Chalk up wins for NY Attorney General Leticia James and the US Justice Department — and chalk up double losses for Donald J. Trump.
Top News Today :
It seems Wednesday just wasn’t Donald’s day. That’s the day a federal appeals court overturned a ruling prohibiting the Justice Department from investigating classified documents stolen by Trump and seized by the FBI. It’s also the day NY Attorney General Leticia James lowered the boom on ‘The Donald,’ the Trump family, and their empire.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it found absolutely no personal interest for Trump in documents marked classified and no viable proof that he ever declassified them while in the Oval Office. Or, in other words, Trump’s claims that he was the rightful owner of the documents, that he previously declassified them, and that he needed to protect them due to his personal interests in the papers were all a bunch of baloney.
“We cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the 100 documents with classification markings,” the court concluded. “Classified documents are marked to show they are classified… For this reason, a person may have access to classified information only if, among other requirements, he ‘has a need-to-know the information.’
“Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the judges added. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.
“In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal,” the panel concluded.
The ruling means the US Justice Department may now immediately resume their investigation into Trump’s classified documents thievery and are once again privy to all of the papers he initially took.
Trump can’t declassify docs just by thinking about it
As if that wasn’t enough for one day, Attorney General Leticia James of New York delivered a message to Trump that he’s likely never heard before: “It’s time to be held ACCOUNTABLE!”
On Wednesday, James filed a civil lawsuit accusing Trump, his family business, as well his 3 eldest adult children of inflating the value of the Trump family assets by billions of dollars.
This “complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us,” James said during an afternoon press conference.
“The examples I laid out are just scratching the surface of the misconduct that we have uncovered,” James continued. “The pattern of fraud and deception that was used by Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization for their own financial benefit is astounding.
“This investigation revealed that Donald Trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth, to deceive banks and the people of the great state of New York,” James told reporters.
“Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. It’s the art of the steal,” she added, referring to the title of Trump’s 1987 memoir, “The Art of the Deal.”
OUCH!
The more Donald Trump attempts to avoid accountability for decades of misdeeds, the more ammunition appears to be hitting him where it hurts.
Stay tuned…
.
OK WASSUP! discusses the Top News Today:
Leticia James and Justice Dept. vs Donald Trump
Everywhere I look I see stories today that Trump is finished and people starting to believe he really is going to jail this time. All this could be a big turning point finally.