Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Statistics
We looked inside some of the posts by ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly and here's what we found interesting.
Average Info
Notes Per Post
5
Likes Per Post
0
Reblog Per Post
5
Reply Per Post
0
Time Between Posts
1 hour ago
Number of Posts By Type
Text
17
Last Seen Tumblr Blogs
Fun Fact
Kazakhstan’s Minister of Communications and Informatics has blocked the Tumblr site because it contained 60 sites of terrorism, extremism, and pornography in 2015.
Text
By Luke Broadwater
When inmates are released from federal prison, the Justice Department places a call to their victims, notifying them that the defendant who attacked them is now free. On Tuesday, the phones of U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. police officers were buzzing nonstop.
For Aquilino A. Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant, the automated calls began on Monday evening and continued into Tuesday morning after President Trump issued a sweeping legal reprieve to all of the nearly 1,600 defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes, in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Between 7:03 a.m. and 9:37 a.m., Mr. Gonell received nine calls from the Justice Department about the release of inmates.
Mr. Gonell, who was assaulted during the attack and retired because of the injuries he suffered, was as outraged and distraught as he was shortly after the violence.
“It’s a miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy,” he said of the nearly 1,600 pardons and 14 commutations.
More than 150 police officers from the two agencies were injured during the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob four years ago. Some were hit in the head with baseball bats, flagpoles and pipes. One lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her down as they marched to the building.
Now many of those officers described themselves as struggling and depressed in response to Mr. Trump freeing their attackers.
In the days and weeks after the riot, several police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6 died, including Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the Capitol Police, who was attacked by the mob, suffered a stroke and died of natural causes on Jan. 7. Officers Jeffrey Smith of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and Howard S. Liebengood of the Capitol Police died by suicide in the days after the violence.
Craig Sicknick, the older brother of Brian Sicknick, has dedicated an area of his house to his brother, putting up a portrait and displaying the pocket-size military medallions known as challenge coins and other mementos on a table.
“I think about my brother almost every day,” Mr. Sicknick said. “He spent his life trying to do the right thing. He did it while he was in the military. He did it as a police officer. He did it in his personal life.”
The pardons, Mr. Sicknick said, leave him heartbroken that there will be no accountability for those who stormed the Capitol.
“We almost lost democracy that day,” he said of Jan. 6. “Today, I honestly think we did lose democracy.”
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, there were few condemnations of the pardons from Republican senators, even those who have spoken out against the violence. And those who did speak out often used the occasion to condemn pardons issued by both former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Trump.
Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader, sidestepped questions on Tuesday about whether Mr. Trump acted properly in pardoning the rioters.
“We’re looking at the future, not the past,” said Mr. Thune, who called the pardons “the president’s decision.” He added, “We know the presidential pardon authority was expanded in a massive way by President Biden, and obviously we knew all along President Trump can exercise it like most presidents have, and he did.”
Still, some of the officers who were victims that day are pledging to fight on.
“For anyone who cares about truth and respect for law and law enforcement, his pardons are an unspeakable outrage,” said Patrick A. Malone, a lawyer for seven officers who sued Mr. Trump over the attack.
“The officers I represent will not forget!” Mr. Malone said.
Harry Dunn, one of the most outspoken officers who protected the Capitol on Jan. 6, spent Monday and Tuesday checking in with his former colleagues.
“Everybody’s angry and sad and devastated,” said Mr. Dunn, who has left the Capitol Police.
One officer, Mr. Dunn said, went to bed after a long shift only to be awakened by an automated voice mail from victim services informing him of the release of a Jan. 6 defendant.
“Every officer who testified in court is now getting these automated calls that, ‘Hey this defendant is being released,’” Mr. Dunn said. “The number of calls people are getting, it’s unbelievable.”
Mr. Dunn himself said he is feeling a mix of emotions, including frustration and resignation.
“It’s mind-blowing to me that everybody is now surprised and up in arms about it,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump “said he was going to do it, and what me and the other officers were doing speaking out was getting people to realize what was coming.”
He added: “I get so many messages, ‘Harry, you’re a hero.’ I don’t want to be a hero. I want accountability.”
0 notes
Text
By Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany
The Trump family’s new crypto token surged in just two days to become one of the most valuable forms of digital currency in the world, creating the potential for a multibillion-dollar payout to the family but also generating a storm of questions about the conflicts of interest the new venture creates.
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced the launch of the new token, $Trump, on Friday night as hundreds gathered for a crypto-inspired inauguration ball not far from the White House.
The venture won praise by some as a sign of how digital currencies are now going mainstream in the United States.
But economists and even some longtime crypto investors said the new digital coin, known as a memecoin, might also emerge as a landmark moment in the speculative history of crypto trading and the potential dangers it poses to the financial system. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency tied to an online joke or a celebrity mascot.
“If people want to gamble, I don’t really care,” said Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now a lecturer for a center studying global economic markets at Duke University. “What I care about is when this crypto bubble bursts — and it will burst — it will end up impacting people across the economy even if they don’t have direct investment in crypto. And this new coin is making it worse.”
Eric Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s sons, who helped launch the token, declined to comment on Sunday.
At least on paper, the Trump tokens in the market as of Sunday late afternoon had a total trading value of nearly $13 billion, and a total of $29 billion worth of trades had taken place in just two days. That calculation is based on the nearly $64 value of each of the 200 million tokens issued, according to CoinGecko, an industry data tracker.
This suggests, as of Sunday, that Mr. Trump’s coin was the 19th most valuable form of cryptocurrency in the world, the CoinGecko tally indicated.
The Trump affiliates appear to control another 800 million tokensthat, at least hypothetically, could be worth as much as $51 billion — a total that would make Mr. Trump one of the richest people in the world.
Before the coin started trading, Forbes had listed Mr. Trump’s net worth as $6.7 billion, most of that coming from Trump Media and Technology Group, another speculative venture the Trump family helped start, which runs the money-losing social media platform Truth Social.
The Trump family late on Sunday moved to add a second new crypto token, this one called $Melania, with Mr. Trump and Melania, his wife, both promoting it on Truth Social, just as Mr. Trump was about to start a rally in Washington celebrating his inauguration.
“The official Melania Meme is live!” the social media posting said.
That move then coincided with a dive in the value of Mr. Trump’s own token, dropping to as low as $41, before starting to rise again, as doubts appeared to emerge over just how valuable these new tokens would actually be. Mr. Trump did not appear to be deterred.
“Bitcoin has shattered one record after another,” Mr. Trump said at his rally, referring to another form of cryptocurrency. He added during his remarks that “these are all investments that are only being made because we won the election.”
But Mr. Trump’s newfound crypto wealth would likely vaporize if he moved to sell his trove of coins. New cryptocurrencies often shoot up in price, making traders billionaires on paper, only to collapse when the coins’ holders start selling.
That is especially true of memecoins, which are prone to rapid swings in price as their internet popularity fluctuates. Prices can also vary across platforms, making it difficult to pin down a coin’s actual value. In 2021, one of the first memecoins, a dog-based digital currency called Dogecoin, minted millionaires overnight, only to lose much of its value just as quickly.
The launch of the Trump memecoin caught many of the industry’s power brokers off guard.
When the president-elect announced the coin on Friday night, hundreds of the most influential executives in the industry were drinking cocktails and singing along to Snoop Dogg at an inauguration party in Washington dubbed the Crypto Ball. (One executive who attended the ball said he was “annoyed” that trading in the coin had begun while the industry’s leaders “weren’t paying attention,” making it difficult for them to profit.)
Nonetheless, some traders have already cashed in.
Within a minute of the coin’s launch, a crypto trader had accumulated a $1 million position, according to an analysis of public transaction data by the crypto data firm Bubblemaps, which posted its findings on social media.
The coin’s price surged, and the trader’s account soon sold off holdings worth $20 million. The analysis prompted speculation on social media about whether an insider with advance knowledge of the coin’s launch had been able to make quick profits. (Bubblemaps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, one of the largest trading platforms in the United States, estimated in a social media post that as of Saturday, the Trump team had made $58 million in fees from all of the $Trump sales — even without selling its own reserve of tokens to the open marketplace.
It also appears that the Trump team may be transferring some of its tokens onto an overseas trading platform called Bybit, which is not allowed to execute trades in the United States, Mr. Grogan noted. Bybit has recently been the focus of enforcement actions by international cryptocurrency regulators.
The Trump coin’s launch immediately created new opportunities for executives, crypto traders and even major companies to curry favor with the Trump administration.
Anyone can spin up a memecoin for a few dollars, and the vast majority of the tokens are not available to buy and sell on mainstream digital currency marketplaces, which often focus on larger, more established coins. But within hours of Mr. Trump’s announcement, the crypto exchange Kraken began offering the new coin, and Coinbase, the largest exchange in the United States, said it would also list it.
Coinbase and Kraken are fighting lawsuits filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which conducted a wide-ranging crackdown on crypto firms during the Biden administration. The companies are among a large group of crypto firms that stand to benefit from the more relaxed approach to tech regulation that Mr. Trump promised on the campaign trail.
A onetime crypto skeptic, Mr. Trump embraced the digital currency industry last year, giving a speech at a major industry conference in which he promised to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
After winning the election, Mr. Trump made a series of moves that appear poised to benefit the crypto industry. He chose someone to lead the S.E.C. who has a track record of working closely with crypto companies, and tapped the venture capitalist David Sacks, a digital currency enthusiast, to oversee crypto and artificial intelligence policy for his administration.
At the Crypto Ball, Mr. Sacks announced from the stage that “the reign of terror against crypto is over, and the beginning of innovation in America for crypto has just begun,” according to a video posted on social media by Eric Trump.
The president-elect’s family was personally invested in the crypto market even before the memecoin launched. In September, he and his sons helped start a crypto business, World Liberty Financial, that also has a digital coin associated with it, WLFI.
World Liberty is not directly owned by the Trumps. But Mr. Trump is a promoter of the venture, and he receives a cut of the profits from token sales.
For the most part, the crypto industry has responded enthusiastically to Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures. But someexecutives expressed concern this weekend that the memecoin launch would end up hurting amateur traders.
A popular crypto podcaster called it a “gratuitous cash grab” that would be “bad for humanity.” Erik Voorhees, a prominent Bitcoin investor, wrote on social media that the memecoin was “stupid and embarrassing.”
Still the Trump family’s embrace of cryptocurrencies shows no sign of slowing down.
“It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Mr. Trump wrote on Friday as he announced the birth of the new crypto token. “Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW.”
0 notes
Text
By Mattathias Schwartz and Mike Baker
Attorneys general from 22 states sued President Trump in two federal district courts on Tuesday to block an executive order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants as citizens, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Eighteen states and two cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., challenged the order in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is “automatic” and that neither the president nor Congress has the constitutional authority to revise it. Four other states filed a second lawsuit in the Western District of Washington.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship was “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, who led one of the legal efforts along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts.
“Presidents are powerful,” he said, “but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”
Nick Brown, the attorney general in Washington, said Mr. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to 150,000 newborn children each year.
“It would render them undocumented at birth. It could even render them citizens to no country at all,” said Mr. Brown, whose state was joined by Oregon, Arizona and Illinois.
On Monday, in the opening hours of his second term as president, Mr. Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to undocumented immigrants would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would extend even to the children of some mothers in the country legally but temporarily, such as foreign students or tourists.
Mr. Trump’s executive order asserts that the children of such noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and thus aren’t covered by the 14th Amendment’s longstanding constitutional guarantee.
The order flew in the face of more than 100 years of legal precedent, when the courts and the executive branch interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing citizenship to every baby born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status. The courts recognize only a few exceptions — such as the children of accredited diplomats, and children born in U.S. territory that is under the control of an occupying army.
“It’s so outlandish that it’s almost assured to be struck down,” predicted Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, who expressed shock at the order’s breadth. Even former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was a foreign student when she was born, might be impacted. “The person who drafted this order was not doing Donald Trump any favors.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Mr. Trump’s order would mean that more than 20,000 newborn children would lose their citizenship each year in his state alone. Mr. Trump is “trying to keep a promise that he made during the campaign,” Mr. Bonta said. “We’re trying to keep a promise to uphold the law.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There are signs the judiciary could be divided on the issue. Judge James C. Ho, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has been more sympathetic to some of Mr. Trump’s arguments, likening unauthorized immigrants to an invading army. That comparison has also been made by lawyers for the State of Texas and another declaration by Mr. Trump that illegal crossings at the southern border amount to an “ongoing invasion.”
Still, that appeals court does not hear cases originating in Massachusetts, and other courts are unlikely to even consider the Trump administration’s arguments about constitutional interpretation without a new law from Congress, said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He cited recent cases where the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch can’t single-handedly address the biggest political controversies, known as “major questions.”
“If that’s true of student loans or Covid-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” he said. “The states are right and the courts are probably going to agree with them.”
The plaintiffs in the suit filed in Massachusetts included New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Additional suits were filed by a group led by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire, and another by Lawyers for Civil Rights.
The order on birthright citizenship does not take effect for 30 days, unlike Mr. Trump’s first-term attempt to ban travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries, which led to airport chaos. The timing means that executive-branch agencies can work through how to implement the order while the courts decide on its legality.
Mr. Brown, the Washington state attorney general, said his team continues to review Mr. Trump’s executive orders and expects the state will be involved in more litigation in the future. But, he added, the state is not going to sue over objectionable-but-legal moves by the Trump administration, such as pardoning most of those charged for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I have no interest in continuing to sue the president of the United States, whether it’s Donald Trump or whoever the next president is, but it is my oath to defend the Constitution,” Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order, he added, was “plainly illegal.”
0 notes
Text
By Elizabeth Dias
As Donald J. Trump raised his right hand to take the oath of office as president on Monday, his left stayed at his side. Although his wife, Melania Trump, held two Bibles, Mr. Trump did not put his hand on either.
The longstanding tradition of taking the presidential oath with one hand on a Bible stretches back to George Washington and was observed by Mr. Trump in 2017. But doing so is not a requirement.
The reason Mr. Trump did not place his hand on either of the Bibles Mrs. Trump was holding — a family Bible and a Bible used by Abraham Lincoln — was not immediately clear. The White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
At his first inauguration, George Washington used the altar Bible from a nearby Masonic Lodge, and kissed it after taking the oath.
But the Constitution requires simply that the president take the oath before assuming the office. It does not require a Bible, or any religious text.
Still, presidents have overwhelmingly followed Washington’s lead. (Franklin Pierce in 1853 broke the precedent of also kissing the Bible.)
In rare cases when a Bible was not used, presidents have placed their hand on something that signifies a higher power. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, placed his hand on a book of law. Lyndon B. Johnson, aboard Air Force One after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, used a Catholic prayer missal that was found on the plane.
When Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in after William McKinley’s assassination in 1901, he did not use a Bible.
0 notes
Text
By The Editorial Board
On Jan. 6, 2021, Philip Sean Grillo, a former Republican district leader in Queens, jumped through a broken window at the U.S. Capitol with a megaphone. He pushed his way past a line of Capitol Police officers and opened the exterior doors of the Rotunda to allow other rioters to enter the building and trash it. “We stormed the Capitol!” he exulted on video, and was seen smoking marijuana and high-fiving other Donald Trump supporters who were fighting the police. “We shut it down! We did it!”
Nearly three years later, a federal jury convicted Mr. Grillo of multiple offenses. But he did not lose heart: Last month, when he was sentenced to a year in prison, he had a special taunt for the federal district judge who sentenced him, Royce Lamberth.
“Trump’s going to pardon me anyways,” he yelled at the judge, just before he was handcuffed and led away.
He was right. On Monday evening, several hours after President Trump was inaugurated, he fulfilled a promise he had repeatedly made to pardon nearly all the rioters who attacked and desecrated the Capitol in 2021 to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified. Mr. Grillo and about 1,500 other rioters received full pardons from Mr. Trump, while 14 others received commuted sentences.
A presidential pardon for Mr. Grillo not only makes a mockery of his jury’s verdict and of Judge Lamberth’s sentence. Mr. Trump’s mass pardon effectively makes a mockery of a justice system that has labored for four years to charge nearly 1,600 people who tried to stop the Constitution in its tracks, a system that convicted 1,100 of them and that sentenced more than 600 of them to prison.
Most important, the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisers. It loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.
The presidential pardon system is usually abused in modern times by departing presidents giving a final gift to cronies, donors or relatives, and those breaches of trust were bad enough. Mr. Biden issued dubious pardons to his son and, as he walked out the door, several other family members, as well as pre-emptive pardons to an array of current and former government officials for noncriminal actions, all to protect them from potential Republican retribution — an expansive use of pardon power that further warps its purpose.
But what Mr. Trump did Monday is of an entirely different scope. He used a mass pardon at the beginning of his term to write a false chapter of American history, to try to erase a crime committed against the foundations of American democracy.
