A legal search warrant allowed FBI to retrieve stolen secret documents at Mar-A-Lago

Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago:  In fact, the National Archives found more than 150 sensitive documents when it got a first batch of material from the former president in January, helping to explain the Justice Department’s urgent response.

A federal judge granted a search warrant to retrieve classified material at the former guy's Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club in Florida.

Opinion letter echo published in the Fillmore County Journal 

in Rushford, Minnesota:

Mar-A-Lago protestors

To the Editor, Trump has stolen top secret documents and lied about it. This criminal act involved thousands of stolen records. There were 46 empty folders that had contained classified documents. These are not the actions of a decent sane person. 

Were the missing papers lost, destroyed, hidden, or sold? 

Now he vilifies the FBI and the Department Of Justice. 

On the day of the violent coup attempt, Trump urged the crowd to the Capitol and watched the violent attack on Capitol police on TV for hours, without lifting a finger. Trump has always seen the rule of law as something to twist and manipulate. For instance, his public attacks on the Mueller investigation and individuals involved along with dangling potential pardons for those who would refuse to testify were clearly obstructions of justice. 

By the time of the coup attempt, many top government officials were Trump appointees or loyalists. After the January 6 insurrection the phones of top government officials at the Secret Service, Defense Department, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were wiped clean.

But it’s more than just Trump. 

Mar-A-Lago stolen secret documents FBI evidence picture

n fact, the Republican Party decided that the coup attempt was of no importance! Now, they criminalize girls, women and doctors with government forced birthing laws. They make voting more difficult, ban books, and make second class citizens out of most everyone except straight white males. 

Moreover, the Republican war on science threatens the future of our planet with climate related catastrophes. Biden and the Democratic Party will see that truth, freedom for all, and democracy will endure.

Greg Rendahl in  Ostrander, Minnesota

Response:   Donna Hasleiet Halvorsen, Peterson native says:

September 12, 2022 at 12:10 pm  Good for you, Greg. You got everything right. You and other readers might be interested in a fundraising letter I received from Mike Pence last year in which he said that “They (Democrats) see the Constitution as something to circumvent, not something to uphold.” He might be changing his mind. We’ll see.  

Trump's chief of staff said the president thought Pence ‘deserves’ chants of ‘hang Mike Pence’ on January 6, ex-aide testifies

Minerva's prophesy to the Former Guy: "To understand the living"

Obviously, the Former Guy, does not read. In fact, he has not learned the message in the excellent novel, "Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil".  

Savannah's Bonaventura Cemetery- In the novel "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", Minerva*, the voodoo priestess, routinely performed voodoo.  "To understand the living, you got to commune with the dead", said Minerva.

Trump needs to read what Minerva said in John Berendt's bestselling novel. In fact, The Former Guy shows no class in his ignorant dig at General Powell upon his death. Minerva's prophesy will prevail over The Former Guy, just mark Maine Writer's words!  

In other words, do not speak ill about the dead. The Former Guy has blocked this message.  

Echo opinion letter published in NewJersey.com

Dear Editor, So, once again, the former guy Donald Trump has proven himself to be the ultimate low-life. 

He couldn’t resist taking cheap shots at the American hero Gen. Colin Powell, who just passed away and — unlike Trump —was a military officer, and a true American warrior and diplomat who endured much to serve his country.

Trump’s main (posthumous!) criticism about Powell was that he supported the war in Iraq after 9/11. Trump has conveniently chosen to forget that he, too, is on record supporting America’s participation in this conflict.

Powell willingly joined the Army in 1958, and served two tours in Vietnam. In contrast, Trump did everything he could to avoid military service during the Vietnam era. He actually compared surviving the dating scene without getting a sexually transmitted disease to Vietnam bravery. How pathetic

Powell worked with presidents and members of both parties for the common good. He was diplomatic and patient even when he didn’t get his way. His behavior was very different from the way Trump behaved in office.

Trump promoted the “Big Lie” about his winning reelection in 2020, and was wiling to put then-Vice-President Mike Pence and Congress in jeopardy in order to try to overthrow the legitimate choice.

History will remember Colin Powell as a true American patriot, no matter what Trump says. (Post Script Maine Writer- Donald Trump is merely #TheFormerGuy.)

Carl F. Young, Clark, New Jersey

The Bird Girl statue-
A calm but eerie disposition falls on this figure, signifying the reason that it paired artistically well with the story in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".  In other words, "Do not speak ill about the dead."

*Minerva was one of the most unforgettable characters in the Midnight  story. She was a mysterious voodoo priestess. In a dramatic scene described in  Berendt's novel, Minerva warns about consequences for those who speak ill about the dead.

