Greg Palast

Trump raided, in part, because of law he signed to ensnare Clinton

In this week’s edition of the Election Crimes Bulletin, host Dennis Bernstein and investigative reporter Greg Palast discuss the recent FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Separate from the investigation being undertaken by the January 6th Committee, the raid on Trump’s Florida home was done at the request of the National Archives, who were seeking official documents Trump had illegally removed from the White House. And there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude to be had, knowing Trump’s home was raided, in part, because of a law he signed to ensnare Hillary Clinton — and to prevent her from running for office. But though this National Archives-instigated raid puts the former president in significant legal jeopardy, it’s a case out of Georgia that might be more likely to deprive Trump of his liberty — and his infamous comb-over!
 
TRANSCRIPT
Dennis Bernstein: I just wanna start off with a couple of quick headlines here. Here’s one about the Attorney General. He had a press conference with no conference part. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that the Justice Department had filed the motion to unseal a search warrant and property receipt from the FBI’s recent search of former president Donald Trump’s MAGA-Largo estate.
It looks like the folks who helped to take care of him are trying to take care of him in a different way. But let me just add this into the mix, and then I want you to comment. This is coming out of Ohio, the armed man [Ricky Walter Shiffer] who tried to storm the FBI’s Cincinnati office on Thursday, before getting into a shootout with cops that left him dead in an Ohio cornfield, appeared to be a conspiracy-addled Trump-superfan, who told his followers on Truth Social that he was ready for combat after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. He, by the way, was also guess where on in January? Yeah, at the insurrection.
Greg, we’ve talked about the situation growing more and more violent, and we’re seeing that happen — attacking the FBI, that’s pretty amazing.
Greg Palast: Well, in fact, yes, actually the amount of violence, having just come back from Georgia, it ain’t pretend. There were guys in a film that I’m working on right now…there was a so-called reenactment by the Civil War aficionados of the one single battle that the rebel won outside of Atlanta, they redid that battle. But it was interesting talking to the spectators and re-enactors. I said, why are you here? They said, to support the Confederate history. I said, well, isn’t that war over? And he said, nope, the Confederacy’s not over and the South will rise again. And then they started talking about how they’d already picked out the high points at the peach tree hotels in downtown Atlanta, waiting for that moment. Remember Trump’s statement to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”. Well, they’re still standing back and they’re still standing by — and they are armed to the teeth. And this ain’t no joke.
So, yes, obviously the armed reaction to the FBI raid [is worrying], but, let’s get into that FBI raid, ‘cause most of the media has just simply covered it as, well, you know, the FBI, how dare they break into… Even Pence was saying, how dare they break it to a former president’s residence? This is unprecedented. Well, you know, a lot of things about Trump are unprecedented.
If you take government property that isn’t yours, and he took many boxes…they aren’t his, they belong to you and me. They are the public’s documents. In fact, it was a guy named Donald Trump who signed a law when he was president saying that it is a crime for a president, or anyone who would control presidential papers, to illegally remove those papers. And that was because, if you remember, they were all berserko about Hillary Clinton’s emails. And so, Trump himself, he’s being raided based on the law that he himself signed and pushed that said, if you grab presidential documents, if you grab official documents and bury them or eliminate them, you go to prison. And by the way, that law has one other piece of punishment that Trump came up with, which is that if you get caught removing presidential papers illegally, you can’t run for federal public office. So, this is real, real serious for Mr. Trump. And this, again, is the law he crafted to try to hopefully ensnare and imprison Hillary Clinton, or get her barred from running for office again. But now it may be that he’s the man who’s gonna get literally hoisted on his own petard — legally.
By the way, this presidential records issue goes back to Richard Nixon, who was very good at creating false papers, as we know. So, before we get too excited about the wonderful FBI, they are at the center of the fake creation of documents, the COINTELPRO program, misused by Nixon, and that led to the 1978 Presidential Records Act. So, what we’re talking about is a series of laws based on abuses.
