On Thursday, CNN reported that outgoing President Donald Trump has banned his staff from mentioning Richard Nixon's resignation — or even Richard Nixon altogether.
"Trump has been consumed by the unraveling of his presidency during his last days in office, according to people around him, which included a casual discussion among advisers recently about a possible resignation," reported Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins. "Trump shut the idea down almost immediately. And he has made clear to aides in separate conversations that mere mention of President Richard Nixon, the last president to resign, were banned."
Further, according to the report, "He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again."
Nixon famously stepped down in 1974 as a result of the Watergate scandal, after tapes were released of him orchestrating a plot to spy on his opponents and obstruct justice.
A previous ABC News report suggested that aides previously brought the idea of resigning early to Trump, but the president rejected it — in large part because he doesn't trust Vice President Mike Pence to issue him a pardon, as Gerald Ford did for Nixon.
Trump and Pence's relationship has been rapidly deteriorating ever since Pence determined he lacked the constitutional authority to block certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Congress, a fringe legal theory pushed by right-wing Chapman University law professor John Eastman. This week, Eastman was forced out of his job after speaking at the pro-Trump "Save America" rally that devolved into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Speaking on CNN this Wednesday, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig talked about the current legal threats facing Donald Trump, saying that the former president should be concerned.
Honig first addressed Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Trump alleged mishandling of classified documents, where an appeals court in Washington, D.C. has ordered one of Trump's lawyers to him to testify before a federal grand jury.
"This tells us that the Justice Department believes and was able to prove to the satisfaction of a federal judge that Donald Trump committed a crime and the crime here appears to be obstruction," Honig said. "The theory is that Donald Trump lied to the FBI through his lawyers about those classified documents. It is important to keep in mind the burden of proof here is lower than it would be at trial."
In regards to Trump's alleged hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, Honig said that the grand jury's failure to meet today in spite of rumors that Trump would be indicted could be due to three things: one, that the grand jury wants to take time to consider more evidence; two, "there's a witness that the DA wants to call that wasn't available today"; and three, that Trump already negotiated an "actual surrender will happen on a certain day."
RELATED: Appeals court quickly shoots down attempt to block Trump lawyer from testifying
Honig went on to say that while he has faith in Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg as a prosecutor, he questions the wisdom of bringing a "historic" case against a former president over what is basically a "bookkeeping failure."
According to Honig, the biggest threat Trump faces in the case regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia.
Watch the video below or at this link.
Police are looking into an incident in which a man in a small upstate New York community outside Buffalo screamed racial slurs at a Black couple and called for Black and Latino people to be killed, reported The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
"Kevin and Cheryl Moses, a married Black couple, went to the Aldi’s in Cheektowaga — just outside of Buffalo — on Monday, according to The Buffalo News. Kevin shopped while Cheryl waited in the car, and when he returned, his wife complained that a man in another vehicle had allegedly hit their car," reported Brooke Leigh Howard. "Kevin told the local outlet that when he confronted the driver, the man quickly became aggressive and attacked him with racial slurs."
"'You are a fucking n-----,' the man says, turning around to face the camera. 'You’re not even fucking animal,'" the report continued. "'Kill all n------!' the man then chants after closing the trunk to his Scion and before putting away his shopping cart back at the supermarket. 'Kill all s-----!' Kevin urges the man to provide his name. 'Go away, n----- boy!' the man shouts instead. 'You are an example of an ignorant man, sir,' Kevin says."
According to the report, Kevin told the man “You just made YouTube!” after he walked back to the car, to which the man responded, “Why don’t you call the police like n------,” and told him more Black people should have been murdered in the TOPS supermarket shooting.
IN OTHER NEWS: Appeals court quickly shoots down attempt to block Trump lawyer from testifying
That attack, which killed 10 Black shoppers, was committed by a white supremacist who believed in the "Great Replacement," a conspiracy theory that mass immigration and births of nonwhite people are deliberate population engineering to crowd out white people from existence in countries where they are currently a majority.
Police in Cheektowaga say they are investigating the incident, saying, “We take these incidents very seriously and are using all our resources to investigate it and will work with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office to determine if criminal charges will be pursued.”
Watch video below or at this link.
A former top Dept. of Justice official says a federal judge’s expedited ruling ordering an attorney for Donald Trump to testify against his client before a grand jury and hand over documents very well may be related to “national security.”
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith had successfully made the case Donald Trump may have committed a crime, via his attorneys, in his classified documents case. That finding allowed her to invoke the crime-fraud exception, and order Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to testify before the grand jury investigating the ex-president’s unlawful retention and refusal to return hundreds of classified documents.
Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissman, who also worked for Special Counsel Robert Mueller and headed the DOJ’s Criminal Fraud Section, Wednesday afternoon on MSNBC said it’s possible Judge Howell’s expedited decisions were related to national security.
Tuesday night Judge Howell ordered DOJ to provide information by 6:00 AM Wednesday.
Trump appealed Howell’s ruling, and Wednesday afternoon the Appeals Court denied his appeal related to the documents, Politico reports.
“I’ve never seen anything that quick. It’s very hard to know why. I have to say, to me, when I think about what can be a plausible reason– and this is pure speculation – is that there must be something in the papers that gave the judges concern about national security implications, because it’s such a short timeframe.”
“The reason this is a bombshell is you could end up with Evan Corcoran as a key, fundamental witness against Donald Trump in an obstruction of justice case and a false statements case,” Weissman adds.
According to Politico, Wednesday’s appeals court ruling “effectively permits the Justice Department to circumvent Trump’s attorney-client privilege after a lower-court judge found that the documents likely contain evidence of a crime.”
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