Steve Bannon- failed in the military, flopped in government and will surely blunder in Italy!

Echo report by Ben Munster published in the May 31, 2021, The New Yorker:

Maine Writer comment: Bannon (ugh!) irony- A man who failed as a Navy officer and made a name for himself by supporting conspiracy theories perpetrated by #FormerGuy, now wants to build a right wing Nazi style academy in Italy!?!  Obviously, Bannon does not read. There is zero, "Nein!" ie. "no", support among Italians for anything that resembles Facism, Mussoliniism, right wing revanchism* and the evils of Nazism. 

Predappio, Italy crypt Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

 

Suggested reading list for Bannon. If he can't read, then somebody must read these to him:

• The Italian Front: Invasion of Sicily, Salerno, Monte Cassino, Anzio, Rome, Gothic Line (Campaigns of World War II), by Michael B. Haskew.
• Beneath A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
• The Vatican Pimpernel: The World War II Exploits of the Monsignor Who Saved Over 6,500 Lives by Brian Fleming
• The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

The Last Stand at Steve Bannon’s “Gladiator School”

The Academy for the Judeo-Christian West is trying to stave off eviction from Trisulti, an eight-hundred-year-old monastery outside Rome, where its founder hopes to offer courses like “Cultural Marxism, Radical Jihad, and the C.C.P.’s Global Information Warfare.”  By Ben Munster

At a café in a mountain town east of Rome, Benjamin Harnwell was wondering which of the five thousand applicants to his right-wing “gladiator school” he could introduce to a reporter without embarrassment. He thought of four, and dialled one up. “A journalist is looking to speak to some students,” he said into the phone, “and I don’t want him to wind up talking to some skinhead.” He listened, a religious medal rattling against his chest, his slicked-back hair shining. Harnwell hung up, saying that he’d been kidding about the skinhead thing. He then sped off in a white Fiat Punto, heading to the Certosa di Trisulti, a vast, eight-hundred-year-old charterhouse that is both his home and the site of his school.

Several years ago, encouraged by his friend Steve Bannon, the strategist behind #FormerGuy Donald Trump’s 2016 election, Harnwell, a forty-five-year-old British Catholic, began leasing the monastery, for about a hundred thousand dollars a year, from the Italian Ministry of Culture. 

Bannon has long been trying to foment populist insurgencies across Europe, and he viewed Trisulti as the perfect location for the Academy for the Judeo-Christian West, in which a new class of right-wing “culture warriors” would be trained. The aim, Bannon said, was “to generate the next Tom Cottons, Mike Pompeos, Nikki Haleys: that next generation that follows Trump.”

Set high in the mountains and decorated with frescoes, the monastery is a lonesome outpost on Bannon’s European frontier. With Trump’s defeat and Bannon’s 2020 arrest, on wire-fraud charges (he was pardoned), the work of setting up the school feels newly urgent. Harnwell spent the past two years battling lawsuits, and now the Italian government is trying to evict him. He has until June to appeal, before the carabinieri drag him out. Bannon blames “corrupt bureaucracy,” saying, “This is the sort of thing you expect from third world countries, not a founding nation of Western Civilization.”

If the plan goes ahead, gladiatorial training in the Catholic conservative arts will be offered to about seventy-five students, who will receive academic credits, toward a master’s degree, from an as-yet-undisclosed Catholic university in the States. Students were to have resided in old monks’ cells (no Wi-Fi), among a few lingering brothers. Applicants range in age from eighteen to eighty and include Italian academics and former U.S. marines. “We want people who have a sense that Western civilization is under threat,” Harnwell said.

So, the student he called, Alvino-Mario Fantini, is a fifty-two-year-old Ph.D. candidate in the Netherlands. “It’s wrong to accuse someone of racism and xenophobia, or Nazism, or any other ‘-ism’ without knowing their beliefs,” Fantini said by phone. He bitterly recalled being labelled a “fascist” in college for wearing a Dartmouth Indians sweatshirt. (The team has been renamed Big Green, to Fantini’s chagrin.) He applied to the academy in 2018, sending Harnwell a few clips blasting political correctness from the magazine he edits,  The European Conservative.

.

