Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Rideback
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

Federal Judge rules this afternoon that Prosecutors have met the bar to pierce the attorney/client rule baring testimony by a lawyer against his client. The exception that was met is based on credible evidence, that convinced the judge, that the Trump's attorney Corcoran and Trump had engaged in conversations to perform an unlawful act.

https://money.yahoo.com/judge-ordered-t ... 15636.html

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/03/17/e ... lity-show/

'Multiple outlets are reporting that Judge Beryl Howell, in what may be her last ruling as Chief Judge, has ruled that Evan Corcoran must testify about his conversations with Trump.

This follows the news, from ABC, that Jack Smith’s team is particularly interested in a conversation Trump and Corcoran had on June 24, 2022, after prosecutors sent a subpoena to Trump Organization for surveillance footage that would show Walt Nauta moving boxes out of the storage room where the FBI would late find 70 classified documents. As I noted last year, in the early weeks of Trump’s efforts to stall the investigation, there was a discrepancy about what date this subpoena was served, which I suspected might suggest DOJ had to file subpoenas to two different entities before Trump agreed to comply.

So now we’ve ended up where it was clear we were going to end up in September, with another of Trump’s lawyers whose communications with him are found to be crime fraud excepted.

Corcoran is in good company. He is probably at least the fourth Trump lawyer whose comms were deemed crime-fraud excepted in the last five years. The others are:

Michael Cohen, April 2018
Rudy Giuliani, January 2022
John Eastman, March 2022
Indeed, the first such instance, the conversation Cohen recorded of Trump agreeing to a hush payment, will likely lead to the first (or possibly second, depending on what Fani Willis is doing) indictment of Trump, perhaps early next week.

With both Cohen and Rudy, the lawyers withdrew objections after Special Master Barbara Jones deemed the comms not to be privileged.

Corcoran should feel pretty good, though. He may be the first Trump crime-fraud contestant who manages to avoid legal exposure himself.

That’s got to count for something in the Trump Crime-Fraud Reality Show, right?
just-jim
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by just-jim »

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Appointment of Special Counsel must be working…..

Today, two dozen people connected to Mar a Lardo have been subpoenaed by a Washington DC jury on the classified documents issue.
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/politics ... index.html

Some observers think this could signal an imminent indictment in the case.

Gosh - maybe there could be a “two-fer”….indictments in both the federal M-A-L case and the Georgia Grand jury voting case.
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Meanwhile - guilty Donnie’s Depends are all wadded up….he’s apoplectic!
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9746880D-CF26-4907-B810-956052F611D4.jpeg
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Rideback
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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Prosecutors are asking the judge to charge Trump with contempt

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/politics ... index.html
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

That these docs were at a storage unit that held items from an office in NV used by staffers only digs Trump's complete lack of regard for the treatment of national security docs, staffers for criminy sake, it'll be interesting to find out the number of fingerprints that the FBI pulls off of them to log a chain of custody.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by just-jim »

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surprise, surprise, surprise!

more classified documents found, outside of Mar a Lardo……

“Lawyers for Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fla., used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those items were immediately turned over to the FBI, according to those people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The search was one of at least three searches for classified materials conducted by an outside team at Trump properties in recent weeks, after Trump’s legal team was pressed by a federal judge to attest that it had fully complied with a May grand jury subpoena to turn over all materials bearing classified markings, according to people familiar with the matter.

There has been a lengthy and fierce battle between Trump’s attorneys and the Justice Department in a Washington federal court in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. Much of the legal wrangling remains under seal by a federal judge, but people familiar with the matter say the Justice Department has raised concerns about what prosecutors view as a long-standing failure to fully comply with the May subpoena by Trump’s team.”

more at:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... ds-search/
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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Meanwhile, from WaPo: Trump's PAC is paying legal fees of MAL defendants like Kash Patel and Trump's valet.