And, by the way, I do think that Hillary Clinton did abuse the law. Come on, she didn’t know that public papers are public and not private? Also, when they said that this has never happened before, in fact, Hillary Clinton’s servers were seized, ultimately by the FBI. They did check in her home in Chappaqua, which is also the home of former president Bill Clinton. So, no, this is not unprecedented. But, again, in that case, they were technically looking, not for the presidential papers, but for a potential future president and the Secretary of State. But this is not that unusual, except that Trump is unusual.
By the way, this is nothing to do with the January 6th hearings. This is a very separate federal grand jury that was impaneled at the request of the National Archives, which said papers are missing. You could tell that, ’cause I know when I work with these federal agencies, these things are numbered and stamped. And also, when I do investigations, you have a letter responding to a letter, but you didn’t see the original letter? It’s very hard to run off with the documents and bury them.
There’s real questions. because these were documents which included national security material, which would not have anything to do with the January 6th hearings. My curiosity has to do with…you know, why would Trump grab the stuff? The answer might be, and again, I’m always afraid to speculate, but I have done these investigations…Remember, Trump was impeached over threatening Ukraine with disarming Ukraine. Imagine if he’d gotten away with that today. Can you imagine? Trump tried to disarm Ukraine… and it’s quite consequential. So, that might be in that information, because, why would he be taking national security documents and hiding them away?
And, and let me add a few other things… We know from an informer who got to Newsweek that it was someone very close to Trump. One of the people close to Trump, running Mar-a-Lago, who happened to know where all these papers were hidden. And what caused the raid was that the FBI had actually a very positive relationship with Trump. They had asked his lawyers, they said, listen, we understand from the National Archives that you have boxes of presidential documents. You can’t have those. But, before we determine whether they are public or private documents, just lock them up.
They actually went to Mar-a-Lago in June, so this is not new. They went to Mar-a-Lago in June, but it was very friendly and they just said, listen, just lock those things away and have heavier locks than you have right now. We need to keep those secure. But it was only when they got an informer to say they jacked the FBI, they told you about the 15 boxes in that room, but there are other boxes in two other rooms — in his bedroom and in another room.
When you lie to the FBI, that creates a bit of a problem. And that’s when they decided that they couldn’t tip him off, ’cause obviously the sentiment was that he was telling them there’s only 15 boxes, when, in fact, he had a lot more that he was hiding — and why. So, that’s why they had to do the raid. Though, I will say, unusually for the FBI, they did not wear any FBI identification and they carried no weapons. Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of nice kid glove treatment, Dennis?
Bernstein: Yes, well…I’m gonna guess that people of color that make up the FBI is probably about less than 1%. The FBI has a reputation for being a racist organization. I’m sorry, I’m not gonna feel bad about them either. And everybody knows that if it was Black and brown people who were carrying forth with an insurrection, there would’ve been blood everywhere and it would’ve been the blood of Black and brown people. So we know that there’s another story here, and it has to do with the inability of the white FBI to deal with terrorism at the roots, which they’ve known for decades…that it’s white.
Palast: Well, what’s interesting here is that the FBI seemed to have been dragged into this. It’s not like the FBI were aggressively trying to go after Trump. In fact, it was the National Archives, which you just think of as kind of like a fancy library. It was the National Archives which is very upset. It’s their job to keep control of those papers. You can’t just take off with papers. They are not yours. It’s a government of, by and for the people. It’s not of, by, and for Donald Trump or the Trump Organization. And that’s very, very important. These are our documents. He stole them from us. It is a form of theft. And it is very dangerous stuff, because we also need to know what our government is doing. That’s why the law was passed originally in 1978, because Richard Nixon, Tricky Dick, was very good at either creating documents or burying them.