The academy’s curriculum is devoted to the intellectual underpinnings of (stupid!) Bannonism, a cocktail of populist nationalism, libertarianism, and traditional (right wing!) Catholicism, angled vehemently against the European Union, China, Islam, gay rights, Pope Francis, abortion, and the left. Course titles include “Cultural Marxism, Radical Jihad, and the C.C.P.’s Global Information Warfare” and “The Early Church as a Business Enterprise.” The professors—whom Harnwell is reluctant to name—will include browbeaten conservative instructors from obscure Catholic finishing schools. The academy will also offer media training, taught, ideally, by Bannon himself, and inspired by sessions held at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. (As one cpac participant put it, “They taught us how to speak about gay marriage without revealing our real thoughts.”)

When the idea for the academy was first floated, in Trump’s heyday, Harnwell had the support of a broad coalition of right-wingers, but that base is crumbling. The Italian government has moved leftward and has repeatedly taken Harnwell to court, alleging failure to pay rent and irregularities in his lease application. (Harnwell calls the charges “leftist disinformation.”)

He prevailed until last month, and the litigation has drained him, financially and emotionally. He has also lost support from revanchist elements in the Vatican, and other allies are now disillusioned with Bannon’s attempts to re-create Trumpism in Europe. “They said it would be a cultural project, that they would make Trisulti again a place of study and prayer,” Rocco Buttiglione, a conservative-leaning former Italian minister, said. “Then Steve Bannon entered into the picture.”

Protests have been erupting in the woods near the monastery, the monks have fled, and Harnwell is preoccupied with pet problems: his dog likes to eat lamb shank, and his cat drowned in a medieval well. But he remains determined to open. “This is an existential battle for me between good and evil,” he said. But months of potential gladiatorial prep time have been wasted, and it’s hard not to be glum. “Now I’m a fund-raiser for my lawyers,” he said. 

Published in the print edition of the May 31, 2021, issue, with the headline “Gladiator 101.” The New Yorker.

*Revanchism/Revanchist is the political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country, often following a war or social movement.

Postscript - May Bannon and company should also read about what happened to the Former Guy Academy. 

Trumpziism is domestic terrorism

An echo opinion letter published in the independent online newspaper, The Daily Bulldog in Farmington, Maine.

January 6 will exist in infamy:

The violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters.

There are still people running around with MAGA hats and Trump flags. This letter is not for them, because they have become cult members and are past reasoning.

Let us put some of our past history in perspective. 

Osama bin Laden organized an attack on the United States of America in 2001. Two aircraft struck the Twin Towers causing massive civilian loss of life, but the aircrafts sent to strike the heart of our government, the Pentagon and the White House, failed to make their target.

In 2021, twenty years later, Donald J Trump organized an attack on the heart of our government. He succeeded where Osama bin Laden failed. Trump’s cult of fanatics assaulted the Capitol of the United States while Congress and Senate were in session. They violently attacked, and overran the Capitol police, destroying property – including defecating and urinating in the Capitol rotunda. They ran through the halls of Congress breaking into offices. A noose was hung from scaffolding and the mob was chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence’. They were searching to capture the Speaker of the House. They were armed with collapsible weapons, stun guns, bear spray and zip tie handcuffs. It is unclear what outcome they were seeking: the violent overthrow of our Constitutional government and the installation of their Glorious Leader… President for life?

#FormerGuy tRumpf lost the election! 

In fact, Trump lost the popular vote by almost eight million. Every Governor and Secretary of State in all the contested states certified the election counts as fair, accurate and unassailable. There were numerous recounts, each affirming the results of President Biden’s win. Sixty-four judges, many Republican judges that were appointed by Trump, threw out Trump’s lawsuits as having no merit. Trump’s total argument was that thousands showed up at his rallies so he couldn’t have lost the election; and even now he continues the Big Lie.

The major threat to United States of America is no longer foreign terrorist, but radicalized American terrorist motivated by the ex-President of the United States – Donald J. Trump.

From William Gilliland in Farmington, Maine
Vietnam veteran, U.S. Navy retired (USN-Ret)

The Big Lie and the King Lear Syndrome

Echo opinion published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Julie Pace, with the Associated Press

"Republicans must now contend with the reality that millions of their party’s supporters believe a lie so powerful that it sparked an insurrection against Congress." 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — At the heart of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, was a lie, one that was allowed to fester and flourish by many of the same Republicans now condemning Former Guy Donald Trump for whipping his supporters into a frenzy with his false attacks on the integrity of the 2020, election.

#FormerGuy

The response from some of those GOP officials now? We didn’t think it would come to this.

“People took him literally. I never thought I would see that,” said Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff. Mulvaney resigned his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland last week after the riots.

That argument reveals the extent to which many Republicans have willingly turned a blind eye throughout Trump’s presidency to some of the forces coursing through America. Each time Trump promoted a conspiracy theory or openly flirted with extremist groups, Republicans assumed there were still some limits to how far he and his most loyal supporters would go.