'Trump’s Save America PAC is paying for lawyers of witnesses in the Mar A Lago document case.
By Isaac Stanley-Becker~The Washington Post
December 05, 2022 at 4:52 p.m. CT
Former president Donald Trump’s political action committee is paying legal bills for some key witnesses involved in the Justice Department investigation into whether Trump mishandled classified documents, obstructed the investigation or destroyed government records, according to people familiar with the matter.
The witnesses include Kash Patel, who has testified in front of the grand jury and is key to Trump’s defense, along with Walt Nauta, a potentially critical prosecution witness, according to these people, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal probe. Nauta, a Trump valet, has told FBI agents he was instructed by the former president to move boxes at Mar-a-Lago, even as government investigators were trying to recover classified documents at that private club and residence, according to people familiar with the matter.
Both Patel and Nauta are represented by Brand Woodward Law, which according to public records has been paid more than $120,000 by Trump’s Save America PAC. Stan Brand, the top lawyer at the firm, said there is nothing improper about the PAC paying legal bills for witnesses in the investigation. Another lawyer not involved in the case, however, said it could encourage witnesses to not cooperate.
“There’s no bar against third parties paying for legal fees as long as it’s disclosed to the client. The ethical obligation of the lawyer is to the client,” Brand said. “This is a tempest in a teapot and another cheap shot at these people because of who they work for.”
But Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor, said the payment arrangement raises concerns about whether the reimbursement of legal fees may influence what the witnesses say or do. And he noted that if Justice Department officials have ethical concerns, they could ask a judge to, at a minimum, question the clients about whether they are certain their interests are being protected.
“It looks like the Trump political action committee is either paying for the silence of these witnesses, for them to take the Fifth or for favorable testimony,” Walden said. “These circumstances should look very suspicious to the Justice Department, and there’s a judicial mechanism for them to get court oversight if there’s a conflict.”
Other witnesses represented by Brand Woodward whose legal bills are being paid by Trump’s PAC include Trump’s longtime adviser Dan Scavino and at least one other personal aide who has testified in front of the grand jury, the people familiar with the matter said.
“We don’t comment on any vendor payments, and everything the group spends on is publicly reported and in accordance with the law,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman.
[A timeline of Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents]
Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at New York University’s law school, said such arrangements are common in the corporate world and should only be concerning in some circumstances.
“The problems arise when the person paying the fee chooses the lawyer and has an interest in how the lawyer represents the client,” Gillers said.
He cited the case of former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, “who became a whole lot more cooperative” with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol after she switched lawyers.
Gillers noted that the Justice Department can ask a judge to remove a lawyer from a case if it has reason to think the lawyer is not acting in the client’s interests.
Trump has been willing to have his PAC pay the bills of aides who are loyal to him or continue to work for him, the people familiar with the matter said. The Republican National Committee has paid legal bills for Trump advisers in the past, including during probes of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and has shouldered more than $1.5 million in legal bills for Trump since he left office.
The PAC is the subject of a federal investigation for its fundraising tactics around false claims that the election was stolen. Separately, federal investigators have issued subpoenas seeking details about the formation and operation of the PAC, as part of the Justice Department probe of efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Those subpoenas, according to people familiar with them, sought a wide range of information about how the PAC raised and spent money.
[Trump's motive in Mar-a-Lago case seen as ego, not money]
Trump has wanted to keep a large sum of money in the PAC because there are no restrictions on how those funds may be used, one of the people familiar with the situation said; but he has frustrated fellow Republicans by being wary at times of spending the funds.
The PAC has spent $9.7 million on legal bills since 2021, according to a Washington Post review of its filings, about 14 percent of its spending during that period. That includes legal bills for separate investigations into Trump’s business in New York and his post-2020 election conduct in Georgia, according to people familiar with the matter.
In New York, for example, one firm led by Philadelphia lawyer Michael van der Veen is guaranteed $25,000 per month from the president’s PAC for work on New York legal cases, according to an agreement reviewed by The Post. The PAC paid van der Veen’s firm at least $369,000 in 2022, according to filings, and the firm has billed the PAC at least $230,000 since the last filings, according to documents reviewed by The Post.
Trump is equipped to keep making many more such payments. His PAC, which mostly raises money from small-dollar donors, had nearly $70 million on hand as of its most recent filing, submitted in late October.
[Mar-a-Lago classified papers held sensitive secrets about Iran, China]
It’s not unusual for the same lawyer or law firm to represent multiple witnesses in an investigation, as the Brand Woodward firm is doing in the Mar-a-Lago probe. One of its clients, Scavino, has been represented by the firm since before Trump left office.
Brand said there is little difference between the current situation and his past work representing George Stephanopoulos, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. In that case, the government — not a PAC — paid for some of his representation when Stephanopoulos was subpoenaed by a congressional committee.
If the government were to try to stop the reimbursement for legal work from Trump’s political arm, Brand said, that would be an unfair attempt to “squeeze witnesses into cooperating by cutting off their ability to defend themselves.”
The Justice Department is investigating Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office, including 103 documents that remained at the property after Trump and his legal team responded to a grand jury subpoena seeking the return of all such material.
Some of the documents recovered by the FBI in a court-approved search contained highly classified information, including about a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities, intelligence activity in China and Iran’s missile system, The Post has reported.
The Justice Department is also investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to reverse President Biden’s 2020 election victory. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel to oversee both investigations, citing Trump’s decision to run for president again in 2024 and Biden’s intent to seek reelection.
Prosecutors involved in each investigation have presented multiple witnesses to grand juries at the federal courthouse in Washington. On Friday, two former Trump White House lawyers, Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin, testified to a grand jury on election-related matters, according to people familiar with the matter; three other Trump aides, including Scavino, testified Thursday to a grand jury about the Mar-a-Lago documents. The testimony of the three aides was first reported by the New York Times.
When Patel was first brought before a grand jury in October, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as grounds to not answer questions, according to people familiar with the matter. But after conferring with a federal judge, he was given a limited-use immunity and brought back before the panel to answer questions in November.
Prosecutors are still seeking to secure cooperation from Trump’s valet, Nauta, who continues to work for the former president even as he has become a potentially critical witness in the case.
When Nauta was first questioned by the FBI, he denied any knowledge or awareness of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the case said. When questioned a second time, however, his story changed significantly, these people said; he told investigators he moved boxes at Trump’s direction, after the grand jury subpoena was delivered demanding the return of any documents with classified markings.
Nauta is in a precarious legal position because it’s unclear whether prosecutors may try to pursue a false-statement charge against him or otherwise pressure him.'
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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Appeals court reversed the ruling of the lower court this afternoon and ended the special master for the MAL case. BTW, Trump is on the hook for the court costs including the fees and charges to the special master and his team. That was agreed upon in the original order.