So, again, this was not the FBI. You can almost see when you watched our Attorney General, Merick Garland, at his press conference today. He almost seemed like…I wish I weren’t here. But, again, it’s not the FBI, it was the National Archives. They required justice to impanel a grand jury, and the grand jury made the decision, and a Florida judge granted the warrant for the raid. So, it’s not really even about the FBI getting tough, or taking on Trump, or any of that. It’s, literally, that they were forced to make this move by the courts and the National Archives. So, bless the National Archives. You never usually think of them as the tough guys on the street.
Bernstein: Everybody knows, still at this point in terms of Trump, it’s what’s happening in Georgia, it’s what’s happening through the DA which is most precise in terms of the ability to go after Trump. Is that case proceeding a pace?
Palast: Well, interestingly, I think this National Archives problem is a big one for Trump.
Bernstein: Oh, that’s a big one for Trump too. Absolutely.
Palast: Because he signed the law saying that if you are found guilty, you can’t run for federal office. And so this could actually be the killer one for him. But, in terms of actually serving on a chain gang, that’s gonna be the Georgia District Attorney.
Bernstein: The Georgia chain gang.
Palast: It’d be like Paul Newman in Hudor whatever film that was, right?
Bernstein: Give that guy a sledgehammer. Make him break rocks.
Palast: What I want to know is will he be allowed to wear his red tie? And he won’t be allowed the comb-over either.
Bernstein: Will he be allowed McDonald’s in federal prison? McDonald’s big burger? I know you can get those at Rikers Island.
Palast: I do know that guys like Trump, if they ever do serve, they serve in places with tennis courts. I’ve seen them.
Bernstein: Exactly.
Palast: Like there’s a so-called prison in La Jolla that I would love. I’d be willing to pay a fair amount of money to spend a weekend there. It has tennis courts, views the ocean. This is for the white collar criminals, basically, to take a break. I know one who actually, literally, signed in for the weekend.
Bernstein: [laughs] Can we have a 60 second version of what’s happening in Atlanta?
Palast: Okay. The key thing is that you have a tough District Attorney who is slowly building a case and it looks like it could take down, if not Trump, a lot of people around him. Like Cleta Mitchell, who is one of the key people behind groups like True the Vote. You can’t remove this from the vote suppression activity. So, she’s involved in convincing Trump, and others were involved in convincing Trump, to have an alternative slate of electors for the presidential vote — and that ain’t in the Constitution. We have had Constitutional crises, there are fights over elector slates, but he literally just pulled a bunch of names of his cronies and said that they were voted in by the people of Georgia. Well, I’m sorry, their names weren’t even on the ballot. And that involves, when you do transmit that, interestingly, again, it’s once again to the National Archives. When you transmit your list of electors to the National Archives, and it’s a false list, it’s made up of people who’ve never even been on a ballot, that’s wire fraud. That’s a federal crime. You do two, three federal crimes like that… And they’re also state crimes, because under Georgia’s racketeering law, which is tougher than the federal law. That is, when I say tougher, it’s easier to prove your case. And I’ve done racketeering cases for the Justice Department as chief investigator, and… I don’t know how Trump’s gonna wiggle out of indictment in Georgia at this moment. You know, I’m not saying I’m for or against it, I’m just gonna say that if there’s one danger here of his indictment, that’s it. But the National Archives thing is now serious and it’s in the hands of a grand jury. So, Trump has now, really, a very serious…he’s got a problem by the law he signed.
Bernstein: And I think he was outmaneuvered by the Attorney General here. This was a beautiful way to go at Trump. You know, he didn’t make it public, it was up to Trump. But, since Trump made a big deal of it, they went public.
Palast: They made a big deal that they wanted to do the raid when Trump was not there. They knew he was at his golf course in Bedminster in Jersey. That’s why they did the raid at the time that they did it. Because in June, when they did show up and it was friendly, they were let in…Trump even came in and shook hands with the FBI agents and said whatever we can do for you, whatever we can get for you, just ask. And I hate to say it, that bit of friendliness is defrauding the FBI. You’re misleading the FBI by saying, look, we’re being open, we’re giving you everything, here I am in the room, what questions do you have? The question will be whether Donald Trump knew that he had some extra goodies in his bedroom…. besides eating cookies in bed?
Bernstein: [laughs]
Palast: I do have to add…it was Hillary Clinton’s logs for the Rose Law Firm which could have put her in prison, which were in fact kept, those time logs were kept under her bed at the White House. So, we’ve been here before.
Bernstein: Stranger things have happened — maybe?!?

