Trump’s Other Immunity Claim: Stealing Boxes and Boxes of Classified Documents
SCOTUS decided to weigh the extent of Presidential immunity less than a week after Trump claimed that he legally stole boxes and boxes of classified documents.
Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
SCOTUS decided to weigh the extent of Presidential immunity less than a week after Trump claimed that he legally stole boxes and boxes of classified documents.
Trump’s immunity claim will be heard April 22.
Back in January, Derek Hines made some claims about the laptop that were always suspect have since been further discredited. Nevertheless, Ken Dilanian parroted those claims as if they were true.
You know who is vindicated by the Alexander Smirnov indictment? Lesley Wolf, who made an effort to prevent Trump’s efforts to interfere in the investigation from tainting the investigation into Hunter Biden and then faced death threats because she did so.
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Leo Wise led the Nevada Magistrate Judge to believe that he’s most worried about Alexander Smirnov fleeing to Russia. But the reporting he laid out suggests the big worry is that Smirnov will flee to Israel.
Merrick Garland’s reliance on the career Associate Deputy Attorney General rather than a PADAG to oversee Special Counsel investigations seems to have created a kind of navel-gazing that only encourages ethical problems with the investigations.
Fridays with Nicole Sandler.
Between his motion to dismiss for absolute immunity and his motion to dismiss under Presidential Records Act, Trump is quite literally claiming that being President gave him authority to steal boxes and boxes of classified documents.
In a story struggling to explain how Alexander Smirnov relates to the side channel Bill Barr set up to launder dirt from Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani mouthpiece Ken Vogel covers up the role of Rudy and the alleged Russian spies from whom he solicited dirt on Hunter Biden.