https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/politics ... index.html

CNN

In a major defeat for former President Donald Trump, a federal appeals court on Thursday halted a third-party review of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The ruling removes a major obstacle to the Justice Department’s investigation into the mishandling of government records from Trump’s time in the White House.

In a ruling on Thursday, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s order appointing a so-called special master to sort through thousands of documents found at Trump’s home to determine what should be off limits to investigators.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

The 11th Circuit said that either approach would be a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and that “both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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Kelly Ann Conway saw for 5 hours Monday before the J6 committee, Lindsey G has not testified in Georgia and today the ex Secret Service agent who described to Cassidy Hutchinson Trump's actions of attacking the 'clavicles' of the secret service agent in the car will give testimony. Meanwhile Trump is attacking Jack Smith's sister in law continually and this time he's poked the wrong bear.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by just-jim »

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And the hits just keep coming!

Courts rule all the subpoenaed folks must testify in election and J6 shenanigans:

“Former prosecutors say the upshot of these court rulings is that key Trump backers and ex-administration lawyers – such as ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows and legal adviser John Eastman – can no longer stave off testifying before grand juries in DC and Georgia. They are wanted for questioning about their knowledge of – or active roles in – Trump’s crusade to stop Joe Biden from taking office by leveling false charges of fraud.

Due to a number of court decisions, Meadows, Eastman, Senator Lindsey Graham and others must testify before a special Georgia grand jury working with the Fulton county district attorney focused on the intense drive by Trump and top loyalists to pressure the Georgia secretary of state and other officials to thwart Biden’s victory there.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... department
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

Ketchup delivery trucks will need to be lined up in front of MAL

This opens up a whole new door for damages against disgraced ex president.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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.…..and more!

A Federal judge has just ruled stoopid donnie may NOT use ‘absolute immunity’ in civil lawsuits stemming from the 2020 elections.

“ The opinion issued Monday from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan stemmed from a suit filed by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, NAACP and three Michigan voters, who together accused the former president and the Republican National Committee (RNC) of violating federal voting rights and civil rights law by conspiring to disenfranchise voters and keep Trump in office despite his electoral loss.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-AA14GVGn

Why would similar suits not escalate, quickly?
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

Always interesting to see Trump openly admit to his theft of govt property. Of course his claim of other presidents stealing or HRC's emails is never brought up as a defense by any of his lawyers once they step foot inside a courtroom or in any of their filings. They aren't allow to lie before a judge/they aren't allowed to bring frivolous cases or conspiracy distractions and so they are left with the indefensible status of these cases. Trump, is all alone in his lawbreaking, there are no 'other' presidents or Democrats to share that stage with him.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by just-jim »

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Queue the suspenseful music…..the end is getting closer and things are getting tighter for tubby donnie…..literally.
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Last edited by just-jim on Tue Nov 29, 2022 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by just-jim »

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And - one more time - dip-sh*t idiot donnie, who can’t keep his own yap shut, admits his own guilt.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