Contents of Alex Jones’ phone set to implicate Trump

In this week’s edition of the Election Crimes Bulletin we reveal how the contents of Alex Jones’ cellphone — which were accidentally handed over to the prosecution in their entirety by the shock jock’s own lawyers during the Sandy Hook defamation trial, and will now likely end up in the hands of the January 6 Committee — could provide proof that Trump and members of his administration were directly involved in the planning of the illegal march to Capitol which ended in violence.
 
"If I were in the Trump crew — Mark Meadows, Chief of Staff, etc. — I would probably be having to change my underpants right now."
 
Dennis J. Bernstein: Today seems to be Alex Jones day… Given the fact that his attorneys, apparently, made a mistake… I don’t know what happened there with all those emails ending up on the wrong side of the bench, but it doesn’t seem to be helping Mr. Jones. Your thoughts on where we are now and where it’s going.
Greg Palast: Okay. A couple things… Number one, we’re talking about the trial of Alex Jones, which he’s already defaulted on. He’s lost a liable suit, because he basically gave out the addresses of parents of children who were murdered in the killings in Connecticut. He said that it never happened, it was crisis actors, and these people are all fake.
Imagine you lose a six year old kid, a seven year old, your child, and then you find you’re up on television with your picture saying you’re a fake, you’re a liar, you’re just out to take away Second Amendment rights — and here’s your home address! People had to move, go into hiding after losing their children. So, Jones, oddly, instead of being charged, which he should have been criminally with threatening people’s lives — ‘cause their lives are in danger — he just simply lost a civil action for liable…
But now, one of his lawyers accidentally, apparently — I mean, I’m sure they asked for it — accidentally sent over his entire cell phone contents. That means years of emails, that means all his text messages. If I were in the Trump crew — Mark Meadows, Chief of Staff, etc. — I would probably be having to change my underpants right now…
Mark, I do know, from speaking to insiders at Women for America First, that they were sending panic messages to Alex Jones, and to his partner, Ali Alexander. That’s the guy who said, “We’ll light this whole sh*t on fire.” Remember, he is threatening to burn down the State House and the State Capitol in Georgia days before he goes to Washington and leads the march to the Capitol to burn that down. He said, we’re gonna burn this down. This is not like, oh my God, this crowd is out of control. That was the plan. That was announced. We have it on camera.
And by the way, thank you to Zach D Roberts for getting that film and basically taking his life in his hands to get that Ali Alexander threat. And that guy that was screaming his head off before Ali, that was Alex Jones saying, you know, this is the globalist plan to take over America, blah, blah…
But we do know that Ali Alexander and Alex Jones were sent several panicked texts saying do not announce a march at the January 6th rally. They sent messages to Mark Meadows saying don’t do the march.
Now, Ali Alexander and Alex Jones both claimed that the White House called them, contacted them, and then had people show up and say, you stand at the corner of this parking lot, Trump’s gonna call for a march and you lead the march. So, they knew in advance that Trump was gonna call for the march — even though he was told it was illegal and dangerous. Illegal and dangerous, he was warned, but he said it anyway.
So, what I’m very interested in is how many texts went back and forth from the White House, and Mark Meadows in particular, to Ali Alexander and Alex Jones, and probably the texting between Jones and Alexander and their planning for the illegal march. You know, find the messages saying we know this march is illegal.
So, it’s not just that Alex Jones is in deep trouble, it’s Mark Meadows. Donald Trump, and whoever else from the White House that was involved in actually planning a march they knew was illegal and dangerous. This is real bad news for Donald Trump.
Learn more at GregPalast.com
 

Could Georgia DA Fani Willis turn Donald into Little “RICO” Trump?

About a month ago, I would’ve said there’s no chance Donald Trump will be indicted, and I still think that you’re not gonna see that on a federal level. But Trump may yet see the inside of a prison cell, thanks to the efforts of Fani Willis, the first woman to hold the office of District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia.
Because of the Georgia Republicans’ zeal to put Democrats like Stacey Abrams behind bars — Democrats who are guilty of registering hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia — the state created its own racketeering laws, which make it a lot easier to prosecute people than under the federal RICO statute. Specifically, Georgia made interference in the election process count as a “predicate act”, which is a prerequisite for RICO prosecutions.
Ironically, this now leaves Trump open to a racketeering prosecution in Georgia, and a grand jury has been impaneled in Atlanta, which is looking into whether the former president and his cronies interfered with and tried to overturn the legal vote count in Georgia. Beyond the attempt to use a slate of phony electors to overturn Joe Biden’s win, the grand jury may also be investigating Trump’s role in instigating and organizing the violence that took place not only at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., but also before the January 6th insurrection at the Georgia State Capitol and Governor’s Mansion.
In the latest Election Crimes Bulletin, first broadcast on Pacifica Radio’s FlashPoints News on July 28, 2022, host Dennis Bernstein and I discuss the political and technical reasons why it’ll be easier to indict Trump for a racketeering crime in Georgia.
To learn more, and for a transcript of this program, visit: https://www.gregpalast.com/why-georgia-da-fani-willis-is-the-biggest-threat-to-donald-trump/

Election Crimes Bulletin: Nullification is the Name of the GOP’s Game

Nullification, as Martin Luther king called it, is a continuing theme in the fight against the right to vote. And it wasn't just the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In 1877 you had a successful overturning, a nullification of the vote, so it can happen again.

#2000Mules: Why not show the perps? They even blur the face of a dog!!!

