Even without wiretaps, there were at least four instances when Federal law enforcement authorities could have disqualified Donald Trump as a Presidential candidate–or secured his indictment.
Threatening your political opponents with violence is a crime under Federal law. Yet such threats against his Republican and Democratic opponents played a major role in Trump’s Presidential campaign.
- Philip Klein, the managing editor of the Washington Examiner, wrote on the eve of the Republican National Convention in July: “Political commentators now routinely talk about the riots that would break out in Cleveland if Trump were denied the nomination, about how his supporters have guns and all hell could break loose, that they would burn everything to the ground. It works to Trump’s advantage to not try too hard to dispel these notions.”
- On August 9, 2016, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
- Reacting to Trump’s “dog-whistle” threat against Clinton, Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) said: “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him.”
Making threats against anyone under protection by the U.S. Secret Service is a felony. Yet Donald Trump was never held legally accountable by the Justice Department.
Threats of violence continued to be made by Trump supporters right up to the day of the election.
- On July 29, 2016, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant acting as a Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
- At a town hall meeting where Trump’s Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence appeared, a woman named Rhonda said: “For me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself am ready for a revolution.”
- In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter threatened to forcibly remove Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, from the White House if she won the race: “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” said Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take….”
Even Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, expressed fear of what might happen if Trump lost the election:
Fergus Cullen
“That’s really scary,” Cullen said, recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “In this country, we’ve always had recriminations after one side loses. But we haven’t had riots. We haven’t had mobs that act out with violence against supporters of the other side.
“There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said.
Trump even began encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He urged them to act as poll watchers in “other” [non-white] communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”
Many of his supporters promised to do so.
“Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.
“I’ll look for…well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”
Knowing that large numbers of angry–and possibly armed–Right-wingers planned to descend on polling places could only have had a chilling effect on untold numbers of Democratic voters. And this would have been especially true in heavily conservative states.
Both the USA Patriot Act and the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act have statutes dealing with making terrorist threats against government institutions to influence their members.
President George W. Bush signing the USA Patriot Reauthorization Act of 2005
If Trump’s remarks did not violate one or both of those laws, certainly remarks made by his surrogates did.
Thus, the Justice Department could have cited the Patriot Act in indicting Trump and/or any number of his followers for “activities that…appear to be intended…to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion [and]…occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
The Justice Department could have also demanded that the results of the election be invalidated on the basis that widespread voter and candidate intimidation played a massive role in it.
But of course this did not happen.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, BARACK OBAMA, BREITBART NEWS, CBS NEWS, CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, CIA, CNN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN, EXTORTION, FACE THE NATION, FACEBOOK, FERGUS CULLEN, FOX NEWS SUNDAY, GREG ABBOTT, HACKING, HILLARY CLINTON, IRS, JAMES B. COMEY, JAMES R. CLAPPER, JEFF SESSIONS, JEWS, JOHN KASICH, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, KEN PAXTON, MARK LEVIN, MICHAEL ROGERS, MIKE PENCE, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NBC NEWS, NEW HAMPSHIRE REPUBLICAN PARTY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PAM BONDI, PAUL RYAN, PHILIP KLEIN, POLITICO, Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION, REPUBLICAN PARTY, ROGER STONE, SALON, SOVIET UNION, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER, THE WASHINGTON POST, THREATS, TIME, TREASON, TRUMP UNIVERSITY, TRUMP-RUSSIA TIES, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, U.S. SECRET SERVICE, USA PATRIOT ACT, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIRETAPPING
ABORTING TRUMP’S CANDIDACY–WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 8, 2017 at 12:06 amPresident Donald Trump claims that, as a Presidential candidate, he was a victim of illegal wiretapping ordered by President Barack Obama.
In fact, even without wiretaps, there were at least four instances where Federal law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2016 election.
Two of these dealt with purely domestic issues–
The third and fourth ones dealt with issues directly affecting the security of the United States.
It is unprecedented for an American Presidential candidate to repeatedly bestow fulsome praise on the leader of a foreign power hostile to the United States. And to receive equally fawning compliments in return from that leader.
Yet that is precisely what has happened between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Thus Putin on Trump: “He is a bright personality, a talented person, no doubt about it. It is not up to us to appraise his positive sides, it is up to the U.S. voters. but, as we can see, he is an absolute leader in the presidential race.”
Vladimir Putin
And Trump on Putin: “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond. He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country”–a clear attack on President Barack Obama.
Donald Trump
Case #3: The Justice Department did not invalidate the results of the 2016 election, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia intervened to elect Trump as Vladimir Putin’s chosen candidate.
Trump, however, has steadfastly denied any such role by Russia: “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”
Case #4: The Justice Department did not prosecute Trump for treason, even though he solicited aid from Russia, a nation hostile to the United States. And no major official of the government–including President Obama–publicly condemned him as a traitor.
At a news conference in Doral, Florida on July 27, Trump publicly invited “Russia”–i.e., Vladimir Putin–to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
This was essentially treason–calling on a hostile foreign power to interfere directly in an American Presidential election. And it was seen as such by both Democrats and even Republicans.
FBI Director James Comey believed that Hillary Clinton’s emails on a private server were so dangerous to national security that he announced–11 days before the election–that he was re-opening an investigation he had closed.
That announcement erased widespread outrage over Trump’s unintended admissions of predatory behavior toward women–“Grab them by the pussy”–and reversed Clinton’s growing lead in the polls.
Yet the Bureau has not issued any such statements about the continuing reports of close ties between Trump and Putin, and Trump’s possible investments in Russia.
To their shame, the federal agencies charged with safeguarding America failed to take action against these abuses.
And, to their shame, the news media, to date, has failed to indict them for their negligence.
Share this: