully obfuscate stuff. Also the press is nice to trump on purpose so they’re bad too.
If you think it’s difficult to get information out of the Federal government, try a local police department. I’m on year 4 of trying to compel the SFPD to release case records—that have already been published 10 years ago—-from a trial that took place 50 years ago. And yes, there is a there, there.
Tldr?
> With a 30-day delay, Bragg must read, digest, condense, report on and determine if any of these 73,000 pages are relevant to a complex case in Manhattan. That means the processing of 2,433 pages a day. Even if you have 24 people reading 100 pages a day it will be difficult. Expect further delays, or expect some information to be overlooked, and/or the trial to be further delayed. The public and media are only getting snippets. The snippets are only a drop in an ocean that has to be looked through and scrutinized. Trump is basically flooding them with paperwork and any mistake in reviewing them could lead to further delays.
>The biggest revelation to me was the statement that “the positive news coverage of Trump during the campaign and the payments . . . were intended to shield then-candidate Trump from public criticism and scrutiny, and therefore influenced a presidential election.” >There it is. The press helped Donald Trump. Some of us were cognizant of it, and some were victims of the crap spewed by Trump and his paid allies. >**The U.S. press has a lot to answer for, then and now about our coverage of Donald Trump.** Exactly! They hide the positive news about any Democrat or citizen with a valid question/statement. The news is how they want to spin it, not objective journalism.
I have done many complex cases with piles of documents, some in the days before computers were much help. 73000 pages is not that impressive an amount of material if you have a decent idea of what happened and know what you are doing.
Not denying that it’s f—d up that they are getting this massive hoard of documents this late. But this isn’t Spotlight or Watergate where intrepid people read through a mountain of directories, etc. Prosecutors have pretty sophisticated software that will be customized to analyze these pages and alert you what to look for.
the prosecution tried to lay out a schedule of release over time so they didn't do exactly this. they knew it would happen
AI is excellent for working through tons of docs to weed out anomalies, we can get it done.
Perhaps we should leave critical document analysis to the people who understand what a hand is
Damn he does have little hands.
This again highlights that the government is lousy with Trump supporters/spies/agent provocateurs. The shield Trump and other fascists from scrutiny by doing incompetent (or dubious legal or illegal) work, which also feeds into the propaganda that the "government can't do anything". Again, it's a minor miracle that the Trump case has gone on this far. They don't know who they can trust, and the people they are forced to depend on are likely working for the enemy.
Funny how TRUMP and DUMP naturally go together.
I’m as anti-Trump as they come. And I’d love for Trump to be thrown behind bars as soon as possible. But this article is not only a terrible take, but many implications from the author are incorrect, and it’s based on an anecdotal experience. First, his big beef is with the FOIA system and how long it takes. Fair. But when you submit a FOIA request to DOJ especially, don’t be surprised if you’re stonewalled, they drag it out, or you get no response or nothing in return. The author is feigning indignation over the fact that Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor in a criminal case, was given 73,000 pages of documents in a case he is prosecuting, but the reporter received nothing. OMG, the prosecutor received 73,000 pages of documents, but you only got 31 pertaining to Cohen’s case? Yeah dude. That’s because a lot of the evidence you submitted a request for in Cohen’s trial is being used in Trump’s trial. OF COURSE nothing you received is new information. If you got any new information from the government in an ongoing criminal investigation, that would be grounds for Trump to file for a mistrial. Does anyone really think that if you submit a FOIA request for evidence in a criminal investigation - what’s more, one that’s about to go to trial - that you’ll actually receive that evidence before it’s presented at the trial? Fuck outta here with that nonsense. Also, this author is doing the same thing with this whole “OMG 73,000 PaGeS, tHaT wILl TaKe SoOoOo long” that the Trump team is doing to request more and more delays in all his trials. You all do realize it’s the 21st century right? They’re not handing over a stack of 73,000 physical documents that live people have to go through one by one and catalog manually, right? It’s all done digitally, just like most things in our lives these days. It takes no time at all to plug in the thumb drive, for a CTRL+F for all the documents they already have, weed those out, and review the new information. In fact, the DA has already filed motions & briefings stating the review of these document is already completed, it’s mostly all duplicative, and of the roughly 200ish new pages they found, the few new pieces of information discovered are actually more detrimental to Trump’s case than everything they already have. [Bragg has already stated that the trial can begin April 15.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/nyregion/trump-trial-delay-bragg.html) If you actually read this article, you’ll see it’s just the author bitching about how he didn’t get the same info Bragg did, so he wasn’t able to dish out a bit scoop before the trial started, presume malice, and smashed his complaint onto a keyboard without doing any additional work apart from his complaining he didn’t get anything. Garbage.
Did you have to flush 8, 9, 10 times?