Few seemed concerned about the worst-case scenarios, dismissing fears of violence or authoritarianism as liberal fever dreams.

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who backed Trump in the 2020 election but is now calling for him to resign, cast Trump’s actions after his loss as a dark shift, despite the fact that the president laid the groundwork for challenging the election before the first votes were cast.

‘Level of madness’

“He descended into a level of madness and engaged in a level of activity that was just absolutely unthinkable,” Toomey said on Sunday. (Maine Writer: In my opinion - the King Lear Syndrome!*)

If some Republicans had reservations about Trump before the election, they often appeared to be overshadowed by their belief that there would be a political price to pay for openly challenging the president. Even after Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden, GOP lawmakers worried about the hold he would have on their party in the coming years and the prospect of a primary challenge in their races if they crossed him. 

Well aware of this reality, Trump tried to box Republicans in further by vowing to run again in 2024, even without conceding the 2020 election.

And so, most GOP officials gave the president time and space to falsely attack the integrity of the November election, spread a vast array of misinformation and delegitimize Biden’s victory in the eyes of millions of Americans. Most have privately acknowledged Biden’s victory, but rationalized that the best way to help ease Trump out of office was to give him space to come to grips with his loss.

But that never came to pass. Even as judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, dismissed case after case and Attorney General William Barr, a Trump stalwart, said there was no sign of any widespread election malfeasance, the president kept up his baseless attacks.

Some complicit, some active

Some Republicans were complicit in the falsehood with their silence, while others were active participants.

More than 120, GOP, lawmakers asked the Supreme Court to overturn the will of the voters in key battleground states, an unprecedented step the high court refused to consider. 

As late as Wednesday morning, 150 lawmakers in the House and Senate promised to object to the election results in Congress, helping fuel the impression among some Trump supporters that there was still an avenue available for subverting Biden’s victory. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, eager to capture the support of Trump’s backers in the coming years, pumped his fist to supporters on his way into the Capitol that morning to object to the results of a free and fair election.

There were exceptions. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, long a critic of the president and the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump during his impeachment trial early last year, warned about the dangerous consequences of letting Trump’s election conspiracies flourish. So did Republican officials in Georgia, who withstood direct pressure from the president to “find” him more votes and overturn Biden’s victory in the state. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell waited until mid-December to recognize Biden’s victory, then aggressively warned his members against challenging the election results in Congress.

For many, clarity came Wednesday

But for many Republicans, it was only on Wednesday, when their own lives were put at risk by the violent mob that stormed the Capitol, that the consequences of the president’s dangerous disinformation campaign became clear.

“Count me out. Enough is enough,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most ardent backers throughout the last four years. Graham was later surrounded by angry Trump supporters at a Washington-area airport, who accused him of being a traitor to the cause of overturning the election. (Coward!)

Several senators who intended to object to the election results also changed their minds in the hours after the insurrection, suggesting they had never really believed in the fraud allegations in the first place. Among them: Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who lost a Senate runoff a day before the riots. Loeffler had thrown her support behind the election objections in a last-minute bid to energize Trump backers in her state.

Believing a lie

It wasn’t hard to see why she thought that might be a winning strategy. An AP VoteCast survey of the electorate in Georgia showed that about three-quarters of voters who backed Republican candidates in the runoffs said Biden was not legitimately elected, despite there being no credible evidence to support that assertion.

Republicans must now contend with the reality that millions of their party’s supporters believe a lie so powerful that it sparked an insurrection against Congress. And within their own ranks, nearly 150 lawmakers still backed challenges to the election after Congress reconvened following the assault on the Capitol.

And then there is this: While a vast majority — 88% — of Americans oppose the rioters’ actions, nearly a fifth of Republicans — 18% — said they support them, according to a new PBS Newshour/Marist poll.

*In the Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, there are vivid descriptions of wandering, severely mentally ill persons in the personage of Tom O'Bedlam or “poor Tom” and disturbed raving madness in late life exemplified by Lear.

Capitol insurrection- What we saw with our own eyes!

#TheBigLie and the Former Guy:

Trumpzi's #TheBigLie failed to sustain his dictator ambitions.

This opinion letter to the editor was published in The Standard: The Official Newspaper of Allamakee County, in Iowa.

#FormerGuy's dangerous Trumpzi big lie - that the 2020 election was rigged, stolen and fraught with voter fraud - had deadly consequences. 