In Dinesh D’Souza’s new film #2000Mules — which claims to prove the 2020 election was stolen by an army of mules that stuffed ballot drop-boxes with fraudulent votes — they don’t show the face or give us the name of a single perp. Why not? They even blur the face of a dog that went to a drop-box with one of these so-called mules! Nice of D’Souza to protect the guilty. Unless, of course, they weren’t guilty. Or just guilty of Voting While Black.
#2000Mules: Fact or Fiction? Learn more: https://www.gregpalast.com/2000-mules-belly-laughs-belly-aches-from-dsouzas-proof-that-trump-won/

2000 Mules: Fact or Fiction?

In his film 2000 Mules, Dinesh D’Souza sets out to prove a giant criminal conspiracy to stuff ballot boxes with fraudulent votes. The proof? Well, you can see it with your own eyes: There’s a BLACK man and he is dropping off BALLOTS in a ballot drop box. Case closed! You can laugh now. But crying time is coming. I predict that 2000 Mules will create the platform for Trump’s loss of the election in 2024 — and Trump’s inauguration in 2025.
D’Souza’s charge is mind-blowing... In Fulton County (Atlanta), he tells us 92,670 ballots were stuffed illegally into drop boxes. That’s astonishing — because there were only 79,000 ballots cast in drop boxes in Fulton County! And in Detroit, it was worse. “Mules” stuffed 226,590 ballots into Detroit area drop boxes — way more than the total number of all mail-in ballots — about three times the number of ballots in drop boxes.
In this interview, Palast chats with Zach D. Roberts, and breaks down the flawed math and misleading claims featured in 2000 Mules.
Learn more: https://www.gregpalast.com/2000-mules-belly-laughs-belly-aches-from-dsouzas-proof-that-trump-won/

The Jack Blood Show: Censorship, cognitive dissonance & bullsh*t hypocrisy

“I don't want anyone censored, whether you're supporting Democrats, Republicans, or whatever. And I don't support any freaking candidate, because they all end up going rotten, I don't care who they are.” — Greg Palast
“It's a victim's parade, send in the clowns, theater of the mass, whitelist for everybody.” — Jack Blood

Insurrectionist Disqualification: Marjorie Taylor Greene v. 14th Amendment

In this week's episode of The FlashPoints' Election Crimes Bulletin, John C. Bonifaz of Free Speech for People talks to hosts Greg Palast and Dennis J. Bernstein about his group’s lawsuit, which challenges Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s candidacy for re-election under the 14th Amendment’s Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause

West Virginia protest calls out Joe Manchin’s dirty coal profits

More than 50 activists convened on a power plant in West Virginia last weekend, calling for its closure. By the end of the day, 16 people were arrested. The plant the protesters targeted in Grant Town is one where Sen. Joe Manchin makes nearly $500,000 per year selling a dirty coal waste called “gob.” Gob is short for “garbage of bituminous,” which Sen. Manchin sells to the power plant for a tidy profit via Enersystems, the company he founded and that his son now runs.
The protesters, a mix of local and national activists, call themselves West Virginia Rising. One of them was Michael Whitten, a retired miner from Boone County, West Virginia. “When I worked on strip mines, we threw that [gob] away,” Whitten told DeSmogBlog. “We covered it up, it’s like if you had a wood-burning stove at your home and you wanted to put wet wood in it — it’s just not economical.”
He’s right. The West Virginia customers served by the Grant Town Power Plant, run by American Bituminous Power Partners (AMBit), are being charged more because of the gob. In the last six years burning this waste coal has cost the local power utility an additional $117 million. All of this — even though regulators initially fought the plant’s transition to burning gob — was pushed through thanks to Sen. Manchin.
Manchin, who has a blind trust set up for his investments, has continually been a one-man blockade for climate legislation. That came to a head this year when he essentially killed the Build Back Better bill, Biden’s signature climate and social policy legislation, by dropping his (some might argue never serious) support of it.
Full report by Zach D. Roberts: https://www.gregpalast.com/west-virginia-protest-calls-out-manchins-coal-profits/
#JoeManchin #GrantTown #WestVirginia #WVRising #CoalBaronBlockade #StopGOB #WestVirginiaRising #Pollution #Environment

We have to cutoff Putin’s ability to make money off oil

Russia got 45% of its national budget — that’s all its social programs, everything — from oil and gas royalties, and the price of gas hit the floor during COVID. Russia was broke. Russia was bankrupt before Putin’s war in the Ukraine. Thanks to this invasion, the price of oil has completely reversed the bankruptcy of the Russian state, and now they're making money off this war. So, we have to cutoff Putin’s ability to make money off the oil.