This is setting up to be a monumental week for Trump world. Not only are the appeals judges set to rule on the Special Master and maybe even Judge Cannon's authority alltogether, but Trump's illegal directive to the IRS to audit Comey & McCabe is about to explode ... both cases can be heard in DC rather than the more friendly Florida courts. We already know the bare bones of the charges Jack Smith would seek against Trump, they were laid out in the subpoena to retrieve docs at MAL. The IRS case uses former Chief of Staff John Kelly as a witness and the IRS agents who were told to make the audits. In the words of a former prosecutor; the idea that both Comey & McCabe would be chose out of the blue for these unusual audits is the equivalent of a whale falling out of the sky into the mountains.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-mig ... ea-dc-jury
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

Trump went on a tear on his own platform Saturday night:

'Sometime after 1:00 a.m., former President Donald Trump blew a gasket on Truth Social, lashing out once again at Special Counsel Jack Smith. And now, he woke up to tear into Smith again. I don't think it will help the one-term President to lash out at the man who is investigating his corrupt arse, but that's Trump's modus operandi.

"Jack Smith (nice, soft name, isn't it?), is a political hit man, who is totally compromised, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near our already highly WEAPONIZED & CORRUPT "Justice" Department and FBI, which are stuffed with, and listening to, Radical Left "MONSTERS," who will cause difficulties for our Country the likes of which we have not seen before," Lumpy wrote. "By the way, OBAMA SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN (and got caught!), & what about the MASSIVE Joe & Hunter BIDEN CORRUPTION (Evidence already in!)?"

Then Trump went all shouty caps in another post.

"THE FAKE NEWS IS THE MOST CORRUPT OF ALL. THEY ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE - THE ENEMY OF THE USA," he screamed into the void. "TURN IN THE SUPREME COURT LEAKER!"

I'm going to go out on a limb to suggest that Lumpy is worried about the possibility of him being indicted for his role in the January 6th insurrection:

"January 6th was all about a highly CORRUPT ELECTION, which is the only thing the Unselects refused to investigate!" he added.

Jack Smith has a solid reputation. Trump, who has a terrible reputation, is trying to smear his investigator. We've seen this play out before. '

Crooks & LIars caught the posts by Trump and made the commentary inbetwen.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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Apparently Special Counsel Jack Smith has zero tolerance for lies told in court. Monday's hearing saw Trump's lawyer try and sneak in blatent lie, didn't go over well.
https://www.rawstory.com/special-counsel-jack-smith/
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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It's actually funny that you say that Biden was on tape, no it was Trump that was on tape.
Besides that yes indeed Biden threatented to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine, BECAUSE PROSECUTOR SORKIN WAS NOT NOT NOT PROSECUTING ANY CRIMES and he himself was corrupt and had business dealings with Paul Manafort.

Now, again, remember the first impeachment where Trump withheld aid money to Ukraine because he wanted Biden's (who wasn't his political opponent at that time) son to be investigated. That is an entirely different scenario, one that is an impeachable offense and the kind of thing we only see in banana republics, the kind of thing an authoritarian wanna be would do.

https://themoscowproject.org/dispatch/t ... index.html
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

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How cute! You use the ‘news’ sources that cover his corruption up to ‘prove’ no corruption (while simultaneously ADMITTING the corruption! Why was Hunter on those boards anyway?) “You’re a stupid son of a bi**h” (also) Joe Biden
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by mister_coffee »

dorankj wrote: Fri Nov 25, 2022 3:56 pm “If you don’t fire the prosecutor (investigating his son) in 6 hrs, you’re not getting the billion dollars “ Joe Biden on tape!
No.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trump ... d-ukraine/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/fac ... 991434002/
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by dorankj »

“If you don’t fire the prosecutor (investigating his son) in 6 hrs, you’re not getting the billion dollars “ Joe Biden on tape!
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

Zero corruption in Biden family but the Rep's are sure afraid of him so they work overtime to create the illusion that they can run their obstruction games on. Again, the whatabousisms don't work. Trump and his enablers have to be held accountable for the damage they have inflicted on this Country. No one is above the law and Trump most certainly is not.
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by dorankj »

But heavy corruption sure does!
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Re: Special Counsel appoint for both MAL & J6 cases

Post by Rideback »

Alzheimer's runs in Trump's family, which is why he could never string words together into anything but word salad every time he opened his mouth. His tweets were notorious for not making even the slightest sense.

Neither dimentia nor alzheimer's runs in Biden's family.
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