Friday, September 7, 2018

Donnie, DoJ and FBI Are Not Your Personal Goon Squads

Though he really wants them to be.
President* Donald Trump declared Friday the U.S. Justice Department should investigate and unmask the author of a bitingly critical New York Times opinion piece purportedly written by a member of an administration “resistance” movement straining to thwart his most dangerous impulses.

Trump cited “national security” as the reason for such an extraordinary probe, and he called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get it going. He also said he was exploring bringing legal action against the newspaper over publication of the essay two days earlier.
Just because Trump bleats "national security" doesn't make it so. Fifty years from Nixon, by now, we all should know to be extremely skeptical when a president claims that national security for any sort of fuckery.

Trump is also whining about suing The NY Times. I'd be curious to know what sort of legal grounds he and Rudy the Blowhard can gin up.

Trump thinks it could be treason. It's not treason by any stretch of the imagination. Asking for and taking help from a hostile foreign power to win an election, that's a hell of a lot closer to treason. Only to a tinpot dictator would that be treason.

7 comments:

  1. No, of course not.

    Everyone knows that they're the Democrats' goon squad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would suggest the above comment was laughable...but he/she probably believes that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anon probably read it on Infowars.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anon = Coward hiding in the weeds of the internet, spouting opinions, without a spine to sign their name to it.

    Dale

    ReplyDelete
  5. Maybe it was supposed to be a joke?

    -Doug in Oakland

    ReplyDelete
  6. Maybe, but under the anon post, I doubt it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I suppose Donnie could sue the "John Doe" who wrote the editorial for libel, then subpoena the NYT for "John Doe"'s name. Whether a court would go along with that is a question that I can't answer. The courts do it with "John Doe" lawsuits in copyright cases, subpoenaing the ISP for the identity of the person matching an IP address, but there is no constitutional right to violate copyright the way there is a constitutional right to freedom of expression. GIven that the editorial clearly passes the Sullivan Test being a newsworthy political commentary about a public figure, it's my guess that a motion to dismiss would be immediately accepted by the court.

    ReplyDelete

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