To open his term with such an act of contempt toward the legal system is audacious, even for Mr. Trump, and should send an alarming signal to Democrats and Republicans alike. Members of both parties had to protect themselves that day from the mob, which made little distinction in political affiliation or ideology as they called for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. In this pardon, Mr. Trump forgave and thus provided encouragement for domestic terrorists who put members of Congress in danger of their lives; the long-term cost will be paid by the entire political system, not just his critics.
For four years, he has tried to stage-manage the erasure of his role in inspiring the assault. It was only hours after the attack that his allies in the House and on Fox News began sowing doubt about the motivation for the rioters, claiming it was organized by leftistsmasquerading as Trump supporters. By 2022, when he was under investigation by the House Jan. 6 committee, he began referring to the rioters as “political prisoners” persecuted by Democrats and openly suggesting that the F.B.I. had helped stage the attack. By the time his presidential campaign was in full swing last year, he had completely transformed the day’s monstrous bloody fury into what he called a ���day of love” and insisted falsely that none of his supporters had brought guns to the Capitol.
But Mr. Trump’s dense fog of misinformation can’t change what really happened on that terrible day, which, as the Times editorial board wrote at the time, “touched the darkest memories and fears of democracies the world over.” It was a sentiment in the early aftermath of the attack echoed even by senior Republicans, some of whom would go on to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in instigating it.
At least 20 people who joined the attack did carry firearms onto the Capitol grounds, including Christopher Alberts, who wore body armor containing metal plates and carried a 9-millimeter pistol loaded with 12 rounds of ammunition, along with a separate 12-round holster that included hollow-point bullets. He was sentenced to 84 months in prison after a jury convicted him of nine charges, including assaulting law enforcement officers, but received a full pardon on Monday. More than 140 police officers were assaulted that day; Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, was killed, and other officers were smashed in the head with weapons; they were bruised, burned and lacerated; four later died by suicide.
“My concern is that people are going to believe that if they attack me or members of my family physically that Donald Trump will absolve them of their acts,” Michael Fanone, a former police officer attacked by the crowd on Jan. 6, told The Times. “And who is to say he wouldn’t?”
For many of the officers who were pepper-sprayed or hit with two-by-fours or beaten that day, the thought that the nation’s chief executive would forgive such actions is despicable. “Releasing those who assaulted us from blame would be a desecration of justice,” Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant who suffered lasting injuries in the riot, wrote in a Times Opinion guest essay this month. “If Mr. Trump wants to heal our divided nation, he’ll let their convictions stand.”
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, which helped organize the assault, was sentenced to 18 years in prisonafter being convicted of seditious conspiracy for assembling $20,000 worth of assault weaponry intended to be used at the Capitol. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced Mr. Rhodes, called him “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.” Judge Mehta later said he was appalled by the idea that Mr. Rhodes could receive a pardon.
“The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country,” the judge said last month.
Mr. Rhodes was not pardoned, but his sentence was commuted, and he was scheduled to be immediately released.
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys militia, was described by a federal judge as the “ultimate leader” of the rebellion, though he was arrested and barred from Washington as soon as he arrived there and didn’t enter the Capitol. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison after the Justice Department said that by “inflaming the group with rage against law enforcement and then turning it loose on the Capitol, Tarrio did far more harm than he could have as an individual rioter.” Two weeks ago, on Jan. 6, his lawyer wrote to Mr. Trump asking for a pardon, describing his client as “nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values,” and his request was granted on Monday.
Judge Lamberth, a senior federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the D.C. District Court, has been on the bench since 1987 and has seen it all, having served with the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Vietnam and as a federal prosecutor in Washington during the 1970s. But in pronouncing one sentence against a rioter last January, he said he had never seen such a level of “meritless justifications of criminal activity” in the political mainstream.
“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness,” he wrote. “I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion’ like ordinary tourists or martyrizing convicted Jan. 6 defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or even, incredibly, ‘hostages.’ That is all preposterous. But the court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”
On his first day back in public office, Mr. Trump provoked the danger that the judge dreads, setting loose hundreds of people found guilty of participating in a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol — not because they committed no crimes but because they committed their crimes in his name. In doing so, he invites such crimes to happen again.
0 notes