For weeks before and after the election, #FormerGuy Trump repeated The Big Lie. Trump supporters were enraged and followed Trump’s directives to march to the U.S. Capitol January 6th. Their intentions were to break into the Capitol, to stop the certification of Joe Biden, as the legitimately elected president of the United States, and threats were made to harm Vice President Mike Pence, plus Democratic leaders and anyone who stood in their way.

With our own eyes, we saw the rioters beat Capitol Police officers. We saw the noose this mob erected. We heard them shout, “Hang Mike Pence!” With horror, we saw the mob break into the Capitol and the Trump flags hanging from the balcony. Rioters wore Trump hats and Trump t-shirts, and waved Trump flags.

Republican senators and representatives failed to debunk the big lie which led to this deadly attack on the Capitol. Now, the Republicans are giving life to another big lie - the lie that Antifa and Trump imposters were the insurrectionists, the rioters, and the murderers storming the Capitol.

Recently at a senate hearing, FBI Director Wray gave sworn testimony that the attackers were violent militia groups and white supremacists. At the hearing, Republican senators again tried to blame Antifa and fake Trump supporters. Director Wray repeated his testimony that there were no fake Trump supporters and no Antifa involved in the attack on the Capitol. Wray testified that white supremacists are domestic terrorists and the major threat to the nation.

Yet, instead of condemning white supremacists, violent militias and other Trumpzi-supporting domestic terrorists, the Republicans continue to lie and say Antifa attacked the Capitol. This is cowardly and dangerous.

Republican leaders are placing our democracy, our national security and our safety at grave risk. This lie will result in more violence, death and destruction by domestic terrorists. For the sake of our nation, it is imperative that Republicans put country before party.

From Karen Pratte, in Waterville, Iowa

P.S. Maine Writer-  The Big Lie failed in 2020, but Republicans continue to blindly support the Former Guy, as their dangerous messenger.  

Trumpism is cultism- #GQP

Editorial: Fed by Trump's lies, the mob laid siege to our democracy!
Echo editorial opinion published in the Corpus Christi Caller Times and the Austin American-Statesman, Texas.

During the gathering of Congress on Wednesday January 6th, to confirm the presidential election results soon became one of the darkest days for American democracy, since the Civil War.

Bloodshed. Shattered windows. Tear gas. Elected officials and their staffers huddled in locked offices while (dangerous!)pro-Trump (crazy!)rioters stormed the halls of Congress.

Donald Trump on Wednesday January 6th, delivered his American carnage. (Maine Writer- in a delusional self fulling prophesy, the former guy orated the conspiracy theories and the big lie to a crazed cult of domestic terrorists- QAnon, etc. )

It was a vile and seditious spectacle, and a wholly predictable one. Trump has spent the past two months refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden (The President!). He continued spewing (the big lie!) conspiracies about a “rigged” and “stolen” election and urging his followers to fight back. The protest, Wednesday, January 6th, Trump tweeted weeks ago, “will be wild!”

All of the Republican officials who echoed that rhetoric, who amplified bogus claims of voter fraud, who took extraordinary steps to try to overturn the election — all of them emboldened and legitimized the lawless mob that stopped our country in its tracks on Wednesday. Historians will record — and Texas voters should remember — the disgraceful acts of Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud and others who came to the Capitol, on Wednesday, January 6th, seeking to delegitimize votes from key states, while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton plied the Trump rally (GQP) crowd with more falsehoods about a stolen election.

Maybe this was a political game to them?

But, the mob that poured into the Capitol wasn’t playing. 

They were fed a steady diet of lies that their country is being stolen from them and that their votes don't matter, they turned to violence to be heard.

The sickening events Wednesday, January 6th, underscored the value of our democratic norms and the weight of presidential rhetoric. In both his 2016, and 2020, campaigns, Trump sowed doubt about the legitimacy of American election results. 

Incredulously, the former guy refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2020 election. And, during his (failed!) reelection bid, he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

These are not optional features in a democracy. They are essential to its survival.

Even at the bitter end of his term — even after a person had been shot and killed on Wednesday, January 6th, inside our seat of the U.S. government, and the National Guard had been dispatched to quell violence at the Capitol — Trump couldn’t see past his ego to act for the good of the nation. Instead, the former guy took to Twitter to urge peace, yes, but also to regurgitate election grievances and tell the insurrectionists: “We love you, you’re very special." His message was deemed so reckless that Twitter took it down.

This is not an America most of us recognize. The Republican Party, indeed the nation, has been poisoned (!) by Trumpism. The country, which voted to purge Trump, can recover. But, will the GOP? #GQP

Maine Writer postscript: #Trupmism